Kross’s team wanted to test whether they might simply be observing a correlation between heavy social media use and those people who were already depressed. A statistical analysis showed that, indeed, people who felt lonely were more likely to use social media. However, when the researchers controlled for the loneliness variable, they found that social media use predicted less life satisfaction, even taking into account that lonely people turn to social networks in search of connection.
The growth of social media adds a new dimension to the question of how technology use shapes young brains. Researchers began work in this area by looking at the impact of television and video games amid ominous links to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which has doubled since the 1970s.
In 1998, the pediatrician Dimitri Christakis took paternity leave with his two-month-old. He noticed that his son became mesmerized by the flashing screen whenever the television was on. Christakis knew that his son’s brain wasn’t developed enough to decipher the language and meaning of TV programs. This experience sparked his two-decade-long interest in the impact of technology on early learning, attention span, and risk-taking. He’s now director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.
It’s undeniable that kids today spend more time on screens. In 1970, children were four years old before they regularly started watching TV. Nowadays, the average age is four months. By age five, the typical kid is on a screen for four and a half hours a day, which is 40 percent of their waking hours.
Kids’ time is more structured and sedentary than ten or twenty years ago, both inside and outside school. They spend more time sitting behind desks and less time being physically active. The in-school hours children spend in physical education or at recess have plummeted even as the academic demands have climbed. When children are bored, they’re now more likely to pick up a television remote or iPad than to play outside. The explosion of media and portable electronics increases distractibility and anxiety for both parents and children. Screen use raises two concerns: a device’s impact on a child’s development, and its replacement of healthier activities, like exploratory play or interaction with a caregiver, peer, or sibling.
Scientists have drawn a direct line between children spending more hours in front of television and their growing attention problems, like ADHD. Christakis led a team that looked at more than 1,200 children’s habits, as reported to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). For every weekly hour of TV children watched before age three, they were 10 percent more likely to develop an attention problem by age seven, controlling for race, gender, mother’s education, and similar factors. On the other hand, when parents stimulated kids’ brains by doing things like reading to them, singing, and taking them to museums, each hour a week reduced the odds of the children developing attention problems by 30 percent, according to Christakis. (With these studies, as with Kross’s research, researchers can’t prove causality through prospective experiments, so they use statistical analyses to isolate the variables of interest.)
Researchers have found similar results when looking at all electronic media. Kids exposed to more screen time tend to have more emotional difficulties, poorer family functioning, and attention problems. One caveat: young people who feel isolated in their real-life communities often find valuable social support via the Internet. For tweens or teens beginning to explore an LGBTQ+ identity, for example, social media can be a healthy lifeline.
As Christakis continued his research, he developed a hunch that prolonged exposure to a rapidly changing screen during that critical early stage of brain growth would precondition children’s minds to expect high levels of stimulation, leading to inattention later on when real life turned out to be more boring.
To test this, he developed television for mice.
His lab overstimulated baby mice with sounds from animated shows and flashing lights, exposing them to this stimulation six hours a day for their entire childhood. Then the researchers subjected the mice to several well-established tests of normal behavior to see how they differed from typical mice. The previous use of the test in rodent studies examining the impact of enriched environments on development gave the scientists a historical basis for comparison.
First was the open field test. By nature, mice stick to the edge of a space, such as a grassy field, in order to avoid being spotted and eaten by predators. They do sometimes forage for food toward the center of the space, but only rarely. Mice show this predilection in a laboratory box by running around the edges and making few forays into the center. When Christakis put the overstimulated mice in a box, they ran around like crazy, entering the center more often and spending more time there than normal mice. This is risk-taking behavior in a mouse. In humans, it might look like driving recklessly or testing limits with drugs and sex.
Next, Christakis presented the mice with an unfamiliar object and a familiar one, a common test of working memory and learning that researchers also use in primates and human babies. Giving new objects more attention stems from the mammalian instinct to forage for food. Once mice, chimps, or infants have sussed out an object, they’ll spend less time on it in the future—a sign to scientists that they’ve learned about it.
Typical mice spent 75 percent of their time exploring the new object. But the overstimulated mice spent the same amount of time on each object, either because they couldn’t distinguish familiar from unfamiliar or because they didn’t care. Either the mice had poor short-term memory or they couldn’t learn.
A final test took mice through a complex maze and found that the overstimulated mice actually were faster initially at finding the exit, because they explored more fearlessly, but then they failed to remember the escape route. By the fourth day of the maze, the typical mice were finding the path more quickly and easily.
In sum: extreme electronics exposure led to risk-taking, hyperactive mice with poor learning abilities. Of course, it’s not guaranteed that human brains work just like mouse brains. But still, these findings don’t seem to be good news for the future of our screen-loving species.
