Wired Child

by Richard Freed

  The parents of 12-year-old Cassie and 8-year-old Kenny separated soon after Kenny was born. For a few years, the parents split custody, but then the kids’ father remarried and his attention shifted to his new family. Kenny and Cassie could no longer depend on their father to show up for visits, and he called less and less. The loss of their father would have been more destructive if their maternal grandfather hadn’t stepped in to fill the void. Realizing his grandkids’ loss, he moved closer to the family so he could pick the kids up from school and spend time with them either doing homework or at the park. This connection helped the kids emotionally and academically. It also curbed the children’s craving for peer companionship online.

  Far too many kids aren’t as fortunate as Cassie and Kenny, and we therefore need a renewed emphasis on addressing the problem of fathers who are less involved in kids’ lives. Joe Kelly, author of Dads and Daughters, says that dads who live at least some of their lives away from their kids can continue to have a positive influence on their upbringing, e.g., by ensuring kids aren’t put in the middle of possible parental conflict and by doing their best to stay a part of their kids’ lives, in person, through phone calls, etc.14 Two national organizations which help kids connect with mentors are Big Brothers Big Sisters (www.bbbs.org) and Mentor: National Mentoring Partnership (www.mentoring.org).

  9

  Give Sensation-Seeking Teens the Help They Need

  The Huffington Post article “What Really Happens On a Teen Girl’s iPhone” describes the life of 14-year-old Casey from Millburn, New Jersey. The 8th-grader’s phone is the center of her existence as she texts, games, and closely scrutinizes the number of followers or friends she has on various social networks—about 580 on Instagram and 1,110 on Facebook. She’s preoccupied with the number of “likes” her Facebook profile picture receives compared with her peers. As she says, “If you don’t get 100 ‘likes,’ you make other people share it so you get 100…. Or else you just get upset. Everyone wants to get the most ‘likes.’ It’s like a popularity contest.”1

  There are costs to Casey’s phone obsession; author Bianca Bosker says that “[Casey’s] phone, be it Facebook, Instagram or iMessage, is constantly pulling her away from her homework, or her sleep, or her conversations with her family.” Casey says she wishes she could put her phone down. But she can’t. “I’ll wake up in the morning and go on Facebook just… because,” she says. “It’s not like I want to or I don’t. I just go on it. I’m, like, forced to. I don’t know why. I need to. Facebook takes up my whole life.”2

  Casey’s tech-obsessed life is much like that of Sean, a high school senior whose habits are described in Matt Richtel’s New York Times article “Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction.”3 Sean concedes that the long hours he spends video gaming (four hours each weekday and twice as much on weekends) are hurting his school grades and physical health. Sean wishes his parents would step in to limit his gaming so he could focus on his studies because he struggles to quit on his own.

  PROMOTING THE MYTH OF THE TECH-SAVVY TEEN

  The real-life stories of these teens contrast with the manufactured vision of the tech-savvy teen typically portrayed by the media and tech industry. In his pro-industry book Grown Up Digital, strategy consultant Don Tapscott says present-day kids “can work effectively with music playing and news coming in from Facebook. They can keep up their social networks while they concentrate on work; they seem to need this to feel comfortable. I think they’ve learned to live in a world where they’re bombarded with information, so that they can block out the TV or other distractions while they focus on the task at hand.”4

  This image of teens growing up happily and successfully surrounded by electronic amusements is frequently promoted in popular culture, especially by those invested in teens’ open access to their highly profitable technologies. Alison Hillhouse, an MTV marketing researcher, contends that today’s teens are in command of their tech use because they’ve been raised with it. “They have grown up with social media their entire life,” she says, “They are more in control of it.” Parents apparently don’t need to worry about setting rules for their teens’ use of the Internet, as Hillhouse says of adolescents, “They set rules and regulations for themselves.”5

