Finding A Healthy Balance When Choosing Technology For Kids

ALISON ST. JOHN: And you're listening to midday edition here on KPBS I am Alison St. John in for Maureen Cavanaugh. New digital devices are at the top of a lot of children's wish lists this year, from video games to smart phones more and more kids are using technology at younger and younger age. What is a safe and healthy amount of time for children to be on these devices is a question you may have been asking yourself. And we will get some insights from our guests today. We have Dr. James Italiano who has a practice in family medicine in the North County. Thank you so much for coming in, Dr. Italiano. JAMES ITALIANO: Thanks for having me I appreciate it. ALISON ST. JOHN: And we also have a meal who is director of digital solutions at the San Diego County office of education, Emil thank you for being with us. EMIL AHANGARZADEH: Good to be back, Alison. ALISON ST. JOHN: Emil, you know every year products come out and gets more tempting what are using some of the trends, what sort of things are children asking for this year that is perhaps new to the list? EMIL AHANGARZADEH: I'm seeing a lot of folks talking about these new smart phones of course. And they are the hottest gadgets going right now but most recently I have seen an interest in kids having these go pro cameras., These cameras that you can attach to your heads or different parts of your body so the you can film yourself or film other people doing different kinds of actions or sports or stunts. They are fairly inexpensive and they are a pretty hot commodity. Unfortunately they have a pretty big downside as well because what they tend to do is encourage kids to do more extreme things, things that things that a parent, not that I'm a parent, but I'm sure as a parent would be quite concerned by you could just go to YouTube and do a simple search for ALISON ST. JOHN: I can imagine as a kid also the temptation to not only do something scary and risky, but also record it for your friends would be quite, quite tempting. EMIL AHANGARZADEH: Of course. We live in a society now where it's all about performance and showing off in this voyeuristic lifestyle. And so you know, the thinking for me is that it's not that we can avoid this lifestyle, this new way of thinking that a lot of kids and really adults as well are undergoing. We should perhaps be more aware. ALISON ST. JOHN: More aware, right and we will talk later about some of the benefits that some of these devices bring to us. But it's worth sort of talking about the fact that they can be quite addictive, can't they? They are almost like a drug and Dr. Italiano I wonder whether there's any evidence to suggest that using digital devices might be more of a health risk for children, for people under a certain age than the even are for adults? JAMES ITALIANO: Yes definitely. We've been finding that kids age from 0 to 2 should have extremely limited or no use with these kinds of electronic gadgets and screen time just because decreased executive function, attention deficit. But then most kids ages three and up it becomes an issue with lack of physical activities, not interacting with other kids so that the social skills start to dwindle a little bit. ALISON ST. JOHN: So it's got both physical and sort of psychological sort of human relations impacts. Because obesity is a national crisis at the moment, isn't it. We hear so much about it and you are saying being addicted to a screen is one of the things contributing to that. JAMES ITALIANO: It definitely is. Children who are allowed a device in their room have a 30% increased incidence of obesity and that coupled with different fast food issues and, of those obese kids about 30% of those will further develop diabetes, would be at higher risk for earlier strokes, earlier heart attacks and decrease life expectancy overall. ALISON ST. JOHN: So, getting the kid off the couch doing something active. EMIL AHANGARZADEH: There's also a psychological factor that you were just mentioning here that my understanding of course another neuroscientist is that when you are playing these videogames in front of these computers you are constantly solving and overcoming these challenges and what happens from again, I would defer to the doctor on this is there's an increased release of dopamine that starts coming into your brain and so much so that your brain and body starts to crave it but unfortunately kids, once they leave the videogame and are in real life if you will, the constant release of dopamine is not prevalent and so maybe that's one of the reasons why we find our kids becoming more interested in being an introvert and playing video. Games than they are in actually socializing. ALISON ST. JOHN: So Dr. Italiano really it's like a drug in the sense in the way that it's releasing internal chemicals. JAMES ITALIANO: It sure is it becomes a social isolation, and then this kind of dependency on it just because of the constant simulation. And with that, the lack of ability to cope with things in the real world. ALISON ST. JOHN: That's kind of like the secondary result, first of all you are craving the chemical experience which you are completely unaware and unconscious of then of course this applies to adults, two I've sat there in front of bejeweled for many minutes thinking what am I doing, but for kids is there some evidence that it actually affects the development more? Like we hear that perhaps you know