What happens when you give your kids unlimited screen time? By Good Morning America

We have to go now to our series cracking the kid code. It is the middle of summer and many parents out there they're struggling to keep the kids off of their screen, and we're going to see what happens when you give them unlimited access for a week. Will they moderate their time? Well, one family. They tried it out and Becky Morley have the results: hey Becky good morning, Michael, it's the dream we have as parents. The kids can use their tablet for an hour. So then they'll spend the rest of the day, Oh climbing trees and playing with friends.

But then reality hits its only lunchtime, they've been on the device for five hours, and you're yelling at them again to put it down so our experiment with one family. If the parents didn't intervene for a week with the kids ever go out and enjoy summer, summer means screen time and for the sergeants of Phoenix Arizona. Limiting screen time is a struggle with grace and 10 Wesley, seven and Lily. Four. On a day when there's no school, what's usage, look like ideally an hour two hours, mom and dad are exhausted by it.

We're constantly trying to engage them. Let's do this, let's go here. They are so addicted to them that they don't know how to come off of them. So we've asked the sergeant's to try something, giving their kids unlimited access to devices for a week. Do you think you'll get bored with screens? We use this Disney Circle a device from ABC's parent company that you plug in and an app that tracks the kids' usage on day, one the boys hours are astronomical grace in more than eight hours Wesley nearly 12 hours, hey Wesley, you are hungry for lunch.

You want some lunch fun and bedtime was shot. Who tell me you guys, plan on going to bed? All three kids watched a lot of videos and played some games. Carly noticed a definite shift in behavior right away, I work today and the kids basically spend I, don't know seven hours on their computers and five hours. This is another great example of what happens when they spend too much time on them, and they're coming off of them. Fighting taunting and while the four-year-olds device usage is all over the place averaging about three hours a day at first and then spiking on day, four, with more than six and a half hours, the older boys showed an interesting trend after the first two days of binging, because they could,, they settled into a routine of about five hours a day.

They're choosing other activities over the devices quite frequently I thought it might be a lot worse, Dr. Victoria Buckley, a child psychologist and author of the book reset. Your child's brain makes an astonishing observation. She thought they would use the devices even more, but the kids did self-regulate. Her max was about the average of what most kids in America are doing right now, like five hours a day, oh yeah, for this age group 5 to 7 hours a day is common 5 hours a day is way more screen.

Time than mom Carly had in mind for kids over 5. The American Academy of Pediatrics no longer recommends an exact time limit for screens, but does recommend an hour per day. Cap for kids, 18 months old through age 5, Dr. Buckley, has her own recommendation. Less than an hour to a day is the healthiest kids that have the least amount of screen.

Time has the highest grades. They read more, they sleep better and even the kids agree. What do you think is the right amount of time for you, maybe 1 or 2 hours a day, so your mind says 1 or 2 hours, but when you're actually in it, but go longer yeah? Why do you think that is MMM kids just getting addicted to it? Well, one thing: the entire family said it was really nice not to fight about screens. The kids felt a sense of control the parents loved not having to be the screen police, but five hours a day. That's a lot of screen time and Michael they've decided going forward to use that circle device and limit the kids to just two hours a day.

All right. Thank you! So much Becky and I agree. Five hours a day seems like a long time. If you have five hours to spend on the screen, I'm going to make you get a job. How about that? Well: hey there GMA fans, Robin Roberts here, thanks for checking out our YouTube channel lots of great stuff here so go on click.

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Source : Good Morning America