Dispatch #36: Childhood

On parenting and technology

My oldest kid, who will turn thirteen in June, doesn’t have a smart phone. He does have a flip phone, which we purchased for him before 7th grade began. He’s supposed to bring it to school or when he hangs out with friends, just in case we need to get in touch. Instead, I usually find it somewhere in the house, dead and dusty, as useful a phone as a brick would be.

My son forgets about his flip phone because it’s nothing special. Texting on it is about as fun as flossing your teeth, and the camera produces blurry and grainy photos that will die on the dumb device. It offers him zero entertainment.

This is all by design. I want him to forget his phone, except in emergencies, when he truly needs it.

He won’t get a smart phone until he’s sixteen—and even that I’m nervous about. But, I figure, okay, by then, his prefrontal cortex will be a little more developed. By then, he might have a job, and he definitely will want to text easily with his friends. Most importantly, by sixteen, he’ll drive, so he’ll need a phone—well he won’t need one, but I want him to have access to digital maps and music on the road. I probably won’t let him use social media, though. And the phone won’t live all night long in his bedroom, either.

Maybe I’m overprotective. Or, put more simply and accurately, I’m protective. I want to protect my child from smartphones.

*

In his article for The Atlantic, “End the Phone-Based Childhood Now,” Jonathan Haidt writes how smartphones have deformed childhood, hurting an entire generation of young people. (Haidt has written a whole book on the topic —it’s out now.)

You’re likely familiar with the data, whether or not you’ve read Haidt’s piece. Young people, living more and more of their lives online, struggle with anxiety and depression; they’re lonely, they’re not hanging IRL with friends, so they aren’t learning face-to-face communication. There’s less sex (but there’s more porn). Children, hooked to a screen instead of being independent with friends, aren’t learning to take risks, they’re not learning resilience. Their attention is fragmented.

It’s basically all shitty, and it’s not a surprise. Anyone who has a phone understands its gross allure. And who among us has spent an extended amount of time scrolling and scrolling (…and scrolling) and felt great afterward? No one.

We understand this firsthand, and we’ve read the literature and seen the data. And yet, we’re still getting our kids smartphones.

*

I decided to write this to normalize my choice. So here’s my banner: I am not getting my teenager a smartphone.

Wait Until 8th is great—but I want to wait longer, as long as I can. I hope other parents will do the same.

I tell my friends of this plan, I tell the parents of my kids’ friends (the ones who haven’t already purchased a phone for their offspring). I want us to band together! I want my kids to have friends like them, so they aren’t totally isolated.

(Thank god my sister Lauren, whose eight-year-old daughter is best friends with my eight-year-old daughter, is in agreement. They can be phone-less freaks together.)

“You’ll cultivate mystery,” I tell my children.

“It’ll be hard not to have a phone like other kids do,” I say, “but in the long run it’ll be better for your brain and your mental health.”

“You have the rest of your life to be on a phone,” I say.

But even my four-year-old wants one.

After all, he sees me on mine. Must be the most interesting thing in the world, the way I get sucked into it.

*

I’m trying to give my oldest independence elsewhere, since he can’t have a smartphone. Since the fifth grade he has had time alone with friends after school. In elementary school he used to walk to the public library and to various establishments in the neighborhood to buy things like Boba, frozen yogurt…once, even, a liter of Mountain Dew, lord help me. For a while he was bringing his sister along (she was in kindergarten), but she hated it, so we ended that practice. Yes, we’re lucky his school’s in a safe and walkable area, and, yes, I did worry about him crossing the four lane boulevard. I both feared and reveled in having no exact idea of where he was for the two hours between school and pick-up. When I found out from other parents that my child had started an after school poker game with his classmates, held in this little tucked away nook behind two buildings, I was proud. And, let me just say, every parent was delighted by the gambling ring. Our kids are cool!

Children deserve free play, and they deserve unwitnessed time. Let me give that to my children, as much as I can.

*

Here’s the technology we have in our house:

We have a dead iPad I purchased in like 2012 that we used to bring for traveling but never used at home for children’s entertainment. We have a big television in the living room and a second, smaller one in the boys’ bedroom that we got during the pandemic. My twelve-year-old purchased a Nintendo Switch, with his own money, when he was eleven. He also has a Chromebook from school, on which he can play Minecraft. My husband and I have laptops and iPhones, but the children are not allowed to use them except for the occasional (and supervised) drawing video on YouTube.

At home, my kids watch a shitload of television. How much? You want to know specifics, and I don’t blame you. If your kids watch less than mine, you will feel better. I get it.

