11 October 2018
Jewish Care was proud to be a supporter and participant of the Maccabi Victoria and Maccabi Life event 'Screenagers', held on Wednesday night 10 October.
Over 400 parents, teens and grandparents gathered at the Glen Eira Town Hall to watch a 1hr documentary about the affects of too much screen time on our children and society.
This was followed by a panel discussion moderated and hosted by David Opat - Vice Principal of Student Wellbeing at The King David School.
Panel members included:
Professor Frank Oberklaid OAM - Director, Centre for Community Child Health, The Royal Children’s Hospital, Marilyn Kraner - Manager, Individual & Family Support Manager at Jewish Care and Mayan Gafin and Jeremy Tusia, Year 12 students from Leibler Yavneh College who spoke about their program "Combat D.A.T (Drugs, Alcohol, Technology)" and a 24hr technology detox event organised for their secondary school.
The take-away from the night was that we can all do much more as individuals to lessen and control our amount of screen time. We can improve our wellbeing by being more social, engaged and active. We should have more genuine face-to-face conversations with the people in our lives.
Also discussed at length was the importance of the parent-child relationship particularly in setting up open communication channels and agreeing upon boundaries for the use of technology. The adults in the audience were invited to reflect on their own relationship with technology and consider acting as strong role models with the overall aim of building trusting and open relationships with their children.