
‘Screen Time’ Isn’t What’s Dangerous for Young Children — Notes from “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked”
“Uncle William, did you bring your iPad??” — this was the first question my then five year old nephew asked me after completing my 11 hour drive to visit him and his three sisters in Michigan. Though I was amused he didn’t care about my trip’s safety and comfort, it was an anecdote that stuck with me. From them on, I would notice when dining at restaurants and visiting friends’ homes that to a large portion of today’s children — even toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergartners — mobile devices are one of the best ways to play and spark happiness.
With four years experience in the mobile apps business and after reading Adam Alter’s just-released “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked,” it is no surprise to me that mobile devices are able to keep children happy. It’s not only because many apps can be amusing and cute. But also, many apps are specifically engineered to pull the levers in our brain to increase the release of dopamine — the neurotransmitter that controls the feeling of pleasure. For this reason, I propose that the real discussion in our homes should not be about the amount of time our children spend in front of their devices, but instead, about the content in which they are interacting.
Public discourse has simply been concluding ‘screen time is bad’ since TVs entered our households, though for many young families, it’s not so simple. From the parent or caregiver’s perspective, giving a device affords the parent to focus on other tasks at home or take a breath from the demands of parenting. It’s like having a free, on-demand babysitter. And, though there are mobile applications that are bad for children — and any person wanting to keep their free time, health, and wallet — there has recently been a boom in the development of effective educational, physical fitness, and creative-outlet mobile applications. Because there is such a wide variety of quality in apps, it’s been difficult to know which ones are truly good or bad for children, but thankfully solutions like that one managed by Common Sense Media offers ratings and reviews for the discerning parent.
American Academy of Pediatrics and Center for Disease Control are the authoritative voices in America on the subject of child media use, providing guidelines that are adopted by families across the world. Their conclusion is that toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergartners should be limited to one hour per day of screentime, and the parent should be using the device with the child so she understands how her digital experience relates to reality. At UncleWilliam.org, we’ve been referring to these guidelines as a base, along with reviewing public health research and engaging in conversations with parents in attempt to expand our learning on the subject to develop mobile app-based products to help families better manage the content their children are engaging with. A boon for our efforts was when I came across Alter’s “Irresistible.”
Alter dives into research studies, conversations with addiction recovery experts, psychologists, pediatricians, game designers, and others to uncover more about our relationship with digital devices, and how they are designed to take more of our mindshare and time. Alter primarily focuses on the design strategies product managers utilize to induce behavioral addiction. Unfortunately (and especially unfortunately for not-tech-savvy parents) young children are the most prone to be negatively impacted because their decisions are naturally already limited to maximizing instant gratification and because they don’t understand what is acceptable, healthy, and normal in life. As it’s easier to prevent an addiction than to later address the problem, it’s important to understand the strategies that are being used against us to win our, and our children’s, mindshare and time.
While reading “Irresistible”, I took notes for our own efforts here which also are food for thought for anyone a part of the 21st Century Family Trinity — parents/child caretakers, children, and technology. Alter agrees that “parenting today is incomplete without lessons on how to interact with technology.”
(Please note that in most cases, I paraphrased Alter’s intention and meaning.)
- Children first notice the digital world when their parents use their mobile devices and they are “missing in action”
- Parents do damage when they are constantly checking their phone — because they are both not present with their child and because it tells the child that the phone is something important needing frequent attention
- Babies essentially become blind to whatever they don’t experience in the first three months of their life — so it’s especially imperative that their life isn’t through a digital device and that they experience the core aspects of human existence, without being confused regarding what is real
- Infants instinctively follow their parent’s eyes, and if the parent is distracted from their child (like when on a device when hold the infant), the child is more likely to become easily distracted. When children are easily distracted, they are more challenged for later successes like language learning, problem solving, and other cognitive skills.
- Mild initial struggles are critical, so it’s dangerous to hand your child a device every time she is upset or misbehaving
- Kids should connect what they see on screens with real life. No experience should be confined to a virtual world that was designed to mimic reality.
- Children watching a story unfold should explain what they think will happen next, to point to and identify the characters on the screen, move slowly enough through the process that they aren’t overwhelmed
- Don’t introduce your child too soon to the “goal society” where we quantify everything and set a goal toward it, and then life becomes a state of ‘near-continuous failure’.
With “Hyti — Kids Education, Parental Control” now in beta in the US, we’re providing a tool that helps both children and parents regulate screen time and improve awareness of how devices are affecting them. If you want to be one of the first families within the US to benefit from our innovative solution, request access here.
