Molly DeFrank had just come home to her five kids—ages 12 and under—after several hours away from home. No one said, “Hi, Mom!” Instead she was assailed by requests: “Can I play on your phone? Can I have a half-hour more screen time?” DeFrank had relied on digital “helpers” since she had her first few kids, closely spaced. They watched a lot of “Barney” episodes and she handed her preschoolers tablets and smartphones to keep them hushed while she finished a task.
But the day when no one greeted her became a watershed moment. “I realized that my digital ‘solution’ was exacerbating the problem. The kids were treating me like an electronics vending machine. It was the last straw.” She and her husband had already noticed escalating negative behaviors among their kids: more squabbling, grumpiness, difficulty concentrating, resisting cooperation, bursts of anger, and meltdowns when it was time to transition off a screen-based activity and into something “live.”
The DeFrank parents chose to “pull the plug” and impose a total screen break for their kids. Molly DeFrank fully expected several days of misery as they adjusted, but to her shock, after a single evening of collective kiddie mourning, her kids not only accepted the situation but almost overnight became “happier, kinder, more cooperative, creative, less addict-like.” She was prepared with many alternative activities for the kids and kept a journal of the experience. That journal grew into her new book, “Digital Detox: The Two-Week Tech Reset for Kids.”
The book is geared for parents of kids up to age thirteen, but many principles are transferrable to any age. The author is a religious Christian, and there are occasional references to church attendance or faith in Jesus. However, this book is a treasure trove of practical, smart suggestions that can help guide parents in “getting their children back” from the damage wrought by digital technology overload.
The accepted wisdom about kids and personal technology devices has changed dramatically in recent years. A decade ago, many people assumed that giving kids tablets and similar devices would benefit them intellectually and creatively, but an avalanche of evidence proves otherwise. Speech therapists, psychiatrists, neurologists, teachers, and other experts now concur that too much tech is damaging both children and adults.
Jeff Orlowski’s 2021 docudrama “The Social Dilemma” features former tech insiders—including high-ranking executives—from Google, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter who eventually turned against the products they helped create and promote once they recognized its addictive, anti-social and depressive nature. There’s a reason that Big Tech insiders often impose strict limitations on their own kids’ use of technology at home.
Jonathan Haidt, professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business, also wrote an explosive article in the May 2022 edition of The Atlantic, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” His article presents the irrefutable evidence that our obsession with digital life erodes our quality of life as individuals and collectively as a society.
In an interview on YouTube’s “Amanpour & Co,” Haidt said, “Kids were the canaries in the coal mine” about social media’s dangers. “Something fundamentally changed in the universe in the early 2010s and things got weird. When kids got smart phones, girls went straight for the visual platforms such as Instagram and Tumblr, boys went for You Tube and video games. After holding steady for many years, rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide nearly doubled after 2012.” In fact, internet-use disorder or internet gaming disorder has been added to the International Classification of Diseases by the World Health Organization.
Technology is a fact of life, though, and DeFrank suggests that families engage in a self-assessment of their values and principles to determine how technology will fit in to their family’s operating system. This assessment should aim to clarify what parents want to teach their children as well as the behaviors they want to model. She also recommends a total “digital detox” for two weeks, and her book offers advice on how to do it. This “dopamine fast” gives kids a total reset, a reboot and a fresh start. Some parents see a nearly instant change; for others it may take a few days. “When you replace the overstimulation with parent child connection, that’s where the magic happens. You are changing your kids’ lives for the better.”
This assessment should aim to clarify what parents want to teach their children as well as the behaviors they want to model.
As DeFrank learned, even very young children can easily become addicted to digital entertainment. While many parents allow tots to spend hours each day watching videos on an iPad or other device, Alex, a 35-year-old producer in the digital content industry, has always kept a tight control on what her 5-year-old son watches. “I know how damaging the digital world can be to individual mental health and society in general,” she said. On vacations or long trips she allows him to watch approved streaming apps such as Disney and Netflix with parental controls, or PBS Kids and Noggin, which offer educational games and kids’ programming. When her son balks at having his device taken away after a trip, she reminds him, “We made a deal,” and may take him for a walk or suggest coloring together to distract him. Overall, she suggests trying to “make screens an augmentation to learning, less of a toy and more about making learning a fun activity.”
