For the child’s healthy growth, addiction to mobile is not good. With the development of technology, children are using mobile from an early age, which can be harmful to their healthy growth.
These days, even four years kids are experts in using mobile phones, and they download their favorite games on their smartphone from the Appstore and start playing. When you allow them a smartphone, they turn on Youtube and start watching their favorite show.
Parents are the first teacher of every child, so it is always in the parents’ hands to decide how to raise their child. Most of the parents give the phone to their children as they are working the whole day and cannot look after their child correctly, due to which they provide them with a cell phone so that they get distracted.
They offer mobile during mealtime, bedtime, and so on as mobile is the best entertainment source for kids and then it becomes an addiction to the child.
Once children become addicted to cell phones, they might have a physical and behavioral impact that results in depression, mental disturbance, suicidal thoughts, etc. Children become isolated the whole day and start getting irritated with parents’ command and disagree or disobey their parents.
As children are not aware of the effective use effectively, they might get involved in abuse and crimes like gambling, cyberbullying, pornography, sexting, drugs and alcohol, and other violent aid.
Once the mobile becomes an addiction to kids, problems arise like headaches, poor performance, vision problems, sleep pattern disturbance, low memory power, and socially disconnected from the outside environment from their early age.
If you want to reduce mobile addiction to your child, you can follow the following tips.
Make your kids active
It is better when your kids become active and involved in household work or any other work rather than using a mobile phone the whole day. Addiction to mobile phones can be reduced when you make them active by commanding them for the work. You can set specific rules and regulations for your kids and make them aware so that they can obey you.
With technology improvement, children spend more time on mobile, TV, laptops, and tablets instead of playing games in the playgrounds. They spend less time in healthy activities like school sports and game competition, playing with friends, etc., and spend more and more time with gadgets.
To make your kids active mentally and physically, it is necessary to play games in the playground instead of mobile phones. You can make your kids busy by taking to the ground or park so that they can play some outdoor game and make new friends and become social.
When they get a chance to go outside with their parents, they can learn many things as their minds are brilliant and catch everything sooner. You can also encourage them to perform exercises and teach them yoga and stretching by doing it together.
Do not introduce smartphone at the early age
A child should not be introduced to a mobile phone until he reaches the appropriate age of using social media. Parents should not expose their child to media until he/she reaches two years, except in video calls.
You can teach them using a mobile phone and watching an appropriate video together to make them understand about it. You can help your child understand what is on the screen by watching the media to get knowledge about the content you want to teach them.
Some parents offer mobile phones to their child to calm and introduce them as entertainment when they get bored and do not become able to give time to look after their child. It makes children addicted to the phone as they learn to use everything and get active everywhere. This addiction can be harmful to growing child so introducing phones earlier is not effective for children.
Keep the appropriate apps on a smartphone
As a parent, you must know which app is appropriate for your kid according to their age. Before offering mobile, you can add only relevant websites and block access to all other inappropriate content so they cannot get access to it.
You can add only those websites to help them give a piece of useful knowledge. Parents’ responsibility is to install age-appropriate websites on child’s gadgets. You should not teach your children to engage in social media before their age.
Opening Facebook accounts, using Instagram, Twitter, etc., are not appropriate for kids, just wasting their time. The content of social media content is not suitable for children so that you can block social media access.
Turn off internet or wi-fi
With the passage of time, parenting has also become modern as parents spend more time on social media rather than spending time with kids and offer their kids a smartphone to keep them distracted and calm.
The Internet is available everywhere, so when your children get internet access, they remain away from their parents. So when you do not have an office or are at home, you can turn off the internet and spend time with kids. It helps your kids to develop communication skills. When you interact more with your child, they become more active and learn more.
You need to spend more time playing indoor or outdoor games, talking, teaching, and innovating your child rather than keeping yourself busy chatting with friends or colleagues.
Turning off the internet helps you and your kids stay away from gadgets, and you can reduce the mobile in your child. You can also download the appropriate media on your phone while introducing media and giving it to your child. It is better to download the media on Youtube for offline use.
