Technoference – Do we need to disconnect to reconnect?
Originally published in OHbaby! magazine, issue 39, Spring 2017.
Living in our little slice of the modern world is pretty great. Readily accessible dental care is wonderful - imagine life without it. Electricity is fabulous - I use it every day! And I am supremely grateful for indoor plumbing (ask your grandmother if she had the luxury of a warm wee in the wintertime.)
But let’s be honest: some of our modern conveniences come with downsides. Oil and gas allow air travel - but burning them adds carbon to the atmosphere. A takeaway latte is a real incentive for doing the school run - but all those plastic coated cups are an environmental disaster.
And sure, digital technologies have enabled us to crunch massive numbers, conduct important research, and stay in touch with friends & whānau all over the world (not to mention find the perfect roll of vintage wallpaper on Etsy!). But as our dependence on digital technology (aka ‘tech’) has grown, so have the downsides. It’s time for a tough talk about the ways we allow technology to interact with our families.
Social scientists share examples of tech overuse, pointing to disconnection, addiction, and what researchers call technoference - technology interfering with family connections. This article will outline a few examples of how tech can mess with couplehood, with our internal relationships (hello, self!) and - gulp - parent:child relationships. Fret not, if all this strikes a chord, we will end with some suggestions of how to modify your tech habits.
First up, let’s look at how technoference works in romantic partnerships. Researcher Brandon McDaniel found that relationships are damaged when partners do any of the following:
allow their devices to interrupt their face-to-face interactions,
turn to others online instead of confiding in one another,
compare their (real life) relationship with those they saw on social media (which are likely to be highly curated).
These habits were found to cause:
more conflict over technology use,
less relationship satisfaction,
more depressive symptoms
lower life satisfaction.
Just sit with that for a minute. Our romantic relationships are damaged when we’re interrupted by our devices, when we reach into screens instead of toward one another. If you’re honest, you probably would have guessed that, right? But: this can become a self-perpetuating cycle, feeding on itself. Brandon McDaniel: “At that point, some may start using technology to escape their bad feelings. That leads to the possibility of more technoference, continuing the cycle.”
Let me get that straight: a person is spending too much time on their device, perhaps in the shiny world of social media, and the conflict this causes in this person’s real-life relationships (which are not so shiny - they come with demands, friction, and bin-liners that need replacing) … this sends them deeper into the online world of their device. Which causes conflict in a person’s real-life relationships, and so on.
Is it any wonder that excessive use of tech is associated with a range of negative health outcomes? As screen time increases, so does the risk of:
social isolation
decreased physical activity
mental health fragilities
getting stupider!
I’m not kidding! It seems that our smartphones are dumbing us down. Research published in 2015 said: “Results suggest that people offload thinking to the device.” I immediately feel guilty as I confront my own relationship with Google Maps. I’m pretty sure I’m dumbing myself down in that regard, allowing my smartphone to contribute to what researchers call “cognitive miserliness”. Oh, the shame.
So it’s not just for the good of our romantic partners. Also, for our own health, we’d do well to challenge our screen habits. A headline from Scientific American magazine summarises recent research like this: Most Adults Spend More Time on Their Digital Devices Than They Think. Does that make you cringe self consciously, as I did?
Of most concern, though, is when technoference starts messing with children. We know that the parent:child relationship is a foundational force of immeasurable importance to healthy human development. Children need their parents to be available, responsive, attentive, attuned. Simply being so in between dings of a device is problematic.
When our kids are really little, it is via their relationships with us that they learn the fundamentals of life. They are laying down templates where they learn what it is to be human: “am I valuable?” “Can I rely on other people?” “What is it that is important in this lifetime?” And as you’ve probably heard, neurologically speaking, those first 3 years - aka the first 1000 days - are an opportunity like no other for creating those templates.
For decades, researchers have known about the worrisome impact of emotionally unavailable parents on child development, and have used things like the ‘still face’ experiment to document the ways that our attention feeds our children. In that famous experiment, a parent plays and sings with their baby, and the baby coos and burbles in response. But if the parent drops the smile, loses the song, and stares blankly, the infant will typically move from making increasingly exaggerated bids for attention, through distress, to a similar lack of engagement. Now researchers are warning us that we all imitate the still face experiment every time we read that text, update that status, check that message. This is technoference at its worst.
Our relationships with our digital devices can cause
disconnection to the relationship with our children
damage to a child’s development.
The book “The Big Disconnect” by Catherine Steiner-Adair includes these wise words from Winifred Gallagher: “the grand unifying theory of psychology: your life is the sum of what you focus on”. Jeepers. What are we focused on? And: what are we teaching our kids to focus on?
Because lots of us don’t just hide behind our tech, we encourage our kids to do it, too. Despite recommendations to the contrary, the American Academy of Paediatrics tells us that on any given day in that country, 29% of babies under the age of 1 are watching TV and videos for an average of about 90 minutes. And that 23% have a television in their bedroom.
This is believed to be contributing to various issues, for example: speech. Just this year, a report from New Zealand’s Education Review Office (ERO) pointed to problems with oral language in a worrying number of our 4-6 year olds. What’s that about? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that overuse of tech is part of the problem.
