Wired Child

by Richard Freed

  Encourage Kids Not to Quit Their Day Job (School)

  “School is boring…. There’s nothing for me there,” adolescents may complain. Before we give in to the notion that our teen will never like school, it’s vital to make sure that their immersion in a digital playground isn’t the reason behind this feeling. It may be that the more subtle joys found in school simply can’t stack up to the drug-like rewards from entertainment technologies.

  To give teens an opportunity to appreciate the payoffs at school, it’s vital that we limit their use of entertainment technologies and do all we can to support healthy school involvement, e.g., by setting up a structured learning environment at home. Parents I work with find such steps increase their kids’ learning effort and school enjoyment, as it’s hard to appreciate academic experiences when you constantly show up to class unprepared and are dinged for incomplete or missing homework.

  We also need to show why school is worth it, helping answer the question “What’s in it for me?” If college is one of your goals for your child, or one he or she has identified, I suggest that families visit colleges, not starting when kids are in their junior year of high school, but from the time kids are young. Rather than using the opportunity to make heavy-handed comments about the importance of education, visit local schools or stop by a university when on vacation to enjoy a nice walk around the campus or eat at a local café. Sometimes it’s possible to eat in a school’s dining venue.

  College campuses tend to be beautiful settings with tree-lined paths and young adults spending positive time together. Such experiences can prompt kids of all ages to think, “Oh, I’d like to be here,” which boosts their motivation for trying hard at school. Follow up with a little research on admission requirements and costs if your child has shown interest.

  Finding Inspiration in the Real World

  How teens spend their time outside of school powerfully affects their chances of life success. Specifically, teens involved in extracurricular activities tend to do better academically,28 and they demonstrate to prospective colleges or employers that they have gained real-life experience. So parents can play a constructive role in encouraging kids to explore the world through involvement in sports, music programs, civic organizations, and vocational experiences.

  “But I can’t interest my child in anything other than video games (or social networks),” parents tell me. I know. If we allow teens open access to their devices, that’s how they’ll spend their lives, so carefully consider your priorities as a family and give teens the help they need to find satisfying alternatives to technology.

  A number of tech-obsessed teens I work with have benefitted from volunteering in the community. Philanthropic experiences can help kids realize that many are less fortunate than them, and that there are more important things than playing with gadgets. Community experiences also show kids their actions can make a difference, even if it’s a small one. So aid your teen in a search for such opportunities, perhaps by checking with parents in your area or encouraging your child to ask a school counselor or other trusted adult about available volunteer experiences. Teens also may benefit from your assistance in creating a resume or filling out a job/volunteer application.

  10

  Achieve the Elusive: Kids’ Productive Use of Technology

  Our technology goals for children and teens seem misplaced. Over and over we hear about the need to teach kids how to use technology, yet a quick glance reveals that this goal has already, and easily, been accomplished. With no training at all, American kids deftly navigate computers and the Internet, and they know all the ins and outs of the latest e-gadgets.

  Unfortunately, this knowledge generally has not served them well, as they overuse entertainment technologies at the expense of connections to family and success in school. Our goal should therefore shift to something that actually helps kids, but is undoubtedly more difficult to achieve: teaching them how to use technology productively. In this chapter, we look at how to make this a reality.

  FOCUS ON BUILDING A HEALTHY BRAIN, NOT A LITTLE TECH EXPERT

  Children find it remarkably difficult to use technology productively, as a million and one diversions are always, always, a tempting click away. Kids need self-control skills in order to stick with beneficial applications. How do we promote children’s self-control? As we saw in Chapter 2, these skills are built by limiting kids’ exposure to video games and entertainment TV, and immersing them in slower-paced activities such as dramatic play and reading. In other words, we have to engage our kids in real-world activities so they can build the brains they need to use technology productively. This is particularly important for children from birth through the end of elementary-school, when young brains are especially plastic.

  Controlling access to digital devices means rejecting the advice of industry-linked pundits who claim that setting limits will somehow cheat our children of the ability to use technology well. That’s a self-serving myth perpetuated by tech industry spokesmen with a financial interest in tethering your kids to the devices they sell. As noted by early-childhood experts Susan Linn, Joan Almon, and Diane Levin in Facing the Screen Dilemma: Young Children, Technology and Early Education, “There is no [emphasis mine] evidence that introducing screen technologies in early childhood means children will be more adept when they’re older.”1

  Widely used technologies are purposefully designed to be accessible and simple to understand—that’s how companies profit from them. “It’s supereasy. It’s like learning to use toothpaste,” says Alan Eagle, who works in executive communications at Google. “At Google and all these places, we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible. There’s no reason why kids can’t figure it out when they get older.”2

  FIRST USES OF TECHNOLOGY SHOULD BE LEARNING-BASED

  I believe we should reject the popular practice of having our children’s first forays into technology center around entertainment, especially video gaming. The assumption is that digital amusements will acclimate kids to technology so they can transition to using their gadgets more constructively. The problem is that our nation’s kids aren’t switching, but getting stuck on pleasure-based applications. Remember in Chapter 4 we saw that the earlier kids are introduced to video gaming the more likely they will game obsessively as they grow older.

