It's Time to Reclaim Our Children From Devices

They deserve a higher quality childhood than this.

Photo by Emily Wade on Unsplash

I have a friend named Sheila who is now in her seventies. She once told me an amusing story about coming home from work when her kids were teenagers and finding them all on the couch, staring at the TV. They hadn’t done their homework or their chores. The house was a mess. Dinner wasn’t started. And they were totally zoned out, absorbed in whatever show they were watching.

She spoke to them, but they didn’t acknowledge her. In a fit of rage, she grabbed some scissors and snipped the wires connecting the TV to the wall. The screen went dead and her kids snapped out of their reverie. Sheila said the TV remained like that for many months—and her kids never forgot what happened.

Hopefully, none of us will experience such frustration that we start slashing at electrical connections, but I suspect that many of us can relate to feeling annoyed and even alarmed by the extent to which our children, grandchildren, and their young friends get sucked into their digital devices and seemingly lose touch with what’s going on around them. This issue is exacerbated by headphones when auditory connections are cut off. The child does not hear us, see us, acknowledge us. The child misses out on observation and conversation. The child is present, but not truly, because his or her mind is far, far away.

We Have a Problem

If this happened occasionally, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But the latest statistics show that children spend a daily average of between 5.5 hours and 8.5 hours on screens. While some of that time might be spent in formative ways, it’s absurd to assume that the kids are all reading Wikipedia, looking at Google Maps, and honing their coding skills. Rather, a recent study from Common Sense Media showed that most teens spend their screen time looking at social media, YouTube, and gaming apps.

As I wrote in a post about the study, “Almost half (45%) use apps with mature or adult-only ratings. TikTok users were the most hooked, with some spending as many as 7 hours a day on the app, often during school and overnight.”

Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at New York University, has aptly described smartphones as “experience blockers.” They get in the way of kids experiencing real life. He has also written extensively about how smartphones are ruining kids’ academic performance, a controversial stance that’s been further supported by PISA’s latest findings on global test scores.

As always, when I talk about kids and screen time, I come back to the same argument: What are these kids not spending time doing when they’re on devices for this long each day? These daily averages represent an enormous displacement of focus from high-value activities to low-value activities that I find troubling.

Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash

Sapien Labs recently estimated that screens are replacing up to 2,000 hours a year that would otherwise be spent in face-to-face interactions with friends and family. Even some babies are failing to develop smile reflexes because they’re not getting enough eye contact with their parents.

Canadian author Christina Crook urges people to consider the following question in her book Good Burdens:

“What do we really pay when we pay attention?” The answer? “All of the goals you didn’t pursue. All of the actions you didn’t take. All of the possible yous you could have been.”

Kids won’t get so philosophical about it, but we as their parents, grandparents, guardians, and educators should. There has been a profound transformation in childhood in recent decades. Children of all ages used to spend most of their non-school time working alongside their parents or playing actively and outdoors with other children, but now they spend far more time indoors, alone, and online. They spend more time trailing their parents around shopping centers and doing homework. They spend less time outdoors than the average American inmate.

This is worrisome because childhood is a rehearsal for adulthood and an opportunity to establish patterns of behaviour that will continue for years to come. We know that a child’s brain is molded by the activities it is exposed to. The younger a child is exposed to addictive substances (and screens trigger the same neural pathways as heroin), the more likely they are to be addicted as adults. This is not something they outgrow; instead, they become entrenched.

It's even scarier because excessive screentime is rewiring kids’ brains and, as MRIs have shown recently, are leading to underdevelopment of areas that support more complex skills, like language development, encoding memories, feeling empathy, and understanding facial and emotional expressions.

In other words, there is a lot more bad than good coming out of replacing real childhood play with devices. So, what can we do?

It Doesn’t Have to Be Like This

Childhood can be reclaimed from the digital deluge and turned in a different direction. As parents, we have the right to choose a path that may deviate from the status quo but gets our child to a better place—one that makes them both more interested in the world around them and more interesting, in general.

There are so many benefits. Children’s emotions will be easier to regulate, as they won’t be subjected to the rollercoaster of dopamine surges triggered by screens. They won’t be as prickly in anticipation of getting the screens, nor when the screens are taken away and they experience a let-down effect.

They will be protected from the barrage of online nastiness in the form of cyberbullying and the erosion of self-esteem. This will make them happier and more pleasant to be with. They will be more available to help out around the house. They will become better family members and, ultimately, more confident and adept young adults.

