Tim McCarthy On Raising Children With Healthy Social Media & Digital Media Habits

An Interview With Maria Angelova

No Social Media Accounts until high school. Cite the rules of the social media companies and blame them. Be sure to install password protected parental controls on all devices, including the phone you will eventually give to your child. Insist that you become a friend or have access to all social media accounts and apps so that you can monitor what goes on. Turn on location so you can find a missing phone or a missing child. Set up these rules as a condition of getting the phone, tablet, or computer. It’s easier to live with rules you don’t like than to suddenly have privileges taken away that you thought were your rights.

Young people today are growing up in an era where screen time is a given from a very young age. Unfortunately, studies show that large amounts of screen time can be damaging, and social media can be even worse. Our children are facing enormous challenges before their brains and bodies have had a chance to develop fully. Social media can potentially keep kids from developing social cues and lead to increased mental health challenges, bullying, and much more. So what can parents do to create healthier habits around social media? How can kids be taught to use social media in a healthy way that causes as little damage as possible? In this interview series, we are talking to authors, and mental health professionals, about Raising Children With Healthy Social Media and Digital Media Habits. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Tim McCarthy.

Tim McCarthy has a Master’s Degree in Education and a Grand Master rank in the martial arts. He has combined his years of experience as a classroom teacher and administrator (in both public and private schools) with even more years of experience teaching and developing martial arts programs to create a simple plan for the education of children available at https://4d-2d.com. His unique perspective combining Eastern and Western educational philosophy creates a powerful road map for raising balanced children in an increasingly unbalanced world.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I am and have been an educator for over 40 years. I have personally taught thousands of students of all ages using both Eastern and Western philosophies of education. I taught in the public and private school systems as a teacher and administrator for the first 10 years. Then, for the next 30 years I taught and designed educational courses and curricula in the martial arts. I believe that human beings have 4 Dimensions: The Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual. It is an Eastern way of understanding the human experience that I learned in my martial arts studies and is very different from our current Western educational system. That was why I chose to leave the school system and focus on the martial arts: I was able to teach and develop students in all 4 Dimensions and have designed martial arts programs that have been used by hundreds of schools across the U.S. and Canada, and in some other countries as well. One of the things I am most proud of is my contribution to popularizing and developing the After School Martial Arts programs and Martial Arts Summer Camps . . . you probably have seen signs on the side of the road in your community.

Now I am making those same educational principles available to every parent.

Can you share the most interesting story that has happened since you started your career?

In our martial arts classes we like to teach verbal self-defense. Most fights start with an insult or other mean verbal attack, so we try to teach our students how to handle verbal attacks with verbal self-defense instead of escalating it to a physical fight. It’s part of developing emotional control.

The next step in the process is to have students learn not to get angry just because someone hits them. If they can end the fight without striking back, both people win. They should only respond with physical violence as a last resort.

One of the drills was to have the students slap each other in the face. Many people feel that, “If you hit me in my face, we are going to fight.” I thought if I could get them to take a slap in the face without losing emotional control, it could prevent some unnecessary fights.

Of course, as the instructor I would demonstrate what I wanted them to do before they would practice. I called up one teenage boy with whom I had some discipline issues in the past, and asked him to slap me in the face. He apparently saw this as his chance to get even and slapped me harder than Will Smith hit Chris Rock at the Academy Awards. The whole class gasped, but I just laughed, showing that I wasn’t going to lose my emotional control, and we continued the drill.

Years later, when the incident happened at the Academy Awards, a former student messaged me on Facebook that Chris Rock must have been in that class many years ago. I agreed that Chris handled it like a real pro.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I am working on educating parents on 4 Dimensional Parenting, to empower them to develop their children physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. One of the key resources to achieve that goal is my book, Raising 4 Dimensional Children in a 2 Dimensional World, which not only gives parents theory in the form of the latest research in developmental child psychology, but also gives them practice by providing over 400 fun, educational activities they can use to help their child reach new milestones in each of the 4 Dimensions.

You might say I am providing the Owner’s Manual that parents never got with their child.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence helped me realize that intelligence wasn’t just that thing measured on IQ tests. I think most people understood, even before his book became popular, that having a high IQ was not the true measure of the value of a person and not even directly related to success as most people define it. People have many different talents and abilities, and what I call mental intelligence is only one of them. Goleman popularized the idea of emotional intelligence, and that helped me understand that there could be other kinds of intelligence. For example, a basketball player who can consistently make three point shots has undeniable physical intelligence — he wasn’t born with that ability; he learned it.

Fantastic. Let’s now turn to the main part of our interview. For the benefit of our readers, can you tell us a bit about why you are an authority on how to help children develop healthy social media habits?