Alex also tries to set a good example by leaving her phone in another room during bath time and bedtime routines, and her family has a “no phones or iPads at the table” rule. She has also cut back significantly on her own social use and avoids TikTok, which she found “particularly addictive.” She no longer engages in political discussions online and finds that “even scrolling through what others are arguing about gives me anxiety. Now I mostly stick to posts about other peoples’ kids, interior design, and cats on my private Instagram.”
When a kid starts melting down when their device is taken away, it’s not even their fault, DeFrank says. “You are watching a dopamine crash in real time. The games and apps are designed to release so much dopamine receptors that the kids are numbing out. That’s why they think real life is boring and why just tweaking the number of minutes you allow a child to be online each day doesn’t always help.”
Curbing a teenager’s use of devices is far trickier, but DeFrank believes that “smart kids already understand at a certain level that their brains are being hijacked” by their tech habits and that “many intuitively feel that they need parental help.” As an example, one of DeFrank’s teenaged foster daughters had been given a smartphone by a well-meaning friend. One morning the teen was angry and upset, but despite DeFrank’s efforts, the girl refused to talk. Instead, she hunkered down on her smartphone, “numbing out” by scrolling on social media, headphones on.
Finally, DeFrank convinced her to talk, and the girl poured her heart out about having been slighted on social media. She listened and validated the girl’s hurt feelings, finally getting a smile out of her foster daughter. DeFrank observed, “I think that too often, parents shrug things like this off, rationalizing that ‘this is just how kids process and interact these days.’ But our kids need parents to talk through and contextualize their anxiety, stress, and hurt.”
Left unchecked and unmonitored, this teenager’s hurt could have spiraled into depression and anxiety that is linked specifically to social media use and may be expressed through eating disorders and tic disorders that can mimic Tourette’s Syndrome. Cognitive behavioral therapy and a digital detox can help, DeFrank says.
When coaching other parents of teens, DeFrank suggests having a conversation about their tech habits where the parent commits to a certain level of tech detox of their own and invites the teen to join in. “With teens, parents need to act as mentors, and they need to have skin in the game also. The goal is not to cut kids off from their friends but to modify device use in order to increase their real-life connections,” she said. “It’s an invitation rather than a command.” She also suggests offering rewards for the teen or for whomever in the family participates, after reaching a certain milestone.
Based on the number of parents approaching her for help, she is encouraged that the tide is turning. “Parents see that the promises about kids benefiting from technology not only didn’t deliver but have caused great harm. Fortunately, you can reverse the effects through a detox effort.”
Based on the number of parents approaching her for help, she is encouraged that the tide is turning.
Dr. Eli Shapiro agrees. The founder and director of The Digital Citizenship Project cites a 2014 study from UCLA revealing that after only five days off their devices, kids at summer camp showed drastic improvement in their ability to pick up on social cues. The DCP is a consultancy that teaches “healthy and responsible” use of technology for individuals, schools and corporate clients, and Shapiro lectures at Jewish schools and organizations for his expertise on the social and emotional functioning of families. His presentations to students aim to “help kids become more self-aware, teaching them how their technology use affects their behavior, resilience, mindfulness, and communication abilities.”
Shapiro says that today, most kids in middle school or above have tablets with no filtration on them. Yet filters and other device management protocols not only prevent exposure to harmful content but also “serve in part as the physical manifestation of parental values and expectations around technology,” he said. “Filters can change a device, but education changes the person.”
He also concurs with DeFrank that parents need to identify and instill family values so that digital technology assumes its proper place. He explains, “Without this framework, there can be significant psychological, emotional, and intellectual damage to kids, demonstrated through an inability to hold eye contact, elevated anxiety levels, or disturbed sleep cycles. We have an extensive collection of data showing that an inability to disconnect from a device correlates with these problems. We also found that about 80 percent of students who have devices sleep with them within reach.” He knows of cases where adolescents refused to go to camp or on an eighth-grade graduation trip without their devices. “These are kids who are taking themselves out of the world they are living in.”
Whether technology is an enhancement or a detriment to children depends more on the quality of the relationship, rather than the amount of time spent with it. “Is it a positive relationship where your child is engaged in growth-oriented activities and developing a good skill set as a result? Does your child still communicate well and engage with friends? Parents need to assess this when kids are young and teach them how to self-assess when they are older.”
