Podcast #1,020: Becoming a Tech Intentional Family

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Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness Podcast. In a family, a lot of the dynamics around devices and screens are reactive in nature. Kids bug for their own smartphones. Parents worry they’ll be left out without one, without weighing the pros and cons give in to their kids requests. Parents let children have a ton of screen time because it lets the parents do what they want. Then, they reach a moment where they feel disturbed about how much time their kids are on screens, berate their children for this habit, which they facilitated, and vow that things are going to abruptly turn around. Rather than basing your policies about kids and screens on mood, fear, and impulse, it would be better to do so based on reason and reflection. Emily Cherkin has some ideas on how to get there. Emily is a former teacher, a screen time consultant who helps parents and educators balance the role of devices in kids’ lives, and the author of The Screentime Solution: A Judgment-Free Guide to Becoming a Tech-Intentional Family.

Today on the show, Emily unpacks the state of screen time amongst kids today, how the displacement hypothesis explains how its impact extends beyond a decline in mental health, and why parents give their kids smartphones even when they’re not sure it’s good for them. We then turn to how families can become more tech-intentional, and how that starts with parents taking a look at their own behavior. We discuss why putting parental controls on devices isn’t the ultimate solution, why a better one is based on your relationship with your kids, why you need to live your digital life out loud, and some considerations to think through before getting your kid their first smartphone. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/screentime.

Emily Cherkin, welcome to the show.

Emily Cherkin: Thank you so much for having me.

Brett McKay: So you are a screen time consultant. You help parents help their kids manage their screen time. You also do education with educators. You’re also doing some activism, trying to get some regulations going on to help the tech not be so pernicious in our kids’ lives. So give us an overview about screen time use amongst young people these days. How many hours of screens are kids getting?

Emily Cherkin: Yes, that’s a good question, and it’s a lot. The most recent data that I’ve been using is from the Center for Disease Control, which was just this summer, and they found that on average, kids between 8 and 18 are spending seven and a half hours a day. What really surprises me, well, I guess it’s not surprising, but shocking is that between 11 and 14-year-olds are about nine hours a day, and this is daily average. So some more, some less. So that’s a lot of time, and generally speaking, these numbers do not include the time on screens for school, which is a different problem. Yeah.

Brett McKay: Yeah, so this is just screen time at home.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah, right. So pre-pandemic, a lot of parents were worried about how much time my kids on screens when they come home from school, and then tech in school was already kind of creeping in, but of course, lockdown and remote learning threw a lot of fuel on that fire, and now it’s screen time at school plus screen time at home. So we’re talking, for some kids, could be 10, 12, 13 hours a day when you combine school screen time plus home screen time. That’s a lot.

Brett McKay: That’s a lot of screen. Yeah, you talk about in your book how the pandemic just accelerated the rise in screen time use.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah, and you know, I think the pandemic did a lot of things to change the world, and it definitely accelerated this problem, but it was a problem before. I think we can’t entirely blame the pandemic for it. Like, there was a two-fold effect to the amount of screen time kids were having at school, both, again, personally and for school, like remote learning, was that parents did get sort of a peek behind the curtain and could see a lot more about what was happening on school devices in terms of the tech for school, and parents were often also stuck between a rock and a hard place with like, well, I have to work, or I have to do this, or I don’t have childcare, and so it was a lot. I do think the good part of this is there’s a lot more awareness of it as a challenge, but the not-so-good part is that the numbers have just gone up so rapidly.

Brett McKay: Do we have any statistics on when kids are being introduced to their first screen? I’m not talking about television. I’m talking about maybe like an iPad or something like that.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah, I mean, what’s crazy is it’s infancy is what we’re again, it’s anecdotal. I think it really depends because it’s not like parents are handing a newborn a phone, but if you imagine that a newborn is being held while a parent holds a phone, you’re having an impact, right? Like, that’s a triangulation experience of a baby, a parent, and a phone, and I’ll be really careful upfront here to say I’m not, I always say it’s not parents’ fault that this has gotten so bad, but it is our responsibility to better understand what we’re doing, and it starts literally pre-birth, pre getting children in our lives, and so a lot of it has to do with parental use of screens as that impact or in those early years.

But we do know that for smartphone ownership, nearly a third of eight-year-olds now have their own smartphone, so it used to be kind of like we were talking about high schoolers and maybe middle schoolers, but we’re now talking about elementary schoolers with phones, and those who don’t have phones often have like an Apple Watch or a smartwatch instead of a phone, and we can talk about that too, but I’m not sure they’re better.

Brett McKay: Yeah, okay, so screens, you’re getting to introduce the screens at infancy. I remember, so I remember my son was born in 2010, and that was around when the iPad came out.

Emily Cherkin: Yep, yep, my daughter’s 2011, so I’m with you.

Brett McKay: And so I got an iPad for me. I didn’t think this was for my kid, and so I used it, and then when he was maybe like a year old, I remember like, oh, well, there’s apps for kids. They can learn letters. So I downloaded an app for him, and he did it, but now you’re seeing parents, like they get a screen, like a pad just for their toddler.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah, and that’s definitely a big difference. I have a 16-year-old as well, and I remember when he was about one or two, he figured out pretty quickly how to swipe on the iPhones, just when we had to originally swipe them on, and I remember being like, wow, that’s so crazy. He learned that so fast, and of course, in hindsight, it’s like, of course he did, ’cause it’s really user-friendly. The idea is that even a toddler can do it, and the problem is, exactly as you say, if you go back and you watch on YouTube the original iPad launch videos, nothing is mentioned about children, right? It was a tool for adults, and I even remember buying my husband one as a gift. It didn’t occur to us to get it for a kid, but of course, now we see the padded cases and little toddlers and strollers walking around with them and all of these different apps, games, platforms that are pitched to kids.

