Growing up on screens
How a year lived online has changed our children
SAN FRANCISCO — Like many parents just trying to get to the other side of a pandemic in one piece, Iris Lowenberg-Lin doesn’t have the bandwidth to micromanage screen time for her two older kids.
She and her husband are essential medical workers in the Bay Area — she’s a nurse practitioner and he’s an emergency room doctor — and 18 months ago, they welcomed their “surprise” third child. By giving up some, but not all, control, they’ve been able to see firsthand the good and bad of letting kids lead the way with their own technology usage.
Her 6-year-old middle child adapted quickly. He learned how to read during first grade, even though most of his classes have been on Zoom. He’s keeping in touch with friends over FaceTime and the video game Roblox, taking drum lessons online, watching shows, and still going outside for bike rides and to play.
The adjustment has been harder for her third grader, who misses his friends. When he started getting more migraines in the fall, she realized his similar online diet was having a physical impact on him. He’s still allowed to spend time on computers, but his parents make sure he takes more breaks outside and avoids migraine triggers like hunger, dehydration and lack of sleep.
“Screen time” — as a concept to track meticulously, to fret and panic about, to measure parents’ worth in — is no longer considered a valid framework in a pandemic world, where the way we live our lives has been completely redefined.
Since U.S. schools began closing down a year ago, the country’s children have been adapting, learning and getting creative with how they use technology. The realities of their day-to-day lives vary wildly, as have their relationships with screens. For some, technology is a savior — the lifeline keeping them in touch with friends and helping them maintain social skills. For others, it’s a failed promise — unable to make up for the gaps in their education, their parents’ lost wages and their own mental health.
The conundrum has also splashed cold water on some tech industry promises of what can be accomplished with devices and the Internet, which overlooked the reality of living in the midst of overlapping crises.
A year of everyone turning to technology has shown us that the worth, or danger, of devices has less to do with the glowing screens themselves, and more to do with how they are used. What appears to matter most is the support systems that children and their parents have available to them.
Throughout the past year, people of all ages have spent significantly more time living through their screens. Many of the country’s largest school districts are still closed or offering a hybrid of in-person and remote learning, and kids with device access are using phones, schoolissued computers and tablets in more ways and for longer hours.
Monitoring company Bark, which parents and schools use to track over 5 million kids’ Internet usage, found a 144% increase in the number of messages children sent and received online in 2020 compared with the year prior. That includes messages on social media sites, Gmail and more.
Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center report from October found that 63% of parents with school-age children were more concerned about screen time now than before the pandemic. More than half of the parents surveyed were also worried about their children’s ability to maintain friendships and other social connections and about their emotional well-being.
Parents have spent the past year largely in a state of emergency, just trying to get through days without in-person schools or, often, any child care at all. Families started using screens more to stay in touch with family they couldn’t visit, introducing babies to grandparents, and giving kids their only interaction with friends. Experts initially agreed it was not the time to stress out about too much video game time but for everyone to do their best and go easy on themselves.
Things changed when the fall semester rolled around, and, for many, virtual school began in earnest. Many schools were all or partially remote, with children meeting new teachers and classmates over videoconferencing apps like Zoom.
Early research suggests going remote will hurt all kids, but to varying degrees. A December study by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that last year’s switch to remote school in the spring set white students back by one to three months in math, and students of color three to five months back.
“COVID has been a cascading catastrophe for education, and in particular for disadvantaged kids, but where would we be without the possibility of learning online or even entertainment?” said Ann Masten, a professor of child development at the University of Minnesota who studies risk and resilience in children.
She says screens aren’t inherently good or bad, but it’s what they’re being used for and what they are replacing that matters. In the past year, she says, screens have made things possible, like education and communication, that have been important for getting people through a period of isolation.
She’s worried, however, the pandemic will worsen disparities for kids who were in difficult situations before the schools shut down.
There is only so much teachers are able to do over screens, says Kristen Hawley Turner, a professor and director of teacher education at Drew University. Turner has been working with educators throughout the pandemic on increasing engagement with their students.
“It has been hard since Day 1, and it is increasingly hard to deal with student engagement through a screen. It takes an enormous amount of planning to keep students engaged in the content,” Turner said. “We are reverting back to ways we know in education research are not the best way to learn.”
Even in the best-case scenarios, a year in the life of a child can seem impossibly long. Their brains are still developing, and they’re learning key social skills in addition to school subjects.
But technology is letting kids find new, creative ways to forge friendships and create social groups. Douglas Downey, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University who has studied the ways children learn social skills online, is optimistic they’re still getting some of that through social media and games.
“There’s another dimension of social skills that are emerging and becoming important — the digital ones — and it’s possible that this generation is better at them,” Downey said.