We will dive into the complex issues brought into family life by screens. We think you’ll come away inspired to take a step further in creating a healthy relationship with technology, one that honors your family’s core values and protects your connection.
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Filtering Completed
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Summit Interview: Kim Jon Payne & Tom Cooper
In this fascinating discussion between Kim John Payne M.ED and Dr. Tom Cooper they discuss how to gaining a newfound control and understanding of our relationship with the media.
Dr. Cooper is the author of…
Fast Media, Media Fast: How To Clear Your Mind And Invigorate Your Life In An Age Of Media Overload
FAST MEDIA, MEDIA FAST is an exciting guide for taking a liberating media fast in an age of increasingly fast media. This researched, seasoned manual provides specific guidelines, important areas for thought, creative options and life-changing opportunities.
Dr. Cooper has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. He is the author or co-author of six published books about media ethics and criticism including Television and Ethics: A Bibliography, Communications Ethics and Global Change, and his most recent, Fast Media/Media Fast. The co-publisher of Media Ethics, an independent academic and professional magazine, Cooper is a professor at Emerson College in Cambridge MA and has written over a hundred articles and reviews. From 1975-1980 at the University of Toronto, Cooper served as an assistant to Marshall McLuhan. He has received numerous fellowships, awards, and grants, and was founding director of the Association for Responsible Communication.
–Here is a brief video in which gives an overview of his approach.
–Click here for a transcription of the interview
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Summit Interview: Kim John Payne & Richard Freed
- How can parents gain the authority to set limits on their kids’ tech use?
- What are steps parents can take to build the strong families kids need in this digital age?
- A New York Times’ article described that leading tech executives set strong limits on their own kids’ tech use. Why do you think tech execs are careful about how their own kids use technology?
- Some suggest that parents who make efforts to guide their kids tech use are overprotective, or are practicing “helicopter parenting.” What do you think?
- What do you suggest a parent should do if their parenting partner is on a much different page re: their kids’ tech use?
- What about the understandable concern that kids need to learn to use technology?
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When the Screen is Supreme
The family medium needs to be more important than the social media in a child’s life. Otherwise the danger is that it is the children who are bringing up children and the teaching of family values is displaced by the passing fads of what is cool on social media. Every parent wants to inculcate in his or her child good moral values: we want our children to be strong, kind, and considerate of others. These fundamental values are strengthened whenever we affirm the little kindnesses our children show, and every time we correct their disrespectful behavior. These values need careful parental nurturing because they develop slowly and cannot compete with the fast paced, relentless, manipulative marketing forces unleashed through screens. It is important that we parents understand that kids who are bombarded with screen values don’t reject a parent’s discipline and guidance but rather, simply deem it boring and irrelevant to their situation. How bitterly ironic that, in this brave new world in which the screen is supreme, the very digital devices that we gift to our children, serve to bankrupt our parental authority.
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Anti Screen? No…
Pro Human Relationship? Yes.
By Kim John Payne.
An extract from The Soul of Discipline: The Simplicity Parenting Approach to Warm, Firm and Clam Guidance. From Toddlers to Teens (Ballantine Books/Penguin Random House. 2015.)
How a parent handles the influence of screens (television, computers, phones and other devices) used to be a part of a general discussion about filtering the adult world from
our kids’ lives. In recent years, however, it has become a major stand-alone concern, as alarm has spiked among parents and educators about how children of all
ages cope with the tsunami of information and distraction digital devices offer. It’s a sensitive issue for some, who feel that technology has significantly improved education and entertainment, as well as for
those who believe screen exposure is the new normal and do not want to question the status quo. It is clear to me, as a parenting advisor, that we have to approach this issue with consciousness and courage, and accept the fact that—as in many other areas of our kids’ lives (like when they are fighting or arguing over a favorite toy)—there will be times when we have to step in firmly and take careful control of our children’s screen consumption.
Deep Family Connection.
