Screen Time vs. Real Time - May 2019

“What’s this, Michael?” I look over my 9-year-old’s shoulder at the screen of the chromebook that his school recently issued.

                “It’s my email,” he proudly responds.

                “Really?” I raise my eyebrows and lean in. “What are you emailing?”

                “Stuff.”

                “Let’s see some of this ‘stuff.’”

                I start to scroll through a few of my son’s online exchanges. There were some innocuous “Hellos” and a “What’s Up?” but as I clicked my way through his brief email history, I noticed something else.

                “What’s going on with this conversation here about a missing toy?”

                “Ugh...” Michael isn’t sure how to respond.

                “And, wait a minute,” I scroll a little deeper. “This isn’t good, Buddy. This is cyber-bullying.”  I notice an exchange with another boy in his grade that involves misspelled curse words and insults. “I’m taking this right now.” I pick up Michael’s chromebook. “This is not right. I need to see your teacher.”

                “Dad!” Michael starts to protest and then changes his mind when he sees my expression.

                It’s hard to believe this is already our reality with a son only in 3rd grade.

                I do think that technology can have a place in education as a tool to be used in specific increments. And to be fair to LTUSD, the curriculum at school has certainly been good in terms of cautiously getting kids to learn to research, to code, and to type, but as a parent I draw a bright and firm line at unsupervised online interactions between kids.

                Google solicits educational institutions and school districts with enticing tools, like Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Hangouts, Google Drive, and yes, Gmail, all for free with up to 1 Terabyte of data storage per student as part of their push to accumulate users early and break up Apple’s dominance in the education market.

So much for their old slogan: “Don’t be Evil.”

                And then there’s “Seesaw” which is basically a Facebook-style platform that allows teachers as well as students to post what goes on in the classroom and parents on a supposedly secure platform to see it and “like” it. Ostensibly, this is great, as it gives parents a window into the classroom, but it too is fraught with peril. There are the privacy concerns associated with posting pictures and then there is the online-approval training that this app is cultivating. Jane, our 7-year-old in 2nd grade has come home from school demanding that we watch and then “like” some video that her teacher took of her at school. 

Wifey and I are not okay with any of this.

In an article last year in “The Guardian,” Eliane Glaser wrote, “And not only is screen technology harmful to children…, there is little evidence that it helps them learn. A 2016 OECD report found that the impact of computers on pupil performance was ‘mixed at best,’ and in most cases computers were ‘hurting learning.’”

My concern with the technology in the classroom is really less about how it inhibits academic performance and more about the long term effects on my children’s health and well-being. The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes that screen time of any sort, no matter how purportedly educational, provokes eye strain and bad posture. It’s also the opposite of active, healthy, physical play, which kids so desperately need in order to combat a whole range of expanding childhood medical problems, like obesity, sleep-deprivation, and according to numerous medical studies, grey matter atrophy. “Shrinkage or loss of tissue volume in… the important frontal lobe, which governs executive functions, such as planning, prioritizing, organizing, and impulse control.”  A study in the European Journal of Radiology, went on to say that too much screen time caused “damage to… the insula, which is involved in our capacity to develop empathy and compassion for others.”

We parents are unwittingly reprogramming our children’s neural chemistry with different dopamine pathways that fire based not on shared real and tactile experiences and friendships, but based on superficial virtual interactions. This is in no way healthy development.   

It’s no wonder that Bill Gates kept cellphones from his kids until high school, Steve Jobs wouldn’t give his children iPads, and one of Zuckerberg’s assistants, Athena Chavarria, said in a New York Times piece, “‘I am convinced that the devil lives in our phones and is wreaking havoc on our children.’”

                “Michael, I’ve got a bunch of work to do, but I’m taking you to school today and we’re going to talk with your teacher about your emails and your use of this chromebook.”

                “Okay, Dad.”

                After some conversations at school, we got his email account disabled and so I’ll consider that a small victory in the great Luddite battle against the omnipotent technological tide.

                More importantly, for our little family we’ve been pushing lots of low-tech-high-concentration activities at home.

                “Mom, not another puzzle,” Michael complains.

                “Oh come on, Kiddo.” Wifey says, “This one is really pretty. Check out the beach.”

                Michael peeks at the box and then sits down.

                We also are combating technology by making sure that the clearest dopamine triggers for our kids are authentic experiences, preferably outside, and with friends and family. We’re lucky to live in Tahoe and have access to clean air, water, and scenery that beats the snot out of screen-time any day.