Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. We're experienced moms to a combined total of 18 children. Our mission is to help overwhelmed parents find peace in parenting and humor in the chaos. Come join us as we attempt uninterrupted conversation about parenting with joy and intention.
Speaker: Hello friends and welcome back to Outnumbered. Today's episode is on screens and kids. It's like that double -edged sword of, oh, I love being able to give my children something to distract them. And oh my gosh, you're a terror when you've been in front of screens. So I think we all know why we're doing this and we all need to listen. So hopefully we give you some good tips today.
Speaker: Yeah, I have a funny story related to screen time. So it's, it's recent, um, it's cold here. And, um, my husband and I were both kind of grousing at each other a little bit because it was either too hot or too cold all the time. And I would be like, I am so freezing. Why did you turn the thermostat down? And he'd say, I didn't touch it. Why did you turn it up? You know, we're wasting all this like all electricity on
Speaker: or all this gas and burn all this and I'd be like, I didn't touch it. So finally my 12 year old came and told me, mom, you have got to do something about the three year old. I have caught her touching the screen and playing with a thermostat because it's a screen eight times this week. And I take her down every time she gets a stool and goes over there.
Speaker: And I take her down every time and tell her she's not allowed to touch it. And so here, it was my three -year -old that was just touching buttons and making things happen and watching numbers change. And my husband and I were all picking at each other about who was touching the thermostat. He's wondering why you've got it cranked up to 97. And you're like, well, 44 is a little bit excessive. That is hilarious. And kids are just drawn to screens. I'm really glad you shared that because it's true. It's like this magnetic pole. If there is a screen anywhere in the room,
Speaker: They're drawn to it. In fact, today, so I'm going to talk a little bit about what we're doing right now for screens, but we're not doing anything. We're not allowing kids pretty much any screen time right now. And I find my five -year -old sitting on the couch and she's playing with like a big, we have like a set of Christmas DVDs we haven't put away yet.
Speaker: And it's like this big folding case, so it's big and thick and shiny. And she's sitting there going, this is my tablet. Oh, gosh. They're going to pretend they're on a screen even if they're not. So yeah, totally, totally a pull. And I just wanted to start by saying, chances are if you're listening to this, you probably want to make some changes in regards to screen time. I feel like it's something that none of us have down yet, and we're constantly trying something new. And screens are...
Speaker: extremely addicting. They are new -ish, only come out really, you know, personal screams within the last 10 years or so. And really, they're the future. So we really have to have this conversation, right?
Speaker: Yeah, unfortunately, we can't just go back before the time when there was any and not have to deal with this anymore. I like to use a comparison of a screen, a tablet, a device, a phone being like a fire. Hey, it's a useful tool, but there's always the potential for danger.
Speaker: So, just as you wouldn't leave your super young kids around a fire unattended, not a good idea for a screen. Just as you would train your kids that are a little bit older on the proper ways to behave and use a fire, you should train them on how to use and behave around.
Speaker: a fire, a screen as well. So that's a little comparison that I try to keep in mind because sometimes I just get questioning myself, well, what can this hurt? It's going to be their future. But there's always the potential for danger. Yes, exactly. I love that you said that. It's totally a tool, right? Just like any weapon or dangerous thing. And we call them dangerous. And I don't think screens in general, people call dangerous.
Speaker: But I really think they can be, and that it requires a certain amount of maturity and wisdom to use wisely. And so that's kind of where we're headed here with this episode. So right now, I'm going to give you guys just an overview of what screen time generally looks like at our house and what we're doing a little bit different right now. So generally, because we homeschool, we do not allow any screens during the week, so Monday through Friday, simply because it's just too tempting. So I'm saying barring anything majorly educational. So my older kids do do math.
Speaker: and some typing practice on the computer. But other than that, we don't do any screens for entertainment. If my kids went to school and came home and did homework, that might be different, but we've found what's worked for us. Sometimes they'll watch a movie on Friday nights, and then Saturdays, after their chores, they can usually earn a little time to play games or watch a movie.