  American culture apparently accepts this tech-savvy claim, and many parents evidently believe that teens can manage their own tech use capably. In Chapter 6, we saw that parents set remarkably few tech rules for kids of all ages. Unfortunately, lack of supervision becomes increasingly common as children move through their teens. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 38% of 8-to 10-year-olds report they have at least some media rules that are enforced most of the time. As kids transition into their teen years, rules become even more scarce. Only 29% of 11-to 14-year-olds report they have at least some media rules that are enforced most of the time compared to a paltry 16% of 15-to 18-year-olds.6

  What’s the result of allowing teens to navigate the technology environment for themselves? Kids like Casey and Sean say themselves that they can’t control their use of technology. They are much like teens in my practice who tell me that they truly want to spend less time gaming, social networking, or texting, and want to spend more time with their families and studying. However, their tech use has become compulsive—they literally can’t keep their hands off their phones. Since these admissions are made in the confidence of a therapeutic relationship, I can’t relay this information to their parents.

  I encourage kids to talk with parents about these problems but they won’t because it would risk their parents’ intervention. Such is the tremendously difficult spot our teens are in: knowing at one level they need help yet refusing to admit it to their parents. To do so would reveal their limitations—something teens, who tend to believe they’re invincible, are reluctant to do. So teens try themselves to rein in their own tech habits, and for reasons we discuss in this chapter, are coming out on the losing end.

  Some would argue that Casey and Sean represent teens at the extreme end of the tech use spectrum, but I think their habits under-represent or at least accurately reflect what’s typical for today’s teens. American adolescents ages 15–18 somehow manage to spend nearly 5½ hours using entertainment-based screens plus a little more than 2½ hours talking and texting on their phones every single day.7 That’s a remarkable amount of time playing with technology for kids who need to be focusing on their transition to adulthood and all that it demands.

  There are also those who view adolescents’ immersion in digital play spaces as normal and benign, claiming that this is simply how today’s teens spend their time, just as kids of prior generations hung out at the soda fountain or listened to jukebox music. However, earlier generations of teens didn’t spend this much time engaged in similar self-amusements, nor did these “retro” activities have the harmful effects that research finds for obsessive screen and phone use.

  The bottom line: The belief that teens are tech savvy in that they grasp how time spent with gadgets affects their future and can control their tech usage is another myth promoted by a self-serving industry. It’s illogical to suggest that just by virtue of growing up with entertainment technologies teens can better manage their use of them. That’s like suggesting that teens who have been raised on fast food can better manage their diet. Still, perhaps the best evidence that this belief is a myth is revealed as we peer deep inside the teen mind.

  THE TEEN MIND: HEAVY ON THE ACCELERATOR, LIGHT ON THE BRAKE

  Using the latest brain imaging techniques, scientists have found that as kids enter adolescence, there’s a dramatic remodeling of the dopaminergic system,8 the brain areas responsible for reward. Chemical reward sensitivity peaks in adolescence, so that for teens, rewards feel mega-rewarding. Think back a few years, and you may remember yourself how listening to a certain song or some other experience during adolescence filled you with overwhelmingly positive emotions you just can’t replicate as an adult. These reward-amplifying brain changes turn
teens into sensation-seeking machines.

  At the same time, teens’ ability to contain impulsive behavior is compromised, as their prefrontal cortex (the brain’s judgment center) is not fully developed. During adolescence, this center is busy making connections with and gradually gaining the ability to regulate the lower brain structures. It’s these lower structures that generate highly emotional and impulsive responses. So even as teen brains are programmed for peak pleasure from (often impulsive) reward seeking, behavior control is still very much a “work in progress” that lags behind.

  These two brain systems, one that seeks reward and the other that controls behavior, interact to produce characteristic teen behavior. Laurence Steinberg, psychology professor at Temple University and author of Age of Opportunity,9 describes it this way, “One way to think about it is a kind of competition or balance between two different brain systems: A system that impels us to seek out rewards and go for novelty and excitement, sensation seeking, and then a brain system that really puts the brakes on impulses.”10

  What’s the effect of the adolescent brain changes that put our teens in thrill-seeking mode without a fully mature judgment center? They compromise impulse control, insight, and the ability to make good decisions. As Steinberg says, “It’s like starting the engine before a good braking system is in place.”11 I was not immune as a teen: jumping off cliffs into waters of unknown depth, driving too fast, and a number of other imprudent or reckless behaviors that seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time.