Brett McKay: Right. Or at restaurants. You go into a restaurant, you just see the kid with the iPad, yeah.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah, and again, one of my big mottos is to replace judgment with curiosity, because as I always joke, parenting is the judgiest sport I’ve ever played. It is so fraught with so many opinions about how do you sleep and feed and diaper and all of this stuff from day one. And screen time is a hot topic for judgment. We, as parents, feel a lot of guilt and shame about, I think, our own use. I think about our kids’ use. We sort of, like you and I, we kind of came to the realization at some point, like, oh, well, maybe this isn’t the best thing for young children, but we’re learning this as we go, and I don’t think blaming parents gets us anywhere, and I also think it feeds into the narrative that big tech would like us to buy into, which is that it’s parents’ fault, not their fault, right? It’s a lot easier to say, well, this is a parenting problem, and that’s not my view.

Brett McKay: Okay, so screens, infancy, smartphone, you said it was a third by the age eight?

Emily Cherkin: Yeah, third by eight. We’ve got 71% by age 12, which is sort of middle school. We’ve got almost, depending on, again, it’s probably 90 to 95% by high school.

Brett McKay: And in your book, you do this really interesting compare and contrast to show how screens have just overtaken all areas of our kids’ lives, not just their off-time life, their home life. You do this compare and contrast between what screen use looked like for a Gen X person versus a Gen Z person. So walk us through some of those differences.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah, and I recognize, too, that there is a whole nother parenting generation, like the millennial generation, that might not even recognize the Gen X childhood in this comparison, because I was writing about what I know. And for a lot of us who were Gen Xers, it was growing up and having a lot of freedom in outside play, the sort of come home before the lights come on. Parents didn’t know where we were. We didn’t wear bike helmets. There certainly were things that allowed for a lot of risk-taking and adventuring, and I’m really grateful for that. I think the other thing I see huge differences are with the way in which communication happened, whether that was like if I went to a friend’s house, my parents might know I was there. They might call the house line, but it wouldn’t contact me directly, or even the way schools communicated, right? Sending home a newsletter from the teacher on a piece of paper versus a digital platform, right? So there’s some pretty significant changes. I would say that the single biggest difference, and part of this is I get a lot of responses like, well, I played video games and I watched TV when I was a kid and I turned out fine.

Well, the single biggest difference is something called persuasive design, which I write about in the book and I know is becoming a more mainstream term now. And really what it is is the way in which apps, platforms, technology is designed to hook and hold our attention. And it is not at all the same way of a Gen X childhood, right, where you turn on a TV show and you have to wait a week to watch the next episode. Like that’s sort of a mind boggling concept now for children is like, well, I just watched the whole series all in one day. It’s a very, on demand too. I don’t even have to wait to start it at a certain time. And so that alone has changed the way that we experience, “television” or screen time.

Brett McKay: Yeah, I grew up, I was born in ’82, so I’m like an older millennial. Television for me, we had cable, but there wasn’t really much selection there. Sometimes you go, well, I’m gonna watch Yan Can Cook on the Discovery Channel. That’s all there is. But now kids, they have like personalized feeds in YouTube and it’s constantly, there’s just all this novelty. So there’s no reason for them to go away from their device. When I was a kid, I was like, well, this is really nothing on TV. I’m gonna go outside.

Emily Cherkin: Exactly. And the other thing is too, if you grew up with siblings that like, you had to negotiate what to watch. You fought over the remote control. Like, well, we watched your show last time. Now it’s my turn to pick. And like maybe our parents found that frustrating and annoying, but my view is like, that’s incredibly important skill building and relationship skills stuff that’s happening there. Negotiating and navigating conflict and getting to a point of agreement. But when we hand kids headphones and individual devices, they’re not doing any of that. And again, I always say, I’m not anti-tech, I’m tech intentional. So yeah, I do think sometimes it’s okay that a kid watches something and I can give my two senses that like in general, the bigger the screen, the better. No headphones over headphones, public space versus private space.

Anytime we can do that and make those choices within choices, I think that’s better. But I’m also not an absolutist. I don’t think, it doesn’t affect every kid the same way. And I think that when we get too locked into rules about hard and fast, yes and no, we lose a lot of the nuance. And if you’re a parent, you know that it’s all about nuance.

Brett McKay: So what have been some of the consequences of the increase of screen use among young people?

Emily Cherkin: Well, I mean, if if you’ve been following anything around screen time and youth and social media stuff, the Surgeon General’s warning from last fall is about the dire state of youth mental health. And I do recognize social media platforms are not the same thing as like a smartphone, but that’s the tool on which kids are accessing them. And mental health isn’t only affected by social media platforms. What I see is kids being driven to the technology to escape feelings of discomfort or struggle, whether that’s in the school environment or family communication or social media.

