why i don’t worry about my kids’ screen time, part 1
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 03:08PM 
There’s a billboard in my town that makes me grind my teeth into dust. It shows a kid’s hands holding, on the left, a video-game controller and, on the right, a turtle. Then it says something along the lines of “unplug”.
I was ranting about it the other day and one of my sons rolled his eyes (nicely) and said, “Mooooom, they’re just telling people to, you know, go outside more.” And yes, I get that. But they are doing it in a way that makes me crazy.
The whole either/or mentality is what gets to me. By positing the game controller against the turtle, the message is “video games: bad, playing outside: good.” Why isn’t this a good way to get kids outdoors? Because if they reject the left side of that equation, they may automatically reject the right side. This kind of shaming argument runs a serious risk of turning kids off the outdoors.
It won’t bother my kids — they’re die-hard readers and campers. But I worked for years in a school environment, and I constantly had to take kids and convert them into readers — convince them that they were wrong about hating to read, about not wanting to read, about wanting to do anything but read. When you try to promote something good (reading, playing outside) by attacking something kids love, you are seriously not helping me.
I tie this to the “books are broccoli”* approach. Imagine a cartoon where a teacher is handing two parents a sheet of paper and saying, “Now, the way we introduce children to hating learning is to first get them to hate reading. So require your child to read 30 minutes every night and then fill out and initial this form.”
If you want to suck the fun out of anything that your child enjoys doing, I suggest you force them to do it for 30 minutes every night, fill out a form, and have you initial it.
What is the message there? Reading is broccoli. It’s good for you. You won’t do it unless we make you. Eat your broccoli. Read!
The kid who liked to read sees reading turned into an assigned chore. He gets the message: Reading isn’t cool, dude. It’s something no one would do if they weren’t forced to do it. And by the way, you don’t get to pick out what you read anymore. That book is too young for you; that other one is too old. And neither of them are leveled readers. Here, read this flat, melba-toasty book for a half an hour and then I’ll initial your form. Make sure you get your form signed or I’ll make you read it again. It reads or it gets the hose.
Who is that billboard for, anyway? And does that method work? If parents love the outdoors, if they hike and camp and garden and play outside, their kids are likely to be spending time outside having fun. Many parents, however, seem to be of the “do what I say and not what I do” camp. They are indoors on the computer, watching TV and movies, maybe even reading (!), and they are waving their kids outside. In this scenario, no wonder the kids are bitter, their pale little faces pressed up against the window watching Dad play Halo and Mom skype to Grandma.
The billboard seems to be a vague scold toward parents. “Tsk, it says — make your kids go outside. It’s good for them.” But would the billboard work if the kid on the left were holding a book? Or homework? Or art materials?
Adults want to control kids. They want them to do the things they want them to do, and they want them to enjoy the activities they want them to enjoy. In the 70s, bespectacled children everywhere were being told they were “reading too much” and they needed more fresh air. Banished to the outdoors, they might climb into a treehouse with a copy of “Treasure Island” in their back pocket only to see an angry parent down on the ground, yelling at them to get down here and put that book away, mister. You will run around and play whether you want to or not. Childhood: You’re doing it wrong!
These days, parents research on their iPhone for ways to get their kids to read more and limit their kids’ screen time as though it were a magical alchemy: Less Angry Birds = More Jack London. Either/or. You can’t read and play video games. You can’t play outside and watch TV. By pulling this string, I cause the reading activity level to rise.
You’re never going to convince an adult gamer that video games are bad for kids — not because he’s clinging stubbornly to his addiction, but because he’s amassed enough anecdotal evidence to know you’re wrong. Kids who play video games read (sometimes they learn to read so they can play the games), they problem-solve, they have raucously good fun with their family and friends. Trying to explain that it’s all bad, bad, bad just makes you sound like the Luddite codger you are.
Does it ever work to encourage activity A by denouncing activity B? Books are broccoli and kids need their broccoli so that makes TV and video games candy. Sweet, delicious candy. I’m in my 40s but even I know: candy good, broccoli bad.
The either/or approach focuses on scarcity. The glass is half empty, your day is almost gone. Your free time is as scarce as hen’s teeth. Don’t waste it on things you enjoy! Invest it in these more intellectually valuable pursuits instead!