Speaker: So just like how January 1st comes, we feel like we need to detox from all the junk food suites or whatever. That's how we were feeling at the beginning of this year for screens. So we have eliminated just about everything right now after a couple of negative experiences. So we're going to gradually ease it back in and then in the coming few weeks. But that's basically what it looks like at our house.
Speaker: Okay, what screen time looks like at our house. I guess it's a little bit different around here because I do have some older and adult children. But yes, I'm going to talk about, so for my younger kids, under the age of being able to drive, it's the same. They're homeschooled. The only screen time they have is educational screen time.
Speaker: And then sometimes they get a movie night on Friday nights and sometimes they don't. It's kind of not something they can expect. And I'm going to talk a little bit later about how we
Speaker: how we work with our older kids and getting them devices, personal devices, when, once they're able to, to drive. We did, I did also want to mention that we have episode 15, we did quite a while ago on kids and phones. And so you might want to go refer back to that actually body. And I should probably go listen to that ourselves because that was what almost, you know, year and a half ago, and probably we've changed just since then, or maybe we're struggling with the same things. But anyway, um, yeah, definitely.
Speaker: no screen time for the youngest kids under like two, three and under, nothing for them. And then as they get older, they have more online or involving a screen for their schoolwork. And then once they have a personal device, then we kind of teach them in, try to guide them into the proper usage of being a responsible owner of a screen.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. And honestly, I feel like we as adults kind of got thrown into this as well. Nobody taught us how to properly and responsibly use screens. We just woke up one day and all of a sudden there were iPhones and we could put these devices in our pocket and have nonstop access to endless amounts of entertainment and interesting things and, you know, cat videos or whatever else was bombarding us. And so it's taken us some time to figure out the tools we want to use.
Speaker: And then it's going to take a little more time to figure out how to teach those to our children. So I love that you mentioned that. We don't want to dwell too much on the negative aspects of screens. I think we all know a lot of that, but I did want to share some of the research that we came across in preparing for this episode and just in our own personal lives. One interesting fact that I found out through some research is that passive screen time, meaning just staring at a screen
Speaker: watching a show or a movie is no worse than interactive screen time. So in my mind, I had always thought, well, if my kid's doing something educational or even playing a game that that's at least using more of his brain than just sitting there staring, and they say that, no, that's not
Speaker: No, I mean, an actual math curriculum online, that's different. I mean, there's still more of a pull to it than a workbook, but any sort of something that's designed to be entertaining. And there is a whole heck of a lot of quote unquote educational stuff online that is just designed to suck kids in and be entertaining, right? So that's totally like a line you're going to have to draw on what things work well for your kids and what don't.
Speaker: The other thing that I found interesting as I was reading a couple of these articles will link in the in the show notes is that We need to remember that there are literally thousands probably Hundreds of thousands of people working on the other sides of screens to make them addicting Because that's how they make their money
Speaker: So our kids and our families are up against a lot. It's basically just the parents between the kids and these marketers who are designed to make these games just ultra, ultra addicting. One of the articles that I read said, you know, when I was a kid, there's only so many times you could get stuck at the same place on Super Mario Bros and die until you were like, let's go red bikes. But games aren't like that anymore. They actually learn from your performance and make it just hard enough to be challenging without making you give up.
Speaker: That's kind of terrifying. Yeah, that is really kind of mind boggling to think about how so many people are working to make the screens attractive enough for everybody to come back to. Because it's tied to the money. So I kind of have this philosophy. A lot of times I'll tell parents that none of our kids get devices or phones until they're of driving age and they have to leave us.
Speaker: And then we want to be able to track them or keep track of them or them to be able to get a hold of us. And my response is kind of that, you know what? Kids are wired so that they're going to catch on to screens and devices at whatever age they're finally granted access. They get it. They get it really fast. And new technology comes out so fast.
