As I write this, one of my kids is playing Roblox, another is playing a game on his laptop, and a third is playing a game of her own devising, which just involves asking our Alexa to spell every word she can think of. As you read this, there’s a better than fair chance that if you look around at your kids, you’ll see they’re also engaging with screens and technology.
Our kids are growing up in a world where many of their friends are found on the other side of those screens, too. While there can be some benefits to this, there are definitely drawbacks as well.
First Lady Michelle Obama, who not only successfully raised two children to adulthood but also spent eight years raising them in the White House, more in the public eye than virtually any other child in the United States, has some thoughts on how screen time affects kids.
Michelle Obama’s Latest Interview Is On Parenting
The former First Lady launched a new podcast this year, along with her brother, Craig Robinson. It’s called IMO (shorthand for “In My Opinion”) and focuses on relationships, personal growth, and self-improvement, featuring guests with expertise on various topics.
This week, their guest is Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist whose latest book is geared toward tweens. It’s titled The Amazing Generation, and reaches out directly to younger kids to encourage them in choosing “a life not dominated by screens,” and sharing with them “secrets that tech leaders don’t want kids to know.”
Parents may be more familiar with Haidt’s name from the book he released last year, titled The Anxious Generation, in which he posits a direct link between growing up attached to screens and the greater prevalence of mental health battles.
In his interview on Mrs. Obama’s podcast, he addresses these concerns, specifically discussing how social media can have a negative impact on kids at a young age.
The Former First Lady Shares Her Experience
Facebook opened to the public in 2006, the same year Twitter launched, and Instagram would follow in 2010. Mrs. Obama says that thanks to the timing, keeping her daughters (aged 7 and 10 when Barack Obama took office in 2009) off social media wasn’t a big struggle while they were small.
However, she still witnessed a difference between her children’s generation and her own — born in the 60s, she and her brother describe the experience many of us who are parents now recall, in which their parents sent them out to play, perhaps with instructions to “check in” routinely.
By contrast, the pair posit that parents today may be ‘overparenting’ and overprotecting our kids. Obama says:
“I think a lot of parents are struggling with this…how do we not overparent? How much do we parent? How much free-ranging do we do? And then how does that affect how we manage our kids’ social media?”
Parenting On The Easy Road
When psychologist Jonathan Haidt enters, he clearly states the reasons why parents are so eager to put tech in kids’ hands. It makes our kids happy, they stay satisfied and (relatively) quiet, and parents can go about their day and get things done without interruptions. How many of us relaxed our screen-time rules when our kids were home during the pandemic and we needed peace for our remote work?
Obama agrees. She says raising kids involves some “chaos and uncertainty and, you know, not-pleasantness,” and that parents can dodge that uncomfortable experience by handing their kids a phone.
“A lot of parents want none of it now. It’s almost like, okay, I want now I want my child to be absolutely silent. And it’s perhaps easier to hand a kid a phone. So that they are absolutely quiet and there is absolutely no fighting, right?”
According to Haidt, the end result is that children don’t experience normal conflict, disagreement, or the process of conflict resolution. Meanwhile, what’s taking place on those phones can be more dangerous.
He says, “I can summarize [The Anxious Generation] with a single sentence, which is that we have overprotected our children in the real world, and we have underprotected them online.”
The Dopamine Effect
Haidt brings up ‘quick dopamine’ and ‘slow dopamine,’ describing the brain chemical that gives a positive feeling and causes addiction-like behaviors.
The idea is that when your child works hard on something, like a sports skill, it takes a lot of work to get that dopamine, but tech companies have designed their apps to give quick bursts of dopamine kthat ids (and adults) can’t stop reaching for.
“The devices are more engaging than anything in the real world. They’re more engaging even than your friends in the short run, but in the long run, you have a lot more fun out with an afternoon with your friends than you do an afternoon on TikTok. And so we have to not just be taking away the screens from our kids. We have to be giving them back a fun and exciting childhood.”
He acknowledges that’s easier said than done, especially when the other kids are all busy on their devices, but advises parents to get together and create these situations. Find other parents who agree that the kids need screen-free time, and set up a time to either drop them off together, or a situation where they’re supervised but not micromanaged.
Haidt Says Screens Do Have Their Place
Blocking our kids from screens altogether is also not a viable option. Most of our kids will use technology of one kind or another in school, and later in their workplaces, whether it’s a computer diagnostic system in a mechanic shop, a touch-screen cash register, a research system, or programming microcomputers used in laparoscopic surgeries.
For now, Haidt says that there’s one very important use we shouldn’t shy away from: stories.
“Humans are storytelling animals. That’s who we are. Every culture, we tell stories, we raise our kids on stories, we have myths, we have religion. So stories are good. And a TV screen is a pretty good way to present stories.”
His advice is to sit and watch a movie with our kids, encouraging them to enjoy long-form story presentations rather than just the short-video format they’re accustomed to on social media, and to keep watching as a social experience. He’d rather kids watch a movie than play with a touchscreen, and would rather they watch with a friend than alone.
Setting Some Basic Rules
The idea of taking the tech back after our kids are already used to it is overwhelming, but Haidt has four basic principles that he believes can be implemented reasonably.
First, no smartphones until high school. Kids who need a phone for contact before then can have a basic flip phone. Second, no social media until age 16. Third, no phones in schools. (Yes, this one is very controversial!) Ultimately, parents must invest the time and effort to restore childhood by giving children more independence, responsibility, and free play.
For safety, he advises setting a rule that no screens are allowed in the bedroom.
Haidt and Obama both emphasize that these rules can be implemented even if you’ve already been allowing more freedom, and that they can be implemented even if parents live by different rules themselves. (That is, you can have a television in your room as an adult and still forbid your child to have screens in their room, because the rules for developing brains are different from the rules for adults.)
The key is to choose boundaries, set them, and maintain them.
Doing The Hard Work As A Parent
Obama says she believes parents are exhibiting the same problem we’re trying to fix in our kids: we want instant gratification.
It’s hard to sit and watch a 90-minute movie; it’s easy to pass your kid a tablet. It’s hard to spend time and energy correcting behaviors and enforcing rules; it’s easy to deal with kids who are each in their corner with a screen and headphones, silent and not bothering each other.
She says that parents have to remember to be a parent, not a friend, and to set boundaries with their kids that will help them develop the skills they need for life.
Haidt agrees.
“As a parent, your job is to set the boundaries and choose what’s safe and what’s proper for their development. Their job is to experience negative emotions and learn how to deal with it.”
Obama concludes that parenting isn’t supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be work, and as parents, we’ve got to be prepared to do the work. We have to be more resilient, prepared to hold out and ‘outlast’ a determined toddler who wants another episode of Cocomelon, prepared to stand firm when an 8-year-old is confident he absolutely must have TikTok, and prepared to deal with anger and outrage when when the 14-year-old doesn’t like the limits we set.
Our kids may need the experience of learning to deal with negative emotions, boredom, and disappointment. Still, parents are also obligated to learn how to manage the frustration of saying “no” endlessly without either becoming worn down or responding in ways that cause further harm.
You can watch the full episode of IMO on YouTube or find it on your favorite podcasting app. Meanwhile, I’m now going to pry my kids off their screens and take them to the pool for the day!