An entirely different approach would be to present books as candy, the outdoors as candy. Wow. I think I just blew my own mind.
How different it would be if, instead of scolding children to stop doing A and go do B whether you like it or not, we just shut up and took them on a hike in the woods, then came home and read “Treasure Island” aloud while drinking hot chocolate.
How different it would be if, after playing video games together as a family, we read “The Hobbit”.
How different it would be if we read a book together then watched the movie version. Together.
Part one of why I don’t worry about my kids’ screen time? Our glass is three-quarters full. We have plenty of time — time to read, time to play, time to hike and camp and garden, time to play video games and watch a movie together.
Exposed to all of these activities, my kids love to read. They like to camp and hike and play outside. They like to take long dog walks. They like to play video games, and they love family movie night. They like TV.
I don’t worry about their screen time because it doesn’t negatively affect their love of literature, and they will happily “unplug” to play catch in the yard or go on a walk in the woods.
This is partially due to the fact that we have structured our life to allow time to enjoy all of these things. We haven’t pared their free time down to a thin shaving and forced them to decide how they want to spend their spare half hour per day of relaxation. It’s also partially due to something I’ll discuss tomorrow in Part 2.
Whenever you make it about “give up this thing you really love”, you are probably going to lose. Even if you win on paper, you are still losing in the ways that count.
You are sending all kinds of subtle, between-the-lines messages about what’s broccoli and what’s candy. You’re sending those messages every day when you choose how to spend your free time, too. Before they learn how to velcro their shoes, kids know when your words don’t match your actions.
We have to change our entire approach and start saying, “If these things are really important to us — as a family, as a community, as a society — then we need to start enjoying them, together.”
We need to show our kids by example and as cohorts that reading and playing outside and all the other healthful things we value are the absolute bee’s knees, the epitome of fun, the best possible way to spend a Thursday night or a Saturday morning. We’re unlikely to convince our kids if we don’t believe it ourselves.
So step one really is: Rearrange your life to match your values. Then you won’t have to preach anymore, because your kid will already know.
*Once again, I am using “broccoli” as code for “something good for you that you personally don’t like”. Feel free to substitute spinach or brussels sprouts or whatever doesn’t suit your fancy. Just remember whatever it is, it has to be good for you as well as something you have to choke down against your will.
Read part two here.
Reader Comments (34)
*sigh*
And I really 'heard' the 'we have time' part. That's how I feel. We have time to play video games/watch movies/play outside/READ LOTS and all the other wonderful things we love to do. I admit I'd probably care more about how much screen time they had if we had less 'free' time. That time we have allows my daughter to take more dance classes (her passion) AND piano, and I don't know how we'd manage working around school schedules...
annika — PBS opera? skorts? flossing?
thank YOU, misty. :) i really believe campaigns like this work *against* the movement, and i would love for kids to spend more time outdoors - i just think we need to encourage that in a completely different way.
thank you, shelli! :)
hate hate reading programs. again, it's all about the message underneath the message, right? no one is offering to throw you a pizza party if you watch 30 tv shows. :^P
http://www.katrinakenison.com/2011/10/24/technology-a-boy-on-the-brink-of-adulthood-some-questions/
"they will happily “unplug” to play catch in the yard or go on a walk in the woods."
However, my children don't do this. Maybe it is because they are younger? My 7 year old son would play Angry Birds all day to the exclusion of everything else given the chance. On the other hand, maybe its because he is like me? I have gone through phases where I needed somebody to stage an intervention to remove my laptop from my rigid hands. For both of us, it is better to have planned and limited screen time.
Having said that, perhaps he will grow up to invent the 'Angry Birds' of his generation. I can't, however, say that I am about to create a new Pinterest. I think the trick is to know yourself. (And know your child by participating in their screen time and reading time and outdoor time).
First: "Adults want to control kids. They want them to do the things they want them to do, and they want them to enjoy the activities they want them to enjoy."
I respectfully disagree. I think most parents, most adults, want children to be happy and healthy and grow up to be caring adults. Many parents I know are not thinking of how to control children nor how to get them to enjoy things that they enjoy, but rather they want their children to discover activities that are fun and suit their interests and/or passions.
