Brigham Young University and American Family Survey tell us that the overuse of technology has moved into the number one spot in our “things to worry about.” American Family tell us that drug abuse, bullying, and sex all take a back seat to screen-time fears in the minds of parents and educators.
A knee-jerk reaction to our fears is to limit or get rid of the item causing concern—to throw away cell phones and keep them out of the hands of our children until they are at least thirty-three years old or to move televisions, phones, game consoles, and anything with a screen to the center of the living room so that we can be there when a child is looking at a screen. Once we start down the road of limiting, monitoring, or leaving behind all technology, we realize that we (husbands, wives, and older adults) are having the same complications with screen time as our children are having. How many times have you walked through the tables at restaurants and noticed a table of eight or nine adults all sitting with a phone in their hands and their eyes on the screen, ignoring everyone at the table? One researcher calls this phenomenon FOMO: the fear of missing out. FOMO is, according to the slang dictionary, “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent.” This is a form of social anxiety. FOMO anxiety is characterized by an overpowering desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing. This is so real and so pervasive that people are often “with other groups” while sitting face to face with a spouse or a child. In 1982, American parents were inundated with research that promoted limiting television use. At that time, most homes had one screen: a television. The television was usually a cumbersome, heavy box sitting in the living room. Wealthy families may have had two or three televisions. People with vision would state that some day, every room of a home would have a screen. I remember laughing at how silly that would be. Well, here we are in 2021. Not only do we have a screen in every room of our homes, but 72 percent of children who are eight years old and under have a screen in their front pocket or hands. 84 percent of teens who are twelve to eighteen years old use screens to do all social messaging and are on a screen eleven hours a day.
Surprisingly, adult screen-time use is about the same! In 2014, adults spent thirty-nine minutes on a screen each day. A recent survey of adults showed that their screen time had increased to eleven hours a day, an increase of over ten hours a day in just four years! Adults check their phones every four minutes and feel rude if they don’t respond to every message immediately. We have neck pain, headaches, and social anxiety because of our attachments to our electronic devices. All of this being true, screens are here to stay in some form or another. Technology shouldn’t be stuffed back into a bottle and shelved because of our fears that our children will misuse it. Our children organize track meets, sporting event practices, service projects, and school work on their phones or phone apps. We find our spouses and our children through phone calls, texts, and tracking applications. Phones are part of our education system. Homework is sent electronically, and grades can be accessed immediately by concerned parents. In his book The New Childhood, Jordan Shaprio tells us that we will be ahead of the screen game if we stop thinking about limiting use and start thinking about enhancing use. Shapiro believes that parents should allow their children to begin their digital experience earlier in their lives and then stay involved every step of the way. I agree with this idea! 56 www.sghealthandwellnessmagazine.com
Screen Time
versus
Family Time
By Matt Eschler PhD, LMFT
When children are very young, they love to show off any newlyfound skill. If I insert myself into their digital world at this stage of their lives and begin teaching screen ethics and screen discipline while interacting with them, I have years to teach important skills: paying attention to what’s in front of me versus half attending to a screen while half attending to a face-to-face experience. In other words, you will have much more success teaching cell phone, gamer, and social media ethics to your children when they are young rather than waiting until they are teenagers after they have decided they don’t need your involvement any longer. One important caveat to this suggestion is that parents like myself need to display screen ethics to teach screen ethics. We need to remove screens from our rooms and banish them from the dinner table. Married adults need to go on couples date nights with no screens. Everything we do or don’t do with our phones and social media is sending a message to others and teaching our youth about screen ethics.
This fall, I suggest that we take a deep breath and decide to connect with our lovers and loved ones. Relationships are a key ingredient to healthy screen use. We always thought limiting use would be a key factor in safe screen usage, but limiting screen use doesn’t really work. Relationships with each other that are deep and rich are what actually works. Using screens, games, and social media to add depth and fulfillment to your key relationships will potentially harness screens for your good. As parents and adult role models harness technology and show healthy ethics, the rising generation will follow in their footsteps. The following are some ideas for screen time ethics:
