The book Bored and Brilliantby Manoush Zomorodi asks the reader if it is possible to become more purposeful or mindful about how we use our gadgets. We need to make choices about how we spend our time. We don’t want to waste our days, nor do we want to get side-tracked by busyness. We think that we are “relaxing” when we watch television, play a video game, or check social media, but we are really distracting our brains, not switching them off. It turns out that being bored is the key to creative thinking, but with a cellphone within reach, we rarely allow ourselves to be bored.
If you’ve been following our blogs on technology, you’ll understand why there is a need to control the use of all of our gadgets. If you haven’t been reading along, this statistic might scare you: In a 2017 survey, results showed that children 2- to 8-years-old were using screen media for almost 3 hours a day, including 1 hour with mobile devices. Teens clocked in at about 9 hours per day. Nevertheless, laptops, iPads, and smartphones are here to stay. The goal is not to remove them, but to use them with greater intention. Our mobile phones, iPads, televisions, and computers do not differentiate information that is worth engaging in and thinking about versus throw-away communication. If we value uni-tasking and deep reading, we have to actively choose those activities. We are the ones who need to control our devices, and not allow our devices to control us.
How do we do that? These are just a few suggestions:
- Chade-Meng Tan, a former Google engineer, stated that “The key is to have insight into your behavior. Don’t be unconscious which causes you to spend hours on Facebook, consuming the information equivalent of junk food. Use technology with an identified purpose. The currency of information is attention. An overabundance of information, through a mindless consumption of all that junk information, will lead to a poverty of attention.”
- Nir Eval, the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, noted that every time we download, upgrade, or power up anything digital, we should ask ourselves, “Is this product serving me or hurting me?”
- Dr. Alex Soojun-Kim Pang, author of The Distraction Addiction,stated, “Remember, when you first get any mobile device, it will behave like a child who wants all your attention all the time. Every time we respond to a ping or flash, it takes twenty-three minutes and fifteen seconds, on average, to get back to what we were originally working on. All their defaults are set to alert you to absolutely everything,” said Pang, who turns off every notification for virtually everything on his phone and removes nonessential apps. “I have found that just accessing Facebook and Twitter from my laptop turns out to be perfectly fine.”
- Research shows that people are uncomfortable if left alone with their thoughts, even for a few minutes. When waiting for someone or something to happen, instead of pulling out your phone, try carrying a small notebook, and be present in your environment. Write down what someone is wearing, or a snippet of conversation, or describe the weather.
- Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation, describes how one family has a rule of no electronics in the bedrooms. At the end of the day, all of the phones and tablets and laptops go in a docking station, allowing the family members to sleep better.
- Turkle also states, “We cannot know if the parents we see ignoring children would be more attentive if they didn’t have phones. What we do know is that our phones are seductive. When our phones are around, we are vulnerable to ignoring the people we love. Given this, it doesn’t make sense to bring a phone to dinner with your children. Accept your vulnerability. Remove the temptation.
- Choose to cultivate daily habits of family conversation
- Turn off Wi-Fi when you have work to do.
- The magazine The Atlanticcoined “Tabless Thursday”: one day a week, you can work on only one thing instead of having multiple browser tabs open.
Recently, NBC asked 10 tech executiveswhat kind of screen limits they set for their children. Here are the results:
- An hour of device time once dinner and homework are done
- An hour of tv on Saturday mornings – watched together as siblings
- Screen time, but a book must be read for half hour first
- Apps like Instagram followed by dialogue around what they see
- Unlimited screen time as long as it’s for something educational
- No screen time during the week; no social media any time
- No screen time before age 2
- No private messaging online
- No YouTube, but streaming videos on amazon is allowed
- No devices in the bedroom
Setting technology limits on ourselves, let alone our children, can be difficult, but certainly not impossible. As Sherry Turkle stated, the decision to ensure sufficient family face-to-face conversation time over the use of technology can be “The difference between children who struggle to express themselves and those who are fluent, between children who can reach out to form friendships and those who may find it hard.”
-LeeAnne Fura, MS, CCC/SLP