The battle over screen time
The 20th century gave us the supposedly corrupting influences of rock ‘ n’ roll and television. The 21st century’s burden on parenthood is technology and the battle over screen time.
The war analogy is apt. My husband and I have spent the past three years hunkered down in our foxhole, periodically reviewing our digital combat strategy: do we retreat, surrender or continue to hold our ground?
Are we saving our nineyear- old from a gaming addiction? Is limiting screen time a productive crusade — or a futile, backward-looking endeavour? Is it worth the day- to- day exhaustion of haggling over minutes and hours and the incessant, “Why can’t I have more time?” to forge a healthy digital lifestyle?
The notion of digital disengagement is enticing and I met a heroic young family recently who is doing exactly that. “What about school?” I asked, genuinely curious. Thanks to the governmentapproved “gamification” of education — learning disguised as gaming — and the introduction of classroom tech as early as first grade, there i s enormous pressure on families to get with the digital program, even if they’d prefer to postpone it a while.
“Tech-free private school” was the answer. That’s a little rich for my blood, which leaves heading for the bush as the best and cheapest unplugging alternative.
In an interview for PBS News Hour, Dr. Delaney Ruston, director and producer of the January 2016 documentary Screenagers said the “message of zero tolerance” doesn’t work, “let’s just take everything away and get mad” misses the point. Technology is here to stay and hiding in the hills, or retreating to the bosom of an old-school private school, are temporary solutions.
At some point, our offspring will discover they can hold the whole world in their hands and that’s exactly what they’ll want to do.
But the inevitability of an immersive digital life doesn’t mean capitulating to unrestricted screen time at an early age. Digital engagement rates among young people are on a steady upward trajectory: either some parents are giving up the fight, or they’ve lost it altogether.
The percentage of students who spent five or more hours on social media per day increased between 2013 and 2015, from 11 per cent to 16 per cent. One in 10 students plays video games for five hours or more per day, and the number of students showing symptoms of Internet Gaming Disorder — which includes loss of control, withdrawal, escape and disregard for consequences — has increased by nine per cent since 2007.
These are only some of the more alarming findings from the 2015 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, released last month by the Canadian Association of Mental Health, which shows that young people are investing more and more of their precious time — or wasting it, depending on your point of view — on digital technologies.
For parents, giving up is not a viable option, and yet the pursuit of balance, which is the best and only way forward, seems almost impossible.
In the digital age, technological proficiency has become coterminous with success and progress, which causes angst for many parents. To borrow from gaming terminology, they want to see their kids “level- up”: to keep pace with their peers and not fall behind on the digital superhighway.
Initially I saw my son’s tablet — the digital bone-of- contention in my house these days — as a valuable learning tool, a competitive edge. Two years later, it’s so crowded with games, I can barely locate the math and reading programs we purchased. It’s safe to say I’ve become a tech- skeptic — much less afraid of Internet Learning Addiction ( definitely not a trend) than Internet Gaming Disorder.
Not all tech time is created equal. Social media and gaming expertise will not help our kids get good grades in school or compete in a demanding global economy. The sooner we parents stop fooling ourselves about that the better.
The other problem with balance is it relies on parents “teaching self- control,” as Dr. Ruston emphasized in her documentary, and yet it’s a skill many of us do not possess — guilty as charged! — when it comes to our own tech use.
In the good old days, it was easy to tell kids not to run with scissors — another bright, shiny and potentially dangerous object if not used carefully — because mom and dad weren’t also running with scissors. We can’t say that about technology.
In her TED Talk, Connected: but alone?, Dr. Sherry Turkle, professor of psychology at MIT, said many people are “smitten with technology” and think “too much talking might spoil the romance,” even if evidence points to a loss of digital control as damaging our children and their ability to connect with the world around them.
My son has told me more than once, “I can tell when you’re not listening to me.” In these l ess- than- proud moments, I have to pull my head out of my laptop and face the truth about my own dysfunctional relationship with technology and my tendency to escape from the messy reality of life into an obedient world that obeys my every command.
In this fraught arena, setting a bad example may be the most corrupting influence of all.
IS PLACING LIMITS ON HOW CHILDREN USE TECHNOLOGY A PRODUCTIVE CRUSADE, OR A FUTILE ENDEAVOUR?