Indistractable

by Nir Eyal;

  Ryan’s research reveals exactly where we lose kids’ attention. “Whenever children enter middle school, whenever they start leaving home-based classrooms and go into the more police-state style of schools, where bells are ringing, detentions are happening, punishment is occurring, they’re learning right then that this is not an intrinsically motivating environment,” he says. Robert Epstein, the researcher who wrote “The Myth of the Teen Brain” in Scientific American, has a similar conclusion: “Surveys I have conducted show that teens in the U.S. are subjected to more than ten times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons.”

  While such a restrictive environment isn’t every American student’s experience, it’s clear why so many struggle to stay motivated in the classroom: their need for autonomy to explore their interests is unfulfilled. “We’re doing a lot of controlling them in their school environments and it’s no surprise that they should then want to turn to an environment where they can feel a lot of agency and a lot of autonomy in what they’re doing,” Ryan says. “We think of [tech use] as kind of an evil in the world, but it’s an evil we have created a gravitational pull around by the alternatives we’ve set up.”

  Unlike their offline lives, kids have a tremendous amount of freedom online; they have the autonomy to call the shots and experiment with creative strategies to solve problems. “In internet spaces, there tends to be myriad choices and opportunities, and a lot less adult control and surveillance,” says Ryan. “One can thus feel freedom, competence, and connection online, especially when the teenager’s contrasting environments are overly controlling, restrictive, or understimulating.”

  Ironically, when parents grow concerned with how much time their kids spend online, they often impose even more rules—a tactic that tends to backfire. Instead of more ways to limit your kids’ autonomy, Ryan advises seeking to understand the underlying needs and associated internal triggers driving them to digital distraction. “What we’ve found is that parents who address internet use or screen time with kids in an autonomy-supported way have kids who are more self-regulated with respect to it, so less likely to use screen time for excessive hours,” he says.

  LESSON 2: CHILDREN STRIVE FOR COMPETENCE—MASTERY, PROGRESSION, ACHIEVEMENT, AND GROWTH

  Think about something you’re good at: your ability to present onstage, pull together a delicious meal, or parallel park in the tightest of spaces. Competence feels good, and that feeling grows alongside your ability.

  Unfortunately, the joy of progress in the classroom is a waning feeling among kids today. Ryan warns, “We’re giving messages of ‘you’re not competent at what you’re doing at school,’ to so many kids.” He points to the rise of standardized testing as part of the problem. “It’s destroying classroom teaching practices, it’s destroying the self-esteem of so many kids, and it’s killing their learning and motivation.”

  “Kids are so different, and their developmental rates are so variable,” Ryan says. However, by design, standardized tests don’t account for those differences. If a child isn’t doing well in school and doesn’t get the necessary individualized support, they start to believe that achieving competence is impossible, so they stop trying. In the absence of competency in the classroom, kids turn to other outlets to experience the feeling of growth and development. Companies making games, apps, and other potential distractions are happy to fill that void by selling ready-made solutions for the “psychological nutrients” kids lack.

  Tech makers know how much consumers enjoy leveling up, gaining more followers, or getting likes—those accomplishments provide the fast feedback of achievement that feels good. According to Ryan, when children spend their time in school doing something they don’t enjoy, don’t value, and don’t see potential for improvement, “it should be no surprise to us that at nighttime [they] would rather turn to an activity where they can feel a lot of competence.”

  LESSON 3: THEY SEEK RELATEDNESS—FEELING IMPORTANT TO OTHERS AND THAT OTHERS ARE IMPORTANT TO THEM

  Spending time with peers has always been a formative part of growing up. For kids, much of the opportunity to develop social skills centers around chances to play with others. In today’s world, however, teens increasingly experience social interactions in virtual environments because doing so in the real world is inconvenient or off limits.

  The very nature of play is rapidly changing. Remember playing pickup games at the basketball court, hanging out at the mall on weekends, or simply roaming around the neighborhood until you found a friend? Sadly, spontaneous socializing simply isn’t happening as much as it used to.

  As Peter Gray, who has studied the decline of play in America, wrote in the American Journal of Play, “It is hard to find groups of children outdoors at all, and, if you do find them, they are likely to be wearing uniforms and following the directions of coaches.”

  Whereas previous generations were allowed to simply play after school and form close social bonds, many children today are raised by parents who restrict outdoor play because of “child predators, road traffic, and bullies,” according to a survey of parents in an Atlantic article. These concerns were mentioned even though kids today are statistically the safest generation in American history. Unfortunately, this is a downward spiral that leaves many kids with no choice but to stay indoors, attend structured programs, or rely on technology to find and connect with others.