Speaker: that they're really not missing anything because what they learn at three or five is going to be obsolete by the time they're 13 or 15 anyway. That's how fast technology is evolving. And so I really don't think that there's any harm in my kids missing out on everything they're, quote unquote, missing out on right now. That's a very good point. Yeah, they're going to catch up real quick, that's for sure.
Speaker: A few other thoughts that I wanted to share about that came from the research is that there's a podcast I'm linking in the show notes that talks about how gaming especially puts kids in a perpetual state of fight or flight, which I thought was really interesting. So it jacks up their adrenaline.
Speaker: And it makes it so that it's very, very hard to come down from that. It makes sleep difficult. It makes just being like peaceful kids, kids with a good attention span. It makes all that very difficult, free play difficult because they're used to this constant
Speaker: surge of adrenaline coming through their body. And then the amount of time kids spend on screens is correlated directly with lower test scores across the board. That's also linked in an article in the show notes, can also lead to attention deficit issues. So many things across the board. I'm sure you've heard of so many of these, but it's just important to remember that there is a lot of negative effects to unlimited screen time.
Speaker: I also wanted to mention that it's really important for us to have some grace with ourselves, right? Like I mentioned earlier, we didn't know what we were getting into when we first picked up our first smartphone, and we are all doing the best we can as parents as well. We're kind of like pioneers of this digital parenting age. We can't even ask our parents.
Speaker: how to do this thing because they have no clue. They didn't do it either. And even if we were to ask a friend, okay, what works best for your family? It probably wouldn't even work best for ours because every family is different and every child is very, very different. Screen time will look different for each family, for the age and developmental
Speaker: Level of each child and the phases of life right survival times for example like having a baby or moving often involves a lot more screens than we'd like to see Yeah, that's true. It's because it's an easy way to get our kids to sit in one spot for a little while Perhaps we could look at it like this. Maybe there's a benefit in using a screen to help kids develop self -control and
Speaker: looking at it this way, like a device is something that you can learn about yourself by your response to it. Like I think we probably, you know, you were talking about when we got our first devices, we probably learned some things about ourselves at that time, about how we responded to it, how much time we spent on it, what kind of games we were attracted to, or
Speaker: you know, personally I found like I get headaches if I spend too much time staring at a screen, that kind of thing. So you learn a lot about yourself when there's something new and it's got this pull, this pull for you to
Speaker: to come back to it like an addictive thing. So we can learn about ourselves and we can help our kids learn about themselves and learn developing self -control. And we're gonna talk more about this in a little bit, but just, yeah, there's just benefit in being challenged by something and overcoming it. Yeah, so true, so true. And I think the harder the challenge, the more beneficial it is to figure out how to get through it, right?
Speaker: So when we look at our lives today, we have to realize that adults, we adults are spending more time and energy on screens than we ever have before, right? And most of it is honestly not optional. Uh, a lot of our social engagement, you know, people are like, well, didn't you see it on Facebook? Somebody put it on Facebook. I'm like, Oh no, I didn't see it. And you feel totally out of the loop. You know, um, people are texting, uh, each other or getting on, you know, Instagram to talk about things. Educational opportunities are largely online. And as we've seen, uh, you know, after COVID,
Speaker: Employment can largely be done online as well. So we have to, we owe it to our children basically to give them the skills to gradually ease into this world so that they can best adapt depending on what their personality looks like. Every kid is going to have a different path.
Speaker: Yeah, that's an interesting thing, isn't it, about the social aspect? Like, so I grew up without a television. My whole married life, we've never had a television. And I have no problem telling people, you know, they'll say, hey, did you see this movie or whatever, documentary? And I'll say, no, we don't have a television. And usually the response is, oh, oh.
Speaker: Well, good for you. And so we're now getting that same response about, oh, hey, did you see such and such family member or blah, blah, blah, local thing on Facebook? And we say, we're not on Facebook. And they say, oh, oh.
Speaker: Oh, good for you. It's the same response. Like, you know what? We have lived without being on Facebook and we survived. Wow, we didn't die without a television and we didn't die without Facebook and we're actually okay. It's just a different thing for people to think about.