Video game issues stem from this because many do not promote happy, healthy, or caring. There are a lot of games that promote violence. In fact, for older children there are few games that leave violence out, even if we define violence as very graphic human violence. I have many, many concerns about video games. Many of the students I teach are addicted and say so outright. They choose to play video games over studying and doing their work. Between the links to poor eyesight and gaming, less time spent reading in favor of gaming, less critical thinking taking place during gaming, and poor sustained attention spans after screen time but an increase in attention levels after being outside and/or reading, it's no wonder people want the issue to receive attention. Video games are a candy of sorts; they provide little (some could say none) of value but can do great harm if left unchecked. I would argue that most screen time is unchecked. Your family is a minority, as I will get to below.
Second: You are fortunate to have the ability to raise your children in a way that allows your family to have large amounts of unstructured time that can lend itself to video games, reading, exploring, camping, and nature. Many, many, many families do not have that. A majority of your readers are homeschoolers or alternative schoolers; a majority of kids are neither homeschooled or alternative-schooled. This means a majority of students have unwanted, un-self-selected reading materials (dry ones, at that) shoved in front of them for many hours each day. To unwind when they return home*, many do resort to the video games, whether as a babysitter until Mom and/or Dad get home or just as a way to escape more reading. Additionally, not many students live somewhere that the outdoors is somewhere they can safely go or even know what to do with-it's never been modeled for them.
Modeling camping, hiking, reading, etc. requires having a parent who 1) enjoys doing those, 2) has the monetary ability to do those that require money (even if just gas money to go hike for those who don't live near anything outdoorsy), and 3) has the time to do those things. I would wager a large bet that children who don't read, who can't read at grade level but do spend large amounts of time on video games, have parents who either aren't home or can't afford the luxury or time to spend reading, going to the library, etc.
Lastly, not all parents care about their child getting out from in front of the screen. A billboard like the one you detail means well- it may be the only indication for a child that sitting in front of a screen may not be the only thing to do. It may spur some thought in a parent passing; maybe they will take their child outside to play catch when they get home. The billboard and its creators mean well. You may not like it because you are not the target audience for the billboard. I would suggest speaking to the sponsors if you feel it targets the issues in an ineffective way. Present them with your ideas.
*For reference, the public school bus picks up children in this neighborhood between 7:30-7:45. The students return home at 4:45pm. After homework (more forced, dry reading and/or math worksheets) and dinner, there's not a lot of time left to trek through the forest; in fact, it's not light out much longer after that. Most of the parents in the neighborhood are not yet home, so the kids can't be outside with the exception of a few teenagers that are allowed to play when their parents aren't home.
"The billboard seems to be a vague scold toward parents. “Tsk, it says — make your kids go outside. It’s good for them.” But would the billboard work if the kid on the left were holding a book? Or homework? Or art materials?" - As someone who chooses to live right by the mountains obviously they are an important part of life. But sometimes I think all the focus put on getting out into nature disregards the bigger picture of making a relationship with something that you have a passion about. I think it's telling about our culture that as soon as someone points out something that we either have too much of or too little of they create a matrix of proper "use" when really what needs to happen is for children to be given the time to have passion.
"hate hate reading programs. again, it's all about the message underneath the message, right?"- Oh I agree about this. I love that the librarians know us well enough that they don't even offer it to Alder. I have my own form of reading "program"; if we like a book we get to find more like it!
"how it affects *my* particular kids." This part of the equation is really missing. My son's mood is effected by the time of day he has screen time, we've learned this. Here is one of those, lucky to be homeschooling things, we work with it so that he can watch what he wants as well as explore the world, do art, see friends, experiment with (right now he's interested in domes and in sound). I can't really imagine what it feels like to be a school parent right now when they are given so many directives of what the kids should be doing and no time to do it, not to mention creating free time.
i would love to read the blog post - thank you for providing the link.
just off the top of my head, i would think there are probably a lot of 18yo’s who want to be on their computer 24/7. is that a balance issue? maybe, maybe not. adolescence into young adulthood is such a perilous journey .. if we think back, most of us have adult lives nothing like those years of our own. if he was still living in a cave in two years...
