Riding the tech tidalwave.
It's moving fast and as parents, learning to surf may be our best option.
I don’t surf. I have watched from the beach as others have learned but never have I felt the urge to give it a try myself. But I get the importance of the metaphor for being a human. A few months ago when I started this deep dive into screen controls and exploring resources that help parents in a digital world, my husband responded with “Oh you just have to learn to surf because the waves are getting bigger and bigger and they aren’t going to stop.” I vehemently disagreed with him, convinced, I just needed to wrap my head around the right rules and put them in place. Now 6 months later, I have to say, I hate it when he’s right.
Parents are being inundated with good ideas on how to reduce tech use and being bombarded with suggestions on what to try - I know, I’m totally guilty of adding to the noise with the suggestions and basis for this Substack blog! But I am finding that the implementation of many of the suggestions, no matter what they are, feel hopelessly overwhelming and require me to be vigilant in a way that I don’t want to be. So we do nothing? Correct? Or, when we do spend the time and energy to learn a device’s controls or set up and pay for a control app for our family, something changes and we are back to square one? I’ve said it before - it’s the modern version of Whack-a-Mole. I used to love that game but to be honest, this new version is seriously getting on my nerves.
In the last 6 months, ChapGPT has landed in our laps, I read about an influencer who is making serious money with an AI girlfriend version of herself that she sells by the minute and I heard a safety expert urge parents to come up with a “code word” so that in a possible scam they can detect whether they are actually speaking to their child or not! Data is showing that 91% of youth have a phone by the time there are 14 and more and more kindergartners are coming to school with phones! Seriously, where is the nearest cave for me to crawl into?
But sigh, I am not crawling into a cave with my family, or alone for that matter and complete resignation is also not an option so there is only one thing for me to do: stop, pause, exhale, see where I am trying to control something that I can’t control, watch the waves and get a surf board. Or at least a metaphorical one.
So what on earth does that actually look like?
For me, it looks like continuing to connect with like minded parents and consciously creating opportunities to be unplugged because that is important to me, modeling less tech and healthy tech to my family because that is important to me, holding my boundaries when it’s really important to me that devices are put away because that is important to me and then working hard to let go of the constriction and angst I have around all the rest of it.
So what is important to you?
For me, connecting with like minded parents is what helps me to get with the flow. If information is a way that you learn to adapt and go with the flow (or metaphorically surf), here are a few highlights of the most valued pieces of info and dialogue that I have stumbled upon in the last week. Consider this the highlight real, of the most thoughtful, important and relevant content I stumbled across this week. If you have the interest and the brain space, take a look! If not, you can always come back to it when you do.
Love,
Consider _________________________________________________________________
I spent the last few days listening to interviews with some of the leading voices in tech, digital wellness health and parenting support. The interviews and format was created by GoZen, and called the Reconnected Kids Summit. The experts and speakers, all passionate about raising and supporting empowered, healthy youth seemed to have a shared message for parents and caregivers, whether they actually spoke to it specifically or not:
Know what your kids are doing on their devices. Know who your kids are communicating with on their devices and how.
This is going to look different for every parent, every child, every teenager, every family. That’s what makes this so hard - there isn’t a right answer, a right app, a right ScreenTime set up, a right age, a right amount of time. Though this seems like a simple message, it is work. It is energy, it is time and it is commitment. I will imagine that for some parents and families this might be the hardest message to hear. For me it looks like getting curious, asking questions, checking-in and being very clear about what my values are.
Listen ___________________________________________________________________
From Marin Healthy Youth Partnerships (worth knowing about if you live in Marin!), this Let’s Talk Presentation with speakers Annie Egan and student Riya Aghi on The Adolescent Brain. I found this unbelievably helpful in understanding how I have to adapt my parenting to be more impactful, effective and understanding.
Watch ___________________________________________________________________
This is and isn’t about technology. This new documentary is for anyone but especially for parents, teachers, care takers, family members, school admin and counselors who support youth who are living with anxiety. Anxious Nation is beautifully pieced together to show how anxiety in impacting all of us and how this is a growing mental health crisis that in many ways is impacted by early and extensive device use. This is a health and developmental concern that we need to pay attention to and that paying attention to it, naming it, speaking it out loud and connecting about it is how we can perhaps start to heal it.
Connect _________________________________________________________________
“The Internet is an amazing tool that enriches lives—when used properly.” Katie Greer did a Zoom presentation to parents at our local middle school recently and a friend told me about it so when I saw here name as one of the interviewers in Reconnected Kids Summit, I was thrilled to be able to listen. I really appreciate her approach because she is doing this work as a mom to kids and walking the bumpy, ragged path everyday. I checked her out on Instagram and really appreciate her approach and her acknowledgment that this is hard work AND truly necessary in raising this next generation. Check her out on Instagram.
Learn ____________________________________________________________________
Students can’t get off their cellphones, schools have had enough, an article worth a read in The Washington Post is just another headline about the struggle with schools and cell phones. There is a growing trend of schools banning personal device use during school hours across the country. One point the article misses is that there is actually a growing amount of anecdotal evidence that students are responding quite well to no-phones-at-schools policies, after the initial withdrawal and transition process. If this is of interest to you or you would like information on how to present this information to your school or school community, check out the resources and information at Away for the Day
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What’s a question you have around tech and parenting and device use? Let’s start a conversation!
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