And so as a former teacher, for example, what I saw as soon as we pivoted from I had the paper grade book to the digital one and it really came through the teachers first, not the students in terms of access to platforms. But my seventh grade students stopped coming to ask me for help. They didn’t come and ask me, what happened on my vocab test? How do I study differently to get a different grade? Or I need help on this essay. Instead, what happened is parents started emailing me. Parents were refreshing the portal, like why haven’t you graded this? And so that drove me to spend more time at the computer and then less time with my students. And my very firm belief is that learning happens in the context of human relationships. It doesn’t happen because mom emailed about a vocab test and that was 10 years ago. And what’s happening now is kids are texting their parents from school saying I got a bad grade. And so all of this sort of snowball effect has led us to a group of kids, youth, and not just teenagers, but even younger kids who are just struggling, whether that’s their confidence, their mental health, their skills.

And that to me, if I wanna get a little meta here, no pun intended, is that is a threat to democracy. We are raising children who are not capable of thinking critically, of experiencing a difference of opinion without seeing it or feeling it as a personal attack without the skills to troubleshoot and problem solve that they really need to be a thriving adult. So I see this as a real snowballing problem. It’s not just one thing, it’s multiple things. And the pendulum is swung pretty far.

Brett McKay: Yeah, I thought that was interesting. You have a section about the displacement hypothesis.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah.

Brett McKay: If you’re on a screen, it’s displacing time you could have spent working on a different skill. So if you’re on a screen, you’re not working on learning how to play an instrument.

Emily Cherkin: Exactly.

Brett McKay: But also it displaces skills like you said there, social interaction, how to handle conflict. Because you can just hide behind the screen and not actually have to deal with the conflict.

Emily Cherkin: Right, yeah. And again, it’s easy to dump this all on screens. I think there’s also been a big shift in parenting styles too. You and I are similar age and we were kind of raised in that helicopter parenting generation where yeah, we had a pretty free childhood, but then there was a lot of sort of swooping in, like, oh, you forgot your lunch, let me bring it to school that kind of thing. And now what we’re seeing is this lawnmower, snowplow parenting approach, which is I’m gonna go ahead of my child, mow away obstacles so they don’t ever experience adversity. And I believe those intentions are good. I really believe parents think they are being good and helpful and supportive. But the problem is we actually need our children to have opportunities to experience some friction, some stress, some conflict, because that’s how they learn to cope with it. And the more we take away those experiences, the less opportunities they have to practice that. And I think screens contribute to that in that they provide an escape that we can go to it and watch a video instead of facing a social conflict head on that we might’ve in our childhoods had to deal with.

Brett McKay: Well, going on, kind of continue with that theme, like I’m sure a lot of parents who give their kids iPads and smartphones, they cognitively understand like, okay, I know this is probably not good for my kid. They’ve read the research, they’ve seen the news articles, but they still do it anyway. When you’ve talked to people who’ve come to you for help, what do they tell you? Like, what are the reasons why they give their kids devices, even though they know, like they understand, like this is probably not the best thing for my kid.

Emily Cherkin: Right, yeah. And again, I have a lot of empathy for parents because I think the main reason, I think a lot of the reasons I hear, and again, it’s like, we know this isn’t good. We know what the data say, but a lot of it is fear. And there are sort of several layers to that. I think there is fear about the real world, like what’s safe and what’s not safe. I think there’s a lot of fear about our child being excluded or left out if they don’t have a phone or a social media platform. And I think there’s to be really honest, I think there’s a lot of parental fear about school violence which is awful. I wish it weren’t something that this country had to deal with. But what I see for parents is that we, as parents, are often hijacked ourselves by clickbait news headlines, by sensational social media stories, because that’s how the algorithm works. Certainly once you watch one, you’re gonna get fed a lot more, but they’re not representations of reality.

They are often extremely rare circumstances that are not truly dangerous for the majority of children. And this is a hard thing for parents to hear, but I think we are too often focusing on the scary and not the dangerous. And so what I really try to help parents think about is I think I’m making my kids safe by giving them a phone or preventing them from experiencing exclusion, for example. But really when we hand over unlimited access to the internet, the danger is in the device. And certainly the younger we hand them out and with the less skills in place to cope with it, that’s dangerous. And what’s really interesting is that Pew Research found that the top three parental fears in America are youth mental health, bullying, and kidnapping. And one of the reasons I hear parents give phones out earlier and earlier is this fear of kidnapping, which is this idea of scary versus dangerous, right? Like kidnapping is scary, but it is not dangerous from a statistical perspective.

And somebody actually went and did the math and they found that if you wanted your child to be kidnapped, obviously no one does, you would have to leave them outside every day for 750,000 years to be guaranteed of being kidnapped. And that’s a pretty low statistical chance. And yet when we give our children phones or social media access, we make those top two parental fears so much worse, the bullying and the youth mental health. And so it’s this very paradoxical choice that parents are making. And I understand the instinct, but we need to come from a place of reason rather than fear. And I realize how hard that is to ask parents.

Brett McKay: Yeah we’ve had Lenore Skenazy on the podcast.

Emily Cherkin: Oh I love her. I love her.

Brett McKay: Yeah talking about free-range kids and she talked about… Yeah the chances of your kid getting kidnapped are just… It’s…

Emily Cherkin: It’s nil. Yeah.