but i’ll read the article & give an informed response. :)
thank you, cyndi!
kirstie, lol. that’s why i describe them as shaming. they might make a person feel bad for a few seconds, but do they change anything? i’m guessing the click-through on billboards is pretty low.
i’m NOT against limited screen time - i don’t know if my post gives off that flavor. that’s a parental call, obviously. and i think it’s a parent’s job to help their child when they can’t help themselves. in this post i’m ranting about how we put one activity against another like rock’em sock’em robots and demonize some of them - unfortunately, things that kids love. i just think it’s a bad way to go about bringing in more of the good stuff we think they need more of.
i think you’re probably absolutely right when you say “maybe it’s because he is like me” - that’s my other point, of course - that we need to change our schedule/life/balance/etc. before we look to our kids to fix their issues. if we’re techno-addicts, they’re probably going to be the same, so start balance at the parental level. something like that. :)
hi, jen - thank you for your long and thoughtful response!
you are right - it was sloppy writing on my part to say flat out that adults want to control kids. i should have said *most* adults. i, who champion giving kids choice and control, know that’s true. i do think it’s generally true that adults want to control kids. they do want their kids to be one thing or the other, often heavily influenced by their generation. parents in the 50s had an ideal of an ideal son/daughter that was flavored by their time. back in the old days, reading novels was considered a bad influence; now some parents are up in arms about video games. adults have an idea of what kids should be doing, and they are the ones who get to make most, if not all, of the decisions about how kids live.
“I think most parents, most adults, want children to be happy and healthy and grow up to be caring adults.”
I hope so. :)
“Many parents I know are not thinking of how to control children nor how to get them to enjoy things that they enjoy, but rather they want their children to discover activities that are fun and suit their interests and/or passions.”
You are lucky to know *many* parents like that. :) Of course, this blog is about how to help children discover their interests and passions, so I know parents like this exist - I do think we are the minority, though, in the wider world.
“Video game issues stem from this because many do not promote happy, healthy, or caring. There are a lot of games that promote violence.”
“Video games are a candy of sorts; they provide little (some could say none) of value but can do great harm if left unchecked. I would argue that most screen time is unchecked. Your family is a minority, as I will get to below. “
i can’t even pretend to be the champion for video games. the violence issue is interesting. i would draw a line between a shooting game and the type of game my older, history-loving son loved like Civilization or Age of Empires. those games have violence, i suppose, since they include war. there’s a lot of gray area between Halo and Angry Birds and the puzzle-type games that my younger son enjoys like “Professor Layton”.
do they provide little or no value? this is arguable, but unfortunately not by me - i just don’t have the chops for it. those who are interested could google “video games are good for you” and read some of the opposing views. i’ve read steven johnson’s book “everything bad is good for you” which also champions video games.
is most screen time unchecked? that is not my anecdotal experience, but i believe you see that in your students. is my family a minority? again, that’s not my anecdotal experience, but i’m perfectly willing to believe i’m in the minority - i usually am!
“You are fortunate to have the ability to raise your children in a way that allows your family to have large amounts of unstructured time that can lend itself to video games, reading, exploring, camping, and nature. Many, many, many families do not have that.”.
absolutely true, and that was the point i was making. if nature and reading are getting squeezed out, we need to look at what kids are doing all day and prioritize. “kids need more unstructured time” is something i’ve said over and over and over again. how many kids get free reading time at school? not many. how many still have recess, and how many of those have nature spaces at school? not many.
if nature isn’t available to kids, that’s an issue - but my point was simply that demonizing video games and TV doesn’t work to get kids out into nature or reading more.
you are right about those kids who have no opportunity to get outdoors and whose parents aren’t modeling reading - but how does that change what i’m saying? if kids love video games - and have unfettered access to them - and want to play them to unwind during their small amount of free time - all things that i said myself in my post - then how does it help to posit books vs. video games or outdoors vs. video games if those kids have no natural access to books or the outdoors? it doesn’t. again, if these things are important to us - on the family *or societal* level - we need to prioritize them.