A survey by the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association (ASHA) found:
68% of 2-year-olds use tablets; 59% use smartphones and 44% use video game consoles.
More than half of parents are concerned that tech use is interfering with their child’s development of speech and language.
52% believe that technology negatively impacts the quality of their conversations with their children, and that they have fewer conversations than they would like because of technology.
Fewer conversations will lead to more speech/language issues - that’s a given. But that’s not all: excessive screen time for young children holds other risks, including
increased likelihood of obesity
greater likelihood of learning difficulties
lower quality sleep
Now, I’ve never met a parent who doesn’t value quality sleep for their kiddos. Well, look out: new research from the UK reminds us that the light emitted by electronic screens lowers levels of the sleep-regulating hormone melatonin, and the researchers found that three quarters of children aged 6-36 months use a touchscreen device every day. They pointed to toddlers’ use of touchscreen devices as being associated with poor sleep patterns.
Another issue: a recent study in the journal Child Development has pointed to parental tech use leading to:
problem child behaviour.
On the mama side of things, it feels reasonable and important to “just finish this one email” (I’ve been there!). However, on the child side of things, they are once again sidelined, gazing at their parent’s blank face lit up by the eerie glow of a digital device. When the child inevitably misbehaves in a bid for attention, it’s the child who is blamed. It makes perfect developmental sense for a kid to act out in the face of constant technological disruption to their most important relationship. Remember how important this relationship is for teaching children about the fundamentals of life? (“am I valuable?” “Can I rely on other people?”) Technoference compromises a child’s all-encompassing absorption of these vital lessons.
As our children mature, their tech consumption does too. Most of the teenagers I know have smartphones (which are dumbing them down!) Further, the more they use their cellphones:
the lower their grades
the higher their anxiety.
Meanwhile, a research study from 2012 which surveyed teachers, found that they believe teens’ use of entertainment media have hurt their
academic skills
attention span
writing skills.
Adolescence is another time of great neurological possibility, and the obsession with tech is, arguably, hijacking kids’ potential. So check out this recommendation from the Journal of Reproductive Toxicology, when they examined school policies around cellphone use, in 2011: “There is sufficient evidence and expert opinion to warrant an enforced school policy removing cellphones from students during the day.” Now ask yourself: how many schools do you know with the foresight and courage to actually do so?
Before we throw up our hands and blame teenagers (or schools!), we really must examine our own habits. A study cited in The Big Disconnect found that
54% of teens thought their parents check their devices too often
32 percent of kids feel unimportant when parents are distracted by their phones.
Worse: research from the University of Essex suggests that just having a cellphone within sight - even if it’s turned off - can interfere with the sense of relationship connectedness. Ouch.
Meanwhile, a recent survey conducted by Common Sense Media, found that parents spend an average of nine hours and 22 minutes every day in front of various screens—including smartphones, tablets, computers and televisions. Of those, nearly eight hours are for personal use, not work.
I just need to add some exclamation marks here. EIGHT HOURS!!! And yet 78 percent of those parents surveyed believe they’re good role models for how to use digital technology.
I suspect they would do well to read this blunt (but useful) summary from Scientific American: “To limit kids' screen time, try unplugging yourself”.
For the sake of our children’s development, for the sake of our relationships with our kids. For the sake of our relationships with our partners, and for our own wellbeing, we would do well to resist technoference.
Recommendations for Resisting Technoference:
Read “The Big Disconnect” by Catherine Steiner-Adair, and check out www.timewellspent.io
Keep playing together. Occasionally tech may be the shared focus, but more often, go old school. Play outside. Bust out the play dough, puzzles, sand. Colour together. Curl up together with a book.
Children during their first 1000 days are best kept away from screens. Full stop. They need warm, loving relationships and real life, tangible experiences, using all of their senses. This is what grows brains.
Keep your own phone in purse/on shelf: on silent as often as you can. Better yet: leave your phone in the car after work. Go get it once the kids are in bed.
Employ old fashioned devices (alarm clock! egg timer! CD player!) to resist screen allure
Out in public: if you take a photo, you don’t have to look at it immediately. The kids can wait too. Wait till you’re home! This will keep you in the moment - the moment that was so beautiful you wanted to capture it in the first place.
If you do need to interact with a screen/take a call, say “excuse me …” to the person you’re with. Yes, this means babies as well.
Have the bare minimum on your phone. - dings, pings, Why? Honestly, why? What are you avoiding when you succumb to those tantalising distractions?
Have your tech rituals. Have your family rituals, but DO NOT MIX. Pour a glass of wine after the kids are in bed and bathe in your Facebook feed. Enjoy! Indulge! But wait for it!
Create a family Code of Conduct that all must abide by. This will be different depending upon the ages of your kids, but it might include such things as:
we turn off wifi at set times
we only use one screen at a time (i.e. no playing on iPad while tv is going)
we don’t use cellphones in the bedroom/at the dining table
we have joined the ‘breakfast before browsing’ movement (no screens in early morning)
we install protective software on ALL devices
we turn off ‘autoplay’ on youtube, and just watch just one clip at a time
we consult parents before downloading ANYTHING
we don’t post anything online that we wouldn’t want Nana to see