Brett McKay: It’s nil pretty much. But yeah I thought it was interesting. We’re trying to make our kids safer but in the process we’re actually putting them more in danger of bullying and the mental health stuff. When parents realize their kids have a problem with screen use, how do they typically go about remedying the situation?

Emily Cherkin: Yeah I get a lot of parents who want me to help them fix their kids. And the way I phrase it is that this is not a kid problem it’s an adult problem that’s impacting children. And a lot of the work I do with parents is to start by actually looking at our own use of screens. And again I replace judgment with curiosity. This is come as you are, we’ve all made mistakes, we all are learning, and then because we know better now we can do better. And a lot of it has to do with how do we as adults engage with digital tech around our children because what they see is what they’re gonna do. And so that’s usually a starting point. But the other thing I also hear is that parents really wanna know what parental controls that they can put on their devices or their kids’ devices to help them decrease screen time. And the problem I have with that is it’s actually asking the wrong question. I think rather than worrying about total number of hours and the way in which we monitor them what I would rather happen and I think is a far more effective way to help manage screen time is two things. One do you know what your child is actually doing online?

Not just because you’ve been watching on an app but because you sat with them because you’ve asked them questions about it. All of that. And the second one is do you have a strong relationship with your child? Because that is actually the best predictor of future mental health for them. It’s not that you’ve managed to block XYZ websites or whatever. And at the end of the day too every parent who comes to me has a story of how my kid found the workaround. My kid disabled the parental controls. I thought I had it all locked down. And so I call it digital whack-a-mole. Because you think you’ve got it here but then the kid finds it there. And it sort of lulls parents into this false sense of security and it is not long-term effective. Now that being said it takes a lot more work to work on that relationship piece and the communication piece than it is to just download an app. And that’s hard. Not all parents are able or willing to go there yet and so I recognize it’s not easy but it matters.

Brett McKay: Yeah the parental controls I’ve experimented with various ones. They’re easy to work around but also even if you get them to work they’re not that great because for one you can’t filter content within an app, right?

Emily Cherkin: Exactly.

Brett McKay: You can block websites. You can say okay…

Emily Cherkin: Exactly.

Brett McKay: I’m gonna block all porn websites or drug websites whatever. You can do that but you can’t filter the content in the Instagram app or the Snapchat app.

Emily Cherkin: Exactly.

Brett McKay: And so your kids could be looking at stuff… Or even the YouTube. You can’t really… It’s hard to like do parental controls on YouTube. So yeah they don’t… And then the other problem I’ve had with them before is that sometimes they work too well. And I have my son he was trying to access espn.com to look at the basketball scores. And it’s like I can’t get it. Oh dad I can’t. It says it’s blocked ’cause it’s not appropriate. And I’m like okay. So it’s more of a hassle.

Emily Cherkin: It is and look I’m always… There’s some families for whom it works and they find it’s a great tool. That’s fine I’m not suggesting you toss it all to the curb. But I also really encourage if you have them and you think they’re working to make sure. Because the ways in which kids get around them to your point they don’t monitor the in-app content but even that like for example parents are often surprised that Pinterest is a problematic app. Because they think of it as a crafting place. That’s what we knew it as. But that’s where kids are watching TikTok ’cause they can see TikTok videos through Pinterest. So kids are way… They’re always one step ahead of us on that. And that is why that relationship piece is so important. We don’t wanna drive kids further underground. We don’t wanna make kids sneaky about it because it isn’t a question of if they see inappropriate content or scary content or something they don’t understand. It’s a question of when. And what we need to do as parents is be the adult that they come to when that happens. And if what we’ve done previously is the digital whack-a-mole or the you get in big trouble, they’re not going to come to you.

And that’s where we get into the really dangerous outcomes is that they go to the internet to find out more information which is almost never a good idea. Or they blame themselves and it takes a serious toll on their mental health. The true antidote to addiction is connection. It is this relationship piece. And it isn’t easy and it’s also our job as parents to look at our own screen addiction or tendencies and look at like well what could I be doing differently? What’s a way that I can help my kid by helping myself? That’s a starting point I would argue.

Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

And now back to the show. Yeah I think that’s an important point that you’ve got to model what appropriate or good digital behavior looks like in your own life ’cause your kids are gonna follow what you do. And you have this great advice for parents. If they have a problem with their screen use, right? They’re constantly checking their phone or whatever is to live your digital life out loud. What does that mean and how can that help?

Emily Cherkin: Yeah so a colleague of mine many years ago used this as a phrase to help kids build executive function skills and she said living your life out loud. And I had this aha moment which was like oh my gosh this is what we should be doing with digital tech. And so living your life out loud is actually one of my number one tips to give parents. It’s like you can start it today. It’s free. It’s easy. You don’t need any special skills. And all it is is narrating what you do as you do it around your technology. So it might be I’m reaching for my phone I’m gonna check and see what time soccer practice starts and then I’m gonna text your friend’s mom and see if she can drive you home. It’s a play-by-play to use a sports metaphor. And is it annoying? Yes. Is it boring? Yes. Will your kids roll their eyes and go why are you telling me all this out loud? Yes. And does that matter? Yes because it means they’re listening. You are showing how you are using this as a tool. I always say that a smartphone isn’t a switchblade it’s a Swiss Army knife. It’s a multi-tool and kids need us to teach them that it is a thing that does more than one platform, one communication tool, one anything and how we use it really matters.