i hope you’re right about the billboard affecting a parent, but i admit i’m feeling cynical about it. that parent who doesn’t read, who doesn’t take their kids to the park, who lets their child use video games unchecked, as you say .. i doubt that billboard is going to make much of an impression.
re: your school bus schedule .. i can share this. when i was running my private school, i had students who were dropped off at 7:00 a.m. and picked up at 6:00 p.m. every day. during their very long day, they were at before-care for awhile, rode the bus to school, had their whole school day, then rode the bus to after-school care. when they were picked up at 6:00, they still had to go to after-school activities like dance and ball practice, eat dinner, do homework .. not a lot of time for those kids, either. the kids lucky enough to attend our private school got nature walks, long recess breaks, outdoor classes, and trips to the local park for science- and nature-based lessons. but the public school kids ... not so much.
i’m always thinking about the other kids - the kids who *aren’t* homeschooled, who *don’t* have parents who are helping them discover their passions. some of them have great schools, great teachers, involved parents. some don’t. most of them don’t have the kind of relaxed lifestyle that we’ve chosen, and they don’t have hours of unstructured time every day to pursue their various interests and hobbies. i do address myself to my audience, which is mostly homeschoolers, but i never stop thinking about all the kids, as well as the great teachers i’m friends with who are trying to make a difference at school while struggling with issues like kids who “hate to read” and “hate to learn”. i’ve been there myself, and my beliefs are informed by my former students as well as the homeschooled kids i’ve known.
that said, i still think it’s ineffectual to demonize video games and TV; i don’t think that approach is useful. rather than spending money on billboards, i’d rather see companies building outdoors spaces at schools. having owned a school, i know it can be done extremely cheaply! rather than programs that buy two or three cheap paperbacks for children in need, i’d rather see that money pumped into their local libraries and bookmobile programs. i’d like to see kids having free reading time in school and teachers having the time and freedom to read aloud to students. sigh.
thank you again for your very thoughtful comment, jen!
thank you, kelly! :)
stacey, i have no idea why i pick on broccoli - we like it, too. :) i should really pick on boiled spinach.
“[S]ometimes I think all the focus put on getting out into nature disregards the bigger picture of making a relationship with something that you have a passion about.”
love love this point, and i’m thinking about barb’s friend up above whose 18yo is on the computer 24/7. is he texting friends or is he programming? is he reading sci-fi fan fiction? is he writing a political blog? he’s a young adult; maybe he’s way off track or maybe he’s *on* track to doing something he’s really passionate about. i’d have to know a lot more about it to have an opinion.
i’m afraid the whole “get out into nature” thing is a bit hollow. the proof is in the pudding. are families going out to the parks? if not, why not? are they walking in the outdoors together, gardening together? are there community gardens? if not, why not? we can’t slap up a billboard and pretend that it’s video games’ fault that our kids aren’t holding a turtle.
“I think it's telling about our culture that as soon as someone points out something that we either have too much of or too little of they create a matrix of proper "use" when really what needs to happen is for children to be given the time to have passion.”
love love love this statement. you know i like to harp on how adults/parents/teachers are always pushing kids toward some vague “ideal” that completely ignores that one child might be an outdoor nut and another might be a future computer programmer. if these things have value - reading, the outdoors - won’t kids be able to recognize that for themselves *if they are given the chance*? and if we aren’t giving them the chance, that’s on us.
“I can't really imagine what it feels like to be a school parent right now when they are given so many directives of what the kids should be doing and no time to do it, not to mention creating free time.”
giving over the majority of your day/week/life to school is a big deal. it leaves you with just a tiny portion of your day to control, and they send homework home. those parents are under tremendous pressure.
thank you, stacey - love what you had to say!
AND .. the saddest part is that i think it IS important to champion reading and outdoor time for kids. just NOT THIS WAY.
"I suppose we have the luxury of balance. But we choose this life..."
i don't think non-hs'ers can let themselves off the hook that easily. if these things are truly important to us as a community and as a society, we need to make sure that public school kids have them! nature spaces and gardens at school! free reading time and reading aloud! it's all about choice, and they can choose it, too!
we need to take the shaming billboards down and use them to build treehouses on the playgrounds. ;^)