To be clear, I am not anti-screen, but I am passionately pro human relationships and family connections. I am just as committed to the reality that childhood develops in phases and each stage needs the right environment in order to flourish. Frankly, I would be relieved if the evidence supported screen use for kids as being okay.
It would make Katharine and my life as parents a whole lot easier to just go with the popular tide and get our kids smart phones and tablets and open the door to social networking.
However, both the balance of research and my plain old gut instinct tells me that something is seriously wrong with the way in which perhaps the most powerful tool humankind has ever known is being placed literally in the hands of children. The evidence is mounting that this twenty year unregulated mass social experiment is not going so well, especially for kids and families.
Strong family bonds take time to build and nurture. The increasing demands of work life, with its invisible digital arm reaching right into our home life, means our time with our kids has become more precious and limited than ever before. Therefore, it makes sense that we live every moment with our kids to it’s fullest and not allow ourselves to be displaced by the allure of digital distractions.
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Why Tech Execs Don’t Rush to Get Their Children Smartphones
The New York Times’ article, “Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent,” reveals that leading tech executives set strong limits on their own children’s tech use. One such limit is that kids aren’t provided smartphones until they reach between the ages of 14 and 16. This contrasts with the overall trend of giving younger and younger children smartphones, as many elementary and middle-school-age kids now carry them…[continue reading]
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Screentime Is Making Kids Moody, Crazy and Lazy
6 Ways electronic screen time makes kids angry, depressed and unmotivated.
by Victoria L Dunckley, M.D
Children or teens who are “revved up” and prone to rages or—alternatively—who are depressed and apathetic have become disturbingly commonplace. Chronically irritable children are often in a state of abnormally high arousal, and may seem “wired and tired.” That is, they’re agitated but exhausted. Because chronically high arousal levels impact memory and the ability to relate, these kids are also likely to struggle academically and socially.
At some point, a child with these symptoms may be given a mental-health diagnosis such as major depression, bipolar disorder, or ADHD, and offered corresponding treatments, including therapy and medication. But often these treatments don’t work very well, and the downward spiral continues.
What’s happening?
Both parents and clinicians may be “barking up the wrong tree.” That is, they’re trying to treat what looks like a textbook case of mental disorder, but failing to rule out and address the most common environmental cause of such symptoms—everyday use of electronics. Time and again, I’ve realized that regardless of whether there exists any “true” underlying diagnoses, successfully treating a child with mood dysregulation today requires methodically eliminating all electronics use for several weeks—an “electronics fast”—to allow the nervous system to “reset.”
If done correctly, this intervention can produce deeper sleep, a brighter and more even mood, better focus and organization, and an increase in physical activity. The ability to tolerate stress improves, so meltdowns diminish in both frequency and severity. The child begins to enjoy the things they used to, is more drawn to nature, and imaginary or creative play returns. In teens and young adults, an increase in self-directed behavior is observed—the exact opposite of apathy and hopelessness.
It’s a beautiful thing.
At the same time, the electronic fast reduces or eliminates the need for medication while rendering other treatments more effective. Improved sleep, more exercise, and more face-to-face contact with others compound the benefits—an upward spiral! After the fast, once the brain is reset, the parent can carefully determine how much if any electronics use the child can tolerate without symptoms returning.
Restricting electronics may not solve everything, but it’s often the missing link in treatment when kids are stuck.
But why is the electronic fast intervention so effective? Because it reverses much of the physiological dysfunction produced by daily screen time.
Children’s brains are much more sensitive to electronics use than most of us realize. In fact, contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t take much electronic stimulation to throw a sensitive and still-developing brain off track. Also, many parents mistakenly believe that interactive screen-time—Internet or social media use, texting, emailing, and gaming—isn’t harmful, especially compared to passive screen time like watching TV. In fact, interactive screen time is more likely to cause sleep, mood, and cognitive issues, because it’s more likely to cause hyperarousal and compulsive use.
