As I mentioned in a recent post, I have a lot of conversations with teachers and parents about screen use.  My wife is an elementary school teacher, so we have a lot of these conversations around the dinner table as well.

One practice that comes up a lot is that screens are used frequently to help with classroom management.  This can be done in a few different ways – by showing videos at lunch time, or by rewarding kids with screen use for behaving in a certain way.

There are several reasons why we think screens are consistently associated with negative health outcomes for children and youth. One of them is that screen use is associated with unhealthy food intake. This is because screens often expose us to food ads (which tend to increase food intake), but screens can also lead to mindless eating (e.g. consuming 2 lbs of bad popcorn at a movie theater, which would be unthinkable in any other context). While some kids over-eat when placed in front of a screen, others may under-eat – I’ve heard from parents who say that their kids don’t touch their lunch, which they believe is partially due to being absorbed in the videos they are watching during lunch time.

Of course the purpose of lunch-time TV in schools is to help bring some order to the classroom.  But that order means that kids are not talking to each other.  Ironically, I’ve had many conversations with teachers about how screens are getting in the way of social interaction. And yet schools sometimes use screens for that exact purpose during lunch breaks.  I understand why this might be appealing in the moment, but it really doesn’t seem like a good idea when you consider everything we know about screens, especially as they related to food intake.

Rewarding kids with screen time strikes me as a generally bad idea. We should not reward kids with things that are bad for them (junk food, screens, etc).  That will only make kids want those things more.  We also should not punish kids with things that are good for them (exercise).   This is just really common sense when it comes to promoting healthy behaviours.

Kids are obviously going to be exposed to screens in their daily lives, and in the classroom.  But as a general rule, we should save that screen time for when it really matters.  Lunchtime is not one of those times.