The Latest
March 19, 2024

Where Every Family Matters

Let’s Not Mess Up Our Toddlers

Hello? If you're joking about your cell phone addiction, why the heck are you handing your phone over to your 2 year old?

What if children actually DID come with a parenting manual? If tucked inside your baby’s swaddling clothes was a step-by-step guide for raising your little one from infancy to age 21? Wouldn’t it be great? You could just flip to the chapter on kids and technology and follow along for the well-being of your child.
Well, joke’s on us. There’s no manual, and even if there were, the chapter on technology wouldn’t be there because it’s not available yet. This era we’re in where nearly 100 percent of homes have a smart device is one big grand experiment.
But psychologists are starting to see links between the overuse of technology and our kids’ mental health. The current uptick in childhood depression is being linked to social media, technology and kids. Parents see kids talking less, heads down more. Observing her 3-year-old wrapped up in his iPad, a mom laughs, “He’s completely addicted!”
What do YOU do when your toddler starts making “gimme” hands for your smartphone? Hand it over, right? Yes, technology is fantastic … except for when it’s not.
Common Sense Media (CSM), a California nonprofit that studies the relationship between kids and technology and knows it’s problematic. Chief Executive Jim Steyer, a dad of four, says, “These devices have great benefits, but the downsides are very significant; you’ve got all of these parents glued to their blanking devices, and so are their 6-year-olds.”
    The evidence is clear that parents with toddlers have caved in to “modern” society’s clamor for more and more tech at younger ages. The good news is, if you raise your kids with common sense and authority you can parent your child through the weeds of what’s good for him and what’s not.

KIDS KNOW MORE THAN PARENTS
Nathaniel Clark, M.D., chief medical officer for Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital and associate professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral science. Clark says the right age for a smartphone varies by child, but that “as late as possible” is best. Yet parents give their 18-month-olds smart devices and set up parental controls with little thought to the child’s capacity for it.
“Our brains continue developing until well after we reach age 20,” Clark says. “Particularly in the frontal lobe, which is responsible for both planning, reasoning and inhibition of impulses.”
    Ah, impulsivity. It’s why kids love Snapchat. Take a pic, write a comment, share it and poof it’s gone. A 15-year-old boy (who requested anonymity for this article) witnessed a girl, age 7 or so, on Snapchat sitting in front of him at TPAC.  He looked disgusted when he said, “She shouldn’t be on Snapchat. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’ll just want to do it all the time.” A savvy 24-year-old blogger told me, “The problem is, kids are faster at doing things online than parents are. Even if parents think they know what their kids are doing, they don’t. They can’t possibly keep their kids safe.”
    While technology is a huge source of pleasure, we also know it can be incredibly overwhelming. Today’s homes are circuses with parents struggling to balance screen time with everything else in their lives.
Jean Twenge, Ph.D., is the author of iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood (Atria; 2017). Twenge’s research compares children born in the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s and later. She says the year 2012 (when those having iPhones went above the 50 percent mark) is the same year that kids started saying they felt “sad, hopeless, useless, and that they couldn’t do anything ‘right.’” Kids started describing feeling left out and lonely. Twenge’s researchers saw a 50 percent increase in teen clinical level depression. 

ADDICTION & STRESS
Children given devices at young ages means addiction starting earlier. You know that awful irritability you witness when you take the iPad away from your 3-year-old? That’s what we’re talking about. The struggle of it all.
    According to Gabor Maté, M.D., the best-selling author and expert on addiction, when you put an iPad or other smart device in the hands of your toddler, you give him a one-way relationship; an indifferent, unloving, inhuman babysitter. Human beings must have human connections or they can become lonely, often deeply so. The iPad, iPhone, Facebook and all of the social media platforms promise connection, but it’s not there, Maté says. Technology provides a temporary relief from loneliness. When the tech is removed, the “pain” returns, and so you need more.
    So think: If your child’s addicted to his device at age 3, what are you going to have on your hands when he’s a teen? If Snapchat and Instagram monopolize your preteen’s social life now, what’s going to be running your toddler’s life 10 years from now? And another thought: before all of these social media apps, a kid could go home and not take the mean kids at school with her. On social media, mean kids rein. Parents have to be keenly observant when kids enter puberty, going underground with their feelings and becoming skillful at masking hurt.
   But what if your child is experiencing deep stress? Results from the 2017 National Poll on Children’s Health released in April of 2017 suggest many adults think children today are experiencing worse mental health than they did growing up. If you think technology is to blame for making the world meaner, it doesn’t take much to connect the dots for kids. It’s important to work on connecting with kids starting from a young age and to keep it going as they grow. This connectivity will help tremendously when the going gets tough in the teen years.
“If you have a strong connection with your children, you can help them verbalize what’s going on inside,” Clark says. Stress, in particular, he adds, produces situations that trigger dangerous thoughts and the word no parent should have to hear — suicide. With the rate of childhood suicides on the rise, mental health screenings are now the norm for kids in school. Parents must also be on the alert for behavior changes.
“Smartphone addiction is becoming recognized as a societal, if not a behavioral, health problem,” says Clark.     
     

MINDFULNESS TO THE RESCUE
You love your device, and your toddler loves her iPad. That’s OK, but Clark says to incorporate a sense of mindfulness so you’re not constantly distracted. Your baby and toddler need you.
     “Mindfulness as a lifestyle decision is helpful in coping with stress, and there is evidence to suggest it can also help with depression and anxiety,” Clark adds.
That means we need to pay attention.
     “When we are not mindful with our children, or distracted by digital technology, we do two things,” says Clark. “The first is modeling that distraction is normal, even for the people whom we need to be attentive to. The second is that our children may feel unimportant. Infancy is a crucial time for developing a sense of attachment and stability. It sets the stage for how our children experience relationships in the world,” he adds.
    So don’t buy in to pop culture’s view that limits are old fashioned or that being authoritative with your children is the wrong way to go. Be the parent, and set clear tech limits for your kids.      
“If we can approach our children with empathy and respect, and can avoid being punitive,” Clark says, “we can often set good limits that help our children grow.”

 

MORE GREAT STORIES

Positive Discipline is Best for Kids

Read Outloud to Your Kids Every Night

The Dark Side of Snapchat and Instagram for Kids