The Art of Screen Time

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DIGITAL PARENTING IN THE REAL WORLD

YOU PICKED UP THIS BOOK BECAUSE YOU ARE CURIOUS, AND LET’S FACE IT, A little anxious about kids and screens. I am too. I wrote it to help us both get past that anxiety. To cut the guilt, turn down the volume, tune out the noise, and look deeper. Then we’re going to make a plan.

But first, a story.

Late one night in the early 1980s, I was a towheaded little girl in a nightgown perched on the foot of my parents’ bed watching TV. The screen showed a towheaded little girl in a nightgown, perched at the foot of her parents’ bed, watching TV.

On the television within the television, the credits rolled. The parents were dozing. My parents were dozing. The broadcast day ended on the televised television. The national anthem played over a shot of the American flag. The little girl scootched closer to the screen. I scootched closer to the screen.

Then a terrifying mass of green ectoplasm burst out of the screen within the screen. The movie was Poltergeist (1982).

In that moment was born a lifetime phobia.

Not of ghosts. I love ghosts. I even went through a middle school seance phase, appropriate to the bayous of South Louisiana where I was reared. No, I was deathly afraid of closing credits. The fear has faded over time, but to this day, when a movie ends I prefer to hustle up the aisle. When a TV episode is over I have to minimize the window before the Netflix countdown gets to the next episode.

A quarter century later, my older daughter’s introduction to inappropriate content came on the potty. We had tried everything we could think of to get a toddler to sit down long enough to go number two. And as suggested by a number of other parents, the only bribe that really worked was the offer of a short video on our phones.

We found plenty of kiddie-approved potty training material on YouTube: a catchy ditty about washing your hands from PBS’s Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood; a nice instructional skit from Elmo; a hyperenthusiastic Japanese-speaking panda. Then one day, I happened to click on a five-minute cartoon. It was called “Potty Training.” It had millions of views.

It turned out to be an episode of an incredibly filthy, obnoxious cartoon web series, apparently intended for dimwitted adolescents. My daughter loved it, of course, and asked for it again and again.

A quarter century from now, my daughters may be raising kids of their own. If the forecasters are to be believed, we’ll all be plunged into a gently glowing alphabet soup of AR, VR, AI, MR, and IoT—augmented reality, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, mixed reality, and the Internet of Things. We’ll be inhabiting the bodies of avatars 24/7, exchanging GIFs with our sentient refrigerators, and using virtual assistants to ward off telemarketing bots. Digital experiences will be so immersive and pervasive that Yellowstone National Park will look like today’s Times Square. By then the existence of screens as separate entities, with borders and off buttons, will be a quaint, half-remembered state of affairs.

The terrified little girl inside me asks: How worried should we really be about kids and tech? Where is all of this heading? And what should we actually do about it—now, in the “real world,” a phrase that as of the early twenty-first century still has some meaning?

These questions have resulted in the book you’re reading. It’s a book that I wish I’d had when my firstborn daughter arrived: a clear, deeply researched, and nonjudgmental take on an issue that faces nearly every parent today. I hope it will be a good resource for you as, together, we try to navigate the rocky shoals between fear and hype and untangle the growing role of digital media in our family lives, and in our lives, period.

I’m not presenting myself to you as an unassailable expert. I’m just a parent, one with a solid research toolbox, trying to work this stuff out as best I can. I’ve been writing about education and technology for over a decade. I became a parent in 2011. I belong to the first generation of parents who grew up with the Internet. And I’m now raising two members of the first generation growing up with screens literally at their fingertips.

Children today first engage with digital media at the average age of four months—or almost as soon as they can focus past the end of their noses. In the 1970s, the average age was four years.

According to a Pew survey in 2015, almost half of parents of school-aged kids say that their children spend too much time with screens. On average, children in the United States spend as much time daily with electronic media as on any other waking activity—including school.

Astonishing. But so what?

As parents, we find ourselves without traditions or folk wisdom—or, crucially, enough relevant scientific evidence—in answering that question. Traditional authorities, covering for real gaps in knowledge, fall back on tired tropes.

