Are your kids spending too much time on gadgets?

DRIVEN by demand from parents – and research showing the negative results of technology on children – a new Irish start-up is launching a project with a family festival in Ringsend at the end of the month.

Recent research includes an Ofcom study on tech use in the UK that shows how 72 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds suffered from sleep deprivation due to overuse of tech.

According to Chris Flack, co-founder of UnPlug, their focus is on raising awareness of the overuse of technology.

“UnPlug aren’t anti-tech, we love tech,” he said. “Our focus is to raise awareness of the overuse of tech and encourage a tech/life balance by encouraging using tech for good.”

The Dublin based start-up has spent the last six months delivering tech/life balance programmes to companies in Ireland helping with focus in distracted workplaces.

As a result, the company has been asked to speak at the Digital Citizen Summit at Twitter HQ in California later in October.

Ali Canavan, model and parenting columnist, has been working with the team from UnPlug4kids as she feels it’s a critical issue for millennials, including her six-year-old son James.

“The internet brings huge benefits,” she said. “However, as a parent I’m worried about how addictive social media and gaming is. I worry children aren’t developing simple emotional skills such as being bored which helps form creativity.”

Ali has worked with the UnPlug team of psychologists and neuroscience experts and has a programme that she follows with James.

He still plays Minecraft but they’ve developed a middle ground in which he also spends a lot of quality time with friends and family.

UnPlug4Kids family festival is packed full of exciting activities including a family disco from the team that brought Morning Gloryville to Dublin and ‘Nature & Risk’ which is being run by Nature Kindergarten (Park Academy Childcare). They will be showing children from the age of three and upwards how to chop with an axe and saw wood.

The event will also have ‘smartphone police’ with inflatable hammers who, on catching a parent using a smartphone during an activity, will playfully hit them on the head and ask for a donation for the event charity partner, the ISPCC.

According to Jane Flood, co-founder of Family Friendly HQ, the family website promoting Unplug4Kids: “Your attention is the greatest gift you can give to your children. We know that we often need to reply to messages for work but we need to remember we are role models for our children and if we give time to our phone children will see it as more important than them.”

There are also free massages for parents in the chill out area so if they behave themselves it’s a great day out.

Prices start from €10 for a single parent and child under three.  The price includes all activities plus a children’s goodie bag. More at www.unplug4kids.com