drugs can actually affect their future development more than if you are a adult taking the drug is that true of games, too? JAMES ITALIANO: Well with games as well as the overuse of electronics if used for more than two or three hours per day can definitely affect how someone thinks and just their physical well-being. The general recommendation is trying to limit all screen time to under two hours. ALISON ST. JOHN: Under two hours per day. So it is hopefully not all at the same time. EMIL AHANGARZADEH: And as my mother and I'm sure all of our mothers told us moderation is the key here because as the doctor is anger certainly dangers involved a lot of the videogame play but there's also some interesting positives that come from gameplay. Because you're constantly solving problems you know you are developing the fluid intelligence. You have so many things that you have to juggle, like we were talking earlier in the break room about nowadays it is not as simple as playing pond, or some centipede game where it is just a joystick and an action button, now you have multiple buttons, you have a joystick, you have a headset on where you have to speak to the person on the other side of the room, you got your mother constantly saying it off the videogame and you're constantly juggling all the aspects and so there's something to be said about videogames actually having a positive effect on somebody's intelligence but it's always about moderation. ALISON ST. JOHN: So Emil, you're with the County office of education so you are looking at this as being educational tool that can actually have benefits on the possible physiological as well as you know learning abilities of students. EMIL AHANGARZADEH: Absolutely ALISON ST. JOHN: You are saying Dr. Italiano, two hours, what do you think, how would you recommend that a parent sort of manages the two hours in the day do you have any advice? JAMES ITALIANO: It definitely has to be kind of a family strategy for managing media and actually parenting has to come into play and parents recognizing that we cannot substitute medication and interaction. And using these little devices almost like a pacifier where parents a lot of times need time to themselves and it is extremely easy thing to do to just give your kid a gadget and then they are quiet for a little while. ALISON ST. JOHN: Yes, which used to be television at least these are interactive. I mean I don't know whether you feel Emile, that at least they are a step better than television, or either are there perhaps reasons why because these are devices that are very close to your body, right? I know there's been a lot of research into radio frequencies. I was just going around and finding that the Federal Communications Commission says there is no evidence to date, no scientific evidence that's not been effectively linked exposure to radio frequency for mobile devices with any known health problems. But is that something that some parents are concerned about? EMIL AHANGARZADEH: I think so. I can tell you my wife is concerned about it in the you say the same thing and I may be exaggerating here but about other things like cigarette smoking you know there is no harmful effect whatsoever just keep smoking. ALISON ST. JOHN: That's what they told us back in the 50s. EMIL AHANGARZADEH: I think technology and the radio frequencies that you're talking about we are so young into the evolution of these technologies that I'm not quite sure where the health effects are going to be but I don't necessarily want to scare anybody but it's certainly something that I think about. ALISON ST. JOHN: There are some things you can actually do to try to mitigate that aren't there EMIL AHANGARZADEH: Of course there are, some of the folks that I speak to tell me just do not hold the phone all the way up to your ear for example, just hold it slightly away from your ear. Just maybe a millimeter or two that might make the difference but it is a big might and I do not want to send out any signals that suggest that these are real problems, but if you are concerned about it why not be proactive and hold it away from your ear. ALISON ST. JOHN: I cannot help noticing that the glasses you are wearing are a very interesting color they are kind of yellow, is that related to protecting your eyes? EMIL AHANGARZADEH: It is, Alison. I've been staring at screens for decades now and I'm young man in my early 40s now but over the past five years or so I've started to notice considerable eyestrain and I did a little bit of research and found a couple of companies out there. One is Hammacher Schlemmer and of course one name Gunner that's solely specially designed glasses that unfortunately make me look like Bono, but ALISON ST. JOHN: That may or may not be unfortunate. EMIL AHANGARZADEH: I agree, I like U2. What they do is block about 60% of the blue wavelength that comes off of the screens and as a consequence I find myself being able to stand the screen a little bit longer, but there is a downside to that to Alison because I can stand it longer I tend to sit there longer and that's right. ALISON ST. JOHN: Dr. Italiano, what would you say about kids, for, is that an issue, parent might say hey why don't you start wearing his glasses if you're going to be sitting in front of a screen for a long time would that be realistic? JAMES ITALIANO: That's definitely realistic. Just given the persistent focus on this near light source where in increased risk for potentially