And the added benefit is we’re modeling tech use but we’re also teaching some of that executive function so skills like organizing and planning and communicating. Like we can say oh I’m using this to plan my schedule for the week and this is how it looks. This is all skills stuff kids need. And we can add in that emotional vocabulary too. We can start to talk about like oh my gosh I’m standing in the grocery line and I’m bored and I realize I’m pulling out my phone to look at it and I could be talking to you or it doesn’t make me feel better to scroll through someone else’s Instagram pictures. It just makes me feel like my life is boring. And by starting to articulate the way it impacts us our kids can see that it will also be impactful for them. And again I always just say when the kids roll their eyes it’s good ’cause it means they’re listening. And especially for those teens and tweens that’s developmentally normal. They’re gonna roll their eyes at you and that’s okay.

Brett McKay: Okay so live your digital life out loud. I really like that tip because it just… You know. What I like about it too it just adds more friction into your digital use…

Emily Cherkin: Exactly.

Brett McKay: So you’ll be less likely to pull out the phone. You’re like well I don’t want to narrate what I’m doing to my kids I’ll as well maybe just leave my phone in my pocket.

Emily Cherkin: Exactly. And you start to notice when you do it how many other people don’t do it. My husband said he was doing it with us at home all the time and then he’d go to work and he’s like why is no one saying this? It’s so weird it feels so rude but we’ve sort of slipped into this habit and I would love to see that as a strategy that spreads far and wide.

Brett McKay: And then the other piece of that is instead of relying on parental controls completely just talk to your kids like talk to them about their digital life. Like ask them what are you even checking out on YouTube? What are you watching? You don’t have to do it accusatory like ah you’re probably looking at something you’re not supposed to be looking at. Just like hey no tell me who are the people you follow on YouTube?

Emily Cherkin: Yeah and why do you like that person? What makes their videos interesting to you? And it is very likely your kids are gonna say, “Well, I don’t know.” and that’s where we just have to lean on them a little bit. And to think of this as… Actually it’s a skill building opportunity for them to articulate their opinion and why they like something is a skill. And it’s okay if you don’t agree with it. I think a lot of the judgment we feel about kids’ screen time is very apparent to kids. I think it makes them react more defensively. So I always talk about going backward to go forward. This idea that okay maybe you hate Minecraft and you don’t wanna hear any more about Minecraft today. But if you can engage your child on something they’re interested in, that’s a connection building moment.

You might be like as we’re turning this off would you tell me about the world you build or what you wanna do tomorrow or who are you working with on this world? Any sort of question whether or not you really wanna know the details you’re showing your kid you care about something they’re interested in and that’s solidifying your relationship. And so then the idea would be for something non-digital you can build on that. That’s where I think we go so quickly to defensiveness and accusatory sort of I can’t believe you’re addicted to your phone and why don’t you turn that thing off? And… You know, the kids know. The kids know we don’t like it. So that’s hard.

Brett McKay: Yeah so we… Our family we do use parental… The Apple parental controls ’cause our kids have their own iPad for games and whatever. But the one I think is really useful is they have to ask permission before they download an app. And I think that’s really handy ’cause okay first it prevents them from opening up accounts on social media platforms without us knowing about it. But also the prompt when I get on my phone like, hey Gus wants to download this app. I can have a conversation like what’s up with this? Why are you wanting to do this? It’s a conversation starter.

Emily Cherkin: That’s great yeah I love that too. And we don’t use those controls but we have that rule. And even again anecdotally my daughter last week I saw a screen… She uses a family iPad and we share my phone which is its own creative solution. She’s 13 now so it’s been interesting. She also has access to a light phone which is one of the minimalist options for when she does go out and wants to call about pickup but sharing a phone with a 13 year old is fascinating. That’s a whole different topic. But one of the things that it has allowed us to do is just have these ongoing conversations. And I noticed a screenshot the other day of what looked like an AI chat bot kind of an app. And I was like huh I don’t remember being asked about that one. And so it was an opportunity to revisit the expectation that if you want to download something you have to ask us about it. And just simply downloading it without asking doesn’t work. And because I can see… I have it on my phone but also I can look at the iPad. I was like this doesn’t look like it’s in alignment with what we’ve talked about. And she immediately goes “oh yeah. Okay I’ll delete it.” And I’m sure there are things I’m missing.

Again I wanna put… As much as I am the screen time consultant I don’t want parents to think I don’t fight with my own kids about screen time sometimes. I do. But what I care a lot more about than the are they following my rule? Is are they learning something from this interaction and what is it I want them to take away from it because that’s what’s setting them up for those future skills. And she did a lot of eye-rolling and was annoyed at me for talking to her about it but then I immediately saw a text that she sent to her friends that was like, “I have to delete this my mom made a really good point. It’s not good for kids.” and it was like what she said and what she did were two different things but that’s literally what parenting teens and tweens is like. And so we’ve got to also give them more credit that just ’cause… The gesture I usually give is like they’re both flipping us off and rolling their eyes while beckoning for us to come closer and help them. It’s such a contradictory conflicting message and we have to ignore that middle finger. We have to pay attention to the bid for connection because that’s what they need more than ever even in spite of what they’re saying and doing.