Here’s a look at six physiological mechanisms that explain electronics’ tendency to produce mood disturbance:
1. Screen time disrupts sleep and desynchronizes the body clock.
Because light from screen devices mimics daytime, it suppresses melatonin, a sleep signal released by darkness. Just minutes of screen stimulation can delay melatonin release by several hours and desynchronize the body clock. Once the body clock is disrupted, all sorts of other unhealthy reactions occur, such as hormone imbalance and brain inflammation. Plus, high arousal doesn’t permit deep sleep, and deep sleep is how we heal.
2. Screen time desensitizes the brain’s reward system.
Many children are “hooked” on electronics, and in fact gaming releases so much dopamine—the “feel-good” chemical—that on a brain scan it looks the same as cocaine use. But when reward pathways are overused, they become less sensitive, and more and more stimulation is needed to experience pleasure. Meanwhile, dopamine is also critical for focus and motivation, so needless to say, even small changes in dopamine sensitivity can wreak havoc on how well a child feels and functions.
3. Screen time produces “light-at-night.”
Light-at-night from electronics has been linked to depression and even suicide risk in numerous studies. In fact, animal studies show that exposure to screen-based light before or during sleep causes depression, even when the animal isn’t looking at the screen. Sometimes parents are reluctant to restrict electronics use in a child’s bedroom because they worry the child will enter a state of despair—but in fact removing light-at-night is protective.
4. Screen time induces stress reactions.
Both acute stress (fight-or-flight) and chronic stress produce changes in brain chemistry and hormones that can increase irritability. Indeed, cortisol, the chronic stress hormone, seems to be both a cause and an effect of depression—creating a vicious cycle. Additionally, both hyperarousal and addiction pathways suppress the brain’s frontal lobe, the area where mood regulation actually takes place.
5. Screen time overloads the sensory system, fractures attention, and depletes mental reserves.
Experts say that what’s often behind explosive and aggressive behavior is poor focus. When attention suffers, so does the ability to process one’s internal and external environment, so little demands become big ones. By depleting mental energy with high visual and cognitive input, screen time contributes to low reserves. One way to temporarily “boost” depleted reserves is to become angry, so meltdowns actually become a coping mechanism.
6. Screen-time reduces physical activity levels and exposure to “green time.”
Research shows that time outdoors, especially interacting with nature, can restore attention, lower stress, and reduce aggression. Thus, time spent with electronics reduces exposure to natural mood enhancers.
In today’s world, it may seem crazy to restrict electronics so drastically. But when kids are struggling, we’re not doing them any favors by leaving electronics in place and hoping they can wind down by using electronics in “moderation.” It just doesn’t work. In contrast, by allowing the nervous system to return to a more natural state with a strict fast, we can take the first step in helping a child become calmer, stronger, and happier.
For more on this topic, check out my new book, Reset Your Child’s Brain: A Four Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen Time.
Victoria L Dunckley, M.D. Is an integrative child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist, the author of Reset your Child’s Brain, and an expert on the effects of screen-time on the developing nervous system.
Dunckley, Victoria L. (August 18, 2015).Screentime is Making Kids Moody Crazy and Lazy. Psychology Today. Retrieved from
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-wealth/201508/screentime-is-making-kids-moody-crazy-and-lazy
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Wired Child: Debunking Popular Technology Myths
A Simplicity Parenting Interview
with Richard Freed, Ph.D
Traci McGrath and Richard Freed, March 2015
Today, I’m speaking with child and adolescent psychologist, Richard Freed, who recently published the book Wired Child: Debunking Popular Technology Myths.
Please tell us about Wired Child.
Wired Child explains the disconnect between what’s promised about children’s technology use and what many parents experience for themselves. We are told that technology will bring the family closer, yet we watch as kids ignore their parents in favor of mobile devices. Assurances that technology is the key to our kids’ 21st-century success are contradicted by their overuse of video games, social networks, and texting that drag down their success in school.
