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Tech III

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This week, we'll continue to draw on Catherine Steiner-Adair's The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age to examine children's and adolescents' relationship with technology and its impact on their lives. Last week, from Steiner-Adair, I identified six attention-worthy aspects of our children's technology/media.

  • The incivility, meanness, and cynicism that characterize so much media and online discourse;
  • The degree to which girls and women are stereotyped and objectified with a corresponding idealization of a violent, angry masculinity;
  • The prevalence and ease of access to pornography, an issue especially for boys;
  • The seductiveness of digital activities which at worst can lead to addiction, and for many children precludes unstructured play that calls upon their imaginations; the corresponding lack of physical activity and little time spent outdoors;
  • The ways in which digital communication, particularly texting, undermines the development of children's relational skills, including empathy.
  • The ways in which young people use texting and social media to wreak social havoc, whose impact is all the greater because of the wide audiences so easily reached, the ubiquity of the digital world, and the nature of the communication.

Having already addressed the first three, we will focus on the second three. The press keeps us aware of the perils of internet addiction, and our children's incessant texting and obsessive game playing may feel like addictive behavior. If we're honest, we may feel a powerful attachment to our phones. In fact, according to Steiner-Adair, our brains respond to our screen activities with "neurochemical hits and fixes – the neurotransmitter dopamine most notably – in the brain's pleasure centers."(5) The dopamine stimulated pleasure fix compels us to go back for more. Games amplify this effect by rewarding success, giving the player more materiel or moving him up a level. Steiner-Adair reports that "new research suggests that one out of eight children who play video games shows signs of addiction."(158) As we know from the Common Sense Media study, boys play video games much more than girls do. However, many of can relate to this description of our children, male or female: "They take their phones everywhere – to school, to bed, to the bathroom – and if they can't, or if the battery is low, or they discover they're in a location with poor reception they get a little anxious."(158) Children and teenagers' prefrontal cortex hasn't fully developed yet; as a result they often cannot control their impulses in the best of circumstances much less when seduced by powerful technology. They "need real limits and parental supervision."(159)

Even if children don't show signs of addiction, screen activities as their primary entertainment can still have negative consequences. Video games replace for unstructured, imaginary play, play on which healthy development depends. Steiner-Adair describes a four-and-a-half-year-old who loves a dress-up game. It turns out, however, that's it's not dress-up as we knew it: assembling outfits from the dress-up box that inspired any number of imaginary plots we acted out with our siblings or friends. Unstructured play offers numerous benefits: discerning social cues, learning give and take and compromise, problem-solving, and even language development. Children work through their anxieties by playing. By moving from boredom into imaginary play, they develop the ability to entertain themselves, in the process accessing and developing their creativity. As Steiner-Adair observes, "The rich complexities of imagination and sensory, social, and emotional interactions of real dress-up go far beyond the simple hunt-and-tap experience of the digital environment."(102) Let's remember that children as old as our Lower Schoolers still engage in imaginary play.

While children benefit from all kinds of play, playing outside offers particular benefits. It provides an endless array of stimuli and material from which to build imaginary worlds. It also provides opportunities for learning about nature and for problem solving, and promotes physical activity. Moreover, being outside has a calming effect on us as humans, the antidote to technology. Just as we know the benefits of play, we know even better the importance of physical activity. It's no surprise that Steiner-Adair reports "a mass exodus of children from outdoor free play and free time to the glowing screens of video and computer games, TV, and, increasingly, apps and games for handheld devices." While we can't blame our children's lack of physical activity, the limited time they spend outside, or the decrease in their unstructured imaginary play entirely on technology. However, the seductiveness of screen activities, primarily consumed inside, contribute to these unfortunate and arguably unhealthy changes in childhood.

With less unstructured play, children have fewer opportunities to develop critical interpersonal skills at the same time that media promotes mean, even cruel, behavior. We've also already talked about the importance of live interactions with parents and loving caregivers as critical to children's interpersonal development. However, technology undermines young people's opportunities in this realm in other ways, as well. Steiner-Adair reports that one meta-study involving almost 14,000 college students from 1979 to 2009 revealed "a sharp decline in the empathy trait over the past ten years."(52)

Besides the toxic media culture we have already discussed, Steiner-Adair would attribute this decline primarily to texting. She feels that adolescents' reliance on texting as their primary form of communication is compromising their healthy development. Indeed, she has a sub-chapter heading entitled: "Texting Pushes the Mute Button Emotional Nuance." I'm going to quote her at some length on this topic:

The more children begin to use texting at an earlier age rather than speaking or reading, the more a printed word replaces listening to the human voice and absorbing and understanding nonverbal social cues such as facial expressions and body language. The more they text, the less opportunity they have to develop basic relationship skills in face time conversation and hanging out. The less practice they get at face-to-face interaction over everyday things, communicating ideas and feelings in person, the less ready they are for relationships of greater emotional capacity. (200-1)

According to Steiner-Adair, teenagers "have become averse to spontaneous conversation." They don't call people because it feels "'too intense' or 'so intrusive.'"(61) She fears they aren't learning the give and take of conversation, the ability to respond empathetically, to assert themselves appropriately. She posits a "new cautiousness, a tentativeness about the art of talking and the psychological capability of being direct or intimate with another person."(62)

Finding this assessment concerning, I conducted some unscientific research: I conferred with my advisees, eight ninth to twelfth graders. I was relieved that they themselves actually do talk face-to-face or by phone when dealing with difficult issues, and they believe their schoolmates do as well. I certainly observe girls talking to one another all the time. My son and his friends, while they text plenty and have a Facebook group they've used since middle school, also talk with one another a great deal. We're not going to stop them from texting, but as a school and as parents we need to help our children learn to interact in person with kindness and thoughtfulness (which we do in our Lower and Middle School guidance curricula) without the protective shield of their phones; a good reason for keeping our trips and outdoor education experiences phone free.

While teenagers may not want to engage in difficult conversations, unfortunately they don't feel the same qualms about texting or using social media to say mean, hurtful things. The depersonalized nature of digital communication prevents one from seeing the victim of a cyber-assault, probably making it easier to behave cruelly. Children have always been mean to each other, but technology amplifies the effects of meanness. A comment or a handwritten note has very limited circulation; a text or social media post enjoys a limitless audience; it can even assume a life of its own, seeming never to go away. Moreover, a young person's tormenter follows her home from school; in the digital world, there's no sanctuary from the misery. Steiner-Adair explains that the unpredictability of cyber-attacks as well as the limited ability to respond also heightens the impact. "Offensive ambushes through tech" affect the attacked more deeply "because they can't psychologically protect themselves in the same way they could if they saw an obnoxious kid coming at them in the lunchroom or on the playground."(149) As parents and schools, we need to keep working with our children, as we do in all divisions (even building digital citizenship into our Middle School guidance curriculum), on appropriate behavior, online and in person. Teenagers often don't think through the consequences of their actions – remember that undeveloped prefrontal cortex – and we need to keep reminding them.

Not everything about tech is bad, by any means. However, we've given our children and young people powerful tools that allow access into a world with few rules or restrictions, and one characterized too often by anti-social values. We need to remain constant in our attention to our children's activities in this world, developing their moral foundation, teaching them pro-social values, and making sure they feel comfortable coming to us with their concerns.


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