Recently, one of our Reception teachers came to see me with an unusual request. Could the Reception children, she asked, be excluded from our whole-school prize-giving assembly? At four and five years old, she felt that they were simply finding it too difficult to sit still and concentrate for that length of time.
My immediate reaction was that perhaps we were expecting too much. They are, after all, very young children.
But then I remembered a conversation with a former Head of Eaton Square Prep. When I mentioned the increasing difficulty some of our youngest children seemed to have sitting still and listening for sustained periods, his response was simple:
‘Ten years ago, they could.’
That sentence stayed with me. Children have not fundamentally changed in ten years. Childhood, however, has.
One of the most significant changes has been the extraordinary growth in the amount of time children spend interacting with screens. Tablets, smartphones, streaming services and games are now an entirely normal part of family life, and technology undoubtedly brings enormous benefits. But as educators, we are increasingly asking whether the way young children engage with digital content may also be changing the way they learn to pay attention.
Why Concentration and Attention Are Skills Children Must Practise
We sometimes talk about concentration as though a child either possesses it or does not. In reality, concentration is a skill, and like most skills, it develops through practice.
A child develops the ability to listen to a story by listening to stories. They learn to sit through an assembly by sitting through assemblies. They learn to persevere with a puzzle by experiencing the frustration of not immediately being able to complete it.
These experiences are not always exciting. Sometimes children have to wait. Sometimes they are bored. Sometimes the reward for their attention does not arrive immediately.
That matters.
Much of the digital content designed for children works very differently. Images change rapidly, rewards are frequent and, if something is no longer interesting, another video, game or activity is available almost instantly.
The concern is not simply that children are ‘looking at screens’. It is what screen use may be displacing.
An hour spent on a tablet is an hour that cannot simultaneously be spent building Lego, drawing, looking through a book, talking to a parent, inventing a game, climbing a tree or simply working out what to do when there is nothing immediately entertaining available.
All of those apparently ordinary childhood experiences require children to generate and sustain their own attention.
What Research Says About Screen Time and Children’s Attention Spans
This is an area in which it is important not to overstate the evidence. Research showing an association between higher screen use and difficulties with attention does not automatically prove that screens are the cause. Children who already find concentration difficult may, for example, be more drawn to highly stimulating digital activities.
The type of screen use matters too. Video-calling a grandparent, creating something digitally with a parent and watching an endless stream of short-form videos are all technically ‘screen time’, but they are very different experiences for a developing child.
Nevertheless, concerns about the impact of excessive screen use on children’s development have become sufficiently significant that the Government has increasingly focused on how families and schools can help children develop healthier relationships with technology.
The message should not be that screens are inherently bad. They are part of modern childhood and will be part of our children’s futures. The more useful question is whether they are being used in a way that leaves enough space for children to develop the other skills they need.
How Excessive Screen Time Can Affect Focus and Concentration
One of the challenges for parents is that digital entertainment can be extraordinarily stimulating.
Compare watching a fast-moving programme or playing a game with listening to a teacher explain something, completing a worksheet or sitting through an assembly. Real life inevitably moves more slowly.
A teacher cannot change scene every few seconds. A book does not flash up a reward each time a child turns the page. A conversation requires a child to listen even when somebody else is speaking.
If children become accustomed to constant stimulation, ordinary classroom experiences can inevitably feel less immediately rewarding.
That does not mean that we should try to make every second of school more entertaining. In fact, I think we should be cautious about doing so.
Part of education is teaching children that not everything worthwhile provides instant gratification. Sometimes learning requires patience, repetition, perseverance and sustained attention.
How Parents Can Improve Their Child’s Concentration and Focus
The good news is that concentration can be practised in very ordinary ways.
Read together without another device in the room. Encourage children to finish a puzzle before moving on to something else. Let them colour, build, draw and create for extended periods. Eat together when you can and encourage conversation around the table.
And perhaps most importantly, allow children occasionally to be bored.
Parents understandably feel pressure to fill children’s time, but boredom can be remarkably productive. A child who announces that there is “nothing to do” is being presented with an opportunity to invent something to do. That process requires imagination, independence and sustained thought.
It is also worth thinking about our own behaviour. Children notice when adults reach for a phone during every quiet moment. Creating screen-free times for the whole family can therefore be far more powerful than imposing rules that apply only to children.
Perhaps we need to raise our expectations.
I keep returning to that Reception assembly.
Of course, expectations must be developmentally appropriate. No four-year-old should be expected to sit silently for hours, and movement, play and exploration are fundamental to early childhood.
But there is a difference between recognising children’s developmental needs and gradually lowering our expectations of what they can learn to do.
If children find it difficult to concentrate for ten minutes, the answer cannot always be to ask them to concentrate for five.
Sometimes our job, both as parents and educators, is to help them build towards ten.
Technology will be an important part of our children’s lives, and schools have a responsibility to teach them how to use it confidently, creatively and safely. But we have an equally important responsibility to protect the quieter skills that technology can sometimes crowd out: listening, waiting, imagining, persevering and paying attention.
Perhaps the question is therefore not simply ‘How much screen time is too much?’
It is also:
‘What are our children not doing while they are on it?’
And, increasingly, I think that may be the more important question.