I am the author of Raising 4 Dimensional Children in a 2 Dimensional World. The premise of the book is that we are currently living in a 2 Dimensional World: The world of phones, tablets, computers, and television screens. If you remember your basic geometry, screens have only 2 dimensions: Length and Width. The image on the screen has no depth, therefore it is 2 dimensional.

I want parents to raise their children in the real world, one that has more than just 2 dimensions. The third dimension is depth, which separates real life from screens. According to H. G. Wells, the fourth dimension is time, which means that if something doesn’t exist for a period of time, we don’t perceive it. The real world has length, width, depth, and duration.

I compare that 4 Dimensional understanding to the 4 Dimensions of human existence: the Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual. I want to help parents understand how to raise 4 Dimensional Children first, by getting them off the screens and back into the real world, and second by offering age-appropriate activities they can share together that will help the child develop in each of the 4 Dimensions.

From your experience or research, can you help articulate some of the downsides of children having access to social media? Is there an amount of time, or certain content, that is just too much?

According to Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a professor of Social Psychology at the NYU Stern School of Business, the number of American teens with depression anxiety drastically increased with the advent of social media. Older teen girls were 62% more likely to cut or otherwise harm themselves and 70% more likely to attempt suicide when compared to the same-aged girls from 2000 to 2010. Even worse, younger teen and preteen girls were 189% more likely to cut or harm themselves and 151% more likely to attempt suicide. These kids are the first generation in history to get on social media in middle school, and the results are literally life threatening.

As far as screen time, it depends on the age of the child. Very young children may not be able to distinguish the difference between reality and the images on the screen. As their brains develop, they learn the difference, but they don’t develop the emotional maturity to handle the barrage of influences and agendas propagated online. You can gradually increase the amount of screen time as your child ages, but always encourage them to spend more time in the real world than in the 2 Dimensional world.

Obviously, there is content on the internet that is inappropriate for children. Definitely activate your parental controls on all devices and check them often — if your child doesn’t know the hacks, his friends do, so expect to get them disabled sooner or later. You don’t want your child to become addicted to internet porn, not to mention getting a warped idea about sex. Also keep spending under control with passwords so your child doesn’t go on a shopping spree before she realizes that all those items have to be paid for.

Be sure to impress on your child the possibility that the posts in social media can be lies. Sometimes people just exaggerate to make themselves appear better, and other times people intentionally lie with a harmful agenda. Instill the idea that social media is another place to connect with friends you already know, not a place to make friends who sound too good to be true . . . because they probably are.

Help your child understand that social media is a highlight real, not real life. People post their best looks, their most exciting events, and completely avoid their disappointments and disgraces. Comparing your real life with all its trials and tribulations to someone else’s highlights is a losing proposition. Teens naturally compare themselves to others as a way of finding their place in society. However, comparing yourself to the most beautiful models and actors in the world is not a healthy exercise — especially when the famous beauties PhotoShop their pictures to further enhance their image. An emotionally immature brain comparing it’s own doubts and insecurities to the enhanced highlights of the most successful people is one of the main reasons for the depression statistics cited above.

Is there a positive side too? Can children gain and grow from social media?

There is certainly a positive side to the Internet and the 2 Dimensional world. Years ago, in order to do research you had to go somewhere like a school, a library, or a bookstore. Research involved traveling to the library, looking through the card catalog, then trying to find that book in the stacks, and finding the appropriate information in the book — if your library even had the books you needed. Richer families had an encyclopedia to help with homework, but with the pace of research, they quickly lost relevance. Nowadays a quick Google search will come up with hundreds of articles from all across the world, even research published yesterday that is not readily available in print, and sometimes will even bring you to the exact section of the article that covers what you are looking for. That was the promise of the Internet.

Social media is also a great way to connect with family and friends. For example, I have a page and the only friends I accept are family. We share family events and photos immediately, and can make public posts or send private messages. Years ago we had to travel (perhaps hundreds of miles, usually just on holidays) and bring a photo album.

Social media can also be a lifeline to adults who are lonely and cannot get out of the house for one reason or another. They can connect with old friends and meet new friends, as long as they remember that new friends may not all be who they say they are.

For children, I much prefer FaceTime or a voice call. Social Media and texting can improve keyboarding and spelling skills, and offer a creative outlet, but they lack the feedback we need from face to face interaction. In a FaceTime call, we can see the other person’s emotional response to what we are saying. On a voice call, you can hear tone of voice and volume as cues to their response to what is being said, and they get to talk back. On social media you get to post what you want and don’t often get the feedback you need to understand how well it was understood or accepted.

