Moving to Learn

Ten red flags that indicate your child is using too much technology

Includes ten Tech Tips for improved family connection, health and wellness.

 

When working with children with problematic behaviours, at times it’s difficult to determine what is causing the issue, and often it’s never one thing! This article is designed to help parents, teachers and health professionals understand which child issues might be associated with technology overuse, and offers helpful suggestions to get kids back on a more healthy track.

Sleep deprived, delayed development, obesity, avoids face to face socializing, mentally ill, aggressive, attention deficit, illiterate, can’t self-regulate, and dependent.

  1. Sleep deprived.

The Canadian Sleep Association recently reported sleep deprivation as a national epidemic in both children and adults, citing technology overuse as the primary causal factor. As technology consumption rises, restorative sleep declines, resulting in careless states of lethargy and apathy. In addition to lowered productivity at work and in school, people who are sleep deprived have higher rates of obesity and diabetes, cardiovascular disorders such as heart attack and stroke, cancer, and mental illness. Children need 12 and adults 8 hours per night of sleep, yet only 40% of Canadians achieve these recommended levels.

Sleep Tech Tips: turn off all tech one hour prior to bed, make bed rooms tech free, and plug router into a timer that shuts off home internet at 11 pm.

  1. Delayed development.

One third of British Columbia’s children enter school developmentally vulnerable (HELP UBC 2009/13). In order to meet developmental milestones needed to grow and succeed, children need to move, touch and be touched, connect with humans, and access nature. Hand a child a device and they are sedentary, isolated, neglected, and overstimulated. Take the device away and they get up, interact with others, and engage in activities that promote optimal development. Playgrounds are the epicentre for child development, and should include age appropriate equipment to challenge older children, teens and adults.

Development Tech Tips: increase engagement in healthy activity and reduce use of tech to 1-2 hours per day, add age appropriate challenges to playgrounds, have family theme nights (cookie night, board game night, flash light park night), and do regular Saturday morning tech free outing to pool, museum, or forest.

  1. Obesity.

One in four children are either obese or significantly overweight, increasing their risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease by 30%. The New England Journal of Medicine in 2012 reported that we are witnessing the first generation of children many of whom won’t outlive their parents. Obesity is causally related to technology overuse, technology in the bed room, and watching commercials for junk food, and is epidemic in both children and adults.

Obesity Tech Tips: never combine eating with a screen, regularly have tech free family dinners (including dinner plan, prep, eat, clean-up), and walk yourselves around the block after dinner – or get your neighbors to join you at the park for frisbee!

  1. Avoids face to face socializing.

Tech is a social paradox. While many people think social networking and gaming is making kids more ‘social’, numerous studies cite the contrary – that children who use technology to socialize are reporting more loneliness, isolation, and anxiety regarding peer relationships. Individual performance, whether on Facebook or in gaming, is visible and available for scrutiny, comments, and bullying. The illusion that technology is connecting humanity is quite simply that, an illusion. Disconnect to reconnect.

Social Tech Tips: don’t allow social networking or gaming until 12 years of age (or older if child is socially immature), promote and model social relationships by inviting friends and family for dinners, parties, and outings, and do round table discussion at dinner by having everyone report what was one good thing and one bad thing that happened to them that day.

  1. Mentally ill.

Studies report rising rates of depression, anxiety, obsession, social phobia, addictions, and suicide in today’s children and youth causally related to technology overuse. The question to ask is “Why are so many children, so sad”? In my work I observe a trajectory of problematic behaviors in children associated with what I term Tech Neglect in adults, where the adult prefers the device to their child. When infants are neglected, they demonstrate profound sadness. As these neglected sad infants grow into toddlers, they stomp their little feet and they get mad. Closer to school age, these neglected sad and mad children become bad. Sad, mad, and bad children need parent and teacher attention, love and support. Instead, these sad, mad, and bad children are readily receiving mental health diagnoses and often put on dangerous psychotropic medications.

Mental Health Tech Tips: put down the device and pick up your child, restrict personal device use in daycares and schools and promote social play, and engage children in organized sports and social activities during recess, after school, on weekends, and during summer holidays. Unplug – don’t drug!