Regardless of the amount of time kids and parents spend on their devices, “Shabbat and holidays provide us with our best possible interactions because we don’t have the distraction of digital technology,” he added.
Businesses and organizations are also grappling with the impact of technology and personal devices in the workplace. Shapiro helps these clients combat “digital depreciation,” the negative impact of technology on workforce culture and wellbeing. This plays out in many ways, such as conflicts over differing etiquette standards of older workers versus Gen X or Gen Y workers. For example, younger workers like to wear headphones at work, perhaps listening to music, while many older workers find that rude or alienating.
Workers are also frequently tethered to their devices to an unhealthy degree. “It doesn’t send a warm or open message when you go to speak to a coworker in their office with your phone in your hand, or you’re scrolling through texts during a department meeting,” he observed. Some companies are now beginning to ban personal devices during meetings.
Stress and distractions from technology aren’t always the employee’s fault. In some workplaces employees are expected to respond rapidly to customers, colleagues or teams who may contact them via email as well as additional platforms such as Slack. Shapiro advises companies to choose a single communication platform when possible, to minimize this barrage of communication and its attendant stress on recipients. Anyone, however, can work to avoid compulsively checking email while engaged in another task. This effort at multitasking actually drains productivity because it takes about twenty minutes to get fully immersed in a task in the first place.
Shapiro recommends schools, businesses and organizations take what he calls a “fearless moral inventory,” a phrase he borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous. In this exercise, companies must decide: What role do personal devices play in the workplace? What role should they play?
“Standards and expectations need to be established from the top and then filter down,” Shapiro said. “It’s a new concept in many companies that there are times when you don’t use personal technology at work.” Guidelines can also vary within departments at the same organization depending on the need. For example, Shapiro has noticed that commission-based workers are less distracted by their devices than are salaried workers. Creating awareness leads to possible solutions or new frameworks.
While most people have not allowed their technology obsessions to derail their lives,
studies show that people with higher levels of social anxiety to begin with are the most likely to develop unhealthy relationships with the digital world. For such individuals, setting a phone on “do not disturb” mode can ramp up anxiety because of their dependence on online relationships. Additionally, those with higher social anxiety are more likely to experience the “online disinhibition effect,” a sense of anonymity when posting online that simultaneously encourages people to post things they would never say in person while also allowing them to have connections with people, without the anxiety of in-person relationships.
Most people these days fall into the category of those who realize they should cut down on their digital engagement. Again, a self-assessment can be a great tool. “Ask yourself, is my personal technology use an enhancement or an intrusion in my life? If it’s an intrusion, you can take steps to correct it,” Shapiro remarked.
As general guidelines, he recommends that people set times for when technology is in use and when it is not: in the morning, not looking at your device until you have been awake for around ten minutes, and “going dark” during dinner. He also suggests asking yourself which apps must be portable, like Uber, and which can remain on a home-based device? “What do you want versus what do you really need? Asking these questions keeps us in control of our relationship with our technology.”
Focusing on our wellness—personally and professionally—may involve some sacrifice in convenience or efficiency, and all screen time is not created equal. “Best practices” will depend on whether one’s involvement with technology is creative and professional, versus one of entertainment consumption.
When Shapiro entered this field a decade ago, few were talking about the impact of digital technology; rather, they were talking only about its content. Now, issues of dependency, compulsiveness and anxiety related to digital technology have become of vital and widespread concern. He believes a shift in people’s thinking is very much underway and not a moment too soon. In addition to what has become clear on the detrimental social, intellectual and emotional effects on children and adults, research now shows that the brains of even the youngest children are more susceptible to developing unhealthy attachments with technology than anyone thought.
“It used to be that when a small child had to get a shot, a parent was there to hug them and calm them down. This provided emotional security,” he said. “Today after a shot, kids are often handed a device and they learn: a screen will calm me down, not Mommy or Daddy. In the mall they are not expected to take in the sights and smells, they are handed a phone and programmed to need constant entertainment. This is very unhealthy.”
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to our overreliance on our digital relationships. Shapiro advised, “Strategies should be individualized, and everyone should be deliberate and thoughtful.”
Judy Gruen’s latest book is “The Skeptic and the Rabbi: Falling in Love with Faith.”
