Get Ready for a Media Fast! Screen Free Week is April 30-May 6

What, When, Why and How is Screen-free Week?

What: 

Screen-Free Week (formerly TV-Turnoff) is an annual celebration where children, families, schools, and communities turn off screens and turn on life.  Instead of relying on screens for entertainment, participants read, daydream, explore, enjoy nature, and enjoy spending time with family and friends.   

Screen-Free Week isn’t just about snubbing screens for seven days; it’s a springboard for important lifestyle changes that will improve well-being and quality of life all year round.  

At the heart of Screen-Free Week are the thousands of parents, teachers, PTA members, and leaders of religious and civic organizations who organize local activities and events around the world.  Organizing is fun and easy; we’ve created materials to walk you through the process and help you promote your week.  By purchasing official Screen-Free Week materials, you’ll be spreading the word and supporting CCFC’s important work carving out screen-free, commercial-free space for children.  Next Why Screen-Free Week

Why (See more scary stats below):

Children spend far too much time with screens: an astonishing average of 32 hours a week for preschoolers and even more for older children.

Excessive screen time is harmful for children.  Time with screens is linked to poor school performance, childhood obesity, and attention problems.  And it is primarily through screens that children are exposed to harmful marketing.  Regardless of whether they are consuming “good” or “bad” programming, it’s clear that screen media dominates the lives of far too many children, displacing all sorts of other activities that are integral to childhood.

Screen-Free Week is a fun and innovative opportunity to improve children’s well-being by reducing dependence on entertainment screen media, including television, video games, computers, and hand-held devices.  It’s a chance for children – and their parents – to examine their relationship with entertainment media and rediscover the joys of life beyond the screen.  

Who

At its heart, Screen-Free Week is a collaboration.  Since 1996, tens of thousands of parents, teachers, healthcare professionals, scout leaders, librarians and clergy have helped millions of children turn off screens and turn on life by organizing local Screen-Free Weeks.  Anyone can be a Screen-Free Week organizer for any kind of group—from families, to schools, to whole communities. 

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (insert link) is the official home of Screen-Free Week.  The Week is endorsed by leading educational, environmental, and public health organizations.  For a complete list of Screen-Free Week endorsers, please click here.

How

Anyone can participate in Screen-Free Week by simply refraining from using screens for entertainment during the week of April 18-24, 2011.  But experience tells us that it’s more fun – and more effective – to go Screen-Free with others.  That’s why we hope you’ll consider becoming a Screen-Free Week Organizer this year.

You can organize a Screen-Free Week in a classroom, an entire school, with a scout troop, faith community, neighborhood association, at your local library or in any community or civic group.  Screen-Free Week organizers and their volunteers promote the week, reach out to community partners, get children and families to participate, and help them discover fun screen-free activities.

Organizing is fun and easy.  And to make it even easier, we’ve created a brand-new Organizer’s Kit to walk you through the process; it includes all the suggestions, activities and handouts you’ll need for a great Screen-Free Week—as well as 2 beautiful posters perfect for promoting it.  Click here to purchase your Organizer Kit today and get started on your Screen-Free Week today!

EXCESSIVE SCREEN TIME PUTS YOUNG CHILDREN AT RISK imageEXCESSIVE SCREEN TIME PUTS YOUNG CHILDREN AT RISK

• Forty percent of 3-month-old infants are regular viewers of screen media, and 19% of babies 1 year and under have a TV in their bedroom.

• Screen time can be habit-forming: the more time children engage with screens, the harder time they have turning them off as older children.
  
• Screen time for children under 3 is linked to irregular sleep patterns and delayed language acquisition.

• The more time preschool children and babies spend with screens, the less time they spend interacting with their parents. Even when parents co-view, they spend less time talking to their children than when they’re engaged in other activities.

• Toddler screen time is also associated with problems in later childhood, including lower math and school achievement, reduced physical activity, victimization by classmates and increased BMI.

• Direct exposure to TV and overall household viewing are associated with increased early childhood aggression. 
  
• The more time preschool children spend with screens, the less time they spend engaged in creative play – the foundation of learning, constructive problem solving, and creativity.

• On average, preschool children see nearly 25,000 television commercials, a  figure that does not include product placement. 


SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN ARE ALSO AT RISK imageSCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN ARE ALSO AT RISK

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents create an electronic-media-free environment in children’s bedrooms.

• Including multitasking, children ages 8 -18 spend average of 4 ½ hours per day watching television, 1 ½ hours using computers, and more than an hour playing video games. 

• Black and Hispanic youth spend even more time with screen media than their White peers. 

• Time spent with screens is associated with: 
      » childhood obesity
      » sleep disturbances 
      » attention span issues 

Children with 2 or more hours of daily screen time are more likely to have increased psychological difficulties, including hyperactivity, emotional and conduct problems, as well as difficulties with peers.

•Adolescents who watch 3 or more hours of television daily are at especially high risk for poor homework completion, negative attitudes toward school, poor grades, and long-term academic failure. 

•Adolescents with a television in their bedroom spend more time watching TV and report less physical activity, less healthy dietary habits, worse school performance, and fewer family meals. 

• Children with a television in their bedroom are more likely to be overweight. 

• Especially high rates of bedroom televisions (70-74%) have been seen among racial/ethnic minority children aged 2 to 13 years.

THE BENEFITS OF REDUCED SCREEN TIME imageTHE BENEFITS OF REDUCED SCREEN TIME


• Reducing screen time can help prevent childhood obesity.

• Children who spend less time watching television in early years tend to do better in school, have a healthier diet, be more physically active, and are better able to engage in schoolwork in later elementary school. 
     
• Television viewing at a young age is associated with later behavioral problems, but not if heavy viewing is discontinued before age 6. 

• Limiting exposure to television during the first 4 years of life may decrease children’s interest in it in later years.

Statistics from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

 

Watch a Screen-Free Week Video on this Screen, It’s Free!

 

 

Screen Free Week – April 30th â�� May 6, 2012 from Media Education Foundation on Vimeo.

RESOURCES FOR MEDIA LITERACY imageRESOURCES FOR MEDIA LITERACY

Browse books on Media Literacy in our Amazon.com store.

Ad Busters  and Ad Busters Magazine.  We are a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society.

Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood.  Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) is a national coalition of health care professionals, educators, advocacy groups, parents, and individuals who care about children. CCFC is the only national organization devoted to limiting the impact of commercial culture on children.  CCFC’s staff and Steering Committee are activists, authors, and leading experts on the impact of media and marketing on children.  Most of us are also parents. 

Commercial Alert Commercial Alert’s mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy.

Common Sense Media is dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology.  We exist because our nation’s children spend more time with media and digital activities than they do with their families or in school, which profoundly impacts their social, emotional, and physical development . As a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization, we provide trustworthy information and tools, as well as an independent forum, so that families can have a choice and a voice about the media they consume.

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