In Wired Child, I show that our children’s
and teens’ tech use is defined by
powerful myths—many of which are
fostered by the makers of kids’ tech
products. These myths have encouraged
the “wiring up” of a generation of youth
at the expense of real-world activities vital to kids’ emotional health and success. I show how families benefit when we move beyond tech-industry hype to use the science of behavior and brain function to guide the raising of our kids.
Is there a technology myth that you feel is particularly harmful to children?
At the heart of all the technology myths I highlight in Wired Child is the digital native-digital immigrant belief. This common notion suggests that kids are experts with technology simply by virtue of being born surrounded by gadgets, while parents are relatively clueless in this digital age. However, while parents may not be able to access all of a phone’s features or score points in a video game with the ease of a child, parents, because of their more advanced brain development and life experience, are better able to understand something far more important: how kids’ use, or more frequently the overuse, of technology can affect their emotional health and academic success.
So, as a parent, have the confidence to make decisions about how your child or teen uses technology. Such parenting, in which parents provide their kids’ high levels of guidance in a loving context, is reflective of authoritative parenting, the parenting style that most contributes to our kids’ happiness and success.
Some suggest that parents guiding kids’ tech use is reflective of helicopter parenting. Do you think so?
Helicopter parenting is doing for children and teens what they could do themselves, e.g., completing our kids’ homework for them, or bailing kids out of trouble they got themselves into.
One of the most troubling findings of my research is the increasing involvement of psychologists and neuroscientists in the creation of video games. These experts create digital products intended to suck users away from other aspects of their lives. For children, that would include time spent with family, playing outside, or putting effort into homework. Our kids don’t stand a chance. They need our help.
Interestingly, I find that it’s often parents of tech-obsessed kids who have to rely most upon helicopter parenting. Their children—caught up with gaming, social networking, and texting—are more likely to skip homework or turn it in unfinished. The result is that these parents have to constantly hound their kids to get their work done or intervene with the school on their behalf because of incomplete assignments.
Many parents are describing that their children develop an addiction to tablet computers or video games? Is there evidence that technology can be addictive?
The US health community is moving towards recognizing the addictive potential of certain technologies, something that is fully recognized in China, South Korea, and Japan. I see many preteens and teens who are addicted to technology, mostly video games but also social networks. Parents bring their kids to see me because they can’t understand why they have given up on school and family in order to live in cyberspace. These are kids who often react to their parents’ attempts to limit their beloved devices with aggression or thoughts of suicide.
How can parents protect their kids from tech addiction?
I believe the key is prevention, as treating tech-addicted children and teens is remarkably difficult for both parents and kids. As a culture, we need to be more thoughtful about the age of children when we introduce them to technology, as there is evidence that the younger kids are introduced to video gaming, the more likely they will develop obsessive habits later. I also suggest that parents understand the realities of providing their kids mobile devices such as smartphones, as this tends to dramatically increase kids’ entertainment screen use, and it makes it more difficult for parents to guide their kids’ use of technology.
What about the claim that limiting kids’ technology hurts their ability to be successful in this digital age?
There’s no doubt that our kids need to grow up to be able to use technology effectively; however, our kids’ wired lives are doing anything but that. What is important to recognize is that how kids use technology—whether it’s learning- or entertainment-focused—makes a big difference. Used constructively at the right ages, technology advances our kids’ success, but an overindulgence in digital self- amusements from a young age is wreaking havoc on our kids’ happiness and chances of success.
Today, our kids’ tech use is marked almost exclusively by self-amusement, not learning. For example, teens now spend 8 hours each day at home with amusement-based screens, such as video games, online videos, social networks, TV, as well as texting and talking on the phone. Yet they only spend 16 minutes a day on a computer at home for school. It’s this immersion in entertainment technologies which is pulling kids away from the two most important elements of their lives: family and school.
How can we get our kids to use technology productively?
