Does screen time help peopie to relax?

Made by:钟皓彬，任轶轩，林柏煜，黄嘉依，魏梓萱，卢子康

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Expert opinion 

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Positive 

    Our side firmly believes that electronic products are indeed helpful for people's rest, and the following are our main viewpoints.

     Firstly，the electronic products can offer diverse forms of entertainment to alleviate mental Stress.In today's fast-paced life, people are facing tremendous pressure from various aspects such as work and study. Electronic products, precisely, provide us with rich and diverse entertainment channels, which can effectively help us relieve mental exhaustion.Experts from the American Psychological Association pointed out that electronic products can provide a rich variety of entertainment, such as watching movies, TV dramas, variety shows and other video content, as well as playing casual games, which can make the brain secrete endorphins, thereby reducing stress, improving mood, so that people get physical and mental relaxation.

     Secondly, electronic products are convenient social tools that can satisfy emotional needs The social functions of electronic products also play a crucial role in people's rest process. In modern society, people's social circles are no longer limited to their relatives and friends around them. Through electronic products, we can easily communicate with family members, friends far away, or even like-minded strangers.Experts from the Royal Society for Public Health believe that with the social function of mobile phones, computers and other electronic products, people can easily video call or text chat with distant relatives and friends, share the bits of life, get emotional support and comfort, so as to alleviate loneliness and the pressure brought by work and life, and better enter the state of rest.

       In conclusion, with their diverse forms of entertainment, convenient social functions, and advantages in facilitating learning and self-improvement, electronic products, to a large extent, help people relieve stress, meet emotional needs, and thus better achieve the purpose of rest. We should not one-sidedly deny the positive impact of electronic products on people's rest. Therefore, our side firmly believes that electronic products are conducive to people's rest.

Interactve link

1. Professor Tracy Hutton: • Professor Hutton has further studied the brain activity of children when they use electronic devices for learning activities. He recorded brain imaging of children reading animated stories on a screen versus reading traditional picture books, and found that when children read picture books, the activity of language networks in the brain decreased significantly, while the areas of the brain that process vision were highly concentrated. This work found that the high activation of visual networks may come at the expense of endogenous imagination. For example, traditional picture storybooks guide children to look at pictures as they hear captions - steps that exercise their imagination and make connections. This is not the case with animated stories based on electronic screens. Hutton points out that when this part of the brain is underutilized, children are at risk of not developing properly 

2. McDaniel: • In McDaniel's study, 172 two-parent families with children 5 years of age or younger participated in an online questionnaire. The results show that the use of electronic devices may deprive parents of opportunities to provide meaningful emotional support and positive feedback to their children, leading to more serious behavioral problems such as tantrums or sulking. This will only increase the stress level of the parents, which may then lead to the use of more device support, which in turn creates a vicious cycle. "These results support the idea that the relationship between parental technological interference and their children's externalizing behavior is interactive and influences each other over time McDaniel said. The opinions of these experts provide a strong counter-argument, suggesting that the use of electronic devices may not always contribute to relaxation, but may have a negative impact on children's brain development and family bonding.

Excessive exposure to news, notifications.and information on screens can lead toinformation overload, causing stress andanxiety rather than relaxation.Social media on screens may lead tounhealthy social comparisons andpressures, impacting mental well-beinginstead of promoting relaxation.The blue light emitted by screens,especially before bedtime, can interferewith circadian rhythms, affecting sleepquality and relaxation.Extended screen time often involvessitting for prolonged periods, contributingto a sedentary lifestyle, which may havenegative health implications.

1. **Preschool Age Group Studies**:

   - Studies on the preschool age group also showed similar patterns of results (Cheung, Bedford, Saez De Urabain, Karmiloff-Smith, & Smith, 2017; Nathanson & Beyens, 2018; Tso et al., 2016).

2. **Adult Group Studies**:

   - The results for the adult group are relatively less consistent. Some studies found a negative impact of electronic media use on sleep (Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2015), while others did not find a significant impact of electronic media use on sleep (Exelmans & Van den Bulck, 2016; Leech, 2017).

These studies provide detailed data on the relationship between the use of electronic devices and sleep quality in different populations and types of devices, showing the potential negative impact of electronic device use on sleep.

Negative

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