Martial Arts Club kicks screen time to the curb

With the ever growing concerns around children and the damaging effects screen time is having on them, a Martial Arts Club in Sutton in Ashfield is helping to combat that by encouraging students and parents to cut down on screen time and really think about the effects it’s having.

Recent media and a channel 4 documentary attracted the attention of the owner of The Factory Martial Arts in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Lucy Gray. She said, "We are a local club who not only teach martial arts, but also valuable life skills alongside it, such as respect, self discipline, kindness and first aid to name a few.

After seeing increasing concerns about how much time children are spending on screens, and seeing first hand in our club how some children would choose to miss training to have more screen time, I felt it was time for us to do something. So as a club, we are introducing a topic of screen time where children and parents will have certain challenges to complete in the month of March to try and earn a badge and a certificate if they limit screen time and take part in other activities.

I have worked in childcare for nearly 20 years and have seen such a shift in children's behaviour and attention span in the last few years, and having spent time researching and observing behaviour, I feel a lot of this is down the fact some children are given screen time everyday. So I'm very excited to be introducing this challenge and topic to our club to hopefully highlight the damaging effects of screen time and help to combat this."

If you want to get involved with The Factory Martial Arts screen time initiative for March 2025, head to their social media pages and send a message.