  In many ways, connections in digital environments can be very positive. A child who is bullied at school can reach out for help from supportive online friends; a teenager struggling with their sexuality can find support from someone on the other side of the country; and a kid who feels shy at school can be a hero among their gaming friends from all corners of the world. “What the data show,” says Ryan, “is that kids who aren’t feeling relatedness, who are feeling isolated or excluded in school are going to be more drawn to media where they can get connections with other people and find subgroups they can identify with. So that’s both a plus and a minus.”

  The loss of in-person play has real costs according to Gray, given that “learning to get along and cooperate with others as equals may be the most crucial evolutionary function of human social play.” He sees it as “both a consequence and a cause of the increased social isolation and loneliness in the culture.” Long before studies correlated screen time with rising rates of depression, Gray identified a much bigger trend that dated back over sixty years:

  Since about 1955 . . . children’s free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children’s activities . . .

  Somehow, as a society, we have come to the conclusion that to protect children from danger and to educate them, we must deprive them of the very activity that makes them happiest and place them for ever more hours in settings where they are more or less continually directed and evaluated by adults, settings almost designed to produce anxiety and depression.

  When considering the state of modern childhood, Ryan believes many kids aren’t getting enough of the three essential psychological nutrients—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—in their offline lives. Not surprisingly, our kids go looking for substitutes online. “We call this the ‘need density hypothesis,’” says Ryan. “The more you’re not getting needs satisfied in life, reciprocally, the more you’re going to get them satisfied in virtual realities.”

  Ryan’s research leads him to believe that “overuse [of technology] is a symptom, one indicative of some emptiness in other areas of life, like school and home.” When these three needs are met, people are more motivated, perform better, persist longer, and exhibit greater creativity.

  Ryan isn’t against setting limits on tech use but thinks such limits should be set with the child, and not arbitrarily enforced because you think you know best. “Part of what you want your kid to get from that is not just less screen time
, but an understanding of why,” he says. The more you talk with your kids about the costs of too much tech use and the more you make decisions with them, as opposed to for them, the more willing they will be to listen to your guidance.

  We can start by sharing some of the coping and reimagining tactics we learned in part one. Let your children know what you’re doing differently in your own life to manage distraction; being vulnerable and showing kids that we understand their struggle and face similar challenges helps build trust. Just as we saw in the previous section how good bosses model disconnecting from distraction, parents should model how to be indistractable.

  We may also want to consider providing real-world opportunities for children to find the autonomy, competence, and relatedness they need. Easing up on structured academic or athletic activities and giving them more time for free play may help them find the connections they otherwise look for online.

  We can’t solve all our kids’ troubles—nor should we attempt to—but we can try to better understand their struggles through the lens of their psychological needs. Knowing what’s really driving their overuse of technology is the first step to helping kids build resilience instead of escaping discomfort through distraction. Once our kids feel understood, they can begin planning how best to spend their time.

  REMEMBER THIS

  •Internal triggers drive behavior. To understand how to help kids manage distraction, we need to start by understanding the source of the problem.

  •Our kids need psychological nutrients. According to a widely accepted theory of human motivation, all people need three things to thrive: a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

  •Distractions satisfy deficiencies. When our kids’ psychological needs are not met in the real world, they go looking for satisfaction—often in virtual environments.

  •Kids need alternatives. Parents and guardians can take steps to help kids find balance between their online and offline worlds by providing more offline opportunities to find autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

  •The four-part Indistractable Model is valuable for kids as well. Teach them methods for handling distraction, and, most important, model being indistractable yourself.

  Chapter 31

  Make Time for Traction Together

  When it comes to helping our kids manage distraction, it’s important to make the conversation about people rather than tech. That’s according to Lori Getz, the founder of Cyber Education Consultants, which hosts internet safety workshops in schools—it’s a lesson she learned in her own childhood.

  Getz got her first phone (a corded one for her room) as a teenager. The moment she got it, she closed the door and spent the entire weekend locked in her room, talking with friends instead of spending time with her family. When she got home from school the next Monday, her door had been taken off the hinges. “It’s not the phone’s fault you’re behaving like an a-hole,” her father chided her. “You closed the door and you closed all of us out.”

  While Getz doesn’t recommend her father’s aggressive tactics or tone, his focus on the effect her behavior had on others rather than the phone itself proved instructive. “Make [the conversation] about how you’re treating and interacting with the people around you,” she advises, as opposed to blaming the tool.

  When it comes to how we spend time together as a family, the important thing is to define what constitutes traction versus distraction. A recent Getz family vacation put her theory to the test. Her six- and eleven-year-old daughters asked if they could use their phones during the two-hour ride from Sacramento to Truckee. Motivated by a desire to ease the monotony of the ride as well as the opportunity for a quiet conversation with her husband, Getz agreed. The device time made the long drive easier, but later in the vacation, Getz noticed her daughters started turning to their devices a bit too much.

