'Oppenheimer' Composer Thanked Parents for Giving Him Guitars, Not Video Games
Parents create environments that are conducive to kids' artistic exploration.
Last weekend at the 96th Academy Awards, Ludwig Göransson won an Oscar for Best Original Score. The 39-year-old Swedish composer wrote the soundtrack for “Oppenheimer,” which beat out fierce competition to take the top prize.
When he stood up to accept the award, Göransson thanked several people, including director Christopher Nolan. But then he turned to his parents and offered what is perhaps the most thought-provoking statement of all. He said, “Thank you for giving me guitars and drum machines instead of video games!”
I want to delve into this because it’s a fantastic example of what children stand to gain when parents limit screens in their lives. They become free to pursue creative endeavours and to develop skills and hobbies that can turn into lifelong passions and future careers.
Kids Need Friction
The problem with screen-based entertainment is that it’s frictionless. There is an extremely low barrier for entry to distraction. If you’re bored and you pick up a phone, tablet, or video game, you’ll get sucked into it immediately. Many view this as a good thing; undeniably, these devices offer instant gratification to fussy toddlers and bored children. They offer a temporary reprieve to parents.
But this comes at a price.
NYU psychology professor and author Jonathan Haidt has aptly called screens “experience blockers” for the way in which they cut kids off from reality, isolate them having the real-life experiences that are so profound and formative in childhood.
Kids need the friction offered by boredom and swaths of empty time in order to develop complex imaginary games, be alone with their thoughts, and practice nascent skills. If they always have something else that’s more thrilling and distracting to draw them in, they will not do those harder things. It is difficult enough for adults to resist the allure of a smartphone; it is far worse for a child who cannot understand how or why upfront effort pays off down the road.
Solitude Fuels Creativity
In my book, Childhood Unplugged, I wrote about Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is best known for naming the creative “flow” state. In his research, he found that teens who can’t stand being alone have less creative ability. He said, “Only in solitude could those youths develop the creative habits—journaling, doodling, daydreaming—that lead to original work.”
Obviously, Göransson was one of those teens who managed to channel an interest in music toward achieving a higher level of proficiency and attaining a real, marketable skill. But it’s important to note that he thanks his parents for creating the circumstances that allowed this. It’s not that he was some kind of child-genius who dedicated himself more to music than to video games; no, his parents chose to give him one over the other because they recognized the greater inherent value of one over the other.
His acknowledgement underscores a crucial point—that parents are responsible for setting a child up for success by creating an environment that is conducive to creative exploration and skill development.
On Wasted Potential
It’s far too easy to squander potential in our society these days. No doubt this has always been a problem, but I do think it has become harder lately because of the sheer accessibility and addictiveness of digital media. New technologies have always posed challenges, but they didn’t get in the way of living life in the way that smartphones and video games do now.
Last week, I listened to a great interview between Tim Ferriss and Cal Newport, whose much-anticipated new book, Slow Productivity, just launched. In it, they expressed concern about how many Marie Curies and Frida Kahlos (and, indeed, Ludwig Göranssons and Christopher Nolans) will never emerge because they’ve gone down the TikTok or YouTube rabbit hole without ever putting in the time and focus to develop their unique skills. Not only do they deprive themselves of great achievements, but the world misses out, too.
I don’t think Ferris and Newport are catastrophizing; I think this is a real consequence of a life lived shallowly, in a world where attention is fragmented, rather than directed and fueled.
There are other reasons to insist on formative activities like music over video games. I’ve written about this before (see: Every Kid Hates Practicing Music), pointing out that training discipline in the form of daily practice is incredibly important. My mom always said that if a child happens to get good at an instrument, that’s just a bonus! The real goal is to teach them to sit down and do something hard for a set number of minutes every day, no matter what it is. It’s training for life.
Most of us will likely never have children that win Oscars or Olympic medals or Nobel Prizes or other major awards for their accomplishments, and that’s totally fine! But we should not foreclose the possibility of them becoming skilled at something (or even deriving great pleasure from it) from the very beginning of their lives by giving them frictionless screen-based entertainment on demand. Let them first have a chance at discovering interests, abilities, and rewards.
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I appreciate how you highlight the simple, constructive ways that a consistent music practice can create positive friction, even without any career trajectory in music. Your mama had wise words to offer. It seems to me that with easy access to streaming music and the orientation towards monetizing everything has come a sharp decline in amateur music-making, whether that be music lessons, group singing, or learning songs simply because they're treasured and there aren't a dozen ways to stream them. And I believe the cost of that loss is far higher than we now realize.
I'm interested in what you've written on music practice, as I haven't quite decided what to do when my children start learning an instrument. I had a really awful experience growing up in that practice just became this battle and the resentment bled into my practice sessions. I enjoyed my lessons but hated playing at home, as even if I decided to practice on my own it had the flavour of a chore to it. Eventually (after a lot of arguing back and forth) I ended up quitting lessons altogether. I now remember little of the instrument and am very slow to music read. On the other hand my husband was never pressured to practice and his music playing was always for fun, and he can pick up any woodwind instrument and play it even after years of no music. He also started tinkering with a harp in the last few years and was rapidly able to gain proficiency.
I absolutely wish I knew how to play an instrument well, but I'm not convinced that making children practice is the best or only way. It obviously works sometimes (my sibling is now a performer) but obviously I'm influenced by my own negative experience.