  1. Aggressive.

A meta-analysis of over 1000 studies (Anderson 2010) on media violence and aggression, showed a 97% causal relationship. Violence breeds violence, and overexposure to violent media content found in TV and video games, especially at a young age, can result in acts of aggression (AAP 2016). Game Transfer Phenomena, where the gamer carries visual and auditory imagery and behaviors from the virtual to the real world, is increasingly the norm with video gamers, resulting in an alarming increase in acts of physical and sexual violence. With the escalation in mass shootings (where 4 or more people are killed), possibly shifting focus from gun lobbyists to video game designers might prove to be a more effective intervention strategy.

Aggression Tech Tips: restrict violent media exposure for children less than 12 years of age, restrict personal device use and unsupervised internet use from all daycare and school environments, and promote physical outlets for pent up energy in home, school, and community settings.

  1. Attention deficit.

Brains develop in conjunction with the child’s environment. Children who are exposed to enriched environments with adequate movement, touch, connection and nature, have diffuse neuronal connections to all areas of the brain. Children who grow up in impoverished environments with lots of exposure to fast paced entertainment technology, have a poverty of neuronal connections to the frontal lobes, as they are no longer required. Frontal lobes are what separates humans from lower life forms, and are needed for executive functions such as attention, impulse control, and learning in general. Technology is ‘short circuiting’ the frontal lobes. The de-evolution of the human species has begun.

Distraction Tech Tips: decrease exposure to entertainment based technologies and increase engagement in activities that promote imagination and creativity, increase exposure to attention restorative nature with outdoor play and recess, and perform movement based activity prior to academic tasks.

  1. Illiterate.

With escalating and unrestricted use of technology in Canadian schools, Canada is ranked 13th on the world stage in literacy, while China, who averages one hour of education technology per day, is ranked #1 in literacy (OECD 2012). Teachers teach, not computers, yet without any evidence that substantiates wide scale distribution of technology in educational settings, whole schools are tossing pencil, paper and books in favor of tablets. While teens are Facebooking, texting, playing video games, and doing porn on their cell phones in class, teachers are scratching their heads wondering how to manage this new age phenomenon.

Literacy Tech Tips: ensure printing, reading and numerical literacy prior to use of education technology e.g. age 12, restrict use of education technology to one hour per day, and stop requiring use of technology for accessing school agendas and curriculum. It is the right of every parent, student, and teacher to refuse to use technology in school settings.

  1. Can’t self-regulate.

Immediate, compelling, and totally controlled by the user, today’s wide range of entertainment technologies are perfect for the Me Generation who could universally be called “impatient and bored”. From birth (instead of gazing fondly into their parent’s eyes), infants are increasingly being stuck in front of screens, or are watching their parents watch screens. While research shows exposure to screens at 6-18 months of age results in higher incidence of autism and problematic behaviors, parents continue to pull a blind eye. At 1 in 65 (CDC 2015), autism is now considered epidemic (right along with sleep deprivation and obesity). Self-regulation is the salient determinant of future success, yet we are allowing and promoting tech-regulation, with disastrous consequences.

Self-regulation Tech Tips: never use technology to regulate child behavior e.g. as a reward or for entertainment, put the device down when your children are awake – or if you work from home – provide designated times when you are screen free and available for connection, co-regulation leads to self-regulation!

  1. Dependent.

Parents who overuse technology feel guilty, and tend to spoil their children by letting them use too much technology, and/or by doing everything for them. This created dependency is plaguing today’s parents who won’t let their children experience a moment of risk, stating that “everything is dangerous” and “nothing is safe”, so their kids stay inside glued to a device.  The results of overexposure to media is a pervasive fear of just about everything, as images become more graphic and frequent. This fear and anxiety of the parent is shifted onto the child, who grows up (or doesn’t) overly dependent on their parents. Statistics Canada in 2012 reported that 52% of young adults between the ages of 18-30 years are not working, are not going to school, and are living at home with their parents.