On weekdays, they watch TV after homework and before dinner. This amounts to about to 1-1.5 hours. My two youngest kids alternate shows on the big television in the living room, usually playing (Barbies, sword-play, MagnaTiles) while watching. My oldest holes up in his room and watches TV in bed, often while playing his Switch or Minecraft. This multi-tasking will be his undoing—it pains me. And yet, he’s older, he needs to be alone.

I soothe myself by knowing he reads for at least an hour every night at bedtime, that he is still creative and, once forced to turn off the screens, makes amazing things, creates really cool games. And, best of all, he can’t bring that addiction with him everywhere he goes. Still, it does hurt to know that this, these screens, is what he most wants to do with his free time.

On the weekends, we often watch TV all morning long because we like being lazy. And then, after an outing, we might watch more. It’s a lot. It’s also, for the younger kids, communal. I can see the shows, I can sing the theme songs, the television becomes background as real life play takes over. TV gets boring, as it did when I was young. If it doesn’t, we turn it off for them and listen to music.

The way my younger kids watch TV mimics how I watched it as a kid (but of course there was no streaming and commercial-free programming whenever I wanted…). As an adult, I watch TV, but I also love to read, talk, dance, go out with friends. I don’t feel that my screen time as a child harmed me and my ability to focus, or connect with others. I want the same for them.

I hate that my oldest has the television in his room, that he has the Switch and the Chromebook. The laptop limits the sites he can access (read: no porn), but still. Unlike the younger two, he has difficulty unhooking from his devices. Plus, he’s alone with those screens, cultivating a bad habit. But, like a parent who has already given their kid a smartphone, I feel powerless to take the screens away. It’s why I know I can’t give him the smartphone.

*

All that said, I’ve never given my kids a device in public. Frankly, I would be ashamed to do so.

(Here’s where some of you cheer, and some of you get defensive and stop reading, possibly even unsubscribe!)

I don’t let my kids use screens in public because I find it…yucky and sad. I want my children to take in the scenery, to be involved in the goings-on in front of them, to be bored.

Boredom is a central quality of childhood.

At a restaurant, for instance, they can look around and talk to us. Or they can draw, or they can play a game like twenty questions. Sometimes, they do these things, and then they eat their food, and are polite and cute, and at a nearby table someone (older) smiles at me warmly, as if to say, You’re an amazing mom!

Other times, it does not go so smoothly. The children crawl under the table or fight or scream or run away or do some other raucous act that fills me with rage/shame and makes me want to die. There have been times when their behavior in a public place receives a scolding look from an (older) stranger, as if to say, You should teach your children how to behave!

It seems we have gotten so used to kids being anesthetized by screens that we forget their true exploratory, wild, curious nature. Children are learning how to be in the world—and today’s children are learning this after years of pandemic isolation. Let’s allow them to learn, and let’s give them some grace.

*

I’m outlining all this for you so that you understand that I’m not a parent of extremes. My children aren’t wearing hand-stitched clothing as they play with wooden rings for hours. They’re regular 2024 kids with regular 2024 parents, and they are not going to get smartphones anytime soon.

This is one small thing—one big thing—I can do to protect their childhood.

*

“It’s a good idea,” someone with older kids will tell me.

“I wish I’d known,” they say.

Once you get them a smartphone, they say, your kid is lost to you.

*

In Brooding, her parenting newsletter for The Cut, Kathryn Jeezer-Morton supplies a handy précis of Haidt’s article; she also touches on the research she conducted when getting her master’s degree in digital anthropology. She found that the mothers she was observing did most of their scrolling and texting when their kids had screen time.

“It was a tiny study,” she writes, “but I noticed something: They were giving their kids screen time largely in order to accommodate their own.”

This really pierced me. In this issue of Brooding, Jezer-Morton goes where Haidt doesn’t: to parents, to our own screen addictions.

I admire that she wrote this because people do not like being called out about their screen time. She probably lost subscribers for this piece!

Well, I guess I like being called out.

*

For the past year, I’ve kept close watch on my screen time—meaning, I check it a few times a day to make sure it isn’t too high. I let this system be its own serotonin boost. It feels better than getting an Instagram heart, baby!

What is too high, you ask? Again, if you’re like me, you’ll probably feel better if yours is lower, and I get that.

I like to keep my screen time below three hours a day—two is ideal. The lower my screen time is, the better I feel. Lower screen time means I’ve been writing with focus, it means I’ve been reading (a book). It means I’ve been an engaged mother and spouse. It means I’ve been out in the world, interacting with people, letting my phone lay dormant in my purse. As someone who writes for a living, without coworkers, without meetings, without much to keep me apart from the phone, it’s quite frankly a feat of superhuman effort to get it lower than 2 hours a day. That requires little to no texting, little to no social media. If you need to use your maps for a drive, forget it.

