Electronic devices are an incredible asset, but also come with challenges. As parents we have to know what's best for our kids and set boundaries to help them thrive. Anna gives us insight on the harmful affects of screen time and suggestions to form healthy relationships with screens.
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Jen: Hello and welcome to the Parents’ Place, a podcast put out by the Family Place for parents to develop skills that will strengthen families and provide tools that will help each of us in our parenting efforts. No matter our skills, we can always use reminders that help us work towards a safer, happier home. I'm your host, Jennifer Daly, the education director at the Family Place and my co-host is Sara Hendricks, a family educator at the Family Place. Every week, we will interview professionals that will provide valuable information that will make a difference when you apply it directly to your life. Thank you for joining us. Now, let's get started with today's episode. Hello and welcome to the Parents Place podcast. I'm your host, Jen Daly.
Sara: And I’m your co-host Sara Hendricks.
Jen: We hope that you're having a great Memorial Day and that you are able to take off work and that you're doing something fun with your family. Today, we have a great topic that we're going to discuss, and that is about screen time and our kids and what's too much, what's too little? How do we navigate all of that? Now we have a great guest speaker today. We'll let her introduce herself, so I'll turn the time over to her.
Anna: So, my name is Anna Koopman. I work as a therapist for the Family Place. I received my bachelors of social work degree at BYU Idaho, and then I received my masters of Social Work degree from Fordham University, which I did online. It's just a school based out of New York, and then I did an internship in the Ogden area, working with court mandated clients. And then after I graduated, I started working at the Family Place.
Sara: Wonderful. Well, welcome Anna. We're excited to have you for this topic. I know that you've done a lot of research on it to gain a better understanding of it, and I'm excited to pick your brain and learn some more. And I feel like this is a really good topic to introduce right now because school is ending and so kids are home more, which allows more opportunity for screen time. And so, I feel like it will be good for parents just to have some general knowledge and understanding about screen time and kids. So, is it concerning how much time children spend on screens?
Anna: Oh, I think for most kids, the short answer would be yes. So, if you were to add up the amount of time that children are on devices per day, it might surprise you, especially if you include the time that they're on screens at school. And so, they might have less screen time during the summer while they're not at school. But let's just say they're in school, so maybe they have two hours of screen time at school. Maybe they have like a couple of hours at home doing fun things and then maybe they have a couple more hours working on homework, you know, just kind of depending on how old the child is. So that's six hours right there. And that's a lot.
Jen: I think six hours and I'm like, that does not even come close to what my stepdaughter does. She is on either working for school or it is all just browsing and looking at whatever. I wish it were six hours, and I hope that most families and parents are able to keep their kids to six hours. But I'm like six hours. How do I get my stepdaughter to be six hours a day? And have that include school and everything else? Because it's just, oh, I don't know, because I think also with school now that school is going to be eliminated so I can see her literally just all day, every day, just scrolling through Instagram. I mean, she'll be 15 in July, but so a little bit different for her.
Sara: So, when we're talking about screen time, are we talking specifically like phones and iPads? Are you including computer and TV like any type of screen?
Anna: Any type of screen.
Sara: OK. Yeah. Because when you also think about watching movies and TV shows like that adds up. Yeah. So, Officer Gomez has been on the podcast before. He's a school resource officer in Idaho, and I follow him on social media and love all of his posts. Highly recommend following him. But he had one earlier this week talking about screen time with kids, and he said that he did kind of an experiment in a school where he brought in a bag of lollipops. And it started out just with a few kids of like, I'll give you this lollipop if you can prove to me that you've been on your phone for less than six hours yesterday. I'm pretty sure the number was six hours and then it sort of got out in the school of like, Ooh! Officer Gomez has lollipops. Let's go find out how we can get one. And he said he handed out very few lollipops like only a handful or less because nobody could prove that they had been on their phones for less than six hours, and this is middle school/high school age, so he upped it to nine hours and he gave out a few more lollipops, but still not very many. I mean, that is so much screen time.
Anna: Yeah, that's a full-time job if you're doing nine hours a day. And I think I don't know how it is for like Android phones, but iPhone has this they tell you how much screen time you have. And I think every every Sunday, I'm surprised how much screen time I have. It's like 10 hours a day and I'm like, Wow, that's more than I worked at my job this week.
Jen: I don't know if either of you know this question. The one thing that because I looked at that on my stepdaughter’s one time and it said it was like 18 hours and I'm like 18 hours, she’s like, Well, I think that's also just indicating how much time I'm also listening to music. So is that if she's listening to music, is it counting that as screen time because she's huge in the music. So, I want to know if I'm being fibbed to, or if that's the truth. I don't know. I'm an old lady, so
Anna: I'm not exactly sure how they measure it. I know once you go in there, it tells you how many hours or minutes you spent on each app. So, I don't know if that means while the app is open or while the screen is actually on. So, I'm not sure about that.
