Addiction

What does a balanced tech life for your children look like? A recent article in Martha Stewart Living discusses the framework of Dr. Mike Brooks, author of Tech Generation: Raising Balanced Kids in a Hyper-Connected World, who points out that thinking about how technology could become a problem - before it does - is the way to keep communication open with your children. He emphasizes the importance of being a good role model in your own use of technology, and setting screen limits for every family member. In his way of thinking, there is no one size fits all standard for limiting screen use. 

While parents should know what the recommendations for screen use are from organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and Common Sense Media, Brooks points out that parents need to trust their parenting skills and teach children how to self regulate, pointing out that "Autonomy is a developmental need for children—they want greater independence. And if we're micromanaging all these aspects of their lives, screen time included, they're going to resent it." He argues that heightened anxiety over screen time amongst parents can actually be damaging to the child-parent relationship, and more harmful than screens themselves. 

If you’re looking for some immediate ways to limit screen time for kids, this recent short video from Good Morning America interviews teens and highlights the problem of addiction, while offering some quick tips on limiting screen time. Practical suggestions include no devices at meal times or in bedrooms or bathrooms. They recommend setting up a central charging station so kids have no excuse to have their phones in their rooms at bedtime. Experts also suggest becoming familiar with and using timers and parental control apps. For the long term, think about investing in a router that can help you regulate the time each family member can use the Internet as well as nurturing your kid’s interests in sports, art, music and other activities outside of digital devices.

A recent blog post from Cal Newport is challenging readers to commit to spending less time online this month by listing a number of analog commitments that will “reduce the anxious attraction of your screens”. Finding good books to read, connecting with others, and going to a meeting or taking up a hobby are all suggestions given in the Study Hacks Blog. "We fall into the traps of the digital only when we distance ourselves from the attractions of the analog," he writes.

About half of teenagers and parents in Mexico say they believe they are addicted to their cellphones -- the highest of any nation surveyed by Common Sense Media. In the US, 39% of teenagers report feeling addicted to their mobile devices, which happens to be fewer than both the United Kingdom and Japan.

National Public Radio reports that researchers appear divided over the effect of screen time and social media on teens' -- particularly girls' -- mental health. Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, says social media in particular may be causing anxiety among teens, however others say that her data is skewed. Critics state smartphone use is almost ubiquitous among teenagers today, while only a small minority report mental health problems, so simply knowing that a teenager uses a smartphone (even for many hours a day) cannot reliably predict that the teenager will become depressed. Factors such as genetics or the presence of childhood trauma can serve as much larger predictors.

So why should the average parent worry about this scientific controversy? Because, one critic says, when parents simply demonize phones, "there's less of a communications channel" about what teens are encountering online. A parent's opportunity to mentor or support positive uses of media is replaced by "confrontation on a day-to-day basis." Well-meaning parents, wrongly believing the phone to be as risky as a cigarette or a beer, may actually be making their children's lives harder by fighting with them about it.

Frustrated that smartphones were competing for students' attention in the classroom, Nevada Spanish teacher Debbie Simon started asking students to lock their phones in a magnetically sealed pouch before class began. Despite some initial backlash, Simon says in an interview in the The Epoch Times, after just a few days the students said that they felt more focused and engaged in lessons. This solution has been implemented by many schools and even concert venues. What will your school’s policy on cellphones be this coming school year?

Canadian researchers reported recently in JAMA Pediatrics that teens with higher-than-normal social media and TV use have increased odds of developing depression symptoms, with increased social media and TV screen time tied to greater symptom severity. According to the study co-author Elroy Boers, "Social media and television are forms of media that frequently expose adolescents to images of others operating in more prosperous situations, such as other adolescents with perfect bodies and a more exciting or rich lifestyle." However, the findings, based on data involving nearly 4,000 Canadian youths followed from ages 12 to 16, showed that higher video-game and computer-use levels didn't affect depression symptoms.

Curious about how much time you or your children are spending looking at a phone screen every day? Worried about digital addiction? Google and Apple have tools that can help you manage your screen time on their devices. You can use these features to see how much time you're actually spending on your mobile device and which applications you use most often.

Apple's "Screen Time" feature on its iPhones can be found under "Settings." It breaks down in simple charts how long you spent on your phone that day or over the past week, and tells you which types of apps sucked up most of your time.

Google has built a native "Digital Wellbeing" app into its Pixel phones that provides similar data. It also includes an option to set limitations on usage. For other Android devices, there are a number of apps in the Google Play store that users can download to monitor their mobile device usage.

The effects of digital screen time on children's well being and development is a source of huge debate at the moment. While concerns over the effects of these new devices on childhood development are not unwarranted, scientists have not been able to reach a clear consensus on the topic. Now a new study by the University of Oxford, examining data from over 350,000 subjects in the UK and US, finds digital technology use accounts for less than half a percent of a young person's negative mental health. The research suggests everything from wearing glasses to not getting enough sleep have bigger negative effects on adolescent well being than digital screen use. Binge-drinking and marijuana use also were noted as having significantly larger negative effects, and bullying was found to have four times larger the negative effect on well being than digital screen use. On the positive end of the spectrum, things like eating a good breakfast and getting enough sleep were much more statistically relevant in affecting well being than the effects of technology use.

Richard Bromfield , a professor at the Harvard Medical School, begins his book called Standing Up to Screens: A Doable Plan for Parents United, with a telling quote from James Baldwin: “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” Bromfield notes parents use their own screens nine hours or more a day, more than most children or teens. Half talk on their phones while driving with their young children. A third text, and about 16 percent check their social media. "Yet despite these facts, 78 percent of parents judge themselves to be ‘good media role models’ for their children’s use of screens," he writes in a chapter titled "Fess Up." Bromfield is not prescribing a ban on devices, but his book describes a simple and novel strategy for parents to help their children learn to manage their screens.

Marty Ringle of Reed College in Oregon, who has worked in educational technology for more than 40 years, says there should be more consideration by the public, especially parents, of the risks of technology. In this interview with EdSurge, he suggests that an ethics course focused on technology be required in schools and colleges and the materials available for parents to use. Ringle writes, “There are people today who are well respected, well known, who are expressing anxiety and concerns about this. I personally think those are very well placed concerns. Not just in terms of the immediate obvious concerns about privacy and tracking and profiling people to within an inch of their lives and all those sorts of things, but decision-making, understanding the strengths and weaknesses, the limits of technology, not just today, but tomorrow, I think is vital.”