Wired Child

by Richard Freed

  Four-year-olds will ask why your family doesn’t watch as much TV as other families. Six-year-olds will ask why they don’t have the same gaming devices as their peers. Preteens and teens may wonder why their friends are getting smartphones and they’re not, and so on. It’s important to help our kids understand the reasons for such choices in language appropriate to their age and developmental maturity.

  A good way to begin teaching kids about digital literacy is to help them understand how seemingly minor decisions that they make as a child or teen—how much time they spend gaming, social networking, or watching TV—can profoundly affect their future. We need to help kids see that their desire to become a veterinarian, a teacher, or any number of long-term goals can be easily thwarted if they become caught up in the heavy tech habits snaring many of their peers.

  Too often parents avoid these conversations, because they expect that their kids are already aware of potential consequences. Or some parents assume that their kids consciously choose to game, social network, or text rather than study. Yet children, and even older teens (see Chapter 9), don’t have the judgment needed to make such choices. They need help from parents, teachers, and others invested in their future.

  When you talk with your kids about technology, you may be surprised to find what your child or teen has already noticed. A 3rd-grade boy told me, “Oh, I know kids who are gamers. That’s all they talk about and they don’t seem to care very much about school.” And 4th or 5th graders may be aware of how their peers’ technology use distances them from families and friends. A 10-year-old boy told his mother why he didn’t like visiting a peer’s house, “He just sits in his room and plays on his iPod and doesn’t want to do anything else.”

  By the time kids reach middle school, they may realize that some of their peers are suffering as the result of being entangled in cyber drama. And most high-school-age students are aware of highly capable peers who struggle with grades because they’re buried in video games, social networks, and other entertainment technologies.

  We don’t have to be heavy-handed when we talk with our kids about these issues, e.g., telling them that video games or social networks are “ruining” their lives. Instead, we can gently remind them that activities like school, reading, and extracurricular involvements bring them pleasure. This helps kids develop their own insight about appropriate uses of technology.

  How Does It Feel to Be Manipulated?

  Questioning authority is developmentally normal for kids, especially as they enter and move through their teen years. Entertainment-based tech companies co-opt this instinct, convincing kids to reject the conformity of their families so they can (supposedly) find their own way using trendy technologies.

  We should help our kids understand that while they may not want to follow our lead for the rest of their lives, being played or controlled by giant tech corporations is a bad alternative. Ask your kids about their aspirations, and then ask them what they think commercial technology companies want most from kids. Do tech companies care if children or teens don’t reach their own goals? What strategies do those corporations use to encourage kids to use, or even overuse, their products? If you have teens, consider watching with them the powerful documentary Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood.36 The segments in which child marketers talk about manipulating and branding kids for profit may open kids’ eyes to a side of industry they don’t know exists.

  Teens can also work together to limit their use of entertainment technologies. The New York Times article “ To Deal With Obsession, Some Defriend Facebook”37 describes teens who set up peer support groups that help them deactivate their social network accounts or limit their use to improve their chances of academic success. “We decided we spent way too much time obsessing over Facebook, and it would be better if we took a break from it,” 17-year-old Halley from San Francisco, CA said. Fifteen-year-old Neeka, a high school sophomore from Ann Arbor, MI, got better grades after making a pact with her sister to limit her Facebook time.

  Schools’ Role in Teaching Digital Literacy

  Because our children’s immersion in entertainment technologies often hinders their academic performance, elementary and secondary schools have an important role to play in teaching kids digital literacy. One goal of this literacy should be to help kids learn to resist social pressure to indulge in entertainment technologies. Boys, especially, experience pressure from peers to engage in intensive online gaming communities. Girls, more than boys, are coerced by peers to be constantly available by social network and text. All kids experience social pressure to get smartphones that provide them increased access to academics-thwarting technologies.

  Schools can ease this pressure through broad-based efforts to talk with students and their parents about the research that shows the more kids use video games, TV, or social networks, the less well they do academically. When schools remain silent about kids’ tech use, students suffer. A study of 9-to-17-year-old students found that those who spent more time social networking had lower grades than kids who spent less time using the technology. In what should be an eye-opener for schools, these heavy social networking kids acted as frequent recruiters—getting large numbers of fellow students to visit their favorite sites.38 Such recruiting can drag down the academic performance of the greater student body.

  Schools should talk with their students about the risks of being a peer-follower on matters of technology. They should help kids and their parents understand that the tech-focused lifestyle normalized by our culture is a poor fit with the increasingly rigorous admission requirements of colleges. Schools can also outline what a successful student’s after-school schedule typically looks like: focused study and sports, arts, or community activities rather than multitasking between fun-based technologies.

  HELP KIDS LEARN TO NAVIGATE THE REAL WORLD

  Technology use tends to be self-reinforcing: Kids who live in the virtual world can grow fearful of venturing into the real one. We therefore need to help children develop real-world communication skills and encourage and support their face-to-face interactions with adults and peers.