Jen: I’ve got to do some research to make sure if she's telling me the truth or not.
Sara: Well, maybe it would show you like iTunes has spent this many hour. You look at it, you can
Jen: See, we need to have a class or something on how to even read our phones because I'm a kid from the 80s, I didn't have this stuff. So, what I know about phones and stuff like that, it is purely by me fiddling with it. So, I don't know a whole lot about it, but I just, I don't know in my brain, it's like far too much. So, with that being said of, we think that kids have too much time or whatever the case may be, what are appropriate amounts of time for children to be on screens?
Anna: So, the American Academy of Pediatrics, they recommend that children 2 and under have no screen time unless they are video chatting with family or friends. And then for children older than that and they don't specify a time limit. You know, they say that's just kind of up to the parents and what they want to do. But they do specify that kids ages like older than two do need eight to 12 hours to sleep every night, and they need one hour of physical activity every day. And so, like the time limit is up to the parents. And just like another recommendation is, they recommend that children don't sleep with the electronic devices in their bedrooms. And the American Academy of Pediatrics also encourages parents to develop a personalized media use plan for their children. Actually, if you go on their website, it's healthychildren.org and you can search family media use plan. You can create an individual plan for each of your children, and you can put in very specific things, like how much screen time they're allowed to have in a day, how much time they're going to spend on their homework, how much physical activity, how much sleep and things like that. And so ultimately, it is just up to the parents how much do you think is appropriate. There are some studies, there's a book called Glow Kids that I get a lot of my information from, and it was written by a Dr. Nicholas Doris and I hope that's how you say his name. But he studies addiction and he specifically studies technology addiction. And his recommendation is that if you think your child is spending too much time on devices, then do a four-week cleanse. No screens, and I know that's really tough the whole month of no screens. And then you can slowly start adding that back in like maybe 10 or 15 minutes a day. But then, you know, when the screen time is too much for someone, if they start to get agitated and upset or throwing fits or when they're screen time is over, because then maybe they're overstimulated or they are addicted to that game or YouTube videos, whatever they're doing on there.
Jen: I was just thinking about the zero to two no screen time. And I think about how many. I mean, we were just at a restaurant the other day, and there's this little girl, well baby, in the high chair at the restaurant, and they had propped up a little phone with a little cartoon for her to watch while they sat there and waited for their meal. And so, at that age, that's really sad. I mean, both Sara and I have been sitting in this training a couple of trainings. And one was with kids prenatal up to three and just how many connections are being made through a screen instead of being made with the relationship, or attachment with a person. And it just makes me sad that that's what we're turning to is entertaining our kids instead of connecting with them. We're connecting them with a screen. And I think it goes with all ages. I remember when I was a kid and Atari had just come out and my parents had purchased one. But we were never allowed to play it until we had done chores, until we had done homework, until we had gone outside and played. And then it was OK. You can have a half an hour, 45 minutes to play on Atari, but now it's just in their hands all the time that they can play a game or whatever they want to do.
Anna: Definitely. I was just going to say too from the Glow Kids book. He definitely talked about toddlers and those young children having fun while they're waiting at a restaurant or in a store. And while it is like very easy to give your kid your phone so that they're quiet and they're not screaming so that you're not drawing any attention to yourself in the store. Kids will start to become dependent on that. And so, they're going to depend on the screen to keep them occupied and keep happy while they're waiting for things, right?
Sara: So that's what I think about is that we're conditioning our kids and training them that they need something to entertain them constantly, and they're losing the ability to entertain themselves, and they're throwing tantrums or whatever because they want that screen instead of learning how to sit quietly, just waiting.
Jen: I mean, we're teaching them instant gratification all the time, right?
Sara: Well, yeah. So that is a pet peeve for me is when I see kids, like small children on screens, sitting in church or sitting in the doctor's office like, I understand those are times when we want our kids to be more reverent or quiet, but they need to learn how to do that, not by having something entertaining them, because they're not learning that skill to this is a time when we’re quiet because that screen is occupying their minds, you know,
Jen: Really learning how to self-regulate their emotions and all of that with a screen instead of choosing tools that they could use without a screen. Right?
Anna: So just going back to what Jen said about like the children having the instant gratification, it's OK to let your children be bored. Children need to experience boredom because that's when their creativity comes. That's when they, you know, come up with things and they're using their imagination to play.
