Dubai school limits screen time, sees happier students, better reading scores
In a Dubai school, its happiness score and reading grades improved after three years of screen-time restriction. ‘For some time now, Brighton College Dubai has a more "forensic eye" on screen time,’ Brighton College Dubai’s headmaster Simon Crane said.
"Since then, our happiness is up 15 per cent in the last two years," he said. "We’ve also seen a lot more attention and more success. Our reading scores are also up since we started this screen time reduction program".
He also explained that Brighton College Dubai had taken a few measures, including no cell phones during school time, no screen time and the installation of a healthy digital literacy program.
Phones are out of order until sixth form,’ he added. ‘We don’t make things with screens like PE, art, drama, music. In Math and Science screens also are used only when the teacher determines it is needed. Not the automatic teaching way."’
Another school in Dubai, Little Wonders Nursery has switched off the screens for every kid there. "Every child, whether they are enrolled in 4-hour batches or an extended-day programme, has their entire time free from screens," assistant manager Fathimathul Rishada told me.
‘They’re in their day, playing and learning and studying and meeting other kids. When kids are away from the screen, it’s really neat to see them spontaneously form bonds, build connections and become more experientially mature."
Delaying screens
Simon said that he really liked pushing back on screens being introduced to children. ‘When you put them on a screen, that’s it for life,’ he said. "So you don’t want children being exposed to screens right now. So we will have to restore the old way of teaching.
Rishada agreed with his comments. ‘Overuse of digital devices is causing major harm to children’s development by making it harder for them to do the kind of things that foster growth,’ she said. "As schools get more screen-based and kids are occupying the majority of their free time on tablets and phones, the impact on their social, emotional and cognitive development is clear. But particularly during those first few years (0-5 years, when the brain is developing at an extremely rapid pace), children need to socialise, explore and be ‘caring for’ in all these different domains.
Addiction issues
An Addictions Screening Test was common for two-year-olds, a psychologist in Dubai told me. ‘They had a 2-year-old who was mysteriously going down suddenly, backwards, frequently hitting her head on the ground,’ Dr C B Binu, chief psychiatrist and medical director of Al Fasht medical centre, told IANS. ‘They’d tried different medical investigations, neurological investigation to try to pinpoint the problem but didn’t find anything.
When his team checked, it transpired that the girl had been screen-addicted from an early age. ‘The mother told us she’d given the child television sets when she was less than a year old so she would be distracted while she did housework,’ he said.
"It was an everyday thing, until the mom saw the girl was glued to her screen. She removed the screen, a few tantrums ensued, but they were soon over. But what we discovered was that her infant brain was so accustomed to seeing a screen that when it went away, her body didn’t know how to respond. We think that the falling backwards (movement) was an adaptation the child learned to make to a lack of a known stimulant. We got in there to stop the cycle – we took some action."
Simon said that it was time to ‘shift how we treated screens as kids got older’. ‘We’ve got to play with kids as they get older,’ he said. We tighten the controls less as kids get older, and teach them about digital safety. We also have students write down how many hours they are spending on screens as compared to past weeks."
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