As promised before winter break, I am returning to the topic of technology. I'm going to start with The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age by Catherine Steiner-Adair, a Boston-area therapist who works in private practice and with schools, independent and public. While Steiner-Adair tries to be even handed, she clearly believes that technology is negatively affecting children's development. She structures her book by chronological development stages, but I think we can divide her work between the roles parents play (or don't) regarding technology and their children and the ways children themselves interact with technology. Let's begin with parents.
Steiner-Adair emphasizes repeatedly that we develop and learn most effectively through human interactions, preferably with our parents. As she says, "the connection that begins in the family shapes a child's brain, mind, body, and soul in uniquely human ways that tech cannot replace. . . . Nothing can match the power of our attention and our capacity to connect in affirming, loving, nourishing ways." (30)
Steiner-Adair, however, believes that technology is undermining parent-child relationships. Screens can distract parents from their children. While we shouldn't be wholly focused on our children every second of everyday, children of all ages need periods of full attention. Infants, for example, develop within the context of close interactions with parents and loving caregivers. If we are consumed with texting, or email, or Facebook, we are not giving them our full, undivided attention. According to Steiner-Adair, research has shown that infants can tell when a parent isn't focused on them and they "are often distressed when they look to their parent for a reassuring connection and discover the parent is distracted or uninterested."(71)
As we all know, parenting is hard and it gets harder as children get older. To be successful, we have to love our children, but we also have to set limits, discipline them, be consistent, and intentionally impart our values. We need to work with our children so they learn to manage impulses and emotions; they need help to learn how to be kind and empathetic. It is our responsibility as parents to teach this. It takes patience, responding appropriately – not reactively – in the moment. We can't do it well if we are only half engaged. Imposing the routines that are so important to young children's sense of security also requires focus and effort; we mustn't let our digital lives stand in the way of regular bedtimes or interfere with rituals like story time.
When we constantly turn to our phones because we're answering another email or taking a call, we send a message that these tasks take precedence over our children. Steiner-Adair reports that even young children feel as though they compete with technology for their parents' attention; they share with her their resulting "feelings of isolation, loneliness, anger and sadness." (114-5) Furthermore, we'll never make headway with a teenager if we appear to give priority to our digital lives over them. Teenagers find few things more odious than hypocrisy, and given how often most of us complain about their technology use, we come across as hypocrites when our own technology distracts us from full attention to them (even when they act as though they don't want our full attention). If we don't want them to text and drive, we had better not either. Actions speak louder than words and teens despise hypocrites.
As parents, we have to remember that our children watch us constantly. What are our own technology habits teaching our children. Are we obsessed with Facebook? Do we spend hours surfing the web? Or maybe work emails demand our attention when we are trying to spend time with our children. Some of us have more control over this interference than others. However, if we want our children to feel as though they are at least as important to us as work, we need to carve out work-free sanctuaries when we can give them our full attention. Moreover, we need to model face-to-face communication, fully present engagement, and fulfillment from activities that aren't tech related.
We need to be careful about using technology as a babysitter or as a pacifier. The American Academy of Pediatrics among others advises against children using screens before the age of two. Even after that, we should be judicious about children's screen use. For one, they need to learn emotional self-regulation. If we just hand them a digital game every time they are bored or acting out, they don't learn to sit quietly and entertain themselves. They also need to learn to play, to use their imaginations, to occupy themselves. A pile of blocks, a box of dress-up clothes, a ball, or the backyard all provide an entirely different kind of stimulation than a digital game. Digital games can teach much, but children also need unstructured play where they enjoy a range of sensory experiences and work through issues with other children. "This multi-sensory engagement stimulates the brain centers for language development, for cognitive processing and for deep thinking, and for social and emotional intelligence," all benefits that more passive screen activities cannot provide. (109) Obviously, there are times when technology is a Godsend, but we should use it minimally as a children occupier. Moreover, given what's on the web, Steiner-Adair advises that we "pick any media exposure as carefully as you would pick a babysitter."(88)
As our children get older, inevitably they become more technologically engaged. We cannot, nor should we isolate them entirely from the digital world. Instead, we need to control, to the extent we can, when and how they enter it. When for example, do you give a child a smartphone? When do you allow a child to have a computer in her room? These decisions will vary from family to family, but I would advise not giving a child smartphone before sixth grade. When we give a phone, we need to lay out clear expectations for its use and consequences for violations. I would limit its functions, especially access to the internet, texting capabilities, and ability to buy apps. I would also reserve the right to review a child's phone at any point, even when they are teenagers, and exercise that right periodically. Until, high school, children should work on computers in common spaces like the kitchen; we should install parental controls and periodically review the browsing history. We should also consider tech-free zones and/or times, such as the dinner table.
However, even with those boundaries and no matter how careful you are, your children will inevitably come in contact with information on the internet or will end up exposed to activities that you wouldn't choose. This might happen thanks to a friend or it might happen because she inadvertently finds herself on an inappropriate website. In addition, as children get older, they naturally share less with their parents, a tendency exacerbated by the privacy of the digital world. Moreover, the digital landscape changes so quickly, we can't possibly stay informed about every new website, app, or the latest form of social media. Just as our children eventually venture out into the real world without us, they will venture into the digital world unaccompanied, and most likely much earlier than the real one. They need to be well-armed with values about how to behave. Hopefully, they will also have a strong enough relationship with a parent so they have an adult to whom they can turn when they encounter something uncomfortable, whether that's mean behavior on social media or pornography or anything in between. The only way to inculcate those values and develop that kind of trusting relationship is through conversation, by holding children accountable for their behavior (on and off screen), and setting a good example ourselves. In other words, we have to parent.
Fear and ignorance cannot exonerate us from this responsibility. Just because we are not digital natives and because we cannot possibly keep up with every new online attraction, we cannot abdicate. We also can't avoid talking about difficult issues, like sex, with our children. Steiner-Adair asserts that the internet has "become the primary source of sex education" and, especially for boys, mostly through pornography. (183) We must talk to them about sex and relationships or the internet will be their teacher, and not a healthy one. Schools have an obligation in these arenas as well, but no teacher is as powerful in these realms as parents. If children have strong ethical and moral foundations and adults to whom they can turn, they will be better prepared to navigate the virtual world in which they will spend time.
In this digital age, Steiner-Adair exhorts us "reclaim our parental authority to "know what's best," dig deep for resolve and tap the resources available to help us do it." (65) The rise of technology has undoubtedly made parenting more challenging, but it has also made engaged, thoughtful, principled, loving parenting never more important.