  In the revised edition of Odd Girl Out, leadership authority Rachel Simmons explores the emotional costs of online relationships compared to real-world connections and shows that parents can help.39 Online exchanges deny the experience of registering the tone of comments, so that we can’t understand their true meaning. For example, kids could interpret the online comment, “Kim likes your new boyfriend,” a number of ways, potentially leading to confusion, a cascade of drama, hurt feelings, and the unnecessary loss of friends. An effective way to provide guidance is by raising examples like this, asking your child if he or she has ever experienced the misunderstanding of an online remark, and talking about the advantages of real-world interactions.

  Another benefit to getting kids involved in real-world activities is that it can improve the quality of their relationships. Many children and teenagers find it easier to ridicule one another online than in the real world, since they don’t have to see someone’s reaction if they say something mean. Remember from Chapter 1 that kids who spend greater amounts of time online are more likely to cyberbully or be cyberbullied than kids who spend less time online. I therefore suggest encouraging younger children to be involved in sports, drama, or other experiences where they interact with peers and adults in real time. Teens are also well served by volunteer or occupational experiences that demand offline interactions.

  7

  Nurture Young Children’s Brain Development

  An advertisement for a device using the latest technology promises parents that it will help kids become “more interested in school work” and get “better marks in school.” This device is also intended to double as a babysitter, since the ad promises it’s great for “keeping small fry out of mischief… and out of mother’s hair.”1 These claims are actually from a 1950 advertisement promoting what was then the most modern in high-tech screen devices: a Motorola
television set.

  Unfortunately television, on the whole, has not educated children well. Research suggests kids ages 2½ and up benefit from limited exposure to educational programming like Sesame Street or Blue’s Clues,2 but American kids typically spend long hours watching entertainment TV that displaces reading and homework.3 The result? TV generally detracts from academic success.4

  To give due credit, the Motorola ad is right about the ability of television to occupy children without their caregivers’ attention. In 2006, a study published in Pediatrics reported that the time kids (birth to 12) spent watching TV without parents “was strongly negatively related to time spent interacting with parents or siblings.”5 This is concerning because a strong connection to a parent or other caregiver underlies children’s emotional health, academic success, and overall well-being. All things considered, television is a crummy babysitter.

  REHASHING CLAIMS OF AN ELECTRONIC EDUCATING BABYSITTER

  Marketing for the current generation of interactive technologies also promises parents an educating babysitter. An article in Parenting touts, “Want to enjoy eating out, even with your little one? Distract kids of every age with more iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad applications and game[s].” This article claims that various apps provide “brain food for kids,” “a healthy way to strengthen those memory muscles,” or “teach math skills.”6

  Also advocating for young kids’ use of technology are those whose job it is to promote gadgets and software that ostensibly foster young children’s learning. Not surprisingly, their focus often appears limited to which screen products kids should use rather than on the more important question of whether using these products is in kids’ best interests.7 This contrasts with child development experts who have children’s overall well-being as their primary interest, and who aren’t financially invested in kids’ use of screens or technology. Unfortunately, in a culture consumed with technology, those with a vested interest in endorsing tech stuff may decide our kids’ fate.

  Recently, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the nation’s leading early childhood professional organization, which accredits childcare providers, decided to update its technology guidelines for kids from birth to eight. Sadly, the NAEYC heavily weighted the guidelines’ authorship towards those who promote young kids’ use of technology.8 Not surprisingly, the resulting guidelines strongly endorse young kids’ tech use without mentioning the associated risks. This support for young kids’ tech time is now being communicated to parents via childcare providers who follow their accrediting organization’s guidelines.

  Parents also may have become aware of the NAEYC’s guidelines through the popular press. In her Huffington Post article “Saying Yes to Digital Media in Preschool and Kindergarten,” Lisa Guernsey, director of the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative, ballyhoos the NAEYC’s position statement and the importance of exposing young children to technology.9 Like many others advocating for early tech exposure, Guernsey is financially tied to companies invested in bringing such products to young kids—something she neglects to mention in her article. The New America Foundation has the stated purpose of promoting screen media in early education settings, and its biggest funders (at $1 million or more in 2013) include The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy.10 Both Microsoft (Xbox) and Google (Google Play Games) sell video games for young kids.

  Filling Early Childhood with Digital Media

  Assurances that the latest tech gadgets can both occupy and teach young ones help parents feel good about handing these devices to their kids. A New York Times article noted that there were nearly three million downloads of Fisher-Price’s Laugh & Learn tablet and smartphone apps for babies in 2011–2012 alone.11

  The belief that very young kids benefit from digital devices also increases their use time. While we don’t know what portion of screen time is spent watching traditional TV vs. using a tablet, iPod, or smartphone, 29% of babies under the age of one watch TV and video content for about 90 minutes a day, while on average 64% of kids watch a little more than 2 hours a day between their first and second birthday.12 By the time they’re about four years old, on average children view a little more than four hours of television and video content each weekday.13 An increasing percentage of this screen time is on mobile platforms such as tablets and smartphones.

