The Screentime Dilemma

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In this episode I'm talking about what I call the screentime dilemma - basically the overwhelm and frustration you feel around figuring out screens. I’m helping you understand why it feels so hard and why it actually falls outside of your wheelhouse as a parent. 

There are a lot of areas of parenting where you know what’s best. Adults need about 8 hours of sleep every night. You shouldn’t eat a bunch of sugar at every meal. Your kid can’t drive until they have a license. For these things, there are laws or guidelines that give you a mental map for how things should go.

With tech and screens, we’re all making it up as we go along. And - news flash! - it’s not working out very well.

The Screentime Dilemma

In my opinion, screentime limits are a little above our pay grade as moms. It’s kinda the Wild West of parenting, because there aren’t a lot of guidelines or oversight. So, you have to be the sheriff in a house full of robbers that want it all the time. 

You don’t really know what the rules are supposed to be or how to enforce them. There’s no Surgeon General’s warning or food pyramid of screens. And you’re (probably) not an expert on childhood development and the human brain.

So we, as regular people, are left trying to figure out what’s normal and what’s best for our kids. No wonder you’re overwhelmed!

Guidelines in Our Society

In this little history lesson of rules and guidelines in our American society, you’ll see that when something new comes around, it takes almost an entire generation to set clear rules around it. And until the government realizes that something is causing a problem or that our kids need to be protected, we’re pretty much on our own.  

Here are a few examples…

Cars. The first car was invented by Carl Benz in 1886. It was 20 years before states slowly started to require a driver's license, and it was even longer before age restrictions came into play. It was 30 years before the first stop sign was installed and 66 years until the seat belt was created. 70 years after the first car, driver’s licenses were required nationwide in the United States.

In the beginning, there were no rules or restrictions, and now there are a lot. As a society, we agree that an 8-year-old shouldn’t drive a car. We’ve decided that somewhere around 16 or 17, people are mature enough to handle a vehicle, but we don’t yet know how old someone should be to handle the internet.

Food. Prior to the 1960s, most food was prepared at home with basic ingredients. After World War II ended, manufacturing shifted from creating machinery and supplies for the war to machinery for the home and agriculture. The way we processed, stored and distributed food changed. More cheap, processed foods solved the problem of there not being enough food to go around, but we also created poorer quality food in order to get it to more people. 

20 to 30 years later, the Surgeon General started to notice that nutrition and health were decreasing in our society, and chronic diseases were on the rise. Mandatory nutrition labeling on all packaged food went into effect in the 1990s, but a lot of consumers didn’t really know much about carbs, fiber, sugar or calories, so they created food guides.

When I was a kid, we had the 4 basic food groups as our guideline. Then came the pyramid, which was just confusing, and now we have the simplified “My Plate” model. The purpose of these is to help you, the consumer, make an informed decision about what food you are serving to yourself and your family. 

I think that this is what technology guidelines will ultimately look like - the “My Plate” of screentime. The government essentially says, “Here’s all the food at the market. You can have it all, but these are the best practices for your children.”

Smoking. The technology and agricultural revolution also made cigarettes easier to get, so more people started smoking. Again, the government started to see the impact on health in the form of a lung cancer epidemic. When the evidence became so clear it could not be ignored or denied, more rules came in.

First, we saw the Surgeon General’s warning published in 1964 and added to labels the following year. TV and radio advertising were banned and age limits were put into place. 

Screentime Best Practices

The Internet has been around for about 20 years now (more intensely since smartphones became common), and we’re starting to see that there is foundational harm to kids. They are deprived socially, sleep is impacted, attention is fragmented and it creates addictive tendencies. 

The good news is that answers are coming. The Surgeon General of the United States is creating recommendations, and we are moving towards having guidelines.

U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, states, “The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency, and social media has emerged as an important contributor.” 

Until then, here are some best practices to help you decide how to handle screentime in your own home.

• Wait Until 8th. No smartphone until 8th grade. I would take this a step further and say no personal devices of any kind, including iPads, etc.
• No social media until age 16. 
• No screens before school. This will help your morning routine go more smoothly and help your kid be in their body before they go sit in a classroom.
• On school days, I recommend no screentime. If you decide to give some, wait at least an hour after they’ve been home. 
• Collaborative or social viewing. Rather than each kid being on their own device, learning to compromise and watch or play something together creates a shared experience. 
• Challenge social norms. If our schools and communities could come together on some of these commitments, we could normalize more responsible screen use.
• Demand government action. So much of the change we need will have to come from regulation or changes on a government or platform level. 

Out here in the Wild West, you get to decide and you get to enforce those limits. Your kids hate limits, but deep down, they love them. Rules make us feel safe. Think about your own rules and what works for you. 

I hope you walk away from this episode feeling a little better about yourself. You’re not a failure as a parent because you struggle with screens. In fact, you’re a trailblazer - a 1st generation parent in this new tech environment. 

Imagine me giving you a big hug (‘cause this shit is hard) and a pat on the back. You’re doing great, Mama!

You’ll Learn:

• Why figuring out screentime is so confusing
• How screentime is following in the footsteps of driving, smoking and dietary recommendations
• Current best practices for kids and screens
• What I’d do about screens if I ran the government

Resources:

• Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
• Episode 129: Screen Free Mindset
• Episode 130: How To Do a Digital Detox