myopia with chronic use there is the general recommendation for every 20 min. of screen time that you have you should take 20 seconds and look 20 feet away. So, not very long at all, but it helps the I focus at a distance so the I does not become chronically dependent on the very near source. ALISON ST. JOHN: Talk about that a little bit more. That's called the 20/20/20 movement. JAMES ITALIANO: Yes that's right ALISON ST. JOHN: It sounds a the key thing that's not that difficult to do in the child would find it probably pretty neat. So, describe it again. So what a child who has been focused on the videogame for 20 min. or an hour, you are saying not more than 20 min., right? Then, what do you do? JAMES ITALIANO: Then you take, even if it's just 20 seconds and you look 20 feet away because typically the screen that we have is going to be either right front of our face, couple inches, or about a foot away so our eyes are very focused on the very near light source and if we give our eyes the time to relax, look to the site, even massage the sides of our eyes, try to blink a lot, it definitely helps. EMIL AHANGARZADEH: Unfortunately what happens, Alison is the rich experience that these devices offer kids and adults alike tend to make you forget that it's 20 min. later so there's actually some interesting web applications and software that you can install on your computer. One is called awareness. One is called timeout and these pieces of software are set up to give you little warnings at different time intervals. Some of them will give you a nice long gong sound. Some of them will actually lock you out for 20 seconds from your computer ALISON ST. JOHN: Say the name of those again? EMIL AHANGARZADEH: One is called awareness one is called timeout I believe there's another one called time wave but I'd be happy to send the links. ALISON ST. JOHN: People can find that on the website if they wanted to install that on the computer at home. It might help the kid and actually the kid might feel like they're going to look pretty cool wearing the Bono type glasses. Let's just talk a little bit about the social development though, how do you feel like spending a lot of time at the digital device, we see articles left and right about how it is affecting people's marriages. It's affecting people's business lives, they are spending half their time going to eat at a restaurant sitting there looking at the cell phone. How is it affecting social development in kids? JAMES ITALIANO: It definitely affects it and I read something that linked it to the lack of sleep that kids have. And with the lack of sleep, average 10 to 11-year-old they need just the 10 hours of sleep and if they are getting eight or nine hours there is the need to, it just happens that you are exhausted during the day. You are just deprived emotionally. ALISON ST. JOHN: And somehow because you haven't had a lot of physical activity is more difficult to sleep that might be, part of it too. EMIL AHANGARZADEH: Not trying to be the positive guy here all the time because I think the points that Dr. Italiano is making is great. It's not the digital gadgets and tools are making us antisocial as a matter fact some folks suggest that we are actually more social today than we ever have been. It's just that the time is different. We don't have this theatrical convention where people stand in front of you have a conversation with you in the moment I'm done speaking you need to start speaking and of course some of my colleagues immediately start speaking and they don't really know what they're talking about in some cases. What happens with these digital devices is we get to elongate the time, the interval between exchanges. So there's a lot of things happening online for example with education right now where we are finding much deeper conversations and discussions taking place it's just they are not taking place over a 15 or 20 min. period. They are taking place over a 24-hour period. ALISON ST. JOHN: Interesting, right. And can you tell us briefly the minute we have left there are also benefits for people with some learning disabilities EMIL AHANGARZADEH: Certainly there is some incredible software out there that folks might want to look into who suffer from learning disabilities. I can certainly suggest a couple of course I don't endorse any of these and of course your audience can always contact the San Diego County office of education for more in-depth understanding of these things but one is a great piece of software called math pad plus. Where it lets the students actually line up the numbers in their math programs. Sometimes the anxiety of just running of the numbers is, does not help, it raises their anxiety. There's a great software package called Kurzweil 3000. That's a remarkable tool not just for folks with ADD or anything like that but also for folks who are second language learners or just below grade level. But they are wonderful software packages that can be used. ALISON ST. JOHN: Thank you so much for giving us a lot to think about about a lot of the things that will be under the Christmas tree or given as presents this holiday season so that's Dr. James Italiano. Thank you so much for joining us Dr. Italiano and Emil Ahangarzadeh who is with the San Diego County office of education, appreciate you joining us. EMIL AHANGARZADEH: Thank you Alison ALISON ST. JOHN: And thank you so much for listening to Midday Edition on KPBS. I'm Alison St. John.