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The War on Screens: How Denmark is paving the way for a healthier relationship between young people and technology

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Ask a parent, or anyone with responsibility for young people, what their number one concern is for their wellbeing, and they’ll almost certainly say screens. Three years on from the end of Covid-related lockdowns, countries across Europe are grappling with difficult questions about the place of technology in our children’s lives. When should children be introduced to screens for the first time? Should they be using them at all? What role should screens have in our schools and learning? How do we educate young adults for a working world conducted largely through screens but mitigate against the increasingly apparent effects they have on mental health and wellbeing? What is our role as adults in all of this?

In Denmark, this is a particularly resonant social issue. A decade ago, Danes led the way in digital learning, with significant government funding allocated to embedding iPads and AI in schools. The most recent PISA study of 15-year olds in schools, published last year, found Danish students used digital tools more often than students in any of the 81 OECD countries surveyed. Now, Denmark, like other countries, is having to radically re-think its strategy on screens in light of serious societal concerns and findings from research. 

Since last year, the Danish government has been working closely with a team of advisors to address these concerns. Last October, the Minister for Schools and Children, Mattias Fesfaye, announced tight restrictions on the use of screens in the country’s børnehaver (kindergartens) and vuggestuer (creches) that effectively amounted to a ban on their use with children aged two and under. At the same time, Denmark’s public health agency, Sundhedsstyrelsen, issued new recommendations on children’s use of screens in the home. Parents were advised that children under two should not watch screens without an adult present. The team who devised the recommendations reported that they could not find any research evidence showing the benefits of screen time for under-twos. However, they did find evidence that it could have negative effects on young children’s ability to socialise and regulate emotions, which could have long-term effects on mental health. Similar recommendations on the use of screens have since been issued in Norway.

Sundhedsstyrelsen’s four key recommendations for children, adolescents and adults are:

  • Don’t use a screen up until bedtime
  • Leave your phone or tablet out of the bedroom
  • Spend time away from screens and remember to be physically active
  • Be aware of your social media consumption and how screen use affects your wellbeing

The report from Sundhedsstyrelsen also recommends adults limit their own screen use when with their children, take an interest in their children’s digital life, and make agreements with their children about screen use that apply to all members of the family. The agency has also issued specific recommendations on limiting screens to promote healthy sleep patterns for children and adolescents. 

As well as screen use at home, the Danish government has been considering the role of screens in schools. In February this year, the agency responsible for overseeing the quality of education under the Ministry of Education and Children, Styrelsen for Undervisning og Kvalitet, published 12 recommendations for schools on digital device use during the primary education stage, such as making schools mobile phone-free during the day and encouraging analogue teaching wherever possible. A growing number of Danish schools are now adopting phone-free policies as a result, with students handing in their devices for safekeeping at the start of each day so they can learn and socialise during breaks free from digital distractions.

So what next to ensure future generations in Denmark grow up with a healthier relationship to screens. Dr. Imran Rashid, a world expert on technology and health and advisor to the Danish government who helped to devise the Sundhedsstyrelsen recommendations on screen time, told Last Week in Denmark that the country’s legacy as a world leader in digitisation means it can now “lead the way” not only in the Nordics but across the EU. He believes Denmark assuming the EU presidency in 2025 can only strengthen this position, meaning the country can “create the foundation for EU technology regulation in the future”. 

Dr. Rashid, strongly believes the Danish approach, centred on values, principles and empowering parents and carers to play their role in protecting young people, is the right one. “It can’t be all about bans or wars,” he says. “What you need to do is introduce the principle of being more careful.” Whilst Sweden’s public health authority made headlines around Europe last month by issuing recommendations setting out strict screen time limits for children at different ages, he believes such a centralised policy “wouldn’t be received well” in Denmark, where “the culture is different and policies tend to be more localised”. He is particularly encouraged that so many schools across the country have recently embraced the Sundhedsstyrelsen recommendations by introducing limits on screen use and mobile phones during the school day. Technology has its place, he says, but “the most important device children bring to school is their brain.”

What do internationals in Denmark think of the Danish approach to screen use by young people? Last Week in Denmark spoke to some parents about their views.

For Maria José Gonzalez, a university professor from Columbia and the parent of a pre-school child, the Danish approach is much closer to her own stance on screens than her home country. She is already following the Danish health agency guidelines: “In Columbia screens are used a lot in kindergartens, too much for my taste. In Denmark they have a different methodology which I consider closest to what I like. With my son, we will watch any content beforehand that we plan to let him see at home. If we decide it’s suitable, we’ll watch it together with him and talk about it, for example how people are behaving, the kinds of activities they’re doing, the music they’re listening to and so on.”

Lili Czibor, an IT project manager from Hungary, who has two children aged 4 and 2, does not allow them to use screens at all, apart from FaceTimes with family. She plans to gradually introduce screens from around the age of 5. She feels that “for young children it’s really important to gradually introduce limited and structured screen time while maintaining healthy boundaries”. For her, the Danish and Hungarian approaches to screens for children are “mostly aligned”. Hungary has also just introduced a ban on phones in the classroom following research evidence on the negative impact on adolescent mental health. 

Karli Winters, a teacher from Oregon in the USA, moved to Denmark with her four children in 2019 when they were aged 14, 12, 9 and 7. She feels children in Denmark are given mobile phones at an earlier age than in her home state (often by the age of 10) and it can be difficult for parents not to succumb to peer pressure. She has taken different approaches over time. With her older children, Covid lockdowns meant screens were a necessity for learning and socialising. “The screens were in their rooms from that point and they never left,” she says. Her parenting approach with her eldest two children focused on close guidance and support, including guiding them through setting up social media accounts and modelling healthy online behaviour. On the whole, with a few expected bumps in the road, this was successful. With her third child, now 13, the family have decided to test a radical approach. He has a basic phone but the plan is for him not to have any social media until he reaches 18. For the family, this has been positive so far and her son is confident he can sustain the self-imposed ban. Karli broadly supports the Danish government’s careful, research-based stance on screens but worries that if schools embrace outright bans on technology, this might ultimately put Danish teenagers at a disadvantage in a working world that is predominantly online. What she would really like to see next is a national “digital citizenship curriculum” similar to the highly successful “Week Sex”/Uge Seks sex and relationships programme, “that’s based around the values we want to promote and is properly funded by the government.”

Links:

Read about the Danish Health Authority’s recommendations and view publications here: Control on a screen – Danish Health Authority (sst.dk)
Specific health agency guidance on young people, screens and sleep: sst.dk/sk Sleeve Pattern | What pattern disturbs your child’s night’s sleep? | Danish medicines ag
Dr Imran Rashid’s website: Om mig — Imran Rashid (drimranrashid.com)

Ali Lewis
Ali Lewis
Ali Lewis is a writer and teacher originally from Scotland. She now lives in Billund, Denmark, with her wife and two sons. Besides writing for Last Week in Denmark, she is obsessed with music and frequently contributes to the Berlin-based music and culture magazine FastForward. Follow her on Substack at https://substack.com/@alilewis1

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