Posted by Richard Freed on September 20th, 2014 in Technology and Family
Writer/director Gary Turk’s spoken word film Look Up (embedded below) depicts real-world relationships being lost to our infatuation with digital devices. A YouTube commenter says of the film: “This made me cry… Whenever I’m with my dad he wants me to go for a walk, and all I do is complain that I want to stay home and play my games… Sometimes I regret getting my first video game… it made me who I am today, and I feel like I’m too far to go back.”
Look Up has more than 46 million views and the proportion of likes to dislikes is overwhelmingly positive. Nevertheless, the film has been criticized by some pundits who raise instances when technology brings families closer, e.g., kids connecting to relatives via video chat. There are in fact examples of technology bringing us together and pulling us apart, but what’s the overall effect of our increasingly wired lives? While generally not discussed in the popular media, there’s actually a lot of research that points the way. In this writing, I’ll focus on what science is telling us about the effects of kids’ digital immersion on the family.
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Posted by Richard Freed on September 16th, 2014 in Being Productive with Tech, Tech Parenting
In the recent New York Times’ article “Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent,” technology writer Nick Bilton describes a 2010 phone call he had with Steve Jobs, Apple’s then C.E.O. Bilton asked Mr. Jobs how his kids were enjoying the recently released first-generation iPad. “They haven’t used it,” Jobs replied, “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.” If the Jobs’ household wasn’t bathed in gadgets, how did the family spend time? Walter Isaacson, who wrote Mr. Jobs’ biography and who spent a great deal of time in the Jobs’ family home, observes, “Every evening Steve made it a point of having dinner at the big long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things…. No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer.”
The Jobs’ parenting style is similar to that of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda. In the Reuter’s article, “Bill Gates keeps close eye on kids’ computer time,” the Gates parents are reported to have set strict limits on their daughter’s gaming, and their son had his own screen limits. Bill Gates joked, “My son said, ‘Am I going to have limits like this my whole life?’, and I said, ‘No, when you move away you can set your own screen limits.’”
If both the Jobs’ and Gates’ families set strict tech limits, what type of parenting is employed by other tech industry leaders? In Mr. Bilton’s interviews with a number of technology chief executives and venture capitalists, he found this same parenting strategy quite common, noting many “strictly limit their children’s screen time, often banning all gadgets on school nights, and allocating ascetic time limits on weekends.” For example, Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired and now the C.E.O. of the drone maker 3D Robotics, described why he and his wife set strict technology limits, noting it’s “because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself. I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.” Anderson’s concerns for his kids include being subjected to bullying online and the potential for developing a technology addiction. The types of screen limits Bilton found commonly used by tech industry leaders include:
- no gadget use on weekdays and limits from 30 minutes to two hours on weekends for phones and tablets
- computers only being used for homework on school nights
- and a rule he found universal among the tech parents he polled: “No screens in the bedroom.”
These parenting practices clearly differ from those applied by most American families. The latest Kaiser Family Foundation media/tech study measured US parents rules for kids’ use of video games, computers, and TV and found: “The majority of 8- to 18-year-olds say they don’t have any rules [emphasis mine] about the type of media content they can use or the amount of time they can spend with the medium (there is one exception—a bare majority of 52% say they have rules about what they’re allowed to do on the computer).”
Why is the parenting approach applied by many tech leaders dramatically different from that typically provided US kids? As Bilton notes, “These tech C.E.O’s seem to know something that the rest of us don’t.” I believe their insiders’ knowledge inoculates them from being deceived by industry marketing promising the benefits of immersing kids in phones and tablets. They understand the reality of how American kids use technology: that kids’ tech use is dominated by long hours spent with entertainment technologies—including video games, online videos, and texting (according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, an incredible 8 hours a day)—while kids spend only 16 minutes a day using the computer at home for schoolwork. These tech leaders also recognize that all these playtime gadgets can distance families, hurt academic success, and pose the risk of addiction.
I therefore suggest parents will benefit from paying attention to the contrasting messages coming out of the tech industry. On one hand, industry marketing claims that it’s vital we load kids up with ever more devices, and that video games, social networks, and texting promote kids’ happiness and success. On the other, tech industry leaders speak volumes through the strong steps they take to limit their own kids’ use of devices. Which counsel will you choose when raising your kids?
Photo Credit: Paul Smith/Shutterstock
Posted by Richard Freed on June 18th, 2012 in Technology and Family
On Monday, the San Jose Mercury published an article I wrote about Facebook’s possible move into the under-13 market and its effect on children’s education:
The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Facebook is developing technology that would allow children younger than 13 to use the site. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that his company’s product is vital to young kids’ learning. Last year, he said of the legal restrictions that limit signing up young kids, “That will be a fight we take on at some point,” and justified his reasoning through this comment: “My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age.”
Read the rest at the San Jose Mercury News »
Posted by Richard Freed on May 22nd, 2012 in Being Productive with Tech
If last week’s release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, told us anything, it’s high time to shift our kids’ technology use away from shooting virtual aliens and making status updates to using technologies that will help them one day land a job.
The latest version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (using 2011 test results) found that two-thirds of 8th grade students scored below “proficient” in the sciences. While minute gains were made since a similar assessment in 2009, Gerry Wheeler, interim head of the National Science Teachers Association said, “This is dreadful. We’ve got a situation where we haven’t done much different in the last decade and we keep expecting different results.”
The 2010 Harvard Study, “U.S. Math Performance in Global Perspective,” also revealed how much farther American kids must go if they are to compete in this global economy. American teens ranked a dismal 31st in math and 16th in science as compared to their international peers. Read the rest of this entry »