A psychologist says the negative impact of social media on youngsters’ attention spans is not talked about enough
A child and adolescent psychologist says the negative impact of social media on the “attention span” of youngsters is not talked about enough.
Clare Rowe told Sky News that she sees “really smart, academic kids who can’t pay attention to a 9 to 3 school day”.
She continued: “That’s been the effect of social media. You know, switching between different screens at once, multi-tasking on the brain.
“It’s very, very hard for children and adults – adults with sympathise with this – to maintain a single focus for a whole day. That’s very difficult.”
Addressing the issue of children who are struggling to return to school after the pandemic, Ms Rowe said she believes home-schooling is not the answer.
“I think parents need, as well as reaching out to professional help, to reach out to the school. This can’t be them in solo efforts in the home. They need to reach out and have regular meetings with their school, with their community, with their teachers and try to have a joint effort to try to re-engage these kids to at least step foot back into the classroom.
“I don’t think signing them up for home-schooling is the answer. I’m seeing that in droves, ‘we’ll just sign them up to the curriculum on the home schooling’ and that’s not the answer because we know kids in school offer so much more in terms of their development and socialisation than sitting at home home-schooling.”
