Friday, January 10, 2014

Some Thoughts on our "Digital Invasion"


Pulling off an event like this week’s presentation on kids & technology by Archibald Hart is not a small undertaking. Any time we put on a parent program, it’s never one program, but usually three – one for parents, one for young kids, and one for the older kids. That means a lot of details to cover. And my main thought the morning of the event was: this is all a distraction.

Not the presentation itself; it was informative, relevant, and challenging. I mean the whole issue of kids and technology, specifically the intrusive, ever-present personal computing devices most of us are attached to a good part of each day. (This, written on my laptop after midnight on Thursday.)

It’s all a distraction. By which I mean that ten years ago, we were barely dealing with the stuff we are now: Internet addiction, texting, sexting, easy access to streaming pornographic videos, and i-Devices which have brought e-communication off of the desktop and into our palms, making the digital presence all the more ubiquitous. And 20 years ago? Almost no one had even heard of the Internet.

And yet, 10 and 20 years ago, we were not easily churning out healthy, well-adjusted, spiritually strong kids and teenagers. There were enormous challenges and barriers keeping kids from spiritual maturity even in the pre-Internet age. Which makes all of these issues regarding technology – and they are big issues – a distraction.

Because even if there was a magical cure that kept kids away from porn and ended cyberbullying and cyberstalking and brought down people’s anxiety levels and re-set our brains (which are being re-wired by the demands that electronic communication place on them)…it still wouldn’t magically make kids into spiritual rockstars. It would merely put us in a place like where we were in 1994 – and we weren’t exactly a screaming success when it came to discipling kids back then, either.

My point is, everyone talks about technology as if it’s the biggest issue facing their families these days. And it may be. But we are naïve to think that if somehow we could remove tech from the equation or at least contain its negative effects, we’d pretty much have no more issues dogging families. Poor communication, lack of empowerment, the need to train kids to take on responsibility, high-risk behaviors, and dysfunction are still a part of family life because, well, we’re screwed up and it’s work to get along.

All of these issues with tech aren’t real issues. They’re irritants. And they’re factors which complicate those five features of family life I listed above. Tech is (often) a hindrance to effective communication, it detaches us from real life, it thrusts kids into an adult world they’re not ready for, it is a playing field that encourages risk-taking, and it promotes dysfunction.

Sometimes when we have a really big job to do, we chip away, taking baby steps, rather than taking the radical steps needed to finish the job. After all, if we aggressively conquer the biggest problem in our life, what then will we have to obsess over, right? Yet tech is not the biggest problem families face. It may be the foremost problem, but that just means it needs to be dealt with first so that moms and dads and their kids can get to work on the real issues of family living.

So let me encourage you to be decisive and to go after the tech issues in your home – because there are, in reality, bigger fish to fry. Need boundaries on tech use? Put them in place. Have a kid addicted to porn? Get help. Have kids who repeatedly abuse online privileges? Wean them off. You cannot afford to let these issues consume your child’s adolescence. Believe it or not, there’s more to life than that – theirs and yours.

If you aren’t looking for advice on containing the digital storm in your home, stop reading here. (And thanks for reading.)

If you are, here are my audacious suggestions of some things you might implement immediately. These won’t “solve” the issue forever, but they’re steps in the right direction.

1. Get a handle on your own tech use. Because we don’t reproduce what we want, we reproduce what we are. So to expect your kid not to text at dinner while you text at dinner is an unrealistic double standard. And it will fail. If kids don’t get to go online after a certain hour, adults don’t either. (And remember that kids play games or use social media for fun and to prevent boredom; many adults do work on their laptops or phones for the same reason. So it’s not enough to say, “You can’t play games, but I can work.” That, too, is a double standard.) The bottom line is, we cannot expect kids to use digital devices any less than we use them. We adults have to get this under control. (And this, written on my laptop now well after midnight.)

2. Kids under 13? No social media. Period. Know why? It’s illegal. Yup, that’s right – the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 makes it illegal to collect someone’s personal information online if they are under 13 without parental consent. And since most social networking sites and apps don’t want to go to the trouble of verifying consent, they state that a person must be 13 or older to use their services. In other words, kids who have Facebook and Instagram accounts are lying about their ages in order to sign up.

Parents – hide behind this law! The online marketers and social media people hate the law. And, given how much has changed since 1998 (the dinosaur days of the Internet), it probably is a little out of date. But for now, it’s the law. So when your son or daughter asks if they can start an Instagram account, you can say, “No. It’s against the law.” But all my friends have one! “It’s against the law.” See how easy that one is?

