Plugged In

by Patti M Valkenburg

  To substantiate claims of digital dementia, authors such as Spitzer provide examples of behavior change. For example, none of us are likely to memorize telephone numbers any longer, since they are stored on our smartphones. Similarly, we have become less skilled at arithmetic, for we have calculators readily at our disposal. These examples appeal to us, since many of us do indeed not know any telephone numbers by heart, not even our own sometimes. We also have to acknowledge that we are not as good in mental arithmetic as we used to be, because if we need to add or multiply a string of numbers, we grab a calculator. But do these new habits lead to shallow thinking? Is Google making us stupid, as Carr and others assume?65

  In truth, the scientific evidence presented by authors of these popular texts is meager, relying on a handful of brain-based studies. For example, they often cite a study by Eleanor Maguire and colleagues in which researchers found that the hippocampi of experienced London taxi drivers contained more gray matter than those of a control group without driving experience.66 They also often rely on a study by Gary Small and colleagues to support the shallow-thinking assumption. Observing fifty-five adults, these researchers showed that compared with inexperienced Internet users, experienced users exhibit significantly more brain activity when conducting an online search task.67 Both studies reveal that learning goes hand in hand with structural or functional changes in brain areas. But they do not establish that these changes are related to a shallow information processing or to a deteriorating working memory. In other words, interesting and valuable as these findings might be, they are not evidence that the Internet is turning its users into shallow thinkers suffering from digital dementia.

  Thus, although popular assumptions claim that today’s socially mediated world is creating a population of shallow thinkers, there is insufficient scientific evidence to back up this assertion. It is true that social media have led to an increase in media multitasking. It is also true that ardent media multitasking is linked, among adolescents and young adults, with a decreased ability to focus.68 This deficit, however, is an effect not of social media per se, but instead of a specific form of social media use. Incidentally, it would be strange if no relationship whatsoever had been found between media multitasking and the ability to focus. After all, taken in combination, media multitasking and focusing are a contradiction in terms. They are as incompatible as water and oil, or light and darkness.

  Similarly, despite the headlines, there is no scientific evidence that today’s socially mediated world is making teens less intelligent and more apt to experience digital dementia. If there are any indications for a relationship between media usage and intelligence, it is a positive rather than negative one. As mentioned earlier in the book (chapters 2 and 12), several authors have attributed the Flynn effect (the rise in measures of fluid intelligence) to our quick and complex media environment.

  And although many of us do not invest effort in memorizing phone numbers or other information, there is no reason to suggest that this is due to decreasing intelligence. When people are asked to type trivial information, such as “The eye of an ostrich is bigger than its brain,” and they are told that they can retrieve the exact information later, they no longer make an effort to remember that information.69 This is not because their working memory has deteriorated, but because they do not want to memorize things if they see no reason to do so. We no longer memorize telephone numbers not because we are getting dumber, but because we no longer see the relevance of it. And by not doing so, we reserve time and space for more important or complex things. As Clive Thompson noted, “Our ancestors learned how to remember; we’ll learn how to forget.”70

  Conclusion

  Virtually all teens use some form of social media today. While these social media continue to change—yesterday’s MySpace becomes today’s Instagram—their enduring appeal is that they provide teens (and adults) with an easy means of communicating with known and unknown others. The research discussed in this chapter is limited to the teen audience. This is primarily due to the fact that social media use by children is typically not legally permitted, although the social media landscape is quickly changing. Within the next few years, as technologies advance and legal policies change, it is likely that we will see an uptick in social media use among children—and a related increase in research on the topic.

  As highlighted in this chapter, the affordances of social media are what make social media so appealing. These affordances appeal to a strong, developmentally induced need for control and autonomy among adolescents, allowing them to determine what, with whom, when, and how they communicate. The affordances offer an important explanation of the positive role that social media play in the social-emotional development of teens. They may foster teens’ self-concept clarity, self-esteem, and self-awareness. They may provide teens with important opportunities for developing friendships, and offer them a space for experimenting with their sexuality and sexual self-presentation.

  But as with other media, there is a dark side of social media use, which warrants attention. In particular, social media use is associated with the risk of cyberbullying and sexual grooming. Although, thankfully, these behaviors occur very infrequently, they remain important areas for continued concern and investigation. Similar worries about sexting and sexy selfies call for more scholarly attention to helping teens identify how to manage social media in a healthy and safe way.

  In general, the negative effects of social media use on social-emotional development seem to depend on how teens use social media. If teens use social media to maintain existing contacts, which is what most of them do, overall effects seem positive. But if they use social media primarily to communicate with strangers, or if they create unusual profiles and thereby evoke negative responses, the effects are negative. This implies that to a certain extent, adolescents shape their own social media use and its effects. Until now, such so-called expression effects have not received much attention in the social media literature, yet they are likely the best way to understand the social-emotional effects of social media use.