  Let No Childhood Moment Go Unscreened

  As so much of young kids’ lives is now taken up by screens, corporations have to dig deeper to find non-screen moments of childhood ripe for new products. Fisher-Price’s Newborn-to-Toddler Apptivity™ Seat for iPad® device has gained recent notoriety. It’s an infant bouncy seat that places an iPad directly above the baby’s face. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), which is leading a recall effort, notes that the device blocks the baby’s view of the rest of the world and “encourages parents to leave infants all alone with an iPad.”14 Nevertheless, packaging for the seat advertises “Play & learning at baby’s fingertips!”15

  Another product of an increasingly screen-ubiquitous childhood is the iPotty, a toilet-training device with an iPad stand in front of the child. Its manufacturer, CTA, promotes the “removable touchscreen cover to guard against messy accidents and smudges.”16 In 2013, the iPotty received a Toady, CCFC’s public choice award for the Worst Toy of the Year. Michelle, a mother from Greenville, SC, explained that she voted for the iPotty as worst toy because: “Toilet learning should be a time of positive interaction between child and caregiver. Also, children should be aware of the cues in their bodies as they learn. This toy takes this social/emotional focus out of the process and substitutes the hypnotism of a screen.”17

  THE EFFECTS OF WIRING UP THE YOUNG

  While many promise the benefits of the latest digital devices for young kids, what does science say? Unfortunately, these technologies are so new that their long-term impact—which is how they must be gauged—has not been determined. As the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School notes: “Although there are many products that offer lapware and educational computer games for young children, there is very little research evidence to show that these products are beneficial for learning.”18

  This doesn’t mean we don’t have some important indicators, many of which are pointing to some disturbing effects of the move to immerse young kids in the digital sphere. In fact, despite a lot of hype, in many cases the effects of the newer screen technologies appear to be much like those of the old-fashioned TV.

  Teaching Kids to be Alone with Screens

  The revised NAEYC guidelines described previously suggest that digital technologies “have the potential to bring adults and children together for a shared experience, rather than keeping them apart.”19 However, this contrasts with how popular mobile devices are actually used by most kids and their parents. The Center on Media and Human Development at Northwestern University, looking at how children (ages 2 to 5) use technologies like the iPad or iPod touch, found that only about a quarter of parents use the device with their kids at least most of the time.20

  There’s also evidence that these and similar devices teach kids to be alone with technology. According to the Center, by the time kids are between 6 and 8 years old, only 11% of parents use these gadgets with their children at least most of the time.21 As many of us have seen in restaurants and other settings, young kids’ use of these devices encourages them to be alone—unnaturally alone—even in the presence of their family.

  Why the Strength of Interactivity is a Weakness for Young Kids

  Advocates such as those who crafted the NAEYC’s position statement claim that interactive technologies (for example, a device that responds when a child swipes a touch screen) are better for young kids than passive media such as television. The position statement reads: “Noninteractive media can lead to passive viewing and overexposure to screen time for young children an
d are not substitutes for interactive and engaging uses of digital media....”22

  It’s a mistake to believe that a digital machine’s ability to respond to a child’s action—especially when we talk about younger kids—conveys an advantage. Instead, the truth is likely just the reverse. The profoundly absorbing nature of interactive digital devices can blunt a child’s natural drive to seek interaction with parents and other caregivers.

  ABC’s Nightline staff visited the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development. They joined child experts behind a two-way mirror to watch 3-to 5-year-olds using an iPad. As the ABC News article describes the visit, “The center tested for ‘distractibility’ by having researchers call out the names of the children who were playing with iPads and noted how readily the children responded. Many of the kids were so zoned in on the apps they were playing with, they didn’t respond to the researchers at all.”23 Video from the story shows the troubling, but familiar to many parents, sight of iPad-involved kids apparently oblivious to an adult repeatedly calling their name.24

  When traditional toys such as blocks were substituted for the iPads, Barnard researchers found that the kids became more verbal, social, and creative. “You see how much their vocabulary has gone up and they are talking to each other,” Tovah Klein, the director of the Center noted.25

  It’s perhaps most upsetting for the families I work with when young kids begin to show a preference for “interacting with” electronic gadgets over their parents. This isn’t really surprising. Raising young kids is tough business. Moms and dads can’t be entertaining around the clock, but a tablet, phone, or other interactive device can.

  Wall Street Journal reporter and father Ben Worthen described what happened when he and his wife provided an iPad to their toddler. Initially, Ben and his wife were hopeful, as the device appeared to encourage their son’s language development. Then they noticed that their son could go into a trance-like state with his iPad and wouldn’t respond when they called his name. It became a nightly battle to get him to put it down. These concerns led Ben and his wife to stop giving the iPad to their son.26