How To Take A Tech Break!

If your kids are hooked on the Internet and their gadgets, it may be time for the family to take a tech break. Here’s how to go about it.

- Sasha Gonzales

When Angela Lee realised that her eight year-old daughter and six-year-old son were hooked on her tablet device and smartphone, she knew that a digital fast was in order.

“The first thing they’d do when they arrived home from school was to go online, either on our desktop computer or my tablet device,” shares the 39-year-old finance manager. “Our helper could never get them to log off, not even to eat or do their homework. It got to the point where I was calling the house several times a day, just to tell them to get offline and remind them that they had homework to do. I thought, ‘I can’t keep doing this’. I was worried that their schoolwork would suffer because of their preoccupation with gadgets.

“Also, my son couldn’t sit down to a meal without a smartphone in his hands. That’s when it hit me that unless I staged an intervention of sorts, my kids would grow up to be tech addicts – something I didn’t want.”

So with her husband’s support, Angela had a pep talk with her kids and put her family on a technology detox the following weekend.

Hooked on tech

It’s a well-known fact that overexposure to the Internet and tech devices can have negative effects on one’s concentration and focus.

Daniel Koh, a psychologist at Insights Mind Centre, adds that people who spend too much time online may also have poor social skills. “Being in this tech comfort zone makes it easy for them to switch off and lose interest in everything that’s going on outside of that environment.

“They may only communicate when necessary, and may not know how to read others’ expressions and body language. They may also have trouble expressing their emotions, and can be less caring towards others.”