Faith Forward with Jason McKnight: Screens & Better Kids
You’d never give a martini to a seven-year-old. No good parent would. Why? Because young minds take time to develop, and we all know that alcohol inhibits that development. America’s drinking age is 21 for just this reason: it takes more than two decades for brains to mature such that they can handle safe consumption of alcohol.
You’d never give a martini to a seven-year-old. But we give them something just as addictive. Just as inhibiting. Just as dangerous. The culprit? Hand-held screens. Our phones—these marvelous devices for GPS, email, camera, texting, social media, news, calendar, books, internet, etc., etc. The computing power in your hand is more than what got Neil Armstrong to the moon!
But they are also dangerous. Addictive, mind-altering. And invasive. When not carefully guarded. Perhaps a sip of champagne to celebrate is called for once in a while. So, too, use of screens is fun and even good, in measured terms, the younger the kids are.
How can we walk the line to better screen usage with our kids? A healthy screen usage that won’t inhibit their development, but lets them enjoy the good things we’ve been given? Let me offer three principles to start us off.
First, put your own phone down more. We may not realize how much we are on our screens. We can’t raise kids to use screens as tools if we ourselves are tethered to them like an idol. Kids will do what you do, no matter how much you say differently. So, do an audit of your own phone use: am I constantly holding it, glancing at it, focused on it. Am I able to be alone without screen before my eyes? When do I start in the morning, and power down at night? Is it intentional or do I just revert to it?
Second, live with your kids in the embodied world. God made us physical, corporeal, incarnate. Screens are a “virtual” world—where our eyes engage but not much else. To flourish, we need the smell of cookies, the touch of a basketball, the sound of a power tool, the taste of a crisp apple… the full array of the senses God gave us to engage our world. Live with your kids in the world that is.
Parents: do stuff with your kids, a lot of stuff. Spend time with them, a lot of time. Regular stuff and fun stuff. The more you incorporate your children into the “chores” of the house, the more they are equipped to live in the world as it is (because, small obligatory tasks will be with us until we die!). Live in the embodied world with your kids: do life with them—games, walks, grocery runs, reading stories, shooting hoops, yes, and watching fun YouTube videos together—where you can laugh together at the puppy fails.
Third, learn the right number of hours of screen time for each age of development. Like Alcohol, too much of these disjointed screens can be harmful for your beloved child’s development. If you let them decide what screen usage they should have, their young brains will be stunted. (They “decide” by begging, whining, throwing tantrums; don’t give in just because they complain. Rather, explain to them when calm what the boundaries will be—repeatedly, with great patience—and then stick to those boundaries). Talk to your pediatrician about appropriate time on screens for various ages; our culture gets this dead wrong.
To sum up: Put your phone down more; give full attention to your kids more; and learn what screen usage harms development for each age. These three practices will help our kids’ minds develop better. And, they’ll transform screens from slavedrivers into tools for flourishing.
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