  The girls’ tech overuse came to a head when Getz returned from a run to find her kids glued to their screens. Neither was ready to leave for their family outing, as had been agreed upon. Rather than losing her cool and punitively announcing strict house rules around the kids’ use of devices, Getz decided it was time for a family talk.

  During the family huddle, they all confirmed their desire to spend quality time together (aka traction). By agreeing upon how they wanted to spend their time and what needed to get done, it became clear that doing anything else was a distraction interfering with their plans. They decided as a family that they could use their devices only after they were 100 percent ready to go.

  Getz acknowledges that admitting you don’t have all the answers is a great way to involve the kids in finding new solutions. “We’re all figuring it out as we go along,” she says. Getz wants her daughters to continue to ask themselves questions to self-monitor and self-regulate their behavior: “Is my behavior working for me? Am I proud of myself, in the way I’m behaving?” she asks them to ask themselves. “I work with a lot of teenagers who will often tell me that they don’t want to be distracted, they don’t want to be sucked into all this stuff, but they just don’t know how to stop.”

  To help children learn self-regulation, we must teach them how to make time for traction. We can encourage regular discussions about our values and theirs, and teach them how to set aside time to be the people they want to be. Keep in mind that while it’s easy for us to think, “Kids have all the time in the world,” it’s important to remember they have their own priorities within each of their life domains.

  Working with our kids to create a values-based schedule can help them make time for their personal health and wellness domain, ensuring ample time for rest, hygiene, exercise, and proper nourishment. For example, while my wife and I don’t enforce a strict bedtime for our daughter, we made it a point to expose her to research findings showing the importance of ample sleep during adolescent years. After she realized that sleep was important to her well-being, it didn’t take much for her to conclude that screen time after 9 pm on a school night was a bad idea—a distraction from her value of staying healthy. As you guessed, she timeboxed periods of rest in her day. While she may occasionally find herself deviating from this evening appointment with her pillow, having it in her schedule provides her with a self-imposed guideline to self-monitor, self-regulate, and, ultimately, live out her values.

  When it comes to the “work” domain in kids’ lives, for the typical American child, work is synonymous with school-related responsibilities and household chores. While school schedules provide a timetable for a child’s daytime hours, how they spend their time after school can be a source of disagreement and frustration.

  Without a clear plan, many kids are left to make impulsive decisions that often involve digital distraction.

  I recently had coffee with a friend who is the mother of twin teenage boys. She bemoaned the mind-altering influence of her kids’ obsession with the latest techno-villain: the online game Fortnite. “They can’t stop!” she told me. She was convinced the game was addictive and her kids were junkies. Every evening involved fights to get them to stop playing and finish their homework. Exasperated, she asked me what I thought she should do.

  My advice involved a few unorthodox ideas. First, I advised her to have a conversation with her sons and to listen to them without judgment. Potential questions to ask included the following: Is keeping up with their schoolwork consistent with their values? Do they know why they are asked to do their homework? What are the consequences of not doing their assignments? Are they OK with those consequences, both short term (getting a bad grade) and long term (settling for a low-skilled job)?

  Without their agreement that schoolwork mattered to them, forcing them to do something they didn’t want to do amounted to coercion and would only breed resentment.

  “But if I don’t hound my kids, they’ll fail,” she objected.

  “So?” I asked. “If the only reason they study is to get you off their backs, what will they do when they get to college or start a job and you’re not ar
ound? Maybe they need to know what failure feels like sooner rather than later.” I advised her that teenagers are generally old enough to make decisions about how they spend their time. If that means flunking a test, then so be it. Coercion may be a band-aid solution, but it is certainly not a remedy.

  Next, I proposed she ask them to suggest how much time they’d like to spend on various activities such as studying, being with family or friends, or playing Fortnite. I warned that while she may not like her kids’ answers, it’s important to honor their input. The goal here is to teach them to spend their time mindfully by reserving a place for important activities on their weekly schedules. Remember, their schedules (like ours) should be assessed and adjusted weekly to ensure that their time is spent living out their values.

  Playing Fortnite, for instance, is fine if the time has been allocated to it in advance. With a timeboxed schedule that includes time for digital devices, kids know that they’ll have time to do the things they enjoy. I advised her to change the context of their family conversations around tech—from her screaming “No!” to teaching her kids to tell themselves, “Not yet.”

  Empowering children with the autonomy to control their own time is a tremendous gift. Even if they fail from time to time, failure is part of the learning process.

  Last, I advised her to make sure her kids’ days include plenty of time for play, both with their friends and with their parents. Her boys were using Fortnite to have fun with their buddies, and would continue to play online without an offline alternative. If we want our kids to fulfill their need for relatedness offline, they need time to build face-to-face friendships outside school. These relationships should be free from the pressure of coaches, teachers, and parents telling them what to do. Unfortunately, for the typical child these days, playtime won’t happen unless it’s scheduled.