Tech Engineers Have Used This Research

Cheap tech for entertainment has flooded into our homes so quickly over the last decade, we haven’t had a chance to catch our breath. On the outside, it might appear that kids are laser focused while tapping away. Look at my little Einstein! Mom beams. The truth is that digital entertainment is eroding your child’s ability to concentrate. Instead, it’s overstimulating him with novel distractions. Screen time often thrusts our youngest kids into a continuously hyperattentive state. Their brains are soaking in cortisol and adrenaline, the fight, flight, and stress hormones. This results in our kids first passively receiving and then . No wonder he snaps when you tell him screen time is over. What if my kids only spend an hour per day on screens? Let’s say you limit your child’s screen use to one or two hours per day. But think of the proportion of free time that those two hours comprise. From three to four he has baseball practice.

Remain Solid

From four to five he finishes his homework. This typical child has two hours of free, unscheduled time during his weekdays before bedtime, and he is spending 100 percent of it playing a video game. Do we want our kids spending a majority of their free time consuming digital entertainment? Even if our kids are spending an hour per day, there are substantial opportunity costs. Isn’t today’s digital entertainment the same thing, but for the next generation? The kind of digital entertainment available to our kids is like nothing we’ve seen in generations past. Tech engineers have used this research to bake dopamine release points into their apps, video games, and social media platforms. They have studied the frequency and type of rewards that hook people to their products. It’s the same tactics casinos use. Experts are paid to keep kids scrolling and playing. And they’re incredible at it. Hundreds of the world’s top software engineers and addiction experts are on the other end of your child’s device, coordinating their efforts to keep it in your child’s hand. What chance does a child have against a team like that? Studies continue to demonstrate that children are susceptible to health, behavioral, cognitive, and developmental problems related to certain types of digital media use. Now these little ones need even more dopamine in order to feel the same amount of pleasure they previously enjoyed.

You've Got A Friend

Bearing this level of arousal in mind, we can understand why simply looking at how many hours your kids are on screens is not the whole story. Dopamine is flowing like Niagara Falls in those young minds. This is new technology, brilliantly engineered to suck your kids in. One hour of today’s screens is not the same as one hour of Saturday morning cartoons when you were a kid. So what does this have to do with your first grader’s tantrums? Hyperactivity, impulsivity, short attention span, avoiding tasks that require effort, appearing not to listen, becoming easily distracted, fidgeting. It makes kids unable to control their moods, attention, or excitement in a socially appropriate way. I was interested to hear what he was seeing on the front lines at his local school. What he shared with me was fascinating and alarming. More students are struggling with normal social situations. In the classroom, students appear to be less resilient with academic rigor and more frustrated with collaborative learning. They are more easily distracted and less likely to take risks, he said. What’s to blame for this noticeable decline? Socioeconomic status? So what’s the problem? Taking turns with play equipment and listening respectfully to a partner in a group have become extremely difficult tasks for many students.

Scream Your Last Scream

It’s happening everywhere. Screens are impacting all of our kids in the worst ways. Petersen wasn’t only talking about difficult children or uninvolved parents. He was talking about all kids. Kids from strong families. Great kids with great parents, navigating the world where digital entertainment is everywhere. We are all trying to parent through difficult behaviors, without realizing that an external component has a hold on our kids. We can’t compete with the way screens are affecting their brains. This isn’t the kids’ fault. They are simply human beings responding to stimuli that were designed to keep them playing, watching, using. The impact of their screen time is going far beyond screen time. It’s changing the way kids think, interact with peers, respond to teachers. It’s changing their ability to connect with other humans. What does the future look like for kids raised on excessive digital entertainment? Parents today have a unique vantage point. The first generation of kids who grew up with a smartphone in hand has graduated college and begun their work in the real world. Employers report that this generation is coming to work with new phobias and anxieties. They don’t know how to begin and end conversations. They have a hard time with eye contact. Are we unintentionally depriving our children of tools they need at the very moment they need them? Are we depriving them of skills that are crucial to friendship, creativity, love, and work? So what should we do? We’re becoming Amish. But do we need to summarily dump every form of technology because some of it is harmful? Kindergarten Edition? The answer is absolutely yes. And it looks different in each household. The good news is that you’re the parent, you know your children best, and you get to decide what your family’s relationship with screens is going to look like in your own home. We don’t have to move off the grid and grow all of our own food and throw out our curling irons. Rather than banning all of it forever, we want our relationship with tech to be like maintaining a healthy diet. Pepper will nearly ensure chronic health. Similarly, decades of tech for entertainment will stunt our kids’ emotional, intellectual, and social development. Just because the grocery stores are filled with processed foods and sugar doesn’t mean we should buy it.