I often take Instagram off my phone so that I don’t scroll it without thinking. I don’t use TikTok (I tried; I don’t like it), and I only have Facebook on my computer for reasons I can’t quite explain. I do check my email obsessively, and delete/archive stuff right away. (Election season is not a friend to my in-box, let me tell you!) Oh, and I’ve got to do my Duolingo every night. (Abbiamo un appartamento molto grande...) I have a few active group texts plus a couple friendships that basically live on text. I love the connection to my friends and family, and, at the same time, I am constantly trying to limit my thoughtless use of the phone.

And, let’s face it: the phone makes me a worse parent.

My technology use isn’t limited to my phone, either. I’m on my laptop constantly! I’m checking and answering emails. I’m checking my social media. I’m reading the various newsletters I subscribe to. I’m doing my Wordle, my Connections, my Cinematrix, my crosswords.

This is Mommy’s Screentime and I do not want to stop!

Fuck.

Kathryn Jezer-Morton writes about why people let their kids eat in front of an iPad, something, as I said, I’ve never done:

For many people it’s exhaustion at the end of a long day, but for others it’s an unwillingness to deal with the challenging task of teaching your kids how to act. People tether their children to iPads so as to streamline and optimize their own lives, to avoid meltdowns and chaos. Everyone can be engaged in a semblance of respectable pantomimed productivity through their individual screens, and peace can reign. No messes, no fighting, no whining.

We are at least as addicted to our phones as our kids are; we need them in order to relax. And since we don’t feel safe letting our kids wander around the neighborhood freely while we scroll in peace, we keep them inside with us, scrolling.

This rings true to me. While we don’t use phones or iPads in public, I am giving my kids television (and my oldest the Switch, etc) at home, and that is partly to optimize my own life and avoid the fights and noise and parenting I’d have to do otherwise. That is real. Guilty as charged.

There are all types of valid reasons to rely on technology with your kids, and some of us have extenuating circumstances. I know, for instance, that autistic children have a different need for screens than neurotypical kids. And there are single parents whose situation is different from mine.

But many of y’all don’t have any of that stuff to deal with, and you know it!

I’ve got my own exceptional case: My oldest, who is not neurotypical, has a real knack for causing mayhem. The brutal truth is, when he’s alone in his room on screens he isn’t causing problems and the house feels more peaceful. He also has difficulty with mobility due to joint dysplasia, so being active is not easy for him. When he is on screens, he doesn’t have to deal with the fact of his body.

This is all true, and worth considering. And yet, it doesn’t excuse the choices I make daily.

*

Nowadays, my oldest meets up friends at parks to loaf about. One of his friends lives close to campus, so they’ll walk there after school. Over break, he went to see Speed at the local revival movie theatre with another classmate.

My oldest tells me he’s happy not to have a smartphone, but that it’s also lonely. He doesn’t get the appeal of TikTok, and he doesn’t understand new slang. He and his friends go play Minecraft at lunch in a teacher’s classroom. I ask him why they just can’t talk at lunch.

He says, “Nobody does that, Mom,”

He is surrounded by people—other children—on screens.

Can we change this paradigm? Is it too late?

*

The other morning, I was with my youngest, the four year old (“I”m four AND A HALF,” he’d say, if he was reading this). It was Sunday, and we were the only two awake. He wanted to watch TV. We don’t turn on the TV until 8:00 am on weekends, so as to encourage sleeping in. It was probably about 7:15. Usually, my youngest will happily play with figures after breakfast and before TV. What am I usually doing? My phone is in another room—I avoid it for as long as possible to keep that screen time down!—but my laptop is another story. Mommy wanted her laptop!

But that isn’t fair, is it?

My son knows it isn’t, and he wanted my attention.

I asked him if he wanted to cuddle. We cuddled.

You know I refuse to play, but I do like puzzles. I asked him if he wanted to do a puzzle. He did.

We did one, then another, then another, and another.

8:00 am slipped by and we didn’t even notice.

*

Until my kids turn sixteen, they will have time to be children. My oldest has a little more than three years of an untethered mind, of getting bored, of making shit out of toothpicks because there’s nothing else to do, of daydreaming. That’s three years of movies to watch and novels to read and ice cream to eat without thinking about a phone. He has three more years of riding in a car with nowhere to look but out.

What about yours? What do they have?