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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
Saying this plainly gives a household something firmer than mood to stand on when limits are set. It also keeps two things apart. The care and the affection do not fluctuate. Access to a device can, and can be earned back. Said calmly rather than as a threat in the middle of a row, most young people can follow the logic even while they hate the outcome.
Eat and drink but do not be extravagant: God does not like extravagant people (Quran 7:31). The limit sits inside something permitted, which is the frame most families actually need for screens.
الأعراف
۞يَٰبَنِيٓ ءَادَمَ خُذُواْ زِينَتَكُمۡ عِندَ كُلِّ مَسۡجِدࣲ وَكُلُواْ وَٱشۡرَبُواْ وَلَا تُسۡرِفُوٓاْۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُسۡرِفِينَ
Children of Adam, dress well whenever you are at worship, and eat and drink [as We have permitted] but do not be extravagant: God does not like extravagant people
Qur’an 7:31read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A review of children's and adolescents' screen use, presented with a case, links heavy use to poor sleep and to cardiovascular risk factors, and finds that duration, content, use after dark and the number of devices all matter rather than total hours alone. That is a decent reason for a household to hold a position at all. The evidence is review level and largely observational, so hold any particular number lightly.
Lissak G. (2018). Adverse physiological and psychological effects of screen time on children and adolescents: Literature review and case study.. Environmental research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A limit feels fair when the reason behind it is stated out loud and stays the same each time.
One gentle way to name it: those are being used as words to play with, and they were never really words for playing with. Said kindly, it lands without anyone being told off.
A young person on the sofa with their phone looks like nothing is happening. From the inside it is often the first hour all day that has asked nothing of them.
Real footage of people dying circulates without any warning, sometimes buried inside a video that starts off looking harmless. Young people rarely raise this themselves, so it is worth asking.