Sara: Yes, that's something I tell my kids all the time. When they tell me they're bored, I'm like, good. Something awesome is about to come. So, you touched on this a little bit. As far as like, you had just briefly mentioned a little bit about addiction. But I'm wondering, are there other harms or more that you want to go into when it comes to screen time with children?
Anna: Yeah, so our brains release a hormone called dopamine. And this is a feel-good hormone. And so, we get dopamine when we eat something delicious, when we drink something, when we exercise, when we spend time with fun people. But we also get dopamine when we're playing games or maybe we're getting likes on Instagram or Facebook. And so that also releases dopamine into our body. And I'm just going to reference the Glow Kids book again because it's such a great book, and I recommend anyone read that. And so, I'm just going to read like a little quote from there. As a survival, functions such as eating come after effort and delay. Addictive behaviors cause shortcut to this reward process. So. like, to understand this a little bit more, if someone were addicted to their devices or game, their brain would be producing so much dopamine from this game that they could just play this game for hours. And even though maybe let's just say they play for like a 12-hour stream, if they're addicted to it, then their brain is just going to want that game. They're not even going to be thinking about the food and the things that they need to survive. It's just going to be thinking about how much dopamine that that game produces for them, because that's more satisfactory than food or exercising.
Jen: I’m thinking, even like you had mentioned the likes on Instagram. And I feel like that's a big harm for especially teen girls of posting and then waiting to see how many likes they're going to get on their post. I mean, I have fallen victim to this stuff. I just posted something funny about my puppy or something silly like that, and I've got two likes. It must be that people don't like me or what I posted or whatever the case may be. And that is such a silly thought. But I am able to go through that process of then going Jen, that's really a dumb thought. So, but teenagers can't go through that process or they have a harder time going through that process. So, they take that so personally that someone didn't like their post and then they take that as their self-worth. And that makes me so sad that they're getting their self-worth by how many thumbs ups or, you know, smiley faces or whatever they're getting on a post they're getting on their social media.
Anna: Yeah, I agree, and I have definitely fallen victim to that as well. And I get, like, super excited if my picture gets like 50 likes and I feel really great about myself. But if I only get like 10 likes, then I'm like, Oh, maybe I shouldn't have posted that so it definitely affects our mental health negatively. And I think for all ages, right?
Sara: That's what I was thinking is I don't feel like that is just limited to teens. I feel like that is across the board and maybe people listening would disagree, like, no, that doesn't happen to me. But I think sometimes, like we don't even realize that we have those moments of wanting to go back and check like, who else has liked it, you know, and feeling that gratification from it.
Anna: So again, referencing the Glow Kids book, that's so wonderful. So just some other symptoms that can occur that they have found through studies with excessive device use. This includes ADHD, mood disorders, so that can be like depression, aggression, anxiety, phantom swiping. So, he said that he has seen kids like reading a book in school, and they're trying to swipe the book and also psychosis and psychosis is just any time we kind of lose touch with reality. And so those are just a few of the symptoms that occur, and these can be extreme cases, and these can be just the mild symptoms that we see in people. I have definitely seen some of these in myself, like if I see a bunch of people posting about fun trips that they're going on, and I kind of get upset about that. Like, why don't I get to go on these fun trips? You know, you just kind of lose touch with reality like, OK, they're just posting the good stuff and not all the stressors that are going on. And then there's just a couple of quick stories that I wanted to share. One is, of course, from Glow Kids. And so, Dr. Patatas was working as a high school counselor, and they had a teenage boy sent to his office because they thought he was on drugs or something like that. He was just acting very strange. And so, the kid comes in, just sits in the chair, and Dr. Cotard's asks him, do you know where you are? And the kid doesn't respond. And so, Dr. starts asks him two more times. And by the third time he asks the question, the kid responds with, Are we still in the game? So, he had been playing a game for so long that he didn't know if he was in the game or if he was at school. And so that's what they call gaming induced psychosis, where you're not able to tell the difference. And so that's one pretty extreme case. But it is scary to think about.
Jen: It makes sense because their brains are developing. And so, if they're bright, if that's what they're seeing all the time. And that's what their brain is going to, what connections they're going to be made strong and what their brain understands. So that kind of makes it super scary, but it makes a little bit of sense biologically.
Sara: I just think about there's times I've played like Candy Crush on my phone. And if I play it like before going to bed, I close my eyes and have those images and find myself like playing the game in my mind, even though I'm not actually playing it so. And that's not overindulging and playing too much, you know? But I mean, when you think about kids that are playing games all the time. Yeah, I can understand how that would affect them and become their reality that their minds are just creating those images.