When you keep limited media and turn the wi-fi off, it is a better way to keep your child away from accessing media and getting addicted initially. Children are more curious and navigate everything when you keep your internet on while offering them phones.
Spend more time with children
As we know that parents are role models for their children. Children often learn from others’ activities and do what they see. Moreover, parents’ responsibility is to teach their children the proper use of gadgets when they are busy with work. Otherwise, they should leave mobile and spend time with kids either playing or interacting.
As a parent, the more you interact with your children, the more they develop good communication skills. Children often learn to speak from their parents and communicate with others based on their parents’ speaking. They catch every word quickly and remember everything and apply it practically.
Children’s learning is based on how much time they spend with their guardians. When a child gets more time to spend with parents, the parent-child relationship also becomes more robust, and they get a chance to know about cultural and religious values and beliefs.
Arrange fun activities
As a parent, you can organize fun activities inside a house or outdoor fun activities like swimming, playing ball, outdoor games, etc., and spend quality time with their kids.
They can arrange to cook their favorite foods, bake a cake, make them visit their friend’s house, socialize them with neighbors and relatives, take them to party every weekend, and so on.
You can also encourage your kids to participate in sport, drawing, painting, reading books, etc., which helps keep them productive. These activities make them busy, and they do not remember to use mobile. You can also teach them and tell stories during bedtime to not quarrel with using mobile phones.
Using parental control apps
Parental control apps are the primary solution for getting your children to reduce mobile use. It allows you to set the screentime limit and reduce mobile use.
Fenced.ai is one of the best parenting apps that reduce mobile addiction in your kid. It has all the features for allowing your kid to use mobile productively.
Parental control apps block all the apps with inappropriate content based on your kid’s age. It monitors all the activities that your kids perform online and help you know whether your kid is in danger of using mobile safely.
You can know which app your kid uses on their gadgets and how much time they use the individual site. You can also know whether your children are talking to any strangers or not by tracking their call log history.
The best thing about parental control apps is it allows you to set screen time limit according to your child’s age and automatically turn off the screen when your child reaches the time limit.
Involve children in creative works
For the healthier growth of children, they must create, explore, learn, play, imagine, and innovate new ideas. Their mind should be free of stress and any other distractions. Mobile phones are the primary source of distracting children’s minds as it makes children mentally dull, and they lose their creativity when they get addicted to mobile.
The mobile phone makes children mentally weak and results in poor performance. Parents should make their child involved in creativity like painting, swimming, drawing, gardening, creating stories, reading storybooks and essays, and playing different indoor and outdoor games without introducing mobile in the beginning.
When children become creative, they start to explore, and you can help them by providing appropriate content that helps them know about their concern topic. To involve your children in creative works, you need to spend quality time with them and help your kid learn by providing essential knowledge.
FAQ’s
Is it safe to give my child a smartphone?
It is better not to allow your kid a smartphone; they tend to spend more time on the phone and get addicted. You can offer them smartphones after 16 months by making appropriate content or apps available by setting a screen time limit according to your child’s age.
How do kids become addicted to mobile phones?
Once you start to offer your kids a mobile phone without setting restricted content, they begin to explore and know everything to use. They take mobile as the best entertainment source and become addicted to it.
What should I do if my kid is addicted to a mobile phone?
When your kid gets more involved in mobile phones, you can set an appropriate rule of using mobile with a screen time limit. If they do not follow the rule, you can take their phone and make them involved in creative activities like playing games, watching television together, taking them to the park, interacting more, and so on.
Conclusion
Mobile addiction increases in children when parents do not concentrate on their limited usage. Once your child gets addicted to mobile, it becomes challenging to keep them away from addiction.
Parents should consider the proper and productive use of mobile for their kids within time before it becomes an addiction. It is the parent’s responsibility to keep their children safe from addiction by spending quality time with them and providing useful knowledge.
You can read the above tips to reduce mobile addiction in your child, and if you have some more information, please let us know in the comment section below.
HussaiN is a full-time professional blogger from India. He is passionate about content writing, tech enthusiasts, and computer technologies. Apart from content writing on the internet, he likes reading various tech magazines and several other blogs on the internet. Email ID: [email protected]
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