They will rekindle a curiosity in the world around them, both indoors and out. They’ll spend more time playing, developing their gross and fine motor skills, negotiating with playmates, learning crucial communication skills. They will regain the ability to play with physical toys and to transform boredom into a deeply creative and productive state.

They will learn how to daydream and to focus—both important mental states that are rendered nearly impossible by the allure of digital media’s instant gratification. This will pay off hugely in school and work.

The Path Forward

Photo by Jeremiah Lawrence on Unsplash

Every family’s journey toward digital minimalism will look different, based on their unique circumstances and kids’ ages. I explore these in much greater depth in my book, Childhood Unplugged: Practical Advice to Get Kids Off Screens and Find Balance (New Society, 2023), but here are some basic steps toward curbing excessive digital media use and embracing an offline life.

To be clear, I am not anti-tech; I am opposed to digital media taking over every aspect of a child’s life. This is about putting tech where it belongs and ensuring it remains a tool, not a toy.

First comes the “replacement period,” dubbed as such by Melanie Hempe, founder of ScreenStrong. This is the hardest initial stage at which the devices are removed from sight and reach, and the kids are expected to do other things with their time. Time must be filled with other activities, and this requires significant effort from parents to redirect their children’s focus.

After explaining what you need to do (be forewarned that you will never convince them), invest time playing outdoors, going on hikes and bike rides, visiting the library and reading books together, playing board games and sports, signing them up for extracurriculars, and hosting friends. This takes a lot of work! But it won’t last forever.

Change the physical environment. As with tackling any addiction, the source of the problem must be eliminated to make it easier to avoid. It’s not fair for a child to see an iPad or phone or video game controller that they are not allowed to touch; put it out of sight and then it’s more likely to stay out of mind for a bit longer. Better yet, commit to this change and get rid of it forever.

Embrace the messiness. A home with more physical sources of entertainment will be more chaotic than a home in which toys are hidden or absent and the child is tucked away in a corner, silent, staring at an iPad. Often a child’s creative projects need to be left out in order for play to continue after disruptions. In our house, this can take the form of cardboard box forts, slot car tracks, train sets, and building blocks. It can feel cluttered; it will also be noisier. This is OK. Just live with it. Someday you’ll long for this stage.

Just say no. It’s far easier to create a strict no-screens rule than to dole it out once daily or on weekends. Break the cycle of addiction by committing to no screen time at all. Forget parental controls (these are exhausting and impossible to monitor effectively). Eventually, once other behavioural patterns have been established (say, after six months), you might be able to allow movies on rainy days or sick days. This form of entertainment is less engaging and thus less addictive than more interactive ones, like “educational” games on iPads and auto-playing YouTube videos that have no natural ending built in.

Choose simpler devices for older kids. Resist the societal pressure to buy your teen the most technologically advanced device that exists. If they have a legitimate need for one, i.e., they commute and must be able to communicate, consider much simpler devices that can still do the job. Check out the WisePhone II and the LightPhone. Computers are good for communicating with peers via iMessage if you want to forego the phone completely. (This is how my 14-year-old arranges hangouts with his friends.)

And please forget social media; teens should not be on it before the age of 16, no matter what the tech giants tell us. Even then, they should access their profiles on a computer, not a phone, so it’s not tempting them from their pocket every minute of the day.

Accept boredom. Your kids may complain, but that’s OK. Allow them to be bored; tell them it’s good for them, and then let them be. Marvelous things will happen.

Model the behaviours you want to see. Modeling is the most powerful parenting tool we have, so think long and hard about how you spend your time and what message that conveys to your child, who is always watching and absorbing.

Rely on nature. Nature is the perfect substitute for screen time, a place where you can send your kids to play for prolonged periods of time, gain some indoor peace and quiet for yourself, and they’ll come back refreshed and content. Fill your yard with “loose parts”, toys with open-ended purposes, and sporting gear. Find community and friends who are also willing to send their kids out to play. Take them outside yourself; you’ll benefit, too.

It’s never too late. You have the right to revisit the rules surrounding smartphones and social media, based on new information that you’ve acquired. You can sit your kid down at any age or stage and say, “I’m not comfortable with this anymore. Things are going to change.” Your kid won’t like it, but they have to comply. And you have to stick to it, be consistent, and set an example.

For more in-depth guidance on embracing digital minimalism, please check out my book, Childhood Unplugged: Practical Advice to Get Kids Off Screens and Find Balance (New Society, 2023). It’s available wherever books are sold.

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