Screen-free: The Irony Of Reading A Topic Written On An iPad

Find out more at www.screenfree.org.

I remember loving the times when we'd walk to the library or the computer room in our elementary school in Vicksburg, MI, where we'd inevitably be playing Oregon Trail. If you don't know what Oregon Trail is, you're not a Millennial. It was a garbage game (by today's standards) that we thought was amazing because it was on a computer. PCs weren't popular enough to be in everyone's homes. My family had one and a couple of my friends did as well, but they were typically for our parents to continue their work at home and for us to dial-up AOL and wait 3-5 minutes to sign on to the World Wide Web. Computers have been a part of my life for almost all 31 years. Touch screens are still new to me, and more of a novelty than a necessity to my life.

Your little children probably don't know a time where touch screens didn't exist, and because of that their brains are wired differently than ours. Almost everyone I know under the age of 40 will reach for their phones to answer a question that would have eluded us in yesteryear, but the key point here is that we'll have to reach for our phones. Teenagers and younger appear to have those damn phones surgically implanted into their hands - there's a guy named Neil Harbisson who gave a keynote at the SAS conference who is the world's first recognized cyborg and would probably say the youth should implant the phones into their skin, but I digress. Getting teenagers to have eye contact with you while you're talking to them seems to becoming harder and harder, and even younger children of privilege aren't any better.

Why is that? A multitude of reasons, but mostly because the content is designed to keep their attention. 60 Minutes recently aired a special that stated it's not a generational thing - it's called "brain hacking" and it's a strategy that most high-profile companies are utilizing to help drive traffic. Content is being designed to form habits, and these habits are formed with the longing desire of receiving a reward. The reward can be in the form of "likes" or "retweets", taking technology that is said to be neutral but in fact is designed to program us into actions to drive revenue. 

Luckily, it appears that the goals of the content our children are becoming addicted to isn't just to drive the bottom line. Lots of times, progressive parents are giving little Timmy and little Sally Sue these devices to build competencies to put them at an advantage in school and in life. According to Dr. Aric Sigman, however, the research says it "is the very thing impeding the development of the abilities that parents are so eager to foster through the tablets. The ability to focus, to concentrate, to lend attention, to sense other people’s attitudes and communicate with them, to build a large vocabulary —all those abilities are harmed.” More can be found here, but it appears that children should have limited exposure to screens like this until after the age of 3. Overexposure to screens leads to difficulties building friendships, a skill I'd argue is more important than any content picked up in a classroom setting or an instructional app on a screen.

Some parents use screens to calm children down. There will be lots of opinions around this strategy with individuals (like myself who haven't had that experience of taming a belligerent child) typically more opposed to that than others. What the research says in this case is that although screens can be good pacifiers, it's important for children to develop internal self-regulation. It's proven that learning and actually struggling to get an answer engages the brain, helping the individual learn how to arrive at conclusions and problem-solve. 

That's why I'm in complete support of the efforts happening as a part of Screen-Free Week 2017. An organization I work with, KC Ready 4s, is doing its part to emphasize the importance of "screen-free time". These efforts are critical if we want our next generations to be as successful as they can be. Embrace technology, but understand that critical thinking will never be replaced by a touch screen.