When will they ever learn?

Observation: people and organizations are much more eager to adopt new technology than they are to think about its potential damage. This gap gave me the basis for a 25 year career as a computing productivity expert: I realized that Intel, my employer at the time, was happily rushing towards a major mess by giving employees every new computing and communication capability without doing the required advance analysis of how they should use it. We gave users email, and were soon hit by email overload; we gave them modems, and the work/life barrier was toppled as surely as the Berlin wall; and so on.

Not that Intel was unique – every corporation was at it with equal abandon, and many still are. What’s more, private citizens, and society as a whole, are guilty of the same crime time after time. We humans rarely learn from past mistakes.

One area where this sorry behavior is demonstrated nicely is the provision of smartphones to children.

The problem

Smartphones have penetrated the child demographic (10 years and younger) to an impressive degree. Recent surveys show figures around 25% for children under 10 who have their own device; and, given use of parents’ devices, they are well trained to use them: 90% of two-year-olds were found to have a moderate ability to use a tablet, according to a study in the US. Considering the observation in Proverbs 22:6 in the bible: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it”, and you see that we’re training the next generation of screen addicts right now.

The damages caused by this early ownership of smartphones are becoming clear in recent research findings: it interferes in many ways with the natural, healthy development of the child. Findings include:

• Interference with the development of empathy and social skills, both with peers and within the family.
• Interference with vital hands-on play and learning activity.
• Development of addictive behavior patterns.
• Interference with sleep patterns.
• Development of anti-social online behaviors such as cyber-bullying.
• Damage to kids’ vision.
• Depression and alienation.

So many harms where children are involved should certainly give us pause, and indeed we are beginning to see some pushback at levels going from the personal to the national. It is gratifying to see that parents, educators and lawmakers are starting to think about the issues involved. Sure, it would’ve been nice had they done so in advance, but better late than never.

Grassroots solution efforts

Some parents are beginning to take action against this threat to their kids’ mental health. One laudable effort here in Israel has been led by two mothers for the past six months. The project, named “Let them Grow Up in Peace”, advocates giving children “safe phones” –  a more positive name for the good old “dumb phones” limited to voice and text messaging only. The two initiators have identified a root cause of the smartphone’s incursion into schools: peer pressure. If some kids get the devices, other kids feel a need to follow or be left out. So the program converts entire schools by approaching the parents and leveraging group purchases of dumb phones for the entire student body all at once, eliminating the “haves and have nots” problem. Driven jointly with local parents and school management (and promoted via lectures word of mouth, and a Facebook group, of course), this project has already converted 200 schools across the country and is gaining momentum. Wayda go!

National solution efforts

Governments are beginning to move as well. In France, a law passed a few months ago completely bans smartphones from schools. The law applies to ages 3 through 15, with high schools above that age given discretion.  This strengthens a previous law, from 2010, that banned using the devices in class, but still permitted carrying them, in an off position, in bags.

The Chinese government blamed videogames for the alarming incidence of shortsightedness among the country’s children, and has issued stringent regulations to limit the number of videogames released in China and the duration of playtime. This approach is unlikely to work in the West, and may have other factors involved, but it will be interesting to see what happens to the children’s vision in coming years.

What can YOU do about this?

It’s nice to see others taking action, but at the end of the day, if you raise children it’s your own responsibility to protect them from harm. How can you proceed, then? Some thoughts:

• Make up your mind. Many adults actually hold the view that smartphones represent progress, that this is life in the 21st century, that you can’t stand in the way of this trend but must just flow with it or be left behind. This sounds familiar to me – in my work battling information overload I hear similar arguments against putting the use of email in control. And I disagree, in both cases: I love technology, but it needs to be applied carefully and after considering the pros and cons in each context. Google “smartphones and children”, educate yourself about the risks – and decide whether you want your small children to “just flow with it” out of control.
• Don’t buy your child a smartphone before you sense they’re ready to use it responsibly – around the mid-teen years is a common guideline, although each child is different.
• Join forces with other parents in your school. If you live outside Israel, see if you can drive an initiative similar to “Let them Grow Up in Peace” to eliminate peer pressure for smartphone adoption. The school’s staff may come on board if you take a stand.
• Once they have a phone, stay involved. Know what your kid is doing, online and offline, and steer them firmly away from harmful uses. There are applications for limiting and monitoring usage that can come in handy in this. And remember – your kid may suffer from cyber-bullying, but may also perpetrate it. Be alert to, and manage, both possibilities.
• Put limits on screen time and on when this time is allowed – no phones at dinner, no videogames before homework is done… whatever you deem right, but firmly.
• Educate the child about the device, about the internet, about cyber-bullying and safe online behavior. I’m no child psychologist, so I won’t go into good parenting advice here, but I urge you to do this right in terms of building trust and respect.

It’s a heavy responsibility… but raising the next generations has always been that, for parents and for society. Smartphones just add a new dimension to handle. Do it well.

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