Many families want to set ground rules to help them reduce their screen time - and have time to connect with each other, without devices.

But it can be difficult to know where to start and how to make a plan that suits your family.

First, look at your own screen time

Before telling children to "hop off the tech", it's important parents understand how much they are using screens themselves.

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Globally, the average person spends an average of six hours and 58 minutes on screens each day. This has increased by 13 percent, or 49 minutes, since 2013.

Parents who report high screen time use tend to see this filtering down to the children in their family too. Two-thirds of primary school-aged children in Australia have their own mobile screen-based device.

Australia's screen time guidelines recommended children aged five to 17 years have no more than two hours of sedentary screen time (excluding homework) each day.

For those aged two to five years, it's no more than one hour a day. And the guidelines recommend no screen time at all for children under two.

Yet the majority of children, across age groups, exceed these maximums.

A new Australian study released this week found the average three-year-old is exposed to two hours and 52 minutes of screen time a day.

Some screen time is OK, too much increases risks

Technology has profoundly impacted children's lives, offering both opportunities and challenges.

On one hand, it provides access to educational resources, can develop creativity, facilitates communication with peers and family members, and allows students to seek out new information.

On the other hand, excessive screen use can result in too much time being sedentary, delays in developmental milestones, disrupted sleep and daytime drowsiness.

Too much screen time can affect social skills, as it replaces time spent in face-to-face social interactions. This is where children learn verbal and non-verbal communication, develop empathy, learn patience and how to take turns.

Many families also worry about how to maintain a positive relationship with their children when so much of their time is spent glued to screens.

What about when we're all on devices?

When families are all using devices simultaneously, it results in less face-to-face interactions, reducing communication and resulting in a shift in family dynamics.

The increased use of wireless technology enables families to easily tune out from each other by putting in earphones, reducing the opportunity for conversation.

Family members wearing earphones during shared activities or meals creates a physical barrier and encourages people to retreat into their own digital worlds.

Wearing earphones for long periods may also reduce connection to, and closeness with, family members.

Research from video gaming, for instance, found excessive gaming increases feelings of isolation, loneliness and the displacement of real-world social interactions, alongside weakened relationships with peers and family members.

How can I set screen time limits?

Start by sitting down as a family and discussing what limits you all feel would be appropriate when using TVs, phones and gaming - and when is an appropriate time to use them.

• Have set rules around family time - for example, no devices at the dinner table - so you can connect through face-to-face interactions.
• Consider locking your phone or devices away at certain periods throughout the week, such as after 9pm (or within an hour of bedtime for younger children).
• Seek out opportunities to balance your days with physical activities, such kicking a footy at the park or going on a family bush walk.
• Parents can model healthy behaviour by regulating and setting limits on their own screen time. This might mean limiting your social media scrolling to 15 or 30 minutes a day and keeping your phone in the next room when you're not using it.

When establishing appropriate boundaries and ensuring children's safety, it is crucial for parents and guardians to engage in open communication about technology use.

This includes teaching critical thinking skills to navigate online content safely and employing parental control tools and privacy settings.

Parents can foster a supportive and trusting relationship with children from an early age so children feel comfortable discussing their online experiences and sharing their fears or concerns.

• First published in The Conversation
• Elise Waghorn is a lecturer at the School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne

Poverty and overcrowding are leading to life-changing health outcomes. Diseases like rheumatic fever are rife in some communities.

Yet - the annual Ministry of Social Development Child Poverty Report found child poverty in New Zealand is just slightly above the median rate in European countries.

Single parent families suffer. Ethnic disparities remain. Maori children are more than twice as likely than average to experience material hardship. For Pasifika children, this affects nearly one in three.

These children are also more likely to become severely ill with preventable diseases.

Rent and housing costs take an increasing portion of household incomes. They disproportionately impact those on lower incomes.

Housing costs for all households with children increased from 15 per cent in 1988 to 22 per cent in 2021. Meanwhile, for those in the lowest fifth, they increased from 23 per cent to 40 per cent.

The worst-hit group was those that rented privately and received the Accommodation Supplement (AS), with almost half of their household income spent on accommodation on average.

The report author, Bryan Perry, says the survey only captured those children in private dwellings. It doesn't include those in accommodation like hotels, motels, boarding houses, hostels and camping grounds.

He said there remained about 60,000 children, or five per cent, in "very severe hardship".

The Guardian newspaper article reported:

Rheumatic heart disease is a disease divided down racial lines in New Zealand - 93% of cases present in Pasifika and Maori children.

Pasifika children are admitted to hospital for rheumatic fever 140 times more often than children of European or other ethnicities.

Maori children are admitted 50 times more often.

Each year about 140 people die from rheumatic heart disease.

Roughly 160 new cases are diagnosed a year. Many go unreported.

"Anything that can be done to remove the inequitable burden of this disease on the population is of the greatest priority.
I look forward to the day that rheumatic heart disease becomes a historic rarity on these shores," David McCormack says.

"As a cardiac surgeon - I had never treated rheumatic heart disease before coming to Aotearoa New Zealand. The grievous impact it has on young lives and whanau cannot be overstated," the UK-trained specialist says.

In other countries, rheumatic heart disease is extremely rare.

Eva Colette's Guardian article describes rheumatic fever as a "deadly autoimmune disease" for which there is no cure.

"It can be painful, cause neurological effects, and can develop into irreversible rheumatic heart disease, requiring long-term drug treatment and, on occasion, heart valve surgery," she wrote.

"On many measures, New Zealand is currently one of the worst places in the developed world to be a child."

Source

• NZ Doctor
• NZ Herald

The research will be led by Dr John Shaver, University of Otago's Religion programme head, with Otago Research Fellow Dr Joseph Watts, who will conduct fieldwork in The Gambia.

The study will examine the impact of globalisation on practical support available to mothers and how this support impacts women's fertility and their children's health and development.

The Templeton Foundation notes that despite scholarly projections of the demise of religion, religious groups in many parts of the world are growing.

A great deal of this growth can be attributed to the higher fertility of religious people compared to their secular counterparts.

An unexplained paradox

Studies of diverse human populations demonstrate that parents in modern societies sacrifice the number of children they have for quality of children.

Even though children born to large families are expected to suffer physiological, psychological and social obstacles to flourishing, children born into religious communities appear buffered from the detrimental effects of high fertility.

Currently, this paradox of religious fertility is unexplained.

Shaver said preliminary work in New Zealand suggests co-operation in faith-based communities extends to childcare.

"What we don't know yet is whether shared childcare among co-religionists may help to mitigate the costs of high fertility, positively affecting both fertility and child health."

Over the next 30 months, a team of seven anthropologists and demographers will conduct cross-cultural studies of 6,050 Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim participants in Bangladesh, India, Malawi, The Gambia and the United States.

In addition to Otago University, the project involves researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Connecticut.

The John Templeton Foundation supports independent research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution and emergence to creativity, forgiveness and free will.

Source

• templeton.org
• voxy.co.nz
• odt.co.nz
• Image: ecovis.com

Kaveinga Ora will begin replacing the island's 27 medical centres this week as it starts service for the island's 13,000 people.

The project is the result of two years' work by Rotary clubs in New Zealand, Rarotonga and worldwide as well as the Health Ministry.

The retired diplomat, Nick Hurley, had been in Rarotonga for the service's launch that his wife Christine helped instigate.

He said the health clinic was designed for the island's conditions:"They used a number of specialists for things like making it able to be used in times of natural disasters.

"So it could operate three days without any external power with air-conditioning, or five days without.

"It could still operate with refrigerated space in there for people who might be needing urgent attention."

The ministry's health promotion manager, Karen Tairea, has been involved in developing the scope of the project.

She said that, when needed, they consulted other health staff who had knowledge and experience about any particular topic they were discussing.

"With the clinical side, we had the public health nurses because they would be the main users of the bus so they were able to say what equipment they needed."

She said hospital health services contributed, as the bus would also be used for health drives including blood donations and cervical cancer screening.

Source

• msn.com
• radionz.co.nz
• Image: facebook

Writing in PNG's Catholic Reporter, Fr John Glynn of the We Care Foundation in Port Moresby pointed to United Nation's statistics that he called "terrifying in their implications".

Fr Glynn wrote that 45 per cent of PNG children have stunted growth due to their being malnourished almost from birth.

"It also means that their brains are undernourished and they do not reach their full level of mental ability," he wrote.

Fr Glynn also pointed to Australian and local research that showed 80 per cent of PNG people are "functionally illiterate and uneducated".

"Now we are told that almost half of our children are growing up physically and mentally retarded."

But Fr Glynn said that, of course, the suffering, malnourished children are not "our" children.

"They are not the children of the blessed 20 per cent of the population who are educated, employed and able to take care of themselves and share in the increasing wealth of this lucky country.

"The one child in 13 who dies before the age of 5, the 14 in every hundred who suffer from ‘wasting' diseases and die by the age of six or seven, and the rest who grow up physically and mentally retarded are the children of the 80 per cent of the population who are illiterate, uneducated and in many cases suffer from extreme poverty."

Fr Glynn said this situation should be completely intolerable and unacceptable to every thinking PNG citizen.

"There should be an outcry from every corner of the country for a war on poverty and ignorance.

"But, of course, this won't happen. The poor have no voice."

Such people are invisible in modern mainstream and social media, and so can be easily ignored, Fr Glynn lamented.

Source

• The Catholic Reporter
• Image: Save the Children

Mulipola Oliva Mulipola, presented the machine to the Minister of Health, Tuitama Dr. Leao Tuitama last Tuesday.

Mulipola is Upolu Samoa West Stake President of the LDS Church.

He said that while the work for the hospital was still going, they received a request from the US Charge'd' Affaires, Chad Berbert.

Berbert is also a member of the LDS church.

"He requested to the Church to help with some equipment needed for the new Hospital."

When the request was accepted by the Church, we contacted the Ministry of Health to find a machine and let the church know when they find one." Mulipola said.

Health Minister, Tuitama thanked the LDS for the generous donation. The neonatal machine is an equipment used to care for babies in the neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Source

The Office of Catholic Education Service, closed the schools last Friday and it was expected that they would remain closed on Monday.

The closure encompasses a high school, three elementary schools and two kindergartens, with more than 700 total students enrolled.

"The pink eye epidemic is moving quickly, affecting several of our students and teachers," said Eddie Brown, the Catholic school system's director.

The outbreak also prompted the closure of 28 government schools from preschool through high school, plus special education programs, and smaller private schools.They will not reopen until Wednesday.

Close to 2,300 students and 130 teachers have pink eye, said Salu Hunkin-Finau, director of the territory's Education Department. About 13,000 children are enrolled in public schools in American Samoa.

Source

• The New Zealand Herald
• Image: Your eyedoctors.com

Dr Mora's voluntary contribution is funded by the Australian-based Sight for All Foundation. He will work with the Cambodia Ministry of Health and local doctors to establish a specialist clinic there. Continue reading