3. Practice saying no. As in, “Mom…really, I can’t have an Instagram?” (Answer: “No. It’s against the law.”) You will be the meanest, most unreasonable parents on the planet if your kid is the last one to get an iPhone…according to your kid. You will be the dorkiest, most backward family in the neighborhood…according to your kid. But you must say no – at some point. I can’t tell you where that is. You will decide for yourself at what age your kid gets his or her first phone (hopefully a dumb phone at first), at what age they graduate to a smart phone, and when they get their own computer or tablet – but build in “no” somewhere. There has to be a limit to what you will buy or provide. Because the other option is, there’s no limit, and that’s a terrible position to put yourself in. And it’s a terrible thing to grant your kids, who will always ask for more than you really want to grant them permission for (and believe it or not, they don’t always expect you to say yes). Have some standards. What won’t you say yes to - when it comes to tech or otherwise? Because if the answer is nothing – if you will not say “no” to anything your kid asks – well, then, that’s the answer: it’s never no.

4. Seriously, seriously rethink handheld Internet devices. I mean, seriously. Because your son will use it to look at porn. Not exclusively. But it will happen. “It will happen anyhow.” In all likelihood, you’re correct. Most teenage boys not only have looked at porn, they do so regularly. Part of your job is to make it not so easy.

5. Wi-fi must die after a certain hour. This is one of the making-it-not-so-easy steps. (And this, from me, posted to an online blog well after midnight. Sheesh.) But really, it makes sense. If night is for sleeping, and you turn the lights off, and the TV off, and the computer off, why not the Wi-fi, too?

6. Install filtering and/or accountability software. www.covenanteyes.com is a good place to start if you know nothing about this. Filters are frustrating. There are ways around them. Both true, but again, your job is to make it not so easy for kids to encounter harmful things online. Trust your kids, because you must. But also verify. I like accountability software for kids who are older, because it puts them in a position of having to answer for where they’re going online. Don’t install it as a “gotcha” maneuver; install it with their full knowledge and participation.

7. Get kids prepaid phones that charge by the minute and per text. These phones show a declining balance on the home screen. Kids tend to think that minutes and data transfer are “free”. Disabuse them of this, immediately. Put a fixed amount of money on the phone each month and when it’s gone, it’s gone. (Caveat: Since I often hear that the reason preteens have phones is so their parents can easily get in touch with them, make it a rule that Mom and Dad’s calls must be answered. If minutes expire, deduct $10 from the next month’s allotment. If they don’t answer when you call – either because they’re out of minutes or aren’t paying attention – take the phone away, because really, why then do they have it at all? And really – they’ll be fine without one. They’ll be ok. So will you. Just make sure they know how to call home – that they know your home number and your and your spouse’s cell number.)

8. Become a student of tech. You must do this. Even if you never use apps. Even if you wish they were never invented. Even if your phone is still dumb (like mine is). Whatever your reason for resisting and resenting the tech onslaught, you must be familiar with what’s out there. Because your kids are. It’s second-nature to them. Two sites I recommend: http://internet-safety.yoursphere.com/ and http://www.commonsensemedia.org/

9. Allow kids to be bored; don’t allow tech devices to rush into the vacuum. Archibald Hart closed with this, and I thought it was like gold: When he was a child, he was often bored – and it made him creative. I thought about that and thought about a kid I know who’s a really good artist. He was showing me a cool drawing once, and told me he did it over a school break when – you guessed it – he was bored, with nothing else to do.

Then I thought about my own work, and how one of the things I so often lack is creative space. Though I dream of having whole days and weeks to brainstorm ideas for KidsGames or summer camp or teaching series, it never seems to happen. You know what else never seems to happen at work? That I am bored. More often – nearly always – my schedule is packed to the gills, with half a dozen things to do at once, five tabs open on my Internet browser, and four messages I should have returned a week ago.

And you know what happens when I do hit a point where I feel caught up? Facebook, that’s what.

10. Say no. (Now that you’ve been practicing.) We must say no to some things so that we can say yes to other things. As good as it feels to check the items off your electronic to-do list, or clean out your e-mail inbox, or delete a bunch of files you no longer use (all the organizationally challenged people are thinking, “Files? What are files? I use the desktop.”) – it is fleeting. So fleeting. And so not the point of our lives. Which is why I’m going to hit save and close this laptop, right now. And why you should, too.