Opinion: Too much digital device screen time? If children are learning, let them be

The ideal childhood? Photo / Getty

Our Back Page profile in Saturday's paper about child psychotherapist Augustina Driessen has stirred a lot of debate.

In the profile, Driessen said parents who let their young children spend too much time on electronic devices were "robbing their children of a childhood".

I am of the generation commonly (and often derisively) referred to as millennials. Born in the 80s or early 90s, we were the last to experience the "be home when the street lights come on" mantra and the first to grow up with the internet and cellphones.

We were the first accused of being addicted to our phones, but we didn't grow up with social media and selfies like our children will.

Despite our own familiarity with technology, we watch baffled as our own children use it in ways that seem absurd to us - they seem to film or photograph everything they do and spend all their time on YouTube and Instagram.

It's almost like living in a fantasy world - you portray your best self online and gain approbation through likes and views.

This fixation on image is no doubt damaging in some ways, but in others, it's a new variation on what has always existed.

In the 1700s there was no Photoshop, but the portraits from the time all look strikingly similar - the artists painted their subjects as close to the beauty ideal as possible, making the waist a little narrower, the skin a little smoother, the eyes a little rounder.

No matter the technology of the day, human behaviour doesn't really change, but adapts to the times.

Our children may spend more time on their devices than ever before.

But that doesn't change our priorities as parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles to make sure these children grow into adults with good hearts and strong minds, whether they learn that through educational computer games or by running wild in fields of daisies.