In a Smart Nation like Singapore, digital devices have become a part of our everyday lives. Young children are growing up in a more connected and technologically-advanced environment. While digital devices are no doubt a great form of entertainment and education for young children, the excessive and unregulated usage of screen time have been found to be associated with various negative health concerns impacting young children’s childhood development.
Together with the help of medical professionals and community partners from the various sectors, Play Beyond The Screen, a health communications campaign, aims to encourage parents with children aged 1-5 to actively mediate in their children’s screen time usage and employ alternative measures to educate and entertain them, all in a bid to combat the negative health impacts of excessive screen time on young children’s development.
Watch the video below to hear from some parents on the joys and struggles of parenting toddlers in this digital age.
The Highlights
Able to raise awareness and bridged parents’ knowledge gap.
The campaign raised awareness and bridged parents’ knowledge gap of the health concerns associated with excessive and unregulated screen time.
Through the panel sharing events and on social media, lively discussions about screen time regulation were sparked off amongst the target audience, increasing the salience of the subject of screen time.
Fostering a culture of sharing about screen-free activities.
Parents were taught simple crafts and provided with themed printables so that they can engage their children without excessive reliance on digital devices. In addition, they were encouraged to document various forms of interactive play with their children.
The online buzz amongst parents regarding the play kit resulted in them creating their own content suggesting screen-free ways to engage young children. The large volume of content generated was a testament to the effectiveness of the campaign, effectively boosting the target audience’s self-efficacy levels to manage screen time.
Quick thinking for backup plans paid off.
Due to the change in the DOSCON alert level (from yellow to orange) during the campaign period, the team made a swift decision to cancel on-ground events for the safety of parents and their families.
The Stay-Home Play Kit was actually a backup plan to cope with this change in alert level. The team managed to acquire raw materials to assemble the play kits for distribution to 700 households, within two weeks.
The kits proved to be a timely and effective tactic for parents to engage their children at home during heightened levels of uncertainty, resulting in overwhelming support and extending the reach of the campaign beyond the intended numbers.
The Memories
Reflection #1 – The Challenges
Disruption of the campaign due to COVID-19 outbreak.
The ‘Play By The Bay’ carnival was set to be the team’s biggest event to culminate the campaign, but it had to be canceled because of the outbreak.
Issues surrounding screen time also seemed minute in comparison to the COVID-19 outbreak, making it difficult to secure media coverage with both parents and local mainstream media being most concerned with their immediate safety and health.
While the Stay-Home Play Kits contingency response enabled the campaign to gain a substantial amount of attention, it was executed only towards the end of the campaign’s timeline which impacted its exposure. In hindsight, the Stay-Home Play Kit tactic could have kicked off campaign execution efforts to generate the highest response from parents.
Lack of resources to tailor to different audience segments.
Due to limited resources, the team chose to target all parents with children aged 1 to 5 as a whole, instead of further segmenting them into different demographic segments, such as single-income families with stay-home parent and families with low socioeconomic status.
Using a different messaging strategy to target the segmented audiences, could have been more effective in encouraging behavioural change with the provided resources.
Reflection #2 – The Takeaways
Improving previous campaigns can be helpful.
While past campaigns addressed the topic of screen time, there was little emphasis on the adoption of an active media mediating parenting style which is more effective to regulate screen time as compared to restrictive and co-use methods.
The campaign’s unique aspect lies in the provision of practical materials for parents to actively mediate their child’s digital content. Tactics such as the Media Use Plan and Screen-Free Pledge offered elements of personalisation and room for negotiation on screen time limits with their children. The resources served as direct solutions to address the issue of excessive and unregulated screen time and translated to a higher uptake by parents, in turn promoting healthy screen time behaviour.
A campaign’s sustainability is important.
The team will work with the People’s Association’s (PA) Family Life Division, to ensure the sustainability of this campaign. 500 sets of the Screen-Free Starter Pack will be distributed during their Embracing Parenthood Roadshow events over the year.
To ensure that the collaterals reach a higher number of target audiences, the team will digitalise their collaterals, and make them downloadable and accessible to both PA and preschool networks. In addition, the online parent magazine Little Day Out will be hosting the digital collaterals after the team’s website has been decommissioned, to extend the longevity of the campaign resources.
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