Brett McKay: And besides just checking in regularly on your kid’s digital life and you’re doing this out of curiosity not judgment. You also talked about just having conversations about how technology lines up with your family’s principles or values. Just on an ongoing basis. And you can even talk about it from your own experience. Like oh I was bored and I… Like you said earlier. I’m bored and I wanted to check the screen. Like well I don’t wanna be the kind of person who has to suck on a digital binky anytime I’m bored or upset.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah exactly.

Brett McKay: And you think your kids aren’t listening but they are. They might be rolling their eyes when you talk about it but they’re absorbing it.

Emily Cherkin: Exactly. That’s exactly it. And I think having the conversations just starts to sort of plant those seeds. And so it can be… Like even a couple of days ago at dinner we were just chatting about I was sharing some information a parent shared with me about her teenager having up to 13 hours on his phone a day. And that’s definitely on the high end. And even my 16-year-old son who, I see him pick up his phone more than I would want sometimes and boy do we talk about it. But even he was like huh that’s a lot and inside I’m cheering and excited like oh my gosh he gets it. But I was like yeah yeah it is a lot. And it’s not like they’ll come back to us and it may take five, six, seven, 20 conversations before it clicks in but that again is normal brain development. They’re not always gonna get it that first second or third conversation. And that’s okay that’s why we keep trying.

Brett McKay: Kind of brass tacks here. When do you recommend parents introduce screens to them ’cause there’s different ways you can introduce screens here. The first one I think most kids get introduced to early is an iPad or a tablet of some sort.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah or a parent phone.

Brett McKay: Or a parent phone. Any advice on how to introduce that in a way that it’s more conducive to well-being?

Emily Cherkin: Yeah yeah and again my tech intentional approach is all about the intentionality of introducing it. So my TLDR is later is better less is more relationships and skills first. And so later is better and I realize that’s not helpful because parents often want well like how many years old but the reality is it depends so much on each child and the temperament and the other to what we were talking earlier about displacement like what are the other things that are happening in this child’s life and your family life. So I worry sometimes when we get too hard and fast about age… Number age and number of hours that if you’ve not met that or you’ve gone way past that you feel like you’ve failed. And my goal is to help parents say Oh I guess I missed that. And I want something different. So how can I get there without feeling like I’ve already failed? And you start where you are. And I know parents who have regretted I mean I’ll say this like no parent has ever said to me “I wish I gave my kid a phone sooner” or “I wish I gave them social media access earlier.” Never. It is 100% of the time the opposite. And so if that message can get to the parents of younger kids that’s a powerful thing to take with you.

They’re going to be mad at you if you delay. But the problems that come with giving it too much too soon are much more challenging than them just being mad at you for saying no. And that being said just saying no isn’t enough either. Because it’s one thing to… Here’s a Seinfeld reference, you know how to take the reservation but not hold the reservation. It’s like you can say no and you can have the rule and kids are gonna find it anyway whether it’s on their school computer or their friend’s phone. And so that’s again where that relationship piece has to come into play. And a lot of this is rooted in trust. And it’s hard when we as adults and parents feel distrusting of the world. We’re worried about a lot of different things, but distrust breeds more distrust. And so it is really important that that relationship piece is focused on how do I help my child? How do I teach them about what it means to honor your word and respect your values and your boundaries? And a lot of that’s gonna start with how we model them.

Brett McKay: What about smartphones? What’s a good age for parents to get their kids their first smartphone?

Emily Cherkin: Again later is better less is more. Relationships and skills first. And I would say I mean… And there’s been a lot of press about Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation and his work is wonderful. And I quote him in my book his advice again is like delaying until high school. And again I think that’s great. I think the challenge is parents feel like well my kid’s the only one. And it is true. I mean as we talked about in the beginning the older the kid the more kids have them. And so it does take collective action here. And the metaphor I use is the school of fish in the ocean how do you get it to change direction? Well one fish peels away but the other fish aren’t going to follow until a second and a third fish come too. And so what I talk about is like I need more first fish parents out there and I need also some second and third fish parents because when we get those parents there who are starting to say no or delay or talk about it in the context of values then it will make it easier for the rest of the group to follow. And I see my work very much as a first fish and it’s hard it can be lonely but I really believe it’s the best thing for kids.

We are fighting. When we delay our children’s access or delay or minimize it or limit it we are fighting for their future mental cognitive and emotional health. I firmly believe that. So I believe it matters. And the later we can do that the better in the context of a strong relationship with our children.

Brett McKay: Yeah we’re waiting until high school to get our kids a smartphone. And something that’s helped is my fortunate son he’s at eighth grade so he’ll be in high school soon. But his best friend like we’re really good friends with his best friend’s parents. And we’ve kind of made a compact like none of us are getting them a smartphone.

Emily Cherkin: Great. Great.

Brett McKay: And that’s helped out. Great. ‘Cause now they just communicate with each other via our phones.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah, that’s wonderful. And that makes a huge difference if you can find one other parent to partner with on it. And again, like we use… My daughter is going into 7th grade, we use the Light Phone. So, you know, she can text her friends, she can text us, but she has access at home on the iPad and she uses my phone number. And so that’s a solution that’s worked for us. One thing that has made that much easier is the fact that her school has a phone free policy and has had one for six or seven years, which is pretty, you know, tip of the spear in terms of, you know, that’s not been the norm. And schools are now starting to look at that as an option and it’s great, but that makes my parenting job so much easier. The fact that she isn’t allowed to have a phone at school and so it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t have a smartphone yet. She’s just not allowed to have a phone at school. So that’s another recommendation I would make is to really encourage your child’s school to consider a school-wide policy, because it does help the parents a lot on that side of things.

