She said one major challenge faced by families in metropolitan areas is the dominance of gadgets, which has reduced the quality of family interactions, particularly during mealtimes.
"Much of our time, even during dinner, is spent with screens. Dinner is a crucial moment when children are home and parents are not working," Christie said on Monday.
She noted that Indonesians spend an average of three hours and eight minutes per day on social media, while total daily internet use reaches about seven hours.
Christie said the figure is higher among Generation Z, with social media use averaging four hours per day.
She presented findings from studies on early childhood learning, which show that direct interaction with parents is more effective than learning through videos.
The studies found that toddlers who learned new vocabulary through direct parental interaction performed significantly better than those who learned through video content, even when parents watched together with them.
"There is a known 10,000-word gap at age five. Children who rarely converse with parents tend to have smaller vocabularies, which directly affects their learning ability later in school," she said.
Christie also stressed the importance of nurturing curiosity through quality question-and-answer interactions between parents and children.
"Asking and answering questions is active learning. Children who rely only on gadgets lose opportunities to learn actively, as devices cannot respond to curiosity," she added.
She said families play a key role in instilling values and creating lasting memories for children.
Christie warned that replacing communication at the dining table with screens risks shifting children's value formation from parents to artificial intelligence algorithms and social media.
"Family is humanity's anchor. We are social beings who exchange ideas. Start simply: eat together and talk without gadgets," she said.
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Translator: Sean, Kenzu
Editor: Anton Santoso
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