Shimi Kang - The Tech Solution: Creating Healthy Habits for Kids Growing Up in a Digital World

WHETHER IM IN VANCOUVER, Shanghai, Auckland, or New York, I always hear the same questions: How much screen timeis okay? How can I limit the amount of technology my son is consuming? Are video games good or bad for kids? Should I give my nine-year-old an iPhone?

In fact, I imagine thats why you picked up this book: intuitively, you may feel that digital technology has an effect on your childs behaviour and moods. Your gut is probably signalling that something isnt rightand for good reason. The warning signs are loud and clear. The more your son plays video games, for example, the more distracted, withdrawn, and irritable he seems to become. The constant exposure to her friends portrayals of their lives on social media seems to be leaving your teenage daughter feeling down. Your fifteen-year-olds phone is constantly vibrating from notifications and alerts, but he never seems to have any friends over to the house.

Despite that, youve seen headlines assuring you that theres nothing to worry about: Screen Time May Be No Worse for Kids Than Eating Potatoes (Forbes), or Kids Whose Parents Limited Screen Time Do Worse in College (Inc.), or Childrens Social Media Use Has Trivial Effect on Happiness (The Guardian).

These are just some of the conflicting messages about the impact of technology on our children. It turns out that some of the doubt and confusion is being sown by the same people selling our kids their gadgets and getting them hooked on their platforms and apps. Recently, a co-panellist speaking alongside me at a university conference argued that fears over techs negative impact on children were being massively overblown. Her research, it turned out, was funded in part by a global wireless giant. And when word leaked, a few years ago, that Facebook was considering allowing kids under thirteen onto the network, the directors of ConnectSafely praised the move. Later, it emerged that the group was funded by none other than, you guessed it, Facebook.

And then there are the fearmongering headlines that send a very different message: Screen Time Is Making Kids Moody, Crazy and Lazy (Psychology Today), A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley (The New York Times), Kids Eyesight Ruined After Parents Let Her Play on iPhone for a Year (New York Post). The contradictoryand often extrememessaging out there is enough to make anyones head spin. No wonder parents are feeling confused!

But the effects of technology on childhood and adolescent development arent simply good or bad; the reality is more nuanced than that. Tech can be extremely harmful to children and teens when its used in the wrong ways, and incredibly useful if used in the right ways.

As a Harvard-trained psychiatrist with a specialty in youth addictions, Ive spent the last twenty years poring over the research on health, happiness, and motivation in children. In the last decade Ive added to that focus the impact of screens on the developing mind. And I can assure you that, on the one hand, the science couldnt be clearer. The data on Generation Zthose born between 1995 and 2012is chilling. Theyre less confident. Theyre less likely to take risks, to learn to drive, to stand up to a bully. Rates of depression and suicide among them have skyrocketed in the last decade, almost perfectly tracking the smartphones rise. Anxiety and loneliness have hit crisis levels. Indeed, the World Health Organization is predicting that the number one health epidemic facing this generation will be loneliness. Loneliness! And given the sharp declines in youth mental health, the American Academy of Pediatrics is now calling for universal mental health screening at the age of twelve. So my diagnosis is one of urgency: were raising a generation on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in recorded history.

Yet, if tech was all bad, you wouldnt see a group of committed kids launch the biggest environmental protests in history, as they did in September 2019 with the global climate strikes. You wouldnt see a group of Florida teens, survivors of a school shooting, organizing a national school walkout day to protest lax gun laws, as the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School did in 2018. Without social media it wouldnt have been possible for podcaster Jay Shetty, comedian Lilly Singh, or artist Rupi Kaur to emerge, whole cloth, from social media. As your children begin to learn about podcasting, vlogging, and social media, theyre acquiring the skills and the motivation to find their true voice, refine it, and broadcast it to the world.

The problem is, we dont have much time to figure out how our kids can safely interact with technology. Brain development suddenly accelerates during adolescenceat precisely the same time that screen immersion does. At that point, the frontal lobe, known as the brains control centre, hasnt fully matured. Its the part of the brain that asks us,