  And while social media use has most often been studied in conjunction with social-emotional development, there is growing anxiety that today’s mediated world of bite-size information and multitasking may be hindering teens’ cognitive development. The scientific evidence suggests that alarm bells may be premature. Fervid media multitasking, which frequently accompanies social media use, is indeed associated with poorer concentration. Yet no scientific evidence to date supports the claim that the causal direction runs from media multitasking to concentration problems. It is possible that teens with concentration problems are more inclined to media-multitask. In addition, no convincing evidence supports the claim that media multitasking is problematic for other cognitive outcomes, or that today’s young people are becoming dumber or suffering from digital dementia. If anything, it seems that teens may be displaying improved intelligence when compared with previous generations.

  Accessibility, scalability, and retrievability are important affordances of the Internet and social media. Without any effort, we can find a former classmate online or Google the name of an actor that is on the tip of our tongue. Thanks to the smartphone, we can easily call for help if we feel unwell on the road or if the car breaks down. And it is reassuring to know that our children and loved ones can reach us when they need to. The same affordances, however, come with caveats. In the smartphone era, it is more difficult—for everyone—to focus and to resist temptations. The affordances of social media require users to practice a certain agency so that they reap the benefits and avoid the risks of social media use. For youth, and especially young teens, parents, caregivers, and practitioners come into play here. With their help, today’s youth can benefit from these affordances in a healthy and safe way.

  14

  MEDIA AND PARENTING

  Pedagogy must be oriented not to the yesterday, but to the tomorrow of the child’s development.

  —attributed to
Lev Vygotsky

  Hundreds, perhaps thousands of studies ask whether and how media affect children and teens. As we have seen throughout this book, these studies show that media use can have a positive or negative influence on how children and teens think and behave. But as also has been noted throughout this book, media use does not occur in a vacuum. Many forces can influence media effects on children and teens, including their developmental level, dispositions, and environment. In this chapter, we home in on the environment by focusing on the power of the parent. We discuss how parenting styles differ and what many consider as the most effective form of parenting. With this in mind, we then discuss media-specific parenting for different age groups, highlighting specific media-related issues that parents are faced with as children get older. For example, should parents allow their youngest children to use media? How can parents prevent or mitigate the negative influences of violence in the media during childhood? Why is it so difficult to get teens to put down their cell phones? And what can be done about it?

  Parenting in the Twenty-First Century

  Parenting has never been easy. The literature is replete with examples of the difficulties that parents face in raising their children to become successful adults. Yet today’s parents seem to be facing an unusually complex road. When asked about their experiences, most parents lament that parenting in the twenty-first century is harder than ever before. For example, only 11 percent of American parents feel that raising children is easier than it used to be, and 68 percent feel it has become harder.1 Similarly, in a study of Dutch parents, nearly 20 percent of mothers and 15 percent of fathers indicated they sometimes had doubts about whether they could successfully raise their children. Over half felt that parenting was more difficult than they had imagined it would be.2

  One of the many challenging aspects of parenting is to find a way to balance the nurturing side of parenting with its strict side. Indeed, this balance is a core aspect of most parenting theories. And when it comes to this balance, researchers have found that parenting in which warmth and responsiveness are combined with clear and consistent rules—referred to as authoritative parenting—is most beneficial for child development.3 Authoritative parents formulate rules for their children’s behavior that are developmentally appropriate, explain why these rules are necessary, ask their children for input when formulating rules, and consistently enforce the rules they set.4 In short, they provide structure within a warm and loving relationship. Children raised with authoritative parents do better in school, are more successful later in life, and are happier.5

  Authoritative parenting has been shown to work better than an authoritarian style—a style that prevailed through the 1950s and is characterized by strict rules and little warmth. It also works better than a permissive style—in which parents are warm but provide little structure. This is because authoritative parenting, compared with authoritarian and permissive parenting, is more effective at promoting and supporting the development of children’s self-regulation. As noted in chapter 11, self-regulation reflects the ability to resist impulses and temptations that keep us from achieving our long-term goals. It implies, for example, that we limit our intake of junk food and alcohol so that we can stay healthy; that we resist taking a swipe at a boss or a loved one if they make an annoying remark; and that we turn the smartphone to silent or off when we need to finish homework or other tasks.

  Self-regulation is one of the most important predictors of success in life.6 People who struggle with self-regulation are, compared with successful self-regulators, at a greater risk of succumbing to behaviors that lead to problems such as obesity, substance abuse, spiraling debt, and unwanted pregnancy. The mission of authoritative parents is to help children slowly but surely accept and internalize the rules and requirements of their environment and society at large. This internalization is best achieved when parents communicate rules and requirements in a way that promotes the child’s autonomy, that is, the degree to which children feel that their choices and behavior come from their free will.7 Authoritative parents stimulate their children’s internalization of rules, and by doing so, they gradually teach their children how to regulate their behavior autonomously and voluntarily.

