It doesn’t seem that long ago that many parents felt guilty for using even the highly acclaimed “Sesame Street” to baby-sit their kids while they cooked dinner.
But a not-so-funny thing happened on our way to our high-tech-enamored world of 2015: Children’s recreational use of screens, phones and entertainment media has exploded.
“It’s up considerably from years past,” says Richard Freed, a Walnut Creek child and adolescent psychologist, in his new book, “Wired Child: Debunking Popular Technology Myths.” Digital entertainment is now the “dominant activity in their lives,” says Freed, who is also the father of two daughters, 11 and 7.
And that’s not a recipe for a balanced, well-adjusted life, he and other media and educational experts say. Emerging research shows that kids’ overuse of TV, computers, video games, tablets and smartphones hinders their physical, intellectual, social and emotional development.
Nonetheless, achievement-oriented parents, who a decade ago would have strictly limited their children’s TV viewing, seem eager to equip their kids with the latest laptops, tablets and smartphones. Freed and others blame an industry spin that says that early, regular and, in some cases, unlimited use of technology is essential for kids to be technically proficient and academically competitive in the 21st century.
Sharael Kolberg admits she was one of those parents. The former Silicon Valley web producer and author of “A Year Unplugged: A Family’s Life Without Technology,” recalls how she salivated over the latest laptops at the Apple store when she bought her young daughter an iMac.
Several years after her family’s tech-free experiment, Kolberg agrees with Freed that there is nothing wrong with kids watching limited amounts of age-appropriate entertainment, going online to do school research or having cellphones to reach their parents.
“Technology isn’t the problem,” says Freed, whose daughters don’t have smartphones and use computers for schoolwork. The problem comes when screen time is overused and displaces family, school and other experiences that Freed says are “fundamental to a strong mind and a happy, successful life.”
This overuse is documented in a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. It showed that 8- to 18-year-olds spend up to six total hours a day watching TV, playing computer games or immersed in social media, YouTube videos and movies on their iPads and phones. This daily habit rises to 7 ½ hours if kids are multitasking — posting on Instagram while watching TV, for example. Teenagers may spend an additional 2 ½ hours a day texting or talking on the phone. Meanwhile, kids spend only about 16 minutes a day using a computer at home for homework.
When Kolberg’s daughter Katelyn was 5, she used her iMac and her mother’s iPhone to play games. She also watched TV an hour a day and movies after dinner.
But Katelyn wasn’t the only tech-dependent member of the family. One day, it dawned on Kolberg that she and her husband had issues, too. “We had gotten into the habit of spending our evenings with the TV on while simultaneously checking email or seeing what our Facebook friends were up to,” she says.
So in late 2009, Kolberg and her family started their tech-free year. They removed TVs, computers, smartphones, the Internet, email and social media from their home. They kept a cellphone for emergencies.
Still, Kolberg felt worried that sticking her daughter’s iMac in the garage would somehow make her fall behind. “As a child growing up in Silicon Valley, it just (didn’t) seem right to take her computer away.”
Like Kolberg, Freed challenges the idea that technology brings families together. In his book, he says this myth is perpetuated by such ads as a TV commercial for an Apple iPhone. As the ad starts, a teen’s focus on his phone is revealed to be him actually videotaping family moments; the ad ends with the family together, watching his creation.
“The message is … buy your kids iPhones, and they will be closer to you, even if it looks like they’re ignoring you in favor of their phones,” Freed says.
In fact, kids’ top uses for smartphones have nothing to do with interacting with family or doing research for school. Instead, they’re playing games, texting and watching TV — a lot of TV, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation study.
Americans have long had a reverence for technology, which Freed believes has been exploited by tech and gaming companies to market their products as essential educational tools or cool, engaging — and benign — entertainment, he says.
As parents hear education pundits pushing for more STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs in American schools, they are exhorted by app developers telling them their products can help their babies and preschoolers get a head start on math and reading. Never mind that many of the educational claims made by app developers “don’t hold up,” says Caroline Knorr, the parenting editor at the San Francisco-based nonprofit Common Sense Media.
“A lot of products marketed to parents overpromise what they can do and are not age-appropriate,” she says, adding that it’s the rare preschooler who is developmentally ready to start reading or doing math. The real concern is kids’ constant exposure to entertainment media, Freed says. In his more than 20 years of practice, he has seen hundreds of young patients who struggle academically and tested a number of them for ADHD. He says their symptoms, failing grades and difficulty completing homework often are caused by too much screen time.
In fact, technology overuse could be rewiring kids’ developing brains in ways that could explain the growing number of kids diagnosed with anxiety and other psychiatric disorders. Brain imaging techniques also show that video gaming stimulates the same pleasure pathways as drugs and alcohol. Video or Internet game addiction, which is gaining recognition by mental health professionals, can be devastating. One of Freed’s patients, 15, threatened suicide when his parents announced he couldn’t play his video games until his grades improved.
For both Freed and Kolberg, the strongest statements about limiting kids’ technology use come from industry leaders like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Gates reportedly set strict time limits for his son and daughters’ video gaming and screen time.
And in 2010, Jobs revealed to a journalist that his children had not used his company’s recently released first-generation iPad. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home,” Jobs said, according to a 2014 New York Times article.
In fact, low-tech learning definitely appeals to a small number of Silicon Valley executives who send their children to the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, where kids don’t use computers in the classroom until seventh grade, says Lisa Babinet, the dean of students for the school’s high school and chair of the math department.
In the Waldorf program, learning is hands-on in the purest sense. Kids garden, sew, make music, do lots of imaginative play, and use pencil and paper to master their handwriting. These methods are designed to teach students to concentrate deeply, master human interaction and think creatively, Babinet explains.
The school’s tech-savvy parents understand that gadgets should have a limited place in a well-balanced life, Babinet says. “In a (media) interview, one parent said ‘power tools are amazing, but I wouldn’t give a power tool to a kindergartner.’ ”
When Kolberg’s family went tech-free, Katelyn complained almost daily. On Day 365, Kolberg, whose family has since relocated from Los Gatos to Southern California, contemplated slowly reintegrating devices back into their lives. While relieved to resume technology use for convenience, she was, however, “disappointed to no longer live a life of simplistic communication and family bonding.”
The sabbatical definitely benefited Katelyn, Kolberg says. Without tech, the youngster spent time reading, painting, drawing and gardening. And somehow, removing the TV “dramatically” reduced the anxiety she had exhibited since she was a toddler.
Katelyn also became more adventurous about leaving the safe cocoon of her home. Instead of watching cartoons on Sunday mornings and resisting pleas to go out for a hike, she became “a confident, adventure-seeking nature lover in a matter of months.”
Now 11, Katelyn has a smartphone but rarely uses it and generally has a healthy perspective on technology, her mother says. More than anything, Kolberg says, the no-tech approach taught her daughter to appreciate life’s “simple pleasures.”