Speaker: You know, I tried to do a little bit of personality research and find out if there's different personality types that kind of have a harder time with addiction to screens. And there's a little bit of information out there, but it just kind of seems like generally across the board, every personality type, every person has the
Speaker: ability to get addicted or too involved or spend too much time. And then all the reverse adverse things that come with it also affects every, every personality and different kids have a, in our experience, different kids have an easier time
Speaker: Letting go or not being on social media and all their peers are and other kids have a little bit harder time with it And that that's probably personality type thing. But in general, I just saw that most everybody most every personality type Is struggling with with this addictive part of of device and screens Yeah, we definitely we definitely see some of that as well I have been able to see that some children are
Speaker: Um, respond differently to different aspects of screens. So for example, some kids beg for them more than others and some have a harder time getting off than others. Um, I do have a couple that's strange. We'll let them have screen time and it barely affects them. Like they go, okay, great. And then I say, it's time to get off and I'm like, okay, great. And I'm like, Oh, that's.
Speaker: of strange. Meanwhile, the brother next to them is like having full on teary meltdowns because it's time to get off. So it's clearly not the screen because they're doing the same thing. It's just that one child does not adapt as well. I have definitely noticed that there's a huge age
Speaker: issue there, right? As they get older, they get, um, that prefrontal cortex allows for the decision -making skills to happen. They're a little bit more mature and they're able to stop and say, okay, this is fun, but my mom asked me to get off the concert, you know, way consequences, pros and cons, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: whereas the seven -year -old, a lot more difficult. I've also noticed that a few of mine display a lot more of the addictive type of behaviors, where they're thinking about it nonstop, they try to sneak it, et cetera. And so I'm trying to really figure out the best way to teach them these skills, because they're probably going to still have that same tendency when they leave home. Yes, that is true. Yeah, it's good to help them learn about themselves.
Speaker: So moving into solution space, we wanna talk about some things we've done to help our kids. So I can really mostly only talk about teens because we just haven't given our kids younger than that access to screens and devices. So we introduce our teens to their first device when they get their license or they have a job and they're gonna be away from us.
Speaker: And how we do it is we give it to me, explain that there's no passcode and there will be a daily check on your screen time usage and everything that you do, what apps you're using, what sites you're visiting, your emails, all that's open to us because we are going to get to help you learn this new tool.
Speaker: And then when we run into concerns, we discuss this with our teen and we ask them to develop solutions of their own. Come up with a solution. We're seeing this behavior or this problem or this amount of time or this concern that we have and we need you to come up with a solution and run it by us. Because as we talked about in our episode on teenagers, we try to give our teenagers autonomy.
Speaker: and work on that relationship, that adult relationship that we're aiming for. And so instead of us treating them like a child and coming up with a solution and saying, this is your solution, we ask them to come up with a solution and run it by us. And then what's ironic is usually my teens, my children will come up with a harsher
Speaker: punishment or solution that I would have come up with themselves. Like, you know, my solution might have been, hey, let's just take a week break off of a device. They'll be like, hey, a month. I need a month off. Whoa. Okay. Well, you know, if that's the solution you came up with, let's do it.
Speaker: or something like that. But then I also try to introduce ideas like, what would you be doing right now if you didn't have this device? Because you didn't used to have this device, and what did you do with your time then? And so just talk about things like that. Remember how you used to have these interests, or you would spend your time doing this. What would you be doing right now if you weren't on this device? And just asking them to think outside of the world that is held in the hand on that device.
Speaker: Yes, I love what you said about allowing them to be part of the solution because that's a major adult life skill, right? And I remember my parents doing the same thing to me. And I also remember being kind of frustrated about it, like, just give me a consequence and let's move on, you know? Yeah. I didn't want to be responsible about it, but once they had me thinking, yeah, I very often came up with either
Speaker: A punishment or a, not always a punishment, but sometimes just a solution to the problem that was probably considerably harsher or more strict than my parents would have come up with. But I think that that's great. That's part of life, right? They're going to have to do that eventually. And so why not encourage them to do that now? So I'm so glad that you shared your experience with teens. We're just easing into it. And it's rough so far. Yeah.
