Managing Tech and Children

There has been a lot of buzz lately around Jonathan Haidt’s new book “The Anxious Generation.” In it, Haidt postulates that the cause for the rise in teen mental health issues is unrestricted use of smartphones and social media. He then goes on to suggest four solutions centered around the timing of smartphone and social media access, along with the encouragement of more unsupervised play and childhood independence. The book has stirred up some controversy, as tends to happen any time someone suggests restricting something in any way. I am not going to rehash Haidt’s premise. If you are interested, I recommend reading his book. What I am going to do is offer something different, and yet probably still controversial. I am going to offer 5 simple things that parents can do to limit their use of technology in order to support the emotional well-being of their children.

I have been living in London for a period of time, and having worked in the field of early childhood education I thought I would pay a visit to the V&A Young Museum (formerly known as the Museum of Childhood). The Guardian recently reported that it had just won the ‘Prestigious Museum of the Year’ award, beating out the likes of the National Portrait Gallery. In the article dated 10, July 2024, the Guardian wrote, “Judges described the museum as a ‘truly inspirational’ institution that engaged with the local community of Bethnal Green and radically rethought the museum with young people in mind.” It truly is a wonderful space, although I would describe it as leaning heavily toward a gallery feel intermixed with only a handful of interactive spaces for children. You can go there, as I did, and view the exhibits from a nostalgic point of view, investigating the artifacts of your bygone childhood. You can also go there with a child on one of those rainy London days and use the exhibits as prompts to engage your child’s imagination.

What surprised me the most about my visit to the Young on that drizzly day in June was how little the adults were interacting with their children, let alone the exhibits. What they were interacting with was their phones. I took the photograph below as just one example. This photo is an area of the museum where curators have staged hands-on multi-sensory exhibits. And this wasn’t the only example I witnessed that day. I saw parents staring down at their phones in the café space while their child ate a snack silently across from them. I saw them scrolling in the dress up area stage where you would think they could be using their phones to record their child performing. This leads me to my first recommendation.

I spy with my little eye, seven parents on their phones Young Museum in London

Put Down Your Phone—Be mindful of your phone use whenever in the presence of young children.

Believe me, I get it. We all have stressful exhausting lives and when the weather forces you indoors and the children are bouncing off the wall, sometimes you just need to take them somewhere to let them burn off some steam. But instead of defaulting to your phones to distract you from your hardships, why not let your guard down, get down on the floor and play with your child?

I think we have been falsely raised to believe that at a certain stage in our lives we need to put the things of our childhood away and exclusively don the costume of adulthood.

I think we have been falsely raised to believe that at a certain stage in our lives we need to put the things of our childhood away and exclusively don the costume of adulthood. Unfortunately the cell phone seems to be a mandatory accessory of that uniform these days. You can make a conscious decision to change this societal pattern by simply putting down your phone and playing with your child, particularly when you are in child centric environments. Why not model for your child that adulthood and parenthood include a healthy balance of work and play? This leads me to suggestion number two.

Model Behaviors you want to see in your child—Make a point of demonstrating healthy boundaries around cell phone and social media use.

When you immediately pull out your phone when you are with your child, particularly when they are young, you are sending a message that your child is less important than what is on your phone. You also communicate that it is okay in family interactions to disengage. Once they reach the age where they have their own phones, you will find that they have learned this lesson all too well when they begin to pull their phones out at every opportunity. The not so funny thing is, this is typically the point when parents begin to feel their relationship with their child slipping away and begin to harp on their child for their cell phone use. Adolescents learned how to use a cell phone as a coping mechanism from an early age. They didn’t learn it from their teachers. Did they learn it from you?

You are sending a message that your child is less important than what is on your phone.

Several years ago there was a television advertisement, it might have been for Google, where a parent is lying in bed with their young child and the child begins to ask a litany of questions. You know the ones. Why is the sky blue? How long would it take to travel to the moon? How deep is the ocean? In the ad the father has his phone strategically hidden out of sight from his child as he uses it to search the internet for answers, which he proudly provides to his child. This brings me to my third recommendation.

Ask Questions instead of giving answers—Embrace the power of discovery and imaginative thinking rather than looking for a quick answer.

I get it, we want to impress our children. They come to us with these amazing open minds full of wonderment and they seek information from the wisest and most significant persons in their lives – their parents. This can be problematic in two ways. One, it has the tendency to put you on a pedestal of all-knowing perfection. This is impossible to maintain over the span of their lifetimes. The other thing is, it has a tendency to inhibit real in-depth learning and imagination.

It all stems from an outdated mindset that children are “empty vessels,” which need filling with all the essential information that will enable them to become competent, confident, and highly-developed adults. However, the best catalyst to exploration, learning and creativity can be the simple act of posing a question. Questions can facilitate engagement, open up dialogues, and change perspectives.