I think the self-proclaimed experts have let us down in our attempt to make sense of this incredible new reality. In the absence of Grandma’s advice or a wealth of up-to-date research studies, the source of knowledge that we consult to resolve not only these conflicts, but seemingly every question and hiccup in our children’s lives and our own, is, ironically, the Internet. Dr. Google is the new Dr. Spock.

But the digital information ecosystem that we’re all living in has an inherent bias toward clickbait. That means the existing books, articles, video segments, and blog posts out there about kids and screens all seem to portray worst-case scenarios, to push our buttons so we will keep pressing Like, Share, and Play.

And that in turn means that the crucial questions of digital parenting aren’t only about our kids. They’re about our use of digital media too. Are you embraced by the virtual village or menaced by the virtual mob? Is the phone a magical work-life balancer or a constantly bleeping attention-sucker?

Some of this tension is not new. Moralists raised the alarm over radio, cinema, and then television, all of which in their turn arguably changed childhood just as much as, or even more than, today’s tiny screens.

But today’s devices are mobile, meaning we’re bringing them everywhere all the time, and they have touchscreens, making their interfaces intuitive even for infants. These two new aspects have intensified existing anxieties about the influence of older media like television and video games, with their power to lull, to obsess us, to “overstimulate or… inappropriately stimulate developing brains,” in the words of pediatrician Dimitri Christakis, and to transmit messages to our children in our homes that are out of our control as parents.

In the twenty-first century, few parents escape without considering their children’s use of screens. It’s part of our model of what makes a good, conscientious parent. If you don’t ration and control screen time like candy, you can at least have the decency to act guilty about it. But is screen time really the new sugar?

This is an exploration of the real world of parenting in the digital age. I surveyed over five hundred parents to find out how parents just like you are really making, and breaking, screen time rules. And I talked to the researchers. I can tell you not just what the experts are saying, where they agree and disagree, but at home, when no one is looking, what they’re actually doing as parents with their own kids. The best-known expert recommendation about screens, until very recently, was the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) rule of “no TV before age two.” It was based on little evidence. Nine out of ten parents do not follow it. In 2016, it was significantly altered—but still without very much evidence for the new version.

The research landscape, it turns out, is marked by large gaps, and much hotly contested territory. Still, the best evidence we have currently suggests that if you are functioning well as a family otherwise, there is a huge amount of leeway in the screen radiation your kids can absorb and still do just fine. TV is not DDT. In fact, many of the observed negative effects of screen time are utterly confounded by the realities of social inequality in America. Simply put, the children of lower-income, less-educated parents are both more exposed to screens at younger ages and more subject to a host of other ills. Also, a lot of the issues that come up with screens and kids, both physical and emotional, are traceable to a single effect as old as electric lights.

Technology is ubiquitous. The air we breathe is saturated with Wi-Fi signals. Outside a few tiny subcultures, there is no control group. This is our reality. If you’re looking for a book that beseeches you to turn your back on all that and move to the wilds of Maine, this is not that book. (It’s been written a couple of times, anyway.) Instead of nurturing escape fantasies, let’s think like scientists. I wanted to unpack my own irrational fears and look at them in the light of day. And I want to help you do the same. I’m going to give you an algorithm of sorts so you can figure out the screen strategy that best suits your family today. Don’t fear unknown poltergeists.

First, look for evidence of harms related to proven risks. These include attention problems, weight problems, sleep problems, and academic or emotional issues. They can relate to screen use in general or certain occasions or types of content in particular. I’ll go over the questions to ask when your child encounters screens at school and with peers, and what you as a parent should know about privacy, marketing, sexting, bullying, and other common concerns.

Next, explore your own feelings about where media fits into your family. You may rely on screens as a babysitter. Device use may cause you guilt or contribute to family conflict. It may feel uncomfortable to negotiate and set boundaries. Or, screens may be a warm family hearth; a source of fun, wonder, and excitement. Sometimes all of the above. I’ve started advising other parents on how to create and own realistic boundaries and revise them in a reasonable way when circumstances change. One point that psychologists and family therapists stand firm on is that hypocrisy and inconsistency in boundary-setting, on any issue, makes for confused, sometimes angry kids—and lots of conflict.

