The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Too much screen time
School district hopes parents, teens can benefit from ‘Screenagers’ film
MIDDLETOWN — When Beth Kilian, mother of a 16-year-old and 12-year-old twins, became concerned about the amount of time her children were spending on their devices, she turned to a parental monitoring app to limit their exposure to electronic media.
She and her husband John also set limits on the duration and times of day they use their smartphones and what their kids have access to by downloading apps such as Net Nanny, Mobicip, Qustodio Parental Control and Norton Family Parental Control.
But it’s not always a fail-safe method, Kilian said.
“Once my son deleted the app. I told him, ‘The consequence is going to be, if you do that again, then the phone is going to be mine,” said Kilian, who received an alert on her own phone about the deletion.
“I don’t it think was anything intentional to try to get around me to use the phone more. It ended up happening and I was very clear to him should this happen again, the phone would not be an option,” she said.
Courtesy of a grant through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers at Woodrow Wilson and Keigwin middle schools, the district will be hosting a free screening of “Screenagers: Growing Up in the Digital Age” at Middletown High School on Thursday night.
Her older daughter, a student at Mercy High School, and the twins, who attend Keigwin, also have Kindles, said Kilian, the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program coordinator at the middle schools. Her 12-year-old daughter listens to audiobooks on the tablet and uses it for online gaming and to watch movies.
The children’s use of electronic media for social interaction and other reasons concerns her, Kilian said. “The tablet seems what my (12-year-old) daughter wants to use more because she can do so much more with it.”
However, Kindle doesn’t have a parental control feature for audiobooks because it only allows a single user. “It is difficult to control,” she said.
“It goes both ways and I think it’s the generation. A lot of parents are not aware of what screen time can do.” LisaMarie Sherman, 21st Century program director
“Screenagers” will show what screen time does to students’ brain chemistry and the impact that can have on children learning social skills, said LisaMarie Sherman, 21st Century program director and a writing teacher at Woodrow Wilson.
She highly recommends the movie, which has been used extensively in other school districts in Connecticut.
Sherman hopes to have an “authentic conversation” with parents and their children following the film Thursday, which she chose to show to middle schoolers because that’s when teens are at a turning point in their lives, she said.
Parents, she said, can benefit from the film, too.
“It goes both ways and I think it’s the generation. A lot of parents are not aware of what screen time can do,” Sherman said.
“Students say, “I want my parents to talk to me, but they’re always on their phone,” she has found.
There are positives and negatives to being online, Sherman said. Now that the high school incorporates laptops, tablets and other devices in the classroom, and in November, Woodrow Wilson will give Chromebooks to all the students, which means teachers have to monitor them more often.
“It’s a great thing, but only if it’s used right,” Sherman said. The goal of teaching children about screen time to “arm them with this understanding, which allows them to make good choices.”
Michelle Sanchez experiences similar hurdles with her four children, three sons, a 17-year-old 11thgrader at Middletown High School, an 11-year-old Keigwin sixth-grader, an 8-yearold in third grade at Lawrence Elementary School and preschool 4-year-old girl.
Sanchez, whose middleschooler participates in the 21st Century program, said didn’t even realize that parental monitoring apps existed.
She and her husband often find themselves tasked with luring the children away from their devices. “That seems to have become more of the preferred form of entertainment for them: watching videos to experience the world,” Sanchez said.
“A lot of the apps they use are toy-based experiences with things they want to learn about or they think is cool,” she said, such as watching YouTube videos of teens playing Minecraft or playing with Nerf guns.
Her daughter watches family-style video blogs that mirror large families like her own and their daily adventures, Sanchez said. “It seems to be the norm in our society that they’re gravitating toward this universe that’s Youtube,” Sanchez said.
“I feel like we’ve been able to achieve balance. It’s not something they are good at self-regulating. I still need to say, ‘Alright. Put the devices down. Let’s go do something or give it a break,’” Sanchez said.
The kids turn to television at night when they’re settling down for the evening.
All of them are involved in athletics, too, but she’d like to see them off their devices more often. Her full-time job sees her on the computer and taking part in video conferencing, something that’s necessary.
She works from home, and while that has its advantages, Sanchez makes it a point of staying off her own devices as often as possible when she’s not.
“My screen time is all day long. It’s been a challenge to get them to understand what I do is work even though it doesn’t always necessarily look that way,” Sanchez said.
“Everyone is playing now,” Sanchez said Monday afternoon. “All their work is done and no one is on their device right now. They’re just choosing to play. The three youngest are in my daughter’s room. I have no idea what they’re doing,” she joked, but she was glad they were quiet and occupied.
If it was up to her 12-yearold daughter, who is more of a homebody, Kilian said, she’d want unlimited access. But her “pretty significant” dyslexia often distracts and frustrates her, making it tough to read books.
“She would really like to be on there as much as she possibly could,” Kilian said. “She does use it for positive things — drawing lessons, tutorials of interesting things on relevant topics which are appropriate for her to be learning about.”
Still, Kilian said, “it drains time, and, of course, she escapes into that. Understanding the written word is so much harder for her.”
The district policy on electronics is students can use their smartphones and other devices as long as they’re doing so for educational purposes during classroom time, Sherman said.
Still, educators are finding it’s not easy to both keep up with mandates and keep children focused during school.
“Their attention span is constantly interrupted, and the multitasking that happens, that gets in the way of learning, which is really contradictory to what we expect kids to have with Common Core, Sherman said. “Stamina for reading, stamina for learning, stay with a task — it goes against a growth mindset, which is stamina, perseverance, don’t give up.”
It’s hard to succeed in the ways schools are being asked to do, Sherman said.
“Screenagers: Growing Up in the Digital Age” will be shown the Middletown High School Performing Arts Center, 200 LaRosa Lane, Thursday at 6 p.m. No registration is required.