There are a number of actions we can take. One of which is to build kids’ self-control skills, as it takes remarkable restraint for kids to stay focused on the productive use of technology when digital playtime is always a click away. So how can we foster our kids’ self-control? This is accomplished by limiting kids’
exposure to quick-trigger screen media such as video games and high-action TV, and instead immersing them in real-world activities such as creative play and reading.
There’s a tremendous irony here: It’s engaging kids in lots of real-life activities that promotes their ability to use technology wisely as they grow older.
What do you say to parents who are concerned about raising their child with more serious limits on technology than other kids at school or in the neighborhood?
It’s understandable that parents would wonder about the effects of raising their children with less tech immersion than some other kids. However, it’s important for parents to know that there isn’t evidence that early tech immersion benefits kids. I also suggest a good place to look for guidance is the serious tech limits leading tech executives provide their own children. For example, a New York Times’ article disclosed that Steve Jobs and other tech execs strictly limit their own kids’ tech use, and instead emphasize activities such as shared meals.
Why is the approach to parenting provided by many industry leaders so different than the way American kids are typically raised? I believe these tech execs’ insiders’ knowledge keeps them from being deceived by the many digital-age myths I highlight in Wired Child.
These business leaders are well aware that our kids’ tech use is marked by long hours spent with self-amusements that can take kids’ away from families and interest in school, and also pose the risk of addiction.
How do you help families limit their kids’ use of entertainment technologies if two parents who live together feel differently about limiting kids’ use of screens and technology?
If you’re on a different page with a parenting partner about kids’ use of technology, or would like your partner to be a better role model on the issues of screens and phones, the first step is to talk with him or her about your concerns. If this isn’t effective, encourage your partner to look at the American Acad
emy of Pediatrics media/technology recommendations. Alternatively, the next time you visit your child’s doctor, have both parents attend and ask your pediatrician for advice, as kids’ doctors are often aware of research-driven guidelines for kids’ screen time.
Has the writing of your book influenced how you’ve raised your own children?
I think, even if I hadn’t studied children’s technology, my wife and I would have limited our kids’ screen time—as we believe in the importance of creative play, reading, and other activities that can get pushed aside by digital devices. That being said, I think that my research steeled my resolve to overcome the challenges of raising kids with fewer screens.
I can remember times when our girls were toddlers when I would be reading to them at night after a long day of work and childcare, and I’d be the first one to fall asleep. Sometimes, I would say to myself that screens would sure be the easier choice. But researching the effects of kids’ wired lives and seeing firsthand what happens in my practice made me more determined than ever to do what I could to limit our kids’ early tech exposure.
Issues related to children’s technology can feel overwhelming to parents, as there seem to be “must-have” devices and applications released daily. What’s a message you feel is helpful for parents?
There are many, many self-interested parties that are telling parents to load their kids up with devices and back away, to leave their kids alone to find their own way
with video games, tablets, smartphones, etc. Yet what I find is that parents often know deep in their hearts that their kids need their help, need their guidance. Science is now clearly showing us that parents are right, our kids need our help to be happy and successful in this digital age. So, I suggest that parents follow their intuition and have the confidence and determination to lead their kids on matters of technology and screen time.
Richard Freed, Ph.D., is a child and adolescent psychologist with more than twenty years of clinical experience. He completed his professional training at Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School and the California School of Professional Psychology. Dr. Freed lives in Walnut Creek, California with his wife and two daughters. He is the author of Wired Child, a book for parents, teachers, and others who care for kids. It exposes destructive digital-age age myths and helps parents provide children and teens the strong family they need, promote their success in school, limit their risk of tech addiction, and encourage their productive use of technology. Learn more at www.RichardFreed.com
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“Childhood Is Broken in the Digital Age… Let’s Fix It”
Richard Freed, for The Huffington Post
12/05/2016 10:22 pm ET
Time magazine’s November 7, 2016 cover story, “The Kids Are Not All Right,” reveals that our children and teens are tormented by dangerously high rates of depression, self-injurious cutting, and other serious emotional problems. Author Susanna Schrobsdorff connects this generation’s suffering to the often hopeless and menacing cyberworld they inhabit: elementary schoolers are cyberbullied on social media, teens scroll through grisly photos of self-mutilation online, and—pouring salt into the wounds—kids’ digital immersion cuts them off from needed family connections.