  How do these brain changes run their course, and when do teen decision-making skills become on par with those of adults? Evidence suggests that sensation-seeking is typically at its peak between the ages of 15 and 17, so it makes sense that experimentation with alcohol and marijuana typically peaks around the age of 17, as does the commission of crime and car accidents.12 And the prefrontal cortex—which could moderate impulses—is one of the last brain areas to mature, with development continuing through adolescence into the mid-20s. The result is that as young people move beyond age 17 and head into their 20s, they generally are able to make better decisions and are less likely to jump into poor choices.

  A BAD FIT: TEEN BRAINS AND THE TECH-SAVVY TEEN MYTH

  With risk comes opportunity. Throughout human history, the remodeling of the teen brain into a thrill-seeking machine has served a purpose, encouraging teens to do the seemingly impossible: to move beyond the safe confines of family to seek out new habitats, food sources, and a mate.13 In more recent times, these brain changes have emboldened teens to leave home to attend college or seek jobs.

  Unfortunately, these teen brain changes evolved so young people could succeed in a world that looks less and less like the one we live in now. For most of human existence, the rewards teens sought required great effort and were associated with something productive, such as building a new shelter or learning skills that promoted survival in dangerous circumstances. Yet in the modern world, unproductive activities provide powerful rewards. Drugs and alcohol divert too many teens. And with the advent of the digital-age, the thrill-seeking teen brain can find gratification in dopamine-rich, but easily obtained, rewards of entertainment technologies rather than seeking out the challenging rewards found in school and other real-life experiences.

  That’s why our teens have always needed—and until fairly recently typically received—lots of support from those who love and care for them to help them make good life choices. Nonetheless, the tech-savvy teen myth has convinced this generation of parents that adolescents know what they’re doing with the technologies that take up so much of their lives. The consequences are apparent in the tremendous overuse of entertainment technologies by the typical American teen. They are also evident in my practice.

  I see many 17-and 18-year-old kids whose anxiety and depression have a similar genesis: Their prefrontal cortices have developed enough for them to recognize that their earlier years spent playing with e-gadgets hasn’t helped them, and instead they should have been studying and preparing for their future. By this time, a lot of damage has been done not only to parent-child relationships from constant arguments over tech overuse but also to teens’ chances for college admission, as they’ve accumulated poor grades and little constructive out-of-school experience.

  THE EROSION OF ADOLESCENT ACCOUNTABILITY

  Our ancestors lived under challenging circumstances. Food and other resources were hard to come by, and a family’s survival sometimes hung in the balance. Most earlier generations needed adolescents—with their strong bodies and minds—to play an important role. Consider the tasks entrusted to teenagers in 19th-century American frontier families: tending animals and crops, chopping wood, cooking, and hunting from dawn until dusk. Teens who didn’t fulfill their role put their families at risk for economic disaster and even death.

  Prior cultures relied on their adolescents out of necessity. However, such reliance also gave teens purpose, indelibly connecting them to family and community, and helped them stay focused and lead productive, fulfilling lives. While earlier societies didn’t have access to brain imaging studies, they understood this. They knew through experience that teens, with their sensation-seeking minds, are helped when they’re held accountable to their families, communities, and to themselves.

  One of the most tragic consequences of the tech-savvy teen myth is that it erodes the accountability that adolescents need. Present-day US culture normalizes teens donning headphones, shutting their bedroom doors, developing a tunnel focus on screens, and losing themselves to self-amusement. Even when tech playtime clearly supplants duties at home or a focus on schoolwork (the two main jobs of today’s teens), this myth assumes the destructive imbalance is a normal part of growing up.

