Managing Your Child’s Digital Diet

Our Friends over at the Sparkler app sat down with Dr. Jenny Radesky the director of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics at the University of Michigan, and she authored the American Academy of Pediatrics’ screen time guidelines. Her research focuses on the intersection of mobile technology, parenting, parent-child interaction, and child development. Dr. Radesky chatted with Sparkler about screen time: What can families do to set appropriate limits? How can families empower their children in conversations about using screens and devices at home in safe, age-appropriate ways? How can parents regulate which games and other digital media are available to their children?

How can parents control their family’s digital media & technology use?

Dr. Radesky: I’m focusing a lot of my research and advocacy on: How do we make sure the platforms that kids really love and are on all the time respect their developmental needs…A lot of it comes down to reading reviews on Common Sense Media, knowing a few developers that are really respectful of kids’ needs, and then avoiding the rest. Because a lot of the stuff on the app store is like fly-by-night app developers that are here one day, gone tomorrow, pushing out apps, and then they’re not on the App Store six months later. In our research, we’re amazed at the lack of oversight in the app stores or on the video streaming, like YouTube types of platforms.

What do you mean by the “lack of oversight”?

Dr. Radesky: If you thought of this as like a food store, another thing that’s offering products to kids — some of them are going to be really fun candy potato chip sort of products. Others are going to be healthy foods. You at least expect some degree of safety built in. They’re not going to contain toxic things like viruses. They’re not going to collect your data. Well, we have done research showing that a lot of kids apps [are] collecting a lot of private data. And then we also have found that these digital play things are also saying, come on, buy more, do more. It’s like as if you had an endless bag of potato chips that you could just hand to your child and they would never get to the bottom. So it just feels like a different ballgame for parents. We don’t feel like we know how to grab away that endless bag of potato chips because it never ends. Why would the child want to give that up and go eat some brown bread, you know? So it’s setting us as parents up for a really difficult, difficult battle that doesn’t feel like a fair fight.

What can parents do to protect their kids?

Dr. Radesky: Sometimes really powerful corporations get away with a lot of things that make our lives as parents harder. And we, as parents, can do a lot of things, collectively, to push back against that and to say, “You know what? We’re not going to download those janky apps from the App Store that just collect data and try to just pop up ad after ad. You know, that’s junk that would never pass FDA inspection. We’re not going to accept the endless bag of perfectly predictive, algorithmic potato chips that my child never wants to put down. That’s not fair. I should, as a parent, have the option to turn off that algorithmic feed or to just select certain doses or samples or types of potato chips that I’m going to allow my kid to have because they’re delicious and fun and they’re fine in reasonable quantities. But the business model of just wanting kids and users to watch more and more and more isn’t really compatible with sleep or homework or other things that we really want our kids to be able to focus on and learn to do by themselves.

There’s a lot parents can do — but should tech companies help, too?

Dr. Radesky: The messaging about screen time shouldn’t be directed solely at parents. It also needs to be directed at this really powerful tech system that exists and determines how much it’s trying to persuade kids to keep watching, keep purchasing.

So I’ll tell you, actually, during the pandemic, one of my main focus shifts has been less on, “Hey, parents, here’s what you need to do.” But more, “Hey, big tech companies, here’s what you need to do.”

Our kids have been dependent on this digital environment, and it isn’t always designed with their best interests in mind. It’s usually designed by adults, by engineers, for other adults, for these average human users, who are usually white male adults. That’s not the way a child lives and sees the world.

If your family needs a screen time “reset,” how would you recommend going about it?

Dr. Radesky: Step one is just take stock. Pause, look around, observe your family’s day, and say, “Okay, where’s a place that we could actually put tech away so we can pay more attention to each other?” During meals or car rides, we know from research when a phone is even on the table with you or when it’s out, and you’re trying to toggle between looking at your phone and then trying to multitask with the kid in front of you or your friend, you can’t do both equally well. You’re going to be less good at both of those things. You’re going to be paying less attention to what that person sitting across from you is thinking or feeling.

So, give yourself a break. Give yourself opportunities to single-task on the people around you.

It’s so much harder to really pay attention to someone else’s mind when you have other things vying for your attention. So I’d say take stock. Talk to your kids. Your kids are going to want some input, too. They may tell you to put your phone down at certain times of day. They may tell you to set the WiFi to have certain blackout periods so it’s easier for you to resist the call of your device. That may be your first step. And then when you realize, “Oh, it actually really is easier to have a conversation with you,” or to feel like, “I heard what’s on your mind,” that hopefully will reinforce itself and carry on as a daily activity for families.

Just have some intentional planning on where and when tech is going to be in your day. Is it going to be in the morning when you’re getting ready? Is it going to be when you’re cooking and you want the kids occupied? The more you can plan it out and make it at discrete, predictable, consistent times of day, you won’t have kids begging you at every moment. Just make it predictable, and then kids will internalize those rules over time.

Can you explain what you mean when you say kids will internalize the rules?

Dr. Radesky: And my goal is that kids — themselves — can control and regulate their own media. Then you as the parent don’t have to be the policeman who’s saying, okay, I’m putting on the timer and I’m grabbing it out of your hands. Do some challenges with your kids to see can you hand it over to me without whining. If so, great. You can get more tomorrow.

How do you get a child to hand over a device without whining or being upset?

Dr. Radesky: So first is, if you watch the last five or ten minutes along with your child, you’ll know where that stoppage point is happening. It’s easier to stop it instead of letting the autoplay start back up again when children just want to be carried along.

Number two is notice what’s going on in the show where they might be coloring, they might be dancing, they might be doing something in nature and use that idea and launch it over to your 3D physical world so that you could say, “Hey, this character was just doing that. Let’s go do that in the yard.” So that’s another way to get kids transitioning off.

Third is if your child’s a little older, you can challenge them or give them the responsibility ahead of time and say, “Okay, here’s the deal: We’re just going to watch two episodes of X show, honor code. You are going to turn it off when those two episodes are done, and if you do, you get a sticker or you get a point towards going out for pizza at the end of the week.” Having that behavioral reinforcement for a child, self regulating their own media use, turning it off without complaint is an amazing skill to try to build. It takes a while because tech is fun and it’s hard to let go of. But I recommend trying to challenge kids to hand the device over without a big emotional reaction.