“Even though teens may be in the same room with their parents, they might also, thanks to their phones, be immersed in a painful emotional tangle with dozens of their classmates,” Schrobsdorff writes. “Or they’re looking at other people’s lives on Instagram and feeling self-loathing (or worse). Or they’re caught up in a discussion about suicide with a bunch of people on the other side of the country they’ve never even met via an app that most adults have never heard of.”
Many factors explain why America’s kids increasingly immerse themselves in dark cyberspaces at the expense of engaging with family, school, and other essential real-world activities. Social media, video games, and the like offer a convenient babysitter for today’s parents who work longer hours than those of decades past. Moreover, addictive technologies draw kids like moths to a flame. Yet, no factor has pushed youth digital immersion more than decades of flawed pop-culture parenting advice that has convinced parents and schools to turn kids loose with digital devices.
Leading Parents and Educators Astray
Soon after the new millennium, as America grappled with an explosion in consumer technologies, influential video game developer Marc Prensky promoted a paradigm to guide how parents and teachers should manage kids’ technology: the digital native-digital immigrant concept.
Prensky labeled children “digital natives,” claiming they’re tech experts because they have grown up “surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age.” In turn, he characterized parents and teachers as “digital immigrants,” relatively unsophisticated on matters of technology. Prensky therefore encouraged a reversalin the traditional family hierarchy, suggesting that parents should obey their kids as they demand more video games, cell phones, portables, and online subscriptions.
A number of popular tech pundits followed Prensky’s lead, asserting that parents should back away from guiding kids’ tech. In her 2014 Time magazine article, Danah Boyd, the author of It’s Complicated, told parents to “Let Kids Run Wild Online,” and likewise branded parents who set tech limits “fearful.”
Many American parents and schools have latched on to the digital native-digital immigrant belief since, at face value, it can appear spot on. Watching a preteen flip through a tablet or a teen multitask on a phone can seem to confirm the notion that kids are tech whizzes who need little guidance.
However, brain-imaging studies are showing that the teen brain is highly sensation seeking, while its judgment center, the prefrontal cortex, remains immature. Teens are therefore notoriously bad at limiting their own use of seductive entertainment technologies. In contrast, the more developed prefrontal cortices of parents, teachers, and other caring adults help youth grasp what they cannot alone: how kids’ tendency to overuse playtime technologies is likely to erode their bonds with family, damage emotional health, hinder academic success, and increase the risk of developing a tech addiction. Parents, teachers, and other adult caregivers must therefore provide children and teenagers with strong guidance on tech.
When a Generation of Kids Runs Wild Online
While patently false, the digital native-digital immigrant belief is the defining blueprint for how American youth now use tech. Parents from my clinical practice stare at me in astonishment when I suggest the need to limit kids’ devices: “But she’ll get angry if I set rules on her phone.” In fact, across the nation, parents have turned their kids loose on screens and devices. According to a national study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, “The majority of 8- to 18-year-olds say they don’t have any rules about the type of media content they can use or the amount of time they can spend with the medium.” Schools, too, are increasingly giving students free rein to use phones throughout the day, even in class.
With parents and schools backing away, it’s no surprise that the time kids spend on entertainment technologies has exploded, while the time they spend using technology to learn is trivial by comparison. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, teens now spend 8 hours every day playing with phones and screens, while they only spend 16 minutes a day using the computer at home for school.
Mending a Broken Childhood
I have previously written that our kids’ overuse of playtime technologies is leading to a generation of smartphone experts who struggle with the learning basics that colleges use to gauge admission—an alarming two-thirds of American teens now score “below proficient” in reading, and this same percentage score “below proficient” in math. The recent Time magazine article revealing that America’s wired-up kids also experience epidemic levels of emotional problems completes this picture: As time with tech soars, mental health and academic skills are sinking. Childhood is broken in the digital age.
