Posts

Are you watching what they are watching? The impact of videos on your child's mental health

"Can we have some screen time...." is probably the most common request directed at us from our children. The electronic time in question usually means watching videos on YouTube, Twitch, or Tik Tok or some other streaming site. The videos that they watch can vary from gameplay (YouTubers playing one or more titles whilst commentating on them), short videos made by other users, or even videos shared by their friends. This appears to be the new "in thing" as my kids never fail to remind me. Apparently, playing the games themselves is now less cool than watching other people play them! These videos can last from a few seconds to anything over an hour. Some videos can come in "series". Our little man once told us that he was watching video number 72 of 145 of a legend of Zelda walk-through! Clearly, our children are sometimes spending astonishing amounts of time watching and consuming this content. What impact might it have on their mental health? How awar

Parental stress and online learning for school children during COVID 19

Now that the pandemic curve has been well and truly flattened with a lot of necessary (but extremely hard) social distancing, it’s time for our young people to get back to school. Over the past few weeks our young people have been learning from home. As a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, I have seen many families with varying experiences of online learning in Gold Coast and Brisbane. For some, online learning has gone really well. Some young people have had no trouble getting up on time, preparing for the days lessons and signing on to whatever their school uses for home learning. They have also been able to keep up with the pace and expectations set for them, enjoyed learning via Zoom or Teams or their schools preferred learning platform and been bang on with their schoolwork. Their parents have also found it easy and relaxing as they have not had to worry about their kids being at school during the pandemic, have seen their learning skyrocket and marvelled at their child'