Anna: Definitely. And then another story that I also wanted to share this is one that I have found on Instagram. And so, it was this family. They had like four kids and their youngest boy was about to go to kindergarten and he was just wild. Bouncing off the walls could not sit still, cannot concentrate on anything. So, they went to the doctor diagnosed with ADHD and they were like, this kid has to get on medication or he's not going to be able to function at school or learn anything. But being five years old, you know, the parents don't want to put them on heavy medication at such a young age. And so, they decided to take all screens away. And it was hard. Of course, you go through some withdrawals because when you're used to seeing on screens all day, you don't know what else to do. And so, after a week, they noticed a significant change. And he didn't need medication and he was able to focus at school and he was just like a totally different kid. And one thing that I always like to mention from this story. And they also did take screens away from their other children as well, and I'm sure that they saw significant improvements there, too. But the mother was like, you know, you think I like playing five hours of monopoly? She was like, No, I don't, but I do it so that my kids aren’t on their screens for five hours.
Jen: I think that might be a reason why parents turn to screens so often is because it does take more work to be that involved, to play that five hours of monopoly. But on the flip side, you're not having to deal with all of that misbehavior that you probably would have been dealing with because of the fact that there was a screen issue. And so, I don't know. I guess it's just again going back to your values. What are your values and what are you wanting for your family? And thinking, is me spending time with them versus them spending time with a computer. Which one's more important? And that's all a personal question. I mean, I know what answer it is for me, but it may be different answers for other people.
Sara: Well, I think that screens are really easy babysitters and they are free, you know, and they provide the entertainment across the spectrum of childhood. And so, it becomes like this crutch for parents to just Here, have a screen or, you know, it's just easier. Yes, go be on the computer. It allows me to focus and get done whatever I need to get done. And you lose track of how long they've been on the computer because we're busy as parents, there's a lot on our plates. And so, we're not even thinking about how long they've been using a screen. But with that monopoly example. So, one thing that I've found is I teach my kids games that I enjoy playing. I do not enjoy monopoly like that is the last game I would rather play Candy Land, and that is no fun. But I have started teaching my kids games that I enjoy playing, and even though sometimes it's too advanced for them, I feel like it helps them gain skills beyond their level. We take it slow in the beginning, and I'm not ruthless and crush them until they've got it down a little more. And then that competitiveness comes out. It's a lot more fun for me, and they enjoy that time together too. And so, they'll ask me all the time if we can play some of those different games that I've taught them or like. I really enjoy throwing a softball back and forth in the yard, and so I have gotten them softball mitts and they love playing in the yard with me. Like, they ask me all the time and half the time. I'm like, oh no, I don't want to, but I would rather we do that, then sit in front of a screen and so I will. And so at least we're doing something that I enjoy to a degree versus hours and hours of monopoly. That sounds really awful to me.
Jen: Your kids open up and talk to you because I know when I play card games, I like card games. And so, playing those with my stepdaughter, she opens up a lot more when we're playing those card games. And I also notice just that silliness that comes out in her that you never see when she's on a screen because she's always curled up on the couch face towards the back of the couch. So, we can't see. I don't know if it's because I can't see her, if it's the most comfortable spot, but when we're playing games, she's laughing, she's having fun, she's interacting with us, and that just does my heart so much good to see her giggle and get excited about the games that we're playing that Taco Fish Cat, whatever that game is. I can never remember Taco Goat Cat Pizza. That's what it is. She loves that! I don't like it because I always lose. But to see her get it so excited and just having a fun time, and this is a 15-year-old that's getting excited about this. So, it does my heart good when she chooses to play those games with us instead of her screen.
Anna: It does sound like a lot of fun. There's just one other quote that keeps coming up in my mind that I would see quite a bit on social media. I do follow some accounts that they specifically talk about screen time, things like that, and one quote that gets shared often is parenting is two percent effort and 98 percent putting down your phone. And so that two percent can be really, really tough to put in that effort. And so, yeah, it's just important to have that connection playing the game and playing softball outside. That's great.
Sara: Yeah, I really love that quote because if I don't want my children to be constantly asking for screens, then I need to be setting that example because if they're seeing me on my phone all the time or on the iPad or on the computer, then that's what they want. There's something cool about that, and I think about my three-year-old. She has had like zero experience with screens other than my TV and watching some movies. I never, ever let her be on the iPad or her phone or the computer. But she has seen me swipe as I'm scrolling, and so she'll randomly do that to things because she's seen me do it. So even though she doesn't have personal experience doing it, she sees that happening. And so that's just part of her normal behaviors. And so, I just feel like the less that I'm on a screen, the less of interest it will be for my kids.