To help our kids, I recommend that parents and schools look to how leading tech execs have raised their own children. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and many other tech industry leaders have rejected the digital native-digital immigrant myth, and instead provided their kids strong tech rules. Such limits are needed if kids are to engage with their families that—even in this digital age—are the cornerstone of their emotional well-being. Setting tech rules also helps children focus on their studies and learn to use technology productively.
Make no mistake, guiding children’s and teens’ tech use demands far more effort from adults than just handing over a device. But that’s a small price to pay for fixing what is so clearly broken in our young peoples’ lives.
Freed, Richard. (Dec. 2015). “Childhood is Broken in the Digital Age…Let’s Fix It.” The Huffington Post. Retrieved 11 Dec. 2016 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-freed/childhood-is-broken-in-th_b_13420374.html
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Screen Free Week at our house….didn’t go the way I expected.
by Traci McGrath
I was excited to participate in it. I love the idea of a digital detox….But, since our kids usually see just one show each day, I didn’t expect it to make a huge difference in our home. I expected to have calmer, more peaceful kids (which I got), but I also expected to get way behind on all those not-kid-friendly tasks I usually try (quite hurriedly!) to knock out during my 30 minutes of “kid-free” time each day. I have to admit, I was dreading the week after Screen Free Week, when I’d have to catch up on all those chores, un-made phone calls and un-answered emails!
But something miraculous happened in the middle of all that screenless fun. The week ended, and you know what? I’m not behind on my weekly chores or jobs. Laundry isn’t piled up in some room waiting to be put away. Mold didn’t take over the kitchen sink and I didn’t get fired for my terrible work ethic. Somehow, I had more time and got more accomplished than I normally do, and felt much less stress about getting it done. I still played with the kids, and we had great fun….
But they also began to play without me…peacefully…for hours on end.
Several times during the week, I was astonished to look at a clock and realize I had not heard from either of my children in a couple of hours. I could see them playing right outside the window, but they were so engrossed in what they were doing, and really getting along – getting along so well they didn’t need a mama hovering nearby to help diffuse arguments.
They also didn’t need anyone to give them ideas about how to play.
I try to make it a habit not to ‘entertain’ the kids all the time. I believe in giving them lots of opportunities to solve their own boredom with creativity – but during Screen Free Week, I hardly had the opportunity to push this little soap box of mine at all. They were so tapped into their own creativity, they were no longer coming to me to ask me what they could do, and they completely forgot to ask if they could “watch a show” (a question I’m used to fielding 2 or 3 times a day.)
We still made a point to play together, but it was almost always the case that I was simply invited in to join a game they had invented or go on a scavenger hunt they had created.
There were strings tied to sticks with magnets, a fishing game for metal objects under the bed. There were index cards set strategically around the house with arrows pointing me to a hidden treasure. There were mud pies….Oh, there were mud pies! It’s not that these things aren’t normal at our house, they are. But this week, that they happened with such ease. There were none of those moments when I had to explain that we would not be watching a show and it was time to think of something else to do.
I was right about one thing with regards to the week – I knew my kids’ well-being (and therefore their behavior) would improve…
But I was completely surprised that the week also might make life easier for me.
Traci lives in the Austin, TX area with her husband and two little boys. Traci enjoys teaching a small part-time homeschool group. Her family loves time in nature, tent camping and hiking, and making music.
Published 5/9/2012
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“Back to the Basics: Children In The Digital Age”
Richard Freed
PAUL BRADBURY VIA GETTY IMAGES
Psychologist, author, and speaker on parenting in the age of digital technology
Huffington Post: 08/14/2016 03:38 pm ET | Updated Aug 15, 2016
“This is impossible,” Emily, the mother of three boys, exclaimed. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to give my kids more technology or less.” Emily felt paralyzed because she was caught between digital-age parenting advice and what her heart told her was right. Online articles claimed that children need freedom with gadgets, but she knew a number of teens who spent their lives on their phones, spurned their families, and suffered from emotional problems. Emily was also dubious of promises that devices are the key to kids’ success, as she knew more than a few game-obsessed 20-somethings who still lived with their parents and showed no signs of being productive.
