Smart tech­nol­o­gy can ac­tu­al­ly be dan­ger­ous to the health of adults and chil­dren if it is not used prop­er­ly or as rec­om­mend­ed.

While it has been known to lead to vi­sion im­pair­ment and obe­si­ty in some in­stances—of­fi­cials at the Pae­di­atric Emer­gency De­part­ment, Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope are con­cerned as more per­sons are now pre­sent­ing with ail­ments such as “text thumbs,” “text wrists,” and “text necks.”

Is­su­ing a spe­cial ap­peal to par­ents to en­sure their young ones are su­per­vised when us­ing cell­phones, tablets, com­put­ers and oth­er smart de­vices—Reg­is­trar Dr Ra­bia Hy­dal-Mo­hammed said the neg­a­tive im­pact of so­cial me­dia was no longer a myth, it was now a re­al­i­ty.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters dur­ing the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty’s Back to School Child Well­ness Ini­tia­tive at the Mt Hope Women’s Cen­ter yes­ter­day, she shied away from mak­ing a judge­ment as she ac­knowl­edged the fast pace of life to­day.

She said: “That falls in the lap of many of us and I don’t want to be judge­men­tal be­cause par­ents do live a fast paced life.”

“You come home af­ter work and you are try­ing to cook, you are try­ing to clean and any sort of tech­nol­o­gy is the fall back and the chil­dren go for it.”

How­ev­er, she re­vealed: “We are see­ing text thumbs, text wrists and text necks com­ing to in­to the de­part­ment be­cause every­body’s pos­ture is bad.”

Hy­dal-Mo­hammed went fur­ther as she sought to en­light­en the pub­lic about the blue lights em­a­nat­ing from the smart de­vices.

She said: “I re­al­ly want to give ad­vice that blue lights em­a­nat­ing from any type of screen af­fects the body’s mela­tonin lev­els which helps put you in­to the rhythm of sleep, and by peo­ple hav­ing their phones al­ways look­ing at it, that blue light dis­rupts the rhythm.”

She said it was no won­der so many peo­ple were not get­ting the rec­om­mend­ed hours of sleep they re­quired.

Ex­press­ing con­cern about the dire con­se­quences for chil­dren, she added: “It is re­al­ly that our chil­dren are not get­ting enough sleep to learn and do their work, and play and be healthy.”

She warned per­sons of the pow­er of the PING!

“Do not charge cell­phones close to your bed be­cause we do not know the im­pact of all that ra­di­a­tion; charge them out­side and away and not un­der the pil­low; switch off mes­sage alerts; and man­age time on tech­nol­o­gy wise­ly,” she con­clud­ed.

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was Head, Pae­di­atric Emer­gency De­part­ment, Dr Joanne F Paul who said in­ter­na­tion­al re­search had shown that when­ev­er a per­son re­ceived a mes­sage on their cell­phone, their dopamine lev­els in­creased.

De­scrib­ing it as “hap­py juice,” she said it could be­come ad­dic­tive.

Dopamine is a chem­i­cal found nat­u­ral­ly in the hu­man body. It is a neu­ro­trans­mit­ter, mean­ing it sends sig­nals from the body to the brain.

It plays a part in con­trol­ling the move­ments a per­son makes, as well as their emo­tion­al re­spons­es.

The right bal­ance of dopamine is vi­tal for both phys­i­cal and men­tal well-be­ing.

Liken­ing it to per­sons suf­fer­ing with mar­i­jua­na and nico­tine ad­dic­tions and the sim­i­lar “high” these users ex­pe­ri­ence, Paul said: “Cell­phones are do­ing the same thing.”

“The rea­son why our kids and we our­selves are do­ing it, it’s be­cause they are ad­dict­ed to it.”

She ad­vised that a child or ado­les­cent brain was more sen­si­tive to any type of ad­dic­tion and there­fore, “We have to take this se­ri­ous­ly.”

Both Hy­dal-Mo­hammed and Paul ad­vised par­ents to en­sure their kids were read­ing, play­ing games, eat­ing healthy, and ex­er­cis­ing to en­sure a bal­anced lifestyle.

They said it was on­ly way to keep them fit and al­so stave off the ear­ly on­set of chron­ic non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases lat­er on. Paul added that just like the year­ly ser­vice per­sons per­form on their ve­hi­cles and ap­pli­ances, so too—par­ents need­ed to en­sure the med­ical check-up of their young ones was a pri­or­i­ty.

Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Pri­ma­ry Health Care Ser­vices, NCRHA, Dr Ab­dul Hamid said yes­ter­day’s ex­er­cise had been in­stru­men­tal in de­tect­ing a num­ber of chil­dren with op­ti­cal and den­tal is­sues, along with a num­ber of per­sons who pre­sent­ed with el­e­vat­ed BMIs.

Rec­om­mend­ed screen times for chil­dren us­ing a smart de­vice is as fol­lows:

1. In the ze­ro to two age cat­e­go­ry Ze­ro hours.

2. In the two to five age cat­e­go­ry - One hour max­i­mum.

3. Old­er than that­­—no more than one to two or three hours (but users must take a break).