Dependency Tech Tips: every child should have one chore they are responsible for completing every day, plan for independent living at age 18 years NOW and strategize how to get there, and stop placing parental anxiety and fear on the child e.g. change “You make me so anxious when you bike to the park…text me when you get there, and when you leave” to “You’re 12 years old now and I trust that we have taught you how to be safe. Have fun at the park”!

Cris Rowan is a registered pediatric occupational therapist, biologist, international speaker, and author of “Virtual Child – The terrifying truth about what technology is doing to children”. Additional information can be found on Cris’s website www.zonein.ca including research references on the Fact Sheet, educational videos, and free monthly newsletter. Additional articles can be located on Cris’s blog www.movingtolearn.ca. You can contact Cris at info@zonein.ca.

Cris Rowen

Cris Rowan, BScOT, BScBi, SIPT

Cris Rowan is a biologist, pediatric occupational therapist and sensory specialist with expertise in the impact of technology on child development, behaviour and learning. Having worked in school settings for over 3 decades, Cris is committed to improving student health while also easing the job of learning for children. Cris is a well-known international speaker and author to teachers, parents and therapists globally on topics of sensory integration, learning, attention, fine motor skills and the impact of media content including video games, social media and pornography on children’s brain and body development. Cris has a BSc’s both in Occupational Therapy and in Biology, is a SIPT certified sensory specialist, and has Approved Provider Status for CEU provision with the American Occupational Therapy Association. Over the past 3 decades, Cris has provided over 350 keynotes and workshops, writes monthly articles for her blog Moving to Learn, publishes the monthly Child Development Series Newsletter, and is designer and creator of Reconnect Webinars which offer research evidenced information for teens, parents, teachers and clinicians to manage balanced between screens and healthy activities. Cris is member of the Screens in Schools committee with Fairplay for Kids, member of the Institute for Digital Media and Child Development and sits on the Board of Directors for the Global Alliance for Brain and Heart Health. Cris has two adult children, Matt and Katie who grew up without screens.

Cris can be reached at crowan@reconnectwebinars.com. Reconnect Webinars offers a free, 5.5-hour CCAP accredited Screenbuster Program training webinar for teens which qualifies them to perform Tech Talks for their peers. The Screenbuster Program requires one counsellor, teacher or principal to complete the 3-day Balanced Technology Management certification CEU provided course in order to adequately supervise the teens.

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4 Responses

  1. I am Laurent from the Bilingual Montessori School of Paris (www.montessori-paris.com) and wholeheartedly agree with avoiding all touch screens for children up to age 6 if and when parents believe there is any developmental value in them. It has become a free and disturbing babysitter and is goes against everything we now know about the neurological development of the child.
    It is a sad state of affairs when I see a toddler on the train reach for a magazine – her father is busy on his device and the child falls of the seat of the train trying to reach the magazine and when the child starts to cry, the dad plomps her on his lap and sticks an iPhone in her face!
    Singing, reading and talking, from one human to the next – or crazier yet – silence! The human voice is a gold value for child development. As an Montessori educator I thank you Mr Rowan for helping to raise awareness about this developmental ‘cancer’ that is the overuse and dependency on technological devices. Since their advent approx. 8 years ago, we are noticing WAY more children with ADHD and throwing tantrums and violence in our classes with 24month – 6 year olds. The uncontrolled and unsupervised use of touch screen devices is eating away at human development, starting with the innocent young children who have no choice in the matter and will suffer the consequences. Not teaching the child to use his hand to write in certain US states is strictly appalling. I am really worried about how these children will turn out. Peace and education. Cheers, Laurent

    1. Thank you for your support to better manage screens Laurent! I’ve done a number of parent workshops for Montessori parents and must say, I always have the feeling I’m speaking to the converted! I see Montessori schools as leaders in the field of best practices for technology management. Let me know if there is a way we can team to move this message forward!

  2. Great article. Great advise.
    Remember that infants and toddler should avoid all screen devices up until 24 months of age.
    The virtual world found on screen devices directly competes for the attention of the young child. The loser in this competition is the learning of social and linguistic behavior from the people around them.
    This competition could easily be a big factor explaining for instance why so many more children are affected by ASD since the introduction of screen devices into the nursery.

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