The Surprising Science of Raising Happy, Healthy Kids
In meeting with parents like Emily, I acknowledge the confusion about what is good parenting in the digital age. For guidance, I suggest looking to the science of raising healthy children. What it’s revealing is extraordinary: that even amid the trappings of our tech-obsessed culture, children’s connections to family and school are still the most important factors in their lives. In other words, it’s time we get back to the basics.
There are other elements of raising healthy children, including engaging kids in creative and outdoor play, and showing them what it means to be a good friend. We also need to teach kids self-control and how to use technology productively. Yet, children are better able to acquire these abilities if they have strong connections with family and school. Children learn the value of nature when parents expose them to the outdoors. And kids acquire self-control, or grit, by persevering through challenging school assignments.
The Two Pillars of Childhood
Family is the most important element of children’s lives — even in this world of bits and bytes — because we are human first. We can’t ignore the science of attachment that shows our kids need lots of quality time with us. Such experiences shape children’s brains, and they foster our kids’ happiness and self- esteem, while diminishing the chances that they will develop behavior or drug problems.
Second in importance only to family is children’s involvement with school. Nevertheless, some question the value of traditional schooling, claiming that in the digital age kids learn best through exposure to the latest gadgets. But, according to the Pew Research Center, the value of a college education is actually increasing in recent decades, providing youth higher earning potential and significantly lowering their risks of unemployment or poverty. And how do colleges gauge admission? Not through high scores on video games or the number of social media friends, but instead by measuring kids’ understanding of the learning fundamentals taught in school, including the ability to read, write, and do math well.
Bait and Switch
“He has little interest in joining us on family outings… and it’s like pulling teeth to get him to do homework,” Andrea, the mother of 12-year-old Kevin, told me. Turning to Kevin, who was sitting next to his mother, I asked him what he liked to do instead. “Play my game,” he responded matter-of-factly. From my work with families, I knew there was a good chance that Kevin would tell me video games mattered most. For girls, they often disclose that it’s their phones which distract them from family and school.
Too many parents are now the victims of a bait and switch. They are sold on getting tablets, smartphones, and other gadgets for their children with the promise that these will allow kids to contact family and get ahead in school. But soon after kids get the devices, they use them mainly for self-amusement. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, kids spend only 16 minutes a day using the computer at home for school; in contrast, younger children spend 5 1⁄2 hours and teens 8 hours each day with entertainment screen and phone technologies. That extraordinary amount of time spent playing with devices is often at the expense of kids engaging with family, reading, and completing schoolwork.
Connecting Kids with Family and School
How can you build your child’s life around family and school in this age of distraction? Apply authoritative parenting, the most effective parenting style, to your kids’ tech use. Authoritative parents are loving and highly engaged in children’s lives, and they provide high expectations and limits to support those expectations.
To be loving and engaged with our children, it’s best if parents and kids have lots of time away from devices to be fully present with one another. And to provide kids high expectations and limits, parents should not try to be their children’s friend, but rather understand that they have the responsibility to set tech limits (even when kids push back) to foster distraction-free family moments, reading, and study time.
Your home environment also shapes your children’s connection with family and school. Consider employing the rule used by many leading tech execs that children and teens not use screens and phones in their bedrooms. This encourages kids to spend time in shared family spaces and also increases the odds that they will use computers and other devices productively.
The Essence of Parenting
Besieged by changes wrought by the digital age, parents are searching for how to best raise their kids. What’s clear is that the essence of a healthy childhood isn’t found with phones and other devices. Instead, it’s children whose lives center around family and school who have the best chance of being happy and successful—two qualities that never go out of style.
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