The best catalyst to exploration, learning and creativity can be the simple act of posing a question.

Usually ‘Open-ended’ questions tend to encourage more detailed responses. If you ask a “Yes or No” question you are most likely going to end up with a yes or no as a response. Even a question as innocuous as, “How was your day today?” will tend to be met with a one-word reply. However, posing a more open-ended question such as “How do you think someone could go about measuring the depth of the ocean?” will be more likely to foster an open discussion.

So don’t rely on technology to boost your standing with your child and shortcut their learning experiences. Use it sparingly. Model for your child that the internet is one tool for accessing information, but it is one of many. When a child experiences learning (particularly through multi-sensory explorations) i.e. “Let’s test out some of your water measuring ideas in the bathtub tonight,” rather than simply being fed information, the knowledge becomes more permanent in their hippocampus and thus more accessible later on. Help your child to build their understandings on their own. Over time this will help make them lifelong learners and critical thinkers. This brings me to my fourth recommendation.

Pace Yourself—Don’t be too quick to share your childhood media favorites with your young child.

I spent most of my career working with children between the ages of three and six. Although my own child was an adolescent when I began my career and an adult by the time I left, I wouldn’t have needed him in my life to keep up to date with all the cultural landmarks. My students brought them into my classroom each and every day, through the graphics on their clothing, to the songs they sang, to the personas they took on in dramatic play. From The Little Mermaid to Frozen, I heard and saw it all. For a long time it appeared to be just the Disneyfication of childhood, but then things began to shift as online media began to flood the marketplace and children’s lives. I began to observe children as young as four conversing about the plot of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows while sitting around the snack table. On the playground, children were re-enacting the latest Star Wars saga. Over time, I noticed that much of their play narratives became darker and darker, sometimes disturbingly so. They talked about the online video games they were playing as well, some with an 18+ ESRB rating. These young children weren’t going out and bringing this media into their homes. They were introduced to it by their parents.

These young children weren’t going out and bringing this media into their homes. They were introduced to it by their parents.

I understand the desire to share some of the pivotal cultural moments of your youth with your child. It really can be an incredible bonding experience. It can even be a healthy one, as it helps to demonstrate to your child that you too were young once and enjoyed youthful things. But pace yourself. You have time to share those experiences. Before you introduce an indelible media moment from your past, ask yourself, “Is this developmentally appropriate at this stage in my child’s life?”

Here’s the thing, the line between reality and imaginary is pretty blurry when children are young. They simply have not had enough life experiences to clearly discern the difference between the two. For young children, the magical beasts in Harry Potter can seem all too real. I can’t tell you the number of times as a teacher I was asked by a child while reading a story, “Is this real?”

Photo by Ahmed Akacha

And don’t get me wrong, there are many wonderful messages embedded in the Star Wars stories, but there is also a lot of what I call ‘Clean Violence.’ The same holds true for all but the most graphic of video battle games. The enemy is annihilated, but we really don’t see any blood. We don’t see any pain or suffering. We don’t see the impact their death had on their loved ones. Even ‘bad guys’ have families. So just hold off a little until their understanding of life and death is more developed. Or if that is too big of an ask, then at the very least, use these types of media experiences to have deeper conversations around those concepts. This is a wonderful way to build a trusting relationship with your child. Which brings me to my final recommendation.

Spend Actual Time Connecting—These will be the memories your child recalls about their childhood when they become parents.

There is the old adage that no one ever said on their deathbed that they wished they had spent more time in the office. I think you could also say that no child has ever said that they wished their parents had spent more time on their phones. Children, young children in particular, just want to spend time with you. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy or high priced or high tech, but it does need to be authentic and undistracted. Many parents today feel pressured to buy the latest technological device to validate their love for their child, but technology, no matter how sophisticated AI becomes, will never replace being truly seen and affirmed by someone who loves you.

I understand in this age of work from home that it may be difficult to set technology aside all the time when interacting with your child, but I invite you to try and set aside some technology free times throughout the day and focus primarily on being present with your child. When I was working with parents during the latter part of my teaching career, I was surprised to learn how few families actually made it a priority to sit down together and enjoy a meal. This is a wonderful time to reconnect with each other and talk about your day. It is also a great time to share family stories from your childhood, another activity that has been abandoned in our high tech age. The sharing of personal stories help children to see you as a more three dimensional person in their lives. They get to see how you experienced and navigated childhood and made it through challenges.

No child has ever said that they wished their parents had spent more time on their phones.

So be mindful of when and how much you are using your phone in front of your child. Model for your child a healthy and balanced use of technology. Don’t rely on technology for all of the answers to your child’s questions. Rather, use questions to spur your child’s independent problem solving and imagination. Be mindful of when and how you expose your child to certain types of media. And most importantly, spend more time actually engaging with your child.