Speaker: Um, I will say that for our, for our oldest who's, uh, well, we have two teens now, but he's the, you know, well into the teen years. He is one of the ones that really struggles with some of those addictive behaviors. And so we've had to, um, you know, follow through with some consequences that we didn't really want to, because we felt like he should be able to handle it at this point, but he just couldn't yet. And so yeah, we're going to just see how things go and hopefully be able to teach him those skills.
Speaker: Okay, so I want to tell you guys about this article that I included in the show notes. It's on Medium. And the author talks about doing a major reset. So this is something that we do quite often when we see things getting out of control because it's kind of like if you give an inch, they'll take a mile thing with screens, right? Once you open up that Pandora's box, it's hard to get it back in. And so if your kids are using any amount of screens, you've probably seen how things can get out of control really quickly.
Speaker: So sometimes we'll just go, especially like at a new year or right after a holiday or something when we've been really lax about screens, we'll say, okay, reset time. And we just do no screens for a while. Like I said, that usually does not include some real educational stuff, but it doesn't include fun educational stuff. Like this fun typing game where I get this race car to go fast. No, we don't do that.
Speaker: And sometimes I've noticed that we actually can even fail to see the negative effects of screens on our kids until we do this reset. And for my kids, it takes about a week to 10 days of detoxing before they're back to normal. And then they're playing outside and all these wonderful things that they're doing that they were not doing because screens were an option.
Speaker: So if you want to do a reset, I would recommend talking with your spouse about what you want it to look like. Sometimes either I or Luke will just get fed up and go, that's it, no more for a week. And then we go, oh, are you cool with that? You cool with that? Okay. Yeah. It's often dad. And I'm like, well, I'm the one stuck at home with them. Sometimes I need them distracted, but, um, that helps to have a conversation with your spouse first and decide what it's going to look like for each child and age. So for example, um,
Speaker: We might say, I mean, I can't take screens entirely away from my team because he has school work to do. He does like to keep abreast of current events, which I'm totally okay with him doing, et cetera. And then for us, it's usually the younger, the under 10 kids that are having issues. And so we just clear out everything and it's so nice to see them go back to playing.
Speaker: Yes, that's right. I, one thing I try to do is it's super hard because kids see it like this, but I try not to use screen time as a reward. Like if you get all your work done or if you get all your chores done, then you can have not use it like every word like that. Because although, even though they see it like a reward, I don't see it as a reward. So I'm trying to learn and, and to balance allowing them to have, you know, some,
Speaker: something they enjoy without it being something like, I feel like I'm compromising my values. Something I do with my younger kids, like for example, my
Speaker: nine -year -old is really into chess and there's this curriculum that he's using to learn chess and it shows chess moves and then his older sister had found this chess online thing that he could learn even more. So I tried and he wants to spend a couple times a week we have this agreement where he can spend 15 minutes but before he gets those 15 minutes on his chess he has to have a plan of what he's going to do
Speaker: After he gets off the screen before he gets access and this gets them thinking this gets a child thinking Beyond or past the screen into creative space so this isn't like I know when you're watching a movie or you're looking at a screen or a
Speaker: you're researching something or you're on a screen, it's like that becomes the entire world. It becomes that small. What's the size of a screen? A phone, three inches by what, six inches? I mean, the world gets down to that size. And so I'm just, with this method, I'm trying to make their world bigger again. And they will always come up with something. Oh, I'm going to go outside and build a fort. Or, hey, my sister and I are going to play
Speaker: sorry, or we're going to build an obstacle course and play follow the leader or whatever. And then I always make sure to balance screen time with outdoor time because in our episode on the importance of outdoor time, I think that is such an important time part of their growing up and their health.
Speaker: that there's got to be, it's not even like two to one for me. It's like 10 to one on the amount of screen time versus the amount of outdoor time that I'm looking to have for my kids.