  This voluntary self-regulation does not come about by itself. Adhering to most of the rules parents impose on their children, such as cleaning up their rooms, doing their homework, turning off a video game or the Internet, is not fun, meaning that children will not spontaneously obey their parents. Instead, children’s initial compliance comes from an extrinsic motivation, that is, either to avoid punishment or to please their parents. When parents raise their children authoritatively—by setting rules that take the child’s perspective seriously, and by providing convincing arguments for these rules—children’s extrinsic motivations will likely turn into intrinsic ones. And when this happens, children will have internalized these rules and feel that they follow them voluntarily, which ensures that they can rely on their own self-regulatory skills.

  Setting Boundaries Does Not Mean Being Harsh

  Discussions of authoritative parenting often raise the question of how to set boundaries. Most theories about parenting assume that parents are calm and rational when it comes to raising their children, particularly when it comes to setting and enforcing boundaries. In practice, however, parents do not always manage to stay calm and rational. Any parent can think of a time when their child’s resistance to boundary setting tested their patience. Just imagining a child throwing a temper tantrum in a store is enough to get one’s heart pumping a bit faster. Authoritative parenting requires considerable self-regulation from parents. They must be able, and want, to see things from the child’s perspective, keep their emotions under control, and be patient and tolerant with their child’s behavior rather than indifferent, angry, or pushy.

  This is no easy task. Indeed, providing the “warm environment” aspect of authoritative parenting is relatively easy for most parents. But setting and consistently enforcing rules can be difficult. Some parents, especially those with a higher education, find it a challenge to set and enforce rules because they wrongly associate rules with harshness and a lack of warmth.8 Other parents may feel too busy or too tired to enforce the rules they set. And still others may find it difficult to discipline their children in public because they feel they are being watched and are afraid that others will think they are bad parents.

  Equating the enforcement of rules with a lack of warmth is a common misunderstanding among today’s parents. Inconsistent enforcement takes several forms. Parents may, for example, give into a temper tantrum at the supermarket if the child kicks and screams long and loudly enough. Or parents may be unwilling to punish their child at the moment she or he misbehaves, because they are too tired or have visitors, but plan to punish the child more severely the next time. Although understandable, these forms of inconsistent enforcement can have negative outcomes, including increased conflict in the family and problem behaviors in children. Inconsistent parenting stimulates resistance and recalcitrance in children, a phenomenon known as psychological reactance.9 Psychological reactance is incompatible with, and thus interferes with, the internalization of rules and requirements and, as a result, with the development of children’s self-regulatory skills.

  Media Management in the Family

  Not all rules are equally difficult to enforce. Few parents have trouble reprimanding a child who tells a lie or steals something from the refrigerator. But other parenting issues can be more difficult to resolve. The most difficult limits for parents to enforce are rules about media use, particularly teens’ media use. Setting rules in this area is even more difficult than setting limits on going out at night, handling money, smoking, drinking alcohol, or taking drugs (see figure 14.1).

  Figure 14.1. Restricting media use, especially for teens, is a challenge for many parents because restriction can easily lead to boomerang effects. (iStock)

  Why is this? Why do parents find themselves face-
to-face with such a struggle when it comes to media use? Because, it seems, children and teens are less tolerant of parental inference with media use than they are with other domains of parenting. According to Judith Smetana, the effectiveness of parental discipline seems to depend strongly on the degree to which children consider their parents’ authority legitimate.10 In her social domain theory, she distinguishes between three domains of parenting: the moral, the conventional, and the personal.

  The moral domain deals with problems such as lying and stealing. Most children and teens find parental interference in this domain legitimate: it is never okay to lie or steal, not even if it goes unnoticed. Thus, parents are “allowed” to punish if they discover transgressions within this domain. Children are also relatively tolerant of interference in the conventional domain, which involves matters such as table manners and doing homework, things that are “part of the game” and thus are normal within society. Children are less tolerant, however, of parental interference in the personal domain, which includes matters such as clothing, friends, and media use.

  Personal-domain issues are those that involve children’s individual preferences and choices, and thus are not questions of good versus bad, or what is “normal,” as is the case in the other domains. With young children, this domain is mostly about clothing. Any parent can attest to the fights that can ensue if a child is made to wear certain clothes against his or her wishes. With older children and teens, the personal domain is more extensive and includes friendships and media use. Older children and teens see parents as having no right to meddle in these personal matters. Prohibitions imposed on personal-domain matters, especially with teens, can quickly lead to reactance or even to a boomerang effect (a result opposite from the one the parents intended).