One of the biggest issues facing parents today is the infinite ways in which screentime competes with other modes of engagement with the outside world. On the one hand, we want our children to have a high degree of digital literacy. On the other hand, algorithms optimizing for engagement are responsible for the radicalization of many young people, pitting the potential for learning against the danger of (very persuasive) misinformation.
Screentime is a fundamental aspect of raising children who can engage with an increasingly complex world, but it’s fair to ask, “How much is too much?” In advance of our panel, we’ve asked our guests to respond to this question: What do you think is most misunderstood about kids and screens, and why?
Nir Eyal
Nir Eyal is the author of Hooked and a new book called Indistractible, both of which deal with the habit-forming aspects of technology and how we can begin to get control over systems designed to hack and override our subconscious impulses. For Nir, “Parents misunderstand the deeper reasons WHY kids overuse tech.”
As Nir explains in his interview on the Product Science Podcast about his research for Indistractible:
“What I discovered was that not only is distraction not a new problem, literally Socrates and Aristotle talked about this 2,500 years ago—about what a distracting place the world is these days. What is new is not the problem of distraction. What’s new is that we haven’t adopted the skills to manage distraction and still get the best out of these tools.”
Ana Homayoun
Ana Homayoun is a noted expert on teens and Millennials, an author, a speaker, and an educator. She is the author of three books: That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week, The Myth of the Perfect Girl, and her latest, Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World. She speaks at schools and companies all over the world about organization, time-management, personal purpose, and overall wellness, with a focus on helping students develop empathy and executive functioning skills in our new digital world.
Regarding what is most misunderstood about kids and screens and why, Ana has this to say:
“Basically, I think a lot of parents misunderstand how much tweens and teens want to talk with adults about stuff related to technology and social media use. We’ve inadvertently created a fear culture around screen use, and that leads many kids to be less likely to reach out and share and discuss some of the very normal things they are trying to work out around navigating the digital world.”
Babur Habib
Babur Habib is the co-founder and CEO of the Portfolio School whose previous experience includes co-founding the edtech company Kno and working as Head of Engineering and Development at Intel Education. (You can listen to what he has to say about his experience on his episode of the Product Science Podcast.)
In response to our question, Babur had the following to say:
“A common misconception is that there is a lot of research showing the negative effects of screentime with kids. Most of this misconception comes from media outlets that overplay the current research on the effects of screentime on kids.”
Join Us on November 7th
We hope you’ll consider joining us on November 7th for our panel, Screen Time. There, we’ll be joined by Scott Hagedorn, CEO of Omnicom Media Group in North America, long-time advertising and media veteran, and MediaPost’s Media All-Star in 2017. Together, we’ll take an up-close and personal look at what screens are and aren’t doing to our kids and what we can do as parents to help.
As some of our panelists have implied, the research isn’t really as cut and dried as you might think, and some of the facts might surprise you. The most important thing is to have all of the facts in front of you, so you can make an informed decision and help your kids make sense of it all. We hope you’ll join us for the discussion on November 7th at Portfolio School.
EVENT INFO:
“Screen Time”
Thursday, November 7 | 6:00 - 7:30
Portfolio School | 90 Hudson Street
$20, includes dinner and drinks