  Teens’ insistence that continuous access to screens is what makes them happy also contributes to parents’ difficulty recognizing the problems associated with diminished adolescent accountability. As we saw in Chapter 1, though, the more time our kids spend with screens, the less happy and fulfilled they are. That’s because allowing teens to spend so much time in wired-up self-pleasure sends a dangerous message: Even if kids play with e-gadgets for most of the day, their family will do just fine; if they don’t put much effort into school, it doesn’t really matter. According to Family Matters, by Brown University sociology professor Gregory Elliott, this lack of “mattering,” especially to one’s family, causes significant emotional and behavioral problems for today’s adolescents.14

  THE PERILS OF SELF-FOCUS

  Tech-heavy lives not only diminish teens’ accountability, but also foster their self-absorption. San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge, who together with W. Keith Campbell authored The Narcissism Epidemic,15 says in a recent article that the younger generation, compared to those prior, is “more Generation Me than Generation We.” She goes on to say the latest research “demonstrates a rise in self-focus among American young people, including narcissism, high expectations, self-esteem, thinking one is above average, and focusing on personal (vs. global) fears.”16

  What is causing this shift towards self-focus in the young? Signs suggest those who spend greater amounts of time social networking tend to be more narcissistic than those who spend less.17 Similarly, those who are addicted to online gaming are more likely to have narcissistic traits than those who aren’t addicted.18

  Does immersion in digital entertainment actually lead teens to become more self-focused? I see that evidence in my work. Today’s interactive technologies have a unique ability to demand attention, leaving teens with less capacity to attend to their families. Wired-up kids are less likely to notice that mom had a rough day at work and could use help with the chores, or that dad is worried about a sick relative.

  Moreover, the way our kids spend their time online may also affect what, or who, they view as important. Today’s preteens and teens can spend endless hours focused on self-display: fussing over social networking profiles, making videos of themselves, or creating
a new gaming avatar. Such focus on self-promotion can encourage teens’ self-absorption at the expense of empathy for the needs of their families and others.

  A Fantasy Gap

  There are other costs. This generation’s increasing narcissistic focus may also lead them to feel more entitled—that they deserve things without working for them. A recent study by Professor Twenge and Tim Kasser, Professor of Psychology at Knox College, found a “fantasy gap,” or a divergence between teens’ desire for material goods and their willingness to work to obtain them. In 1976–1978, while 48% of recent high school graduates reported that it was important to have a lot of money, by 2005–2007 this had jumped to 62%. Yet our teens’ willingness to work to obtain such a lifestyle is going in the opposite direction. Of high school graduates from 1976–1978, only 25% admitted they didn’t want to work hard, but by 2005–2007 a full 39% admitted this was the case.19

  The Frontier Exercise

  While heavy tech use increases the self-absorption and decreases the work ethic of many teens I see in counseling, these kids often struggle to recognize this even when it’s brought to their attention. To help increase teens’ insight, I have found something I call the frontier exercise helpful. In the case of game-obsessed 15-year-old David, the exercise not only helped him and his family see how self-focused he had become, it also helped him see the need to change.

  David was brought to counseling by his parents, Janet and Ben, because he had abandoned chores, studying, and just about everything else except gaming. In one of our first meetings, David’s parents turned to their son to express their frustrations. David responded angrily, “They’re my games, it’s my life, and I can do what I want!” Janet and Ben then turned to me to ask what could help their son become more aware of the needs of his family.

  I suggested that we do the frontier exercise. The first step was to ask David and his parents to imagine that they were a frontier family 150 years ago, doing their best to survive in an inhospitable landscape. I asked each family member to describe their role. Janet went first, saying that she likely would be working in the fields from sunrise until sunset and cooking for the family. Ben went next, and said he would be plowing or hunting for most of the day. Then we all turned to David and asked him to envision his role on the harsh frontier. “I don’t know,” he replied, “I’d probably be outside with friends doing stupid things to entertain ourselves.”