Social media is an accepted part of life today. We know that along with all of the good comes a lot of challenges. From your experience or research, what five steps can we take to raise children with healthy social media and digital media habits?

1. Start early: No screen time for Infants. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time before the age of 18 months. Yet, according to the Huffington Post, in one study 50% of parents in Arizona believed their children learn as much watching television as being with their parents. Don’t fool yourself! Setting them in front of a TV may be easier, but it will not have the long-term benefits of personal interaction. Television shows and even the news are filled with violence and disaster, and even “child-friendly” TV has commercials that brainwash the child into needing their products. Also, understand that supposedly educational video games have little to no research to back up their claims of educational value.
2. Limit screen time for preschoolers to 1 hour a day. Don’t just hand the child the device and walk away. Using two dimensional technology can seemingly put your child into a trance, where she is so engrossed in the screen that the real, four dimensional world seems to disappear. Dr. Ellen Wartella of Northwestern University describes it as being “hypnotized” by technology, causing the child not to interact with her as she would be if she were sharing a book with her. In fact, there is research that shows children this age have difficulty transferring the skills learned in two dimensions into their real world experience. In addition, there is evidence that the amount of screen time young children spend is associated with poorer executive functions and self-regulation. The only notable exception might be using FaceTime with relatives so that the child gets visual cues and immediate interaction from the experience.
3. Hold off on giving your child a phone. Why does a 6 year old need a phone? To keep up with the Joneses? Because all his friends have phones? Childhood is a precious time and does not last long. Please encourage your child to run and play in the four dimensional world and postpone the two dimensional world for later. He will have plenty of time and opportunity in the years to come to become fully technologically literate.
4. No Social Media Accounts until high school. Cite the rules of the social media companies and blame them. Be sure to install password protected parental controls on all devices, including the phone you will eventually give to your child. Insist that you become a friend or have access to all social media accounts and apps so that you can monitor what goes on. Turn on location so you can find a missing phone or a missing child. Set up these rules as a condition of getting the phone, tablet, or computer. It’s easier to live with rules you don’t like than to suddenly have privileges taken away that you thought were your rights.
5. Limit screen time, but separate work time from play time. School work done on a tablet or computer is necessary. Encourage it (but also monitor it). Set limits of play time that includes watching TV, gaming, social media, and texting or talking on the phone. At the beginning, you should be present during all interactions. As the child grows older and earns some trust, you can relax the necessity for your physical presence. Negotiate with your preteen or teen as to what would be reasonable play time during the week and on weekends. Arrive at a number of hours acceptable to you both and enforce it. Your teen will probably discover she totally underestimated the amount of time she spends on social media and will have to accept the limits she agreed to. You can re-negotiate every six months or so as she gets older. Establish screen free zones in the house like the kitchen, dining room, bedrooms at night, and the car while driving. Charge all devices in one location, away from the bedrooms over night. Now here’s the really hard part: You have to follow the rules yourself.

How do you effectively respond to the constant refrain of “but all my friends to this!”?

Get better friends.

First of all, most social media companies have age limits, so you can blame “the rules” for not allowing social media accounts until they are old enough.

Second, enroll your child in activities and clubs that are offline: Soccer, basketball, cheer leading, dance class, music lessons or band, chess club, Bible study, gymnastics, or martial arts classes. Give them something to do in the real world and something to practice and talk about with their friends.

If all their friends live on social media, your kids will want to live on social media. If you help them find friends who live in the real world, they will spend more time in the real world.

What are the best resources you would suggest to a parent or educator who would like to learn more about this?

As I said above, the Internet is an amazing resource for information on any subject, but you can save a lot of time by just reading my book, Raising 4 Dimensional Children in a 2 Dimensional World available on Amazon or at https://4d-2d.com.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

Don’t take advice from people more screwed up than you.

Unfortunately, misery loves company, so always check your sources. Having been married and divorced 5 times doesn’t make someone an expert in relationships . . . at least not successful ones. I have a relative who constantly gives advice to her friends, yet she is over 50 years old, works as an hourly employee at McDonald’s, and rents a room in someone else’s house. I love her, but don’t recommend you follow her advice . . . unless you want to be like her.

Seek out people who have done what you want to do and listen to them, but more importantly, do what they do.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I would love to start a national conversation about 4 Dimensional Parenting and inspire research to validate what I say.

What is the best way our readers can continue to follow your work online?

I have a weekly blog at https://4d-2d.com or they can follow me on social media:

Facebook: Tim McCarthy (facebook.com) and https://www.facebook.com/4D.Parents

LinkedIn: (16) Tim McCarthy | LinkedIn

Twitter: https://twitter.com/4Dparents

Instagram: Tim McCarthy (@4dparents) • Instagram photos and videos

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!

About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.