  I see it with the kids I counsel. Once they’ve grown used to the drug-like rewards they find in many digital self-amusements, they often have difficulty changing over to less stimulating learning activities. Our children and teens are being conditioned to view technology primarily as a toy, and to value immediate gratification over longer-term gains.

  I believe kids’ first uses of technology should have learning value backed up by objective research, e.g., a high school curriculum proven to effectively teach students programming skills. Allowing schools, whose job it is to teach children, to direct when and how kids begin to use technology may help achieve this goal. At home, consider this for your kids’ first foray into technology: using the Internet to search about something they experienced during a family outing or in nature. And, as with early reading, make that exposure something you do together.

  Some parents will argue that it’s difficult to get young children to use technology productively, as young kids often struggle to do much beyond play games or watch videos when left alone with computers, tablets, and phones. I agree. Rather than take this as a sign we should leave young kids alone to play with gadgets, I think it proves the point that we introduce technology to children long before their developmental stage allows it to be helpful to them.

  What’s the right age for kids to begin using technology? Brain researcher Jane Healy, author of Your Child’s Growing Mind, suggests that children be at least seven years old before they begin to use a computer.3 In Silicon Valley, many high-tech executives enroll their kids in a Waldorf school whose philosophy is that children don’t benefit from technology until middle school.4 Instead, their curriculum emphasizes real-w
orld experiences and interactions with teachers and students, on the principle that this best promotes children’s creative thinking, problem solving, and other important skills.

  So far, research has just not identified the best age for introducing kids to technology. Instead, the research clearly shows us good reasons to wait. I see no problem with postponing kids’ introduction to computers until late-elementary or middle school. When parents I work with take this route, I see kids who love school and learning, are connected to their parents, are goal-oriented and have the self-control needed to stay focused when they use technology. As a result, they seem more often to view technology primarily as a tool to advance their success.

  WHY WE SHOULD FOCUS ON THE HUMAN CONNECTION

  What can help kids to use technology productively? Evidently, it’s loving relationships with us. A study by Israeli technology researcher Gustavo Mesch found that teens who had a strong relationship with their parents were more likely than peers less close to their parents to use the Internet for learning purposes.5

  In my practice, a close bond with family tends to be a common denominator for families in which kids put technology to good use. Twelve-year-old Noah was brought to counseling by his single father out of concern that his mother wasn’t involved in Noah’s life. Nonetheless, Noah was doing well in school and his tech use was productive for the most part, as the boy had an early interest in computer science. He was also avoiding the pitfalls of many of his game-obsessed 7th-grade peers. So I asked Noah how he was able to spend most of his computer time focused on learning.

  Noah thought about it for a moment and responded, “I really don’t know.” Yet I was quite sure that the time Noah’s father devoted to him was a factor. Each session, Noah spent much of our time together talking about how his father, in spite of being busy, did a lot for him and his younger brother—he took them camping and devoted his spare time to them, playing catch in the yard and helping them with their schoolwork. Such efforts seemed to encourage the boy’s desire to stay on track with schoolwork and in using the computer.

  ANOTHER REASON TO LIMIT KIDS’ ENTERTAINMENT TECH USE

  In Chapter 4, we saw how mind experts use behavioral manipulation tools in video game and social network development to pull users away from other interests and focus them on their digital products. I believe that the industry’s increasing reliance on these techniques helps explain why, much to the chagrin of parents and teachers, our children use technology almost exclusively for entertainment.

  Sucked in by the gravitational pull of virtual rewards designed for maximal stimulation, kids understandably struggle to gain the escape velocity needed to explore the less flashy universe of learning-based technology applications. This typically occurs without conscious awareness. Kids simply look up after spending most of the evening playing on their phone or computer and wonder where the time went.

  Disengagement from entertainment technologies gives children the psychic space to explore themselves and develop their own goals. Away from an “always-on” existence, kids can daydream about what it would be like to become an architect or scientist. This space helps them find their own voice. In turn, their ambitions help propel kids to use technology to get to where they want to be.

  When I asked 16-year-old Carlos what helped him to stay focused when using technology, he replied, “I can’t become an engineer if I’m goofing around on my computer all day.” So help kids find a sense of purpose by limiting their opportunity to get caught up in entertainment technologies. Follow the advice in this book and encourage your kids to consider technology primarily as a means to a productive end.

