Finding a balance between interactive and imaginative

It is becoming more and more commonplace that young children are spending their free time in front of television sets and tablets or holding gaming consoles and mobile phones. Just a decade ago, it was possible to tell whose backyard the neighborhood kids were playing in by the pile of bikes in the driveway. Now, swings don't get swung, soccer balls don't get kicked, and knees don't get scraped from falling on roller blades.

But where does it all start? At the very beginning, with infants and toddlers. The way children under the age of 3 years old interact with electronic screens is crucial to their healthy development in later childhood, during their teenage years, and even into adulthood. This is why parents, educators, pediatricians, and child caretakers need to be more stringent in enforcing screen time rules.

According the American Academy of Pediatrics, children today spend approximately seven hours a day viewing entertainment media. That's about 60 percent of their waking hours. If children are spending so much time staring at screens, no wonder we don't see them playing tag at the park anymore.

James Ernest, professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Alabama, and some of his colleagues conducted a study in 2014 which found more than 5,000 apps in the Apple app store targeted toward toddlers, and more than 1,000 additional apps geared toward newborns.

This staggering fact illustrates how parents are so overwhelmed by "interactive" ways to engage their children that they forget how important imaginative play is.

According to Alliance for Childhood founding partner and senior researcher Edward Miller, "children that are adept at playing video games, pushing buttons, and operating a mouse show an alarming lack of imagination."

In addition, the AAP states that this "can lead to attention problems, school difficulties, sleep and eating disorders and obesity."

To be fair, not all screen time is created equal. Exposing kids to certain approved, educational programs in moderation and in a supervised environment may be beneficial to their development, studies show. Some things, like the astounding biodiversity of our oceans, how a penguin egg hatches, or how a volcano erupts, cannot be taught well in classrooms without the aid of technology.

Bearing all of this in mind, it is important to heed the AAP recommended guidelines for children's screen time exposure. Originally, the AAP recommended completely avoiding all media and screens for children under the age of 2 and limiting screen time to just two hours daily for older children. But a few years ago, they came to the realization that just as the world around us is changing, guidelines for screen exposure should, too. Their revised guidelines are much more ambiguous and stress mindfully exposing children to screens rather than just capping off at a daily limit.

There is also talk that the AAP will be announcing yet another revision to their guidelines in October of this year.

But we don't need to wait until then to change our own screen habits. Children learn from us and see adults as role models. We can pose as an example of healthy screen usage by limiting our own screen time. Additionally, we can establish screen free zones in our homes such as in bedrooms and at the dinner table.

Most important, though, content matters. The quality of the screen time will almost always trump the quantity. So as the AAP puts it, we need to prioritize how our children spend their screen time rather than just setting a timer.

In order to see a change in how our children use screens, we must make known the adverse effects of early childhood overexposure. We need to work together as a community to educate others on healthy screen usage habits, starting with displaying them ourselves.

As a society, we need to long for the image of children scooting down slides on the playground and throwing a Frisbee in the yard, instead of curled up in front of an electronic screen conjuring new Minecraft strategies.

Agnes Wesolowski, of Prospect Heights, is a senior at the University of Illinois at Chicago studying Communication and Spanish. A research podcast titled "Kids and Screens" that she and fellow students produced for a senior seminar will be available online in May.