Finally, hash out your own use of screens. Maybe you feel constantly on call, harried and distracted. Or maybe it’s your partner who seems preoccupied. Maybe devices help you get more things done, or maybe they’re an escape hatch from the pressures of home. Social media could be a source of invaluable parenting wisdom and support or a locus of extra conflict. The Internet and social media can be a powerful, necessary source of support for parents, but when it gets out of control it can be equally disruptive and damaging.

I’ve lived the positive side. I spent two years struggling with infertility before conceiving my first daughter and went through another year of treatments and procedures with my second. During those times, online message boards and Facebook groups formed a vital, virtual support group for me. The women there were fully engaged with all the gory details I didn’t want to talk to anyone else about—not my husband, not my family, not my friends. I couldn’t have gotten through conception or pregnancy without them. I will never know most of their real names or identities.

Yet the platforms we use to make these kinds of connections are neither benign nor neutral. As a journalist covering technology for years, I’m all too aware that one of the world’s most powerful industries is keen to capture our attention and direct our choices as parents. As the adage goes, if you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

You might want to change your practices online, or pull back altogether. Once you’ve taken stock, you may try to shift your family’s habits, as we have, limiting use by time, place, occasion, content, priority, and/or specific activity or type of media use. I’ll give you workable solutions to choose from, based on the real-world decisions that other families have made and stuck to, with good results, and starting at any age.

What may be even more challenging is the next step: discovering and unleashing the joy of screen time with your kids. Yes, I said joy. Particularly when shared, screen time can have meaningful benefits: creative, emotional, and cognitive. For modern, far-flung families, or the many dealing with divorce or other separations, screens can weave family bonds more tightly. With a little attention, you can choose habits of social media and Internet use that help you be the parent you want to be. Part of what this book is about is how to manage research and weigh evidence and advice when making decisions, not just about screen time but about most things. It’s important, now more than ever before, to be curious and critical about your sources of information and where to place trust.

Parents, prospective parents, grandparents, educators, and mentors, this book is for you. Use it as a springboard for discussion and reflection, to discover how you feel and to decide how to approach parenting in the digital age.

Given what we do know, and how much we still don’t know, what is the best analogy for how to understand the impact of screens on children?

On the one hand, some would have you believe that screens for kids are like smoking: There is no safe level of exposure. Every little bit could hurt. One father confessed to me that he has that feeling that every minute his toddler is engrossed in a screen is adding to his “bad-dad debt.” I think a lot of parents share this feeling, especially since the one doctor’s recommendation that has made its way into public consciousness says “no screens before age two.”

The second scenario is that screens are like food. Yes, there are endemic problems that come with excess. Yes, there is junk that should play a small part in anyone’s life. But it’s overkill to imagine that any single bite, or byte, is toxic. Unless, of course, you are part of a sensitive minority with a severe allergy—and I think equivalent populations may exist, particularly when it comes to certain media products like violent content or video games. At the same time, we can recognize that food is necessary, and the right foods can be powerfully pleasurable, healing, and life-enhancing. By being thoughtful about what behaviors you model and how you introduce foods to your kids, and by sharing the creation and consumption of great meals with them, you can lay the groundwork for joyful lifelong habits. And the same is true for media.

Research can help us draw better-quality distinctions. Activists can push for better labels. Public education efforts and regulations can all make a difference. Slowly, habits can change, at least among those with the privilege to make better choices. But it won’t be easy—because our deep evolutionary systems are challenging our very will to choose, because structural inequalities in our society make it difficult for many people to change.

I ran this comparison by Dr. David Hill, an amiable man who favors bow ties. He is responsible for communicating the American Academy of Pediatrics’ various positions to the media. He said, “With diet, harm reduction measures seem to be turning the tide of the obesity epidemic. With tobacco, on the other hand, there really is no safe level of exposure at any age. My personal opinion is that the diet analogy will end up being more apt.”

We don’t yet have a set of solidly evidence-based recommendations that say, “Healthy screen time looks like this.” But I have come up with my own take on food writer Michael Pollan’s famous maxim: “Enjoy screens. Not too much. Mostly with others.”