Jen: Hmm. One harm that just popped into my brain is that the more we allow kids to just have more and more time on their screens and it's just random scrolling or looking on Netflix or whatever it may be. I think we run into the danger. I mean, our kids are going to experience this one day or another, but we may be accelerating that day of them coming across pornography or chatting with adults that are pretending to be kids or whatever the case may be. And so, the more unsupervised time that we're allowing them to have, I think we're just accelerating that time that they're introduced into that world. And I mean, I wouldn't want like Sara's kids to be introduced into that world or any other parents’ kids to be introduced that young. We all know it's going to come sooner or later, and that's why we need to have conversations, but we don't want to accelerate it.
Anna: It's definitely a harm. And I'm really glad you brought that up.
Jen: With that because I know I've mentioned my stepdaughters on her phone a lot. It's hard for me as a stepparent because I just feel like that's not my place to set those limits with her. That should come from her mom and dad. And I struggle. So, but that's a step parent. But how can we be consistent with setting those limits for kids with their screens?
Anna: So, I have a great resource to share. And this is one that I recently learned about going to a conference, and its pornography prevention course that parents enroll in, and it's free and you cater it to your children's ages. So, they recommend starting talking to your children about preventing the use of pornography by age two. You know, obviously you would talk to a two-year-old differently than you would a 15-year-old. So, for example, like a two-year-old, you just want to talk to them about the anatomically correct body parts. Whereas, like a 15-year-old, if you were to see something inappropriate on a billboard, you just have to do something little. All you have to do is say that's inappropriate because of this and they'll learn or that's inappropriate when I see inappropriate things like that, I turn my head this way and maybe I turn up the music in the car if that happens. So, it's just really little things. And so, let me share this resource. So, all you have to do is text the word “prevent” to 385-269-9593. And this course, it's only going to be free for probably another year. But if you have multiple kids, you can cater it to each of them. And once you text in that number, then it will send you a link to register your kids. Like I have a child that's 15, 12, seven, you know, whatever their ages are, and then it'll send you, I can’t remember how often it sends texts, but it'll just send you information. How to talk to your kids about that.
Jen: You say two and I thought, Oh my heavens two. And we're talking about pornography. But it made me think about a conference that I went to when I chose to go to a speaker about pornography. And he had his own clinic. And he said, I just want you to know my youngest child I have in treatment right now is five. So, two sounds like a really good age to start that conversation.
Sara: That's incredible. If you think about social media, it's really just desensitizing kids when it comes to pornography and accepting more and more as being normal. You know, and so that pornography doesn't seem so extreme because you see so much other things that are desensitizing us to lead to that.
Anna: Yeah, even yeah, just like billboards on the freeway are desensitized in our children, so it's scary. So, I'm going to be very aware of.
Sara: Definitely. Well, thank you, Anna, for joining us today and sharing so much information about screen time. I feel like this is a conversation that needs to happen in our homes with our spouses to get on the same page because screens aren't going away. If anything, it's becoming more and more a part of our life. And so, we have to figure out how to navigate this with our children so that they can have a healthy relationship with screens. I'm glad that we were able to have this discussion today. Parents, we want you to think of times during the day that you can have it be a no screen time. I know for me one thing that I used to do was No Media Monday, I think, is what I had called it. And so, every Monday I stayed off of social media. So, it's just something simple to try. But throughout the day, meal times or no screens in the bedroom, whatever would work for your family to start incorporating less screen time, I think, is a great challenge. I also think another challenge would be to check your children's phones and see how much screen time is happening through the settings. All the resources that Anna referenced, we will put in the show notes. If you need to contact Jen or myself, you can email us at parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can also find us on Facebook. Jen Daly - The Family Place or Sarah Hendricks - the Family Place. Or you can find our Facebook page called The Parents Place.
Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll catch you again next week on the Parents’ Place. Thanks again for listening. The family place is a non-profit organization in Logan, Utah, with a mission to strengthen families and protect children. We call ourselves starfish throwers. If you're unsure what that means, refer back to our introduction episode where we explain it. The good news is you can be a starfish thrower too by subscribing to the Parents’ Place podcast and liking our social media pages. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with others and help us get our message out to more people. Also, be sure to check the show notes for links to information referenced in this episode. That's all for now, but we'll catch you again next time on the Parents’ Place.
Subject Resources: Family Media Use Plan: https://services.aap.org/en/search/?context=Healthy%20Children&source=Healthychildren.org&lang=English&k=family%20media%20use%20plan&s= Book: Glow Kids- How Screen Addiction is Hijacking Our Kids - And How To Break the Trance by Nicholas Kardaras Text PREVENT to 3852699593 for a link to register for a course on how to talk to your children about pornography
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