Brett McKay: Have you had issues with parents where they’re… They say, well, I had to give my kid a smartphone because all their school assignments are managed with a smartphone. Is that an issue?

Emily Cherkin: Yeah. So I get really mad about this one because, you know, first of all, a school should never require a child to use a personal device for school assignments, but they do all the time. And the bigger issue that I’m seeing now, you know, is of course the school issued devices, which present a whole different problem, but there’s a lot of issues with asking kids to rely on their own personal phones for school, right? We can talk about equity, we can talk about privacy, with access, distractions, safety, you know, what happens if your classmate drops and breaks your phone? Who’s responsible? So yes, is the short answer. It’s a huge problem. The bigger issue, you know, the thing that I hear more from parents is like, there’s a lot of, for the, but not for me, kind of thinking like they want other parents to not give their kids phones, but they have a reason why their kid needs a phone.

And that’s a touchy one because I do think there are some exceptions in the sense of like a medical diagnosis or a severe learning disability where that is a required tool. Those are the exceptions. But I don’t think, I feel like giving a kid a phone because they have anxiety is a good reason to give a child a phone, right? And so there’s a lot of that kind of thinking and I need some parents to start realizing that it has to be true for all or most kids in order for things to change. And that’s hard.

Brett McKay: Yeah. I heard you in another interview say that a good age to get your kid a smartphone is when you’re… Yeah. What was it?

Emily Cherkin: Yeah. When you’re ready for them to see porn. Yeah.

Brett McKay: Yeah.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah. And that’s not my line, but it’s something that’s in our world that we hear that a lot, but it’s true. And most parents kind of go, but if you’re not ready to talk about porn, they’re not ready to have access to the internet. Like that’s just… It’s just everywhere. And it’s not because kids are seeking it out. I mean, a few kids probably are, but like it’s ’cause it’s everywhere. It’s everywhere.

Brett McKay: No, yeah. So a couple years ago, I’m the leader of our youth group at church, like the boys, and we had a thing on porn use. And I asked them like, Hey, you know, how do you guys get porn these days? Like, how are kids doing it? And they said, people just send it to you. Like, I’ve got friends who’ll just like, they’ll just message it to me. I didn’t ask for it, I wasn’t looking for it, or I’m on Snapchat and someone will just send it to me. And I asked, what do you do about that? He’s like, I just had to delete it and tell them not to do that anymore. I mean like when I was a kid, like that never happened. Like you had to go look for it if you wanted to see it. Yeah.

Emily Cherkin: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. It was like paper form and hard to get and yeah, I mean, again, it’s like, it is pernicious, it’s algorithmically driven and with bots and all of that stuff, and to your point earlier about not monitoring in-app content, kids can get DMs from… There’s a lot of the like phishing kind of scandal things that go on where it’s, it looks like a young hot college girl sending a selfie and being like, oh, you’re cute. Will you send me some inappropriate pictures, right? And you know, a teenage boy’s gonna feel flattered by that. And you know, it can lead to all kinds of bad outcomes. But I think again, knowing that that’s going to happen, we have to talk to our kids about what to do. We have to say like, when that happens, you need to block and delete or screenshot it.

Sometimes that’s actually important for law enforcement, but like, you need to come and let me know immediately. I will never be mad at you for this. Like this is a really important parent message to get through. And we may not know what to do right away, and that’s okay too. We can say, I don’t know what to do and I need to figure out an answer, but thank you for telling me. This is the day and age we live in and it’s just gotta be a part of those conversations. And I mean, as young as four, five, and six, and that’s hard for some parents to think about. But you obviously don’t need to use language of a teenager, but you can say there’s pictures on here that aren’t for kids. There are videos that are made for grownups. Sometimes kids find them, I need you to tell me when you see something you don’t understand. I’ll never be mad at you.

Brett McKay: So a compromise that some parents make when it comes to smartphone. Say they have a kid that’s in middle school or elementary school, they’re like, well, I’m not gonna get my kid a smartphone, but I’ll get them a smart watch. You’re not a big fan of this compromise. Why is that?

Emily Cherkin: Well, because first of all, they’re on their body, right? So at least a phone, in theory, you could leave in a backpack or a locker all day, but like a watch is on your body, so it’s constantly available. If you’ve ever watched a child under 10, they’re fidgety and distracted. They’re just, it’s tappable, right? There’s something they can do with it, whether they’re even doing an app or not. I also think that parents, this is again, going back to that parent anxiety piece, like, we need to stop texting our children at school. And I mean this from kindergarten through college, because I got an email from our daughter’s K-5 principal two years ago that was like, parents, please turn off watches and phones and leave them in backpacks all day because kids’ watches are going off all day long and disrupting the learning. And so again, this is gonna be on us, us as parents, to do the hard thing, which is, except we cannot talk to or hear from our children all day long. It’s to trust that the teachers in the school are going to communicate with us if there’s a problem.

