Should My Toddler Have An iPhone?
A Question of Screen Time & Children
by MICHAEL MARINACCIO
Ever since I was old enough to run, I have had a computer no more than one room away. Sounds fairly normal, but for those in my age group, that was actually pretty uncommon: only 22.8 percent of households had access in 1993 — right about when my father purchased our first IBM on MS-DOS. I can still remember playing Gorillas with him and Jill of the Jungle.
The upbringing meant great benefit to me. An only child, I learned how to write HTML in middle school, rip Javascript off of major websites and create my own Pokemon sites. In high school, I was sniffing packets and crashing people’s computers who failed to patch the vulnerabilities in programs such as AOL Instant Messenger. Those were simpler times.
Ten years later, I found myself struggling to maintain an interest in relationships of any kind. I thought of myself as an aloof personality or an intellectual outside of time. I never enjoyed social gatherings, competition or friendly banter. In fact, I hated them.
I detest the words introvert and extrovert, but at the time I was very much “inward.” No one understood me but it was alright. I had plenty of online video games, a girlfriend at any given time and enough internet to quench any teenage curiosity.
Luckily, with the help of friends, I eventually came around to the reality that I was mildly autistic. Many will jump down my throat for connecting the two, but if this describes you, you probably had a fairly screen-heavy childhood. I have heard this same story a hundred times. Do I blame the screens?
Small studies have finally begun suggesting that Vitamin-D deficiency in infants can cause severe types of autism. While I never had it severely, blood-tests would later conclude that my body has been unable to produce Vitamin-D for some time now. Between the heavy screen time as a teenager and my general lack of direct sunlight, the diagnosis seemed pretty spot on with my personality.
Due to the strong possibility that Vitamin-D deficiency is inherited, my wife has been on a steady dose throughout her pregnancy. My wife is my anti-thesis. Her glorious, bubbly and effusive soul could warm a corpse back to life. Her upbringing? Five siblings, summers spent outside and no television/computer within a mile. Our private case studies could not be more definitive and polar opposite.
Now as my wife and I prepare for our first child we must stop, look back at our childhoods and ask: do we want screens in our young child’s life?
I snapped this photo last year at a Japanese Steakhouse.
My entire table watched in horror as this small toddler stared at his iPad movie (I think it was Ice Age 2), oblivious to the hibachi chef who nearly set fire to the ceiling at least twice trying to impress him. Of course, I also missed the giant flames with my inconspicuous photo-taking.
Barring the possibility of this couple eating here most nights or the family’s profession as welders, it is fair to say that the two year old was used to being completely engulfed in his screen. And I am sure the parents were at ease — they certainly seemed like it. And why not?
Let us be honest. Parenting can take a lot of time out of the day and it is much easier to sit your kid in front of a screen, especially if all his needs dissipate instantaneously. I am not even a father yet and I can see that logic.
But our children deserve much better and we owe it to them to determine, is giving my son a subscription to Minecraft as good as playing catch with him? Because if it is, I would love to put my son on YouTube and watch him become a wizard-class hacker by age ten. But I could not handle seeing him take my path — not without some major modifications.
“I want my son to have it better than I did.”
As many do, my dad once told me, “I want you to have it better than I did.” Like him, I want my children to have every advantage of what I had and none of the disadvantages, none of the loneliness and none of the disorder.
The balance we strike with our technology will be insanely difficult because our lives are now intimately connected with our devices. Phones are no longer just for talking, but also working, playing, photography, you name it. For my wife and I, our workplaces demand it.
The screens provide us with overwhelming stimuli that fuel our information gathering but fundamentally rot our sentient nature. Study after study show how, when removed from an atmosphere of phones and screens, backs straighten, eye contact increases, sound sleep increases — normal human behaviors normalize within days. It should not surprise anyone that these activities detract from the enriching ones: having conversations, exercising, relaxing.
Looking to the generation ahead, it is impossible to know how an iPad at two years old will affect the life of a full-grown adult. The technology did not exist for us. Thus, we cannot know for certain but can surmise it is probably not great. At the same time, we will also not likely know for another decade what conclusively causes autism and why it manifests.
However, all we need to do is look around and see the personal stories of those who have attached themselves to screens for distraction. My personal struggle was quite enough to make me acutely aware of effects I hope to prevent for my children.
Moving forward, a personal strategy we hope to employ is one that does not let screens fill a void where good parenting should occupy. Whether that means no smartphones until 10, 16, or 25— we have many years to decide. But until then, we will do our best to monitor how our children interact with every medium in their life and consistently encourage the natural activities: reading, playing catch, and maybe some chess.