Speaker: Yeah, I love that you shared that. It talks about that in the Medium article I was talking about as well. And he talks about how they reincorporated screen time and made it a more mindful practice. And that's what he talks about, is making sure that they are aware of balancing those activities. I will also say, I'm glad that Audrey mentioned, you mentioned your, the fact that you don't have TV at all and give very little screens to the younger kids, because I think that sometimes we're just afraid to be
Speaker: that weird person or that bad guy, you know? And I'm like, it's all right. We're just, we're all weird in our own special way. Just, just embrace it, right? And move on. Um, don't be afraid to be the only house on the block that doesn't do something or that chooses to do things radically different. If you feel like it's best for your family, do it and your kids will thank you in the long run.
Speaker: I think that the rewards of turning off screens in general can be innumerable. And I'm talking mostly younger kids because we've already talked a little bit about teaching those teens. But our family always, always sees greater independence in our kids. We see better attitudes. We see more free play. So just a few things that my kids have done in the last few weeks without screens are
Speaker: putting together a rollerblade hockey team on the street, creating forts out of boxes, scavenger hunts, play school. Like even while we were on break from our own school, they were playing school. It was hilarious. Lots of outdoor time with friends, wholesome games with our family members, like board games, card games. And there's then so much more time for reading and audio books and more time for sleep. And so all those things are big pluses in my mind.
Speaker: Yes, I couldn't agree more. I see so much more harm coming out of screens than I do benefits. I think that when screens have been around for another generation, and we're looking back, and there are studies that show long -term usage and blah, blah, blah, everything that something being around for more time can enable us to do studies on, I think perhaps our children are going to be able to parent
Speaker: their children differently than we're able to parent ours because we, we just don't know, like we're doing the best that we can. Like you mentioned earlier with what we know, but I think that even in the future,
Speaker: more knowledge is going to help our children, parent their children even better as regarding screens. But yeah, I just like, you know, like I said before, I just don't think my kids are suffering by not having screens. They, in fact, I do see suffering when they do have screens. I think this little behavioral thing that was coming out of my three year old about, you know,
Speaker: punching thermostat was because I had this Spanish game on my phone where it would say a word and she would have to say the word back. There's benefits to learning another language, but she was doing that once a day for 10 minutes. I don't know. I think that little behavioral thing was coming out of that. I'm confident that I'm trying to do the right thing.
Speaker: for my kids and not having them on screens. And I'm also very confident that once they have screens in their life as teenagers, they'll catch up very fast. My other teens have. They're not behind their peers in the way of knowledge.
Speaker: But they are maybe behind, hopefully behind their peers in some of the, um, I know, I know in a previous episode we linked about the, uh, to an article about the, what social media is designed for. And so I'm hoping that my kids are kind of behind in some of the depression and the anxiety and.
Speaker: and the negative things that are coming out of social media usage. And, and I just, you know, I just want to put my arms around everybody listening, who's looking for solutions for screen times with their kids and say, you know, keep doing the right thing. Listen to your instincts and don't be afraid to say no.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I love that. Yeah, as a final thought, we are all just doing the best we can as parents. And it's okay that it looks vastly different today than it will look tomorrow and that what your kid is doing at age eight will look vastly different than what he's doing at 14. But I think we all probably know deep down what's best for each kid at each level.
Speaker: each phase. And I think sometimes it's just having the courage to do that thing. So best of luck managing all the screens at your home. And I think our kids are lucky to have parents that even care. So take care and we'll talk to you next week. Thanks so much for tuning in. Did you know you can help the podcast in several ways? First up, we're on Patreon and there are three different levels to support us there.
Speaker: Just head to patreon .com slash outnumbered. Next up, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a written review on iTunes. It helps other parents find the podcast and receive the help you're enjoying. And finally, you can follow us on Instagram at outnumbered the podcast. We're always having fun over there too. As usual, if you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at outnumbered the podcast at gmail .com. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.