And that really, again, is a shift for us as parents to move out of that anxiety. And I know that parents want to keep tabs on their kids. There’s a lot of, you know, like, well, I wanna track them, I wanna know where they are. I wanna make sure they get to someone’s house. That is living in the fear. That is living in the world of the whole world is dangerous. And really what I’m thinking is, it’s just scary. And I know intentions are good, but parents have to remember that there are benefits to our children having that independence and freedom from surveillance and supervision from us constantly. It’s their chance to go out in the world and practice some pretty critical skills with, you know, in a school environment with an adult who’s trained to do that. I know it’s not a perfect scenario.

I know schools are all over the place, but I think we’ve really misjudged our need to constantly surveil them. And that, you know, what we were just talking about earlier about distrust, you know, surveillance breeds distrust. And if you go back again to that Gen X millennial childhoods, can you imagine when you were in high school, if your parents like literally could track you wherever you went? It sends such a wrong message in my mind about what is healthy for kids and development and independence, which of course directly correlates to that mental health piece. And, you know, feeling surveilled and watched makes us think we’re less capable. And you know, kids think they’re less capable, so they don’t take risks, they don’t put themselves out there and that makes their mental health worse. So it’s this vicious cycle, and that was a long answer to whether or not you should get your kid a smartwatch, but if really what you want is a communication tool, get ’em a flip phone or an old, you know, one of those minimalist phones that don’t have all of those capabilities that they can physically leave in a locker or a backpack. That’s where I am on that one.

Brett McKay: Yeah. I think that you make an important point. Privacy is where we develop a self.

Emily Cherkin: Exactly.

Brett McKay: And so if you’re constantly being monitored, it’s hard to develop your individuality or just your self concept. And I do like the idea if you wanna stay connected with your kids, just give them the Light Phone or the the flip phone.

Emily Cherkin: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it is true that nothing is private on the internet. You know, I get a lot of parents like, well, should I read my kids’ text? Should I… The reality is you should assume that anything that is being put on a digital platform device tool is visible to everybody in the world. And we have to teach our kids that because it’s hard to understand that, especially for a young child. But I don’t think snooping is ever a good way. You know, that’s, again, we run into sort of that trust and mistrust, but I think communicating constantly about like, Hey, I want you to know that occasionally I will check your phone and I’m just, you know, again, making it part of the conversation. Nothing is private on the internet, you know, if you have a conflict with a friend, it’s always better to pick up the phone and call, you know, no teenager does that anymore, I know that. But we want them to know that there are some unsafe things about putting things in writing on a device and that it’s just a safety thing. Right. Yeah.

Brett McKay: Yeah. Well, it’s been a great conversation. Is there one thing that people can start doing today in creating a more tech intentional family? Because like you said, you’re not anti-tech. I think that your husband works for a tech company, correct?

Emily Cherkin: Yes. Full disclosure. Yep.

Brett McKay: Yeah. But you’re all about being tech intentional. So like what’s one thing that parents can start doing today to do that?

Emily Cherkin: Yeah, great question. Well, number one, replace judgment with curiosity and know that this is ridiculously hard and you’re not alone. You know, again, I get so many calls and emails, it’s like, parents are really feeling overwhelmed by this. The second thing is the live your life out loud piece. You know, you don’t need to change anything. In fact, I don’t want you to go home and change everything just from listening to this one conversation. I want you to think about what would it look like to live my life out loud around how I use screens around my family and just start there. See what happens. See what kids say. See what your partner says. You know, like, what do you notice about your own screen use? And if you want a really tangible thing that you can do today is to get your phone out of your bedroom. Because I know, and I survey school groups when I go and talk to parents, and it’s something like 95% of parents admit to keeping their phone in their room at night.

And I know that parents are gonna say, well, what about an emergency? To which I say, just put it in the hallway. Leave the ringer on and put it in the hallway, but like outside your bedroom, because it’s a lot easier to say no to your 16-year-old having a phone in the room at night, which they shouldn’t have than, you know, if you have also put your room, your phone out of the room at night. So that’s one of those just sort of simple, easy to start, being that role model saying, I’ve learned something new. This is gonna help me sleep better, it’s gonna decrease my doom scrolling before bed, you know, I’m gonna do that. And people always say, it’s my alarm clock. And alarm clocks are way cheaper than smartphones.

Brett McKay: No, for sure. Well, Emily, where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

Emily Cherkin: Yeah. So my website is thescreentimeconsultant.com. I have a section about my book. I actually just also added a toolkit for parents who are interested in looking at an alternative pathway for the screens in schools part, you know, opting out of some of that ed tech. So that’s a downloadable free resource. And I would love it if anyone’s interested in signing up for my newsletter. I send weekly essays about parenting and screen time and education and life in the digital fast lane that we’re all living in. And I find… I get a lot of good feedback about those so I don’t spam people or sell their email addresses either.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Emily Cherkin, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Emily Cherkin: Yes. Thank you so much for having me, Brett.

Brett McKay: My guest today is Emily Cherkin. She’s the author of the book, The Screen Time Solution. It’s available on amazon.com. You can find more information about her work at her website, thescreentimeconsultant.com. Also check at our show notes at aom.is/screentime. You can find links to resources, we delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives. And while you’re there, sign up for our newsletter. You have a daily option, a weekly option. They’re both free. It’s the best way to stay on top of what’s going on at AOM. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it’s Brett McKay. Reminding you to not only listen to AOM podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.