  KIDS SHOULD LEARN FUNDAMENTALS FOR A HIGH-TECH CAREER

  A number of parents I work with allow their children to immerse themselves in various devices at the expense of their focus on school, because “Technology is their future,” as a father told me. However, even if we believe kids are using their devices productively, there are risks to becoming overly specialized from a young age. That’s because it’s always difficult to judge future employment trends. As Leonard Fuld notes in Fortune, “In the 1920s, pundits estimated that by 1940 the rapidly growing telephone network would require 42 million women—or every adult female in the country—to work as switchboard operators (women dominated this profession). This forecast never came to pass because switching systems became increasingly automated.”6

  In a few decades, how much computer programming will be automated, carried out by increasingly sophisticated machines that are capable of programming themselves with a few initial commands? Moreover, how much will the increasing trend of outsourcing high-tech jobs affect US kids’ chances of joining the high-tech profession? The US Bureau of Labor Statistics recently described how the demand for American computer programmers is being dulled: “Computer programming can be done from anywhere in the world, so companies sometimes hire programmers in countries where wages are lower. This ongoing trend is projected to limit growth for computer programmers in the United States.”7

  A recent Economics Policy Institute report by researchers from Rutgers, Georgetown, and American Universities also showed that outsourcing is diminishing the demand for American-trained high-tech graduates. The researchers found that about a third of American computer science graduates took jobs outside of the Information Technology (IT) sector. The researchers discovered that about half of those working outside of IT found jobs where the pay or working conditions were better, while about a third left the field because they couldn’t find jobs in IT. “The supply of graduates is substantially larger than the demand for them in industry,”8 the researchers conclude—a cautionary note for those who recommend tech immersion for kids at the expense of learning in other areas.

  What will the demand be for various high-tech jobs when our kids reach employment age? It’s hard to say, which is true for most vocations. For this reason, schools and colleges have long looked to provide kids with a strong base in educational fundamentals such as math, reading, writing, and problem-solving. These skills are always in demand from employers. They give kids the brain power and flexibility they’ll need to find jobs in a rapidly shifting economy.

  As a society caught up in digital fever, too often we seem willing to allow children to downplay learning school-taught fundamentals in favor of letting them spend a majority of their time with gadgets. Ironically, there is evidence this will actually reduce their chances of success in the high-tech workforce. It’s helpful to consider the educational requirements of working in the high-tech field. As described by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Job prospects will be best for programmers who have a bachelor’s degree or higher [emphasis mine] and knowledge of a variety of programming languages.”9

  Clearly, employers are looking to hire computer scientists with college or graduate degrees, but American kids’ time-swallowing tech habits can prevent them from mastering the academic fundamentals needed for college admission. US children score far below their global peers in reading, math, and science, so we must refocus them on basic learning to increase their long-term success in high-tech and other fields.

  GIVE KIDS THE STRUCTURE THEY NEED

  How can we make sure our kids understand that technology is a tool and not a toy? We have to give them lots of help. Children are born into this world seeking guidance—that’s how they learn the skills to survive. If we don’t provide help when it comes to tech, our kids are lost, but only for a moment, because gaming, social networking, and communications industries will give them direction as to how they should spend their lives.

  What kind of guidance can you provide your child or teen to encourage the constructive use of technology? First, think carefully about what devices you provide your children at what age, considering the realities of typical use. The more devices kids get, and the earlier the age they get them, the more difficulty you will have fostering appropriate use. Also, use the recommendations throughout this book to monitor kids’ screen use, such as keeping co
mputers in a common area, and having your kids study along with you as you do your own work.

  Parents have never been able to raise healthy children alone, and this applies to helping kids use technology constructively. Schools can assist kids by offering classes that teach uses of technology like computer programming and web-based research. Considering US students’ academic struggles, computer instruction should not be at the expense of reading, math, science, and other core subjects. Teens I work with benefit when schools sponsor science fairs or other projects that require kids to use technology for purposes other than entertainment. When schools offer such learning opportunities, the curriculum demands and guidance of instructors help teens avoid straying into time-wasting technologies.

  Please don’t underestimate the amount of structure kids need to ensure their work on computers remains productive. A teacher commenting in the New York Times described what happened in her efforts to expose kids to Scratch, an application that teaches kids rudimentary programming skills as they design video games: “Left on their own to learn at the Scratch website, my students almost all spent their time simply playing the games other people created.”10

  One extracurricular program that provides kids the framework they need is Odyssey of the Mind. It has kids work together to solve science-based goals, such as building a robotic vehicle, that may require the use of computers. The combination of the Odyssey goals and its coaches helps kids stay focused. To see if Odyssey is offered in your area, go to their website (www.odysseyofthemind.com) or do an Internet search using the key words: “Odyssey of the Mind” and your city and state or school.

  Parents I work with have found other extracurricular or community activities that encourage their kids’ constructive use of technology. These include science camps for preteens or programming classes for teenagers at a library or community college.