How do you define screentime?
Where does it start and end? Do you define and contain it on the tablet, smartphones or extend it to the computer? What about the television and movies? How about video games? Apps or tools? Is it different for yourself versus your kid? Or your kid’s teacher? Your spouse?
In 1981, IBM launched the Personal Computer (PC). The first .com domain was registered in 1985. In 1998, the world was introduced to Google Search. From 2003 to 2006, Skype, iTunes, 4Chan, Facebook, Podcast, Flickr, You Tube, Reddit, and Twitter were all launched. I’m only scratching the surface.
If you have used any of the recent technologies or tools, you know that it has changed the way we work, play, behave, and exist. Technology has changed everything, and yet our conversation around screentime remains in the stone ages.
We still lump EVERYTHING together that sits behind a pixelated screen.
Ever since the American Academy of Pediatrics’ issued its first recommendation on screentime in 1999 (back when AOL was King of the Hill), parents around the world have been agonizing over the amount of time their precious spends gazing into the blue screen.
Child advocates have built a fortified stronghold in scientific, psychological, and educational circles that staunchly advocates setting clear limits.
Parents feel the weight of these guidelines. In her The Verge article, Lauren Smiley relays a mom’s outcry about the screen time debate: “The anti-smart phone crowd (are like) the vegans of the parenting world. There’s just morality around this whole technology issue — the equivalent of religiousness.”
I want to challenge those guidelines because I believe that by limiting screens we are limiting our children’s future.
I don’t think we should just let our kids loose on their smartphones until their eyes bleed. That would be negligent parenting. But as parents, we need to demystify and reconstruct our conversation with our kids about screentime.
We need stop talking about screen-time like it is sex, alcohol, or drugs.
We tiptoe around the topic, hope that the technicals are covered at school, and look for clues on how they are handling themselves.
“God knows what she is doing online, but I do hope that she is being safe.”
We lecture about setting limits, but then they watch us binge Netflix and aimlessly click.
We need to stop saying, “Just say NO!,” because rules without reasons will lead to rebellion.
Two summers ago our family visited New York, and we went to the top of the Empire State Building. The Dare to Dream exhibit on the 86th floor, which chronicles the building’s history, engineering, and construction, really captured by son’s attention more than the 360-degree views. He was into SIMCITY at the time, and was fascinated by what it took to make a real skyscraper. His questions and inquiry had true insight that came from his hours and hours of simulating construction on a screen.
There is beauty, discovery, connection, and invention in screen-time. Go to any primary school near you. Groups of boys and girls are huddled over smartphones laughing or high-fiving over something one of the kids has made or discovered – an avatar doing the floss with a goofy face, or a YouTube video of a monstrous mound of slime made with 10 pounds of glitter.
For our kids, there is accomplishment too! Someone who says that playing video games is a complete waste of time fails to acknowledge the incredible feeling of satisfaction gained from besting Duriel in the second act of Diablo2. Particularly, when he has been giving you the run around for hours.
The truth is that we don’t know the long term effects of screentime on our kids, but we do know is that technology is not going away.
We need Infinite Screentime because when you get down on your hand and knees and look at the perspective of the future from the POV of your child, we know that we need to prepare them with courage not fear.
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So, how YOU define screentime?