We should all get serious about our screen time
holy moly, the things she shared during that seminar changed my whole perspective
about phones and devices and the online
world and how very unsafe a space it can be
for our children if left unsupervised (and even when it is seemingly
supervised!).
Back in 2017 I was working as a reporter for the Queensland Times (Ipswich, Australia), highly pregnant with my twins and mā mā to my two older girls, Audrey and Minnie-Jane.
I had been sent to cover an event happening at our local shopping mall involving an academic studying parents and the challenges they faced navigating modern technology.
Dr Kristy Goodwin is a digital wellbeing and neuro-productivity expert, author and researcher and travels all around Australia talking to parents about what she’s seeing in the digital space.
Through her seminars, she helps parents comprehend exactly what they’re up against in terms of what their children are being exposed to online and a number of helpful and healthy ways to manage that.
Before I saw Dr Goodwin, I thought I was relatively strict regarding how much my big girls used my phone to watch cartoons, etc (they were only 4 and 2 years old, so weren’t near as savvy as they are today about using the various apps).
But holy moly, the things she shared during that seminar changed my whole perspective about phones and devices and the online world and how very unsafe a space it can be for our children if left unsupervised (and even when it is seemingly supervised!).
As a researcher, Dr Goodwin works with police, mental health workers and other agencies involved with children impacted by online grooming (ie. sexual predators, paedophiles, etc).
She also works with school counsellors and psychologists and some of the cases they were coming across (and continue to see) as a result of children being cyber bullied, being exposed to pornography, sexting, etc, was absolutely mind-blowing.
I’ll never forget the story Dr Goodwin shared about a 10-year-old boy who had presented to his GP with erectile dysfunction due to excessive pornographic use.
She also talked about the case of a traumatised 6-yearold boy, who’d been pinned down by his classmates, forced to watch porn, and how he would cry to his parents because he couldn’t “scratch the pictures from his eyes”.
These sound like extreme cases, but in reality, this is the world our young people are living in today.
And it’s not just our teens, it’s children as young as 4 and 5, often exposed to things totally inappropriate for their age group because older siblings or family members are showing them.
When smartphones and iPads first came on the market, we all rejoiced at how connected we suddenly all were.
But technology moves so quickly and I think a lot of parents, myself included, were left in the dark about just how scary the online world can be.
I’m so grateful I happened to come across someone like Dr Kristy Goodwin, who opened my mind to what was going on out there and who made me far more vigilant around device use and what was appropriate and healthy device behaviour.
Her advice is that devices should not be allowed in bathrooms, the dining table, in bedrooms and while driving, because often places like the dining table and the car are invaluable spaces for connection.
The bedroom and bathroom is also away from the gaze of caregivers and therefore not a safe habit for children to get into.
She also advised that limiting screen use was highly important, as was the quality of what a child was watching.
For example, half an hour of undertaking a learning activity on an iPad versus half an hour of mindlessly scrolling YouTube will produce two very different neurological results.
Dr Goodwin warned it was not just children, but all of us who needed to be mindful of our screen time and that the dopamine hits (feel good emotions) our brains received while staring at our screens was addictive.
There is so much more I could write on this topic and one day, I’d like to explore this topic a whole lot more, as I don’t think it’s a conversation we’re having enough of.
In the meantime, if you would like to find out more about how to navigate this space, you can look up Dr Kristy Goodwin on Facebook or via Google search.
Ex-Australian advertising executive Todd Sampson has also recently launched a ground-breaking series called Mirror Mirror which argues that technology is an unregulated psychological experiment that is changing our brains.
That documentary is creating quite the stir across Australia and thankfully so, in my opinion. It’s time for us all to wake up and get serious about this very real issue.
Eric Shackleton
Ahipara