“Our brains evolved over millennia to process things that happened in real time. Until the advent of media, everything by definition happened in real time, because we didn’t have the capacity,” Christakis explained in an interview. “We’ve shown in previous studies that block play promotes language development and attention.… [Children are] cognitively more engaged in that activity than they are in passively viewing a video.”
One way to understand the impact of screens on development is through a phenomenon known as “joint attention.” “A person will direct a child’s attention to something and they will turn, look at what they’re pointing out, and instinctively turn to the caregiver, asking, essentially, ‘What is this?’” Christakis said. “This happens hundreds of times a day. It’s incredibly important to the children’s development and the architecture of the brain.”
Some children’s brains are wired differently. Kids with autism, for instance, early on show weakness in their ability to engage in joint attention. They’re less likely to make eye contact, to follow a caregiver’s gaze, and therefore to begin to understand language and another person’s intentions. Even before kids receive an official diagnosis of autism, researchers like Christakis can spot the signs by evaluating their capacity for joint attention.
“We know that screens, because of the way they command children’s attention, diminish opportunities for joint attention,” he said. Children ages eight to eighteen use electronics an average of seven and a half hours a day, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study. Except for sleeping, that’s more time than we give to any other activity.
MY INTERVIEWS WITH SMIRNOVA, TWENGE, and Cristakis alarmed me. I wondered if it’s possible to reverse these seemingly profound changes to the minds of children. Then a visit with a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) convinced me that children have funda
mentally changed but that we must forge ahead, because there is no turning back.
A team led by NIMH’s Kathleen Merikangas became the first to analyze a nationally representative sample of teenagers for mental illness. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, their findings were shocking: one in two children will develop a mood or behavioral disorder or a substance addiction by age eighteen. This point is worth underscoring: every other child in your kid’s preschool classroom will have something going on before high school graduation.
This stunning statistic holds the potential to be incredibly discouraging.
But I refuse to feel despair. I believe that this number—one in two—can ultimately free us all. There’s no need for parents to feel ashamed or isolated by a child’s diagnosis—they are not alone. Indeed, any parents struggling with kids’ misbehavior have company, diagnosis or not.
Of those children with a diagnosis, Merikangas’s team found that nearly 40 percent experienced two or more disorders. Anxiety starts appearing first, by age six for half of kids who will be diagnosed, then behavioral disorders by age eleven, followed by mood disorders around thirteen and substance use by age fifteen. These figures refer to the median age for each diagnosis; half will develop these conditions later.
When you encounter a child acting out, consider whether one of these diagnoses might lie at the root of their behavior. Take a child who refuses to speak in class. Or the kid who throws a temper tantrum when it’s time to get in the car for the soccer game. Their stubbornness may arise from fear and anxiety, even if they can’t articulate it.
Anxiety also can lead to social disruption. Sometimes the kids who tease and bully are motivated by their own deep-seated anxiety. The kind of power plays often found among groups of girls may also be traced to an anxious perpetrator. For example, the girl in a clique who’s pushing to exclude another girl may be driven by her own anxiety about fitting in. Nearly one-third of adolescents—32 percent—receive an anxiety diagnosis, according to the NIMH study.
Next most common are behavioral disorders, such as ADHD, which affect 19 percent of children; mood disorders (14 percent); and substance use disorders (11 percent). All these conditions boil down to self-regulation: being able to manage your own impulses, moods, thoughts, and behavior. And anecdotal evidence suggests that even children without an official diagnosis are less likely to automatically obey adults’ orders or to fall in line the way children did in previous generations. That’s why it’s so hard to get kids to do what you want. That’s why the boys on the elementary school playground ignored my instructions.
One simple fact reinforces that it’s not just better screening or diagnosis: more children are dying from suicide. Gregory Plemmons, associate professor of pediatrics at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University, led a team that found that the number of kids admitted to US children’s hospitals owing to suicidal thoughts or self-harm had doubled in the last decade. In that time, the teen suicide rate rose 28 percent and the tween suicide rate rose 52 percent, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The fastest-growing group does seem to be the youngest age group kids, the ten- to fourteen-year-olds,” Plemmons told me. “It’s alarming. Twenty years ago, I never saw eight- or nine-year-old kids that are having these thoughts.”
What’s driving these changes, aside from the rise in media use, as cited by Christakis and Twenge? Merikangas blames pressure to achieve in academics and extracurriculars. When she served as a fellow at Yale University, undergraduate students would cry on her shoulder about receiving Bs. “The kids would come to me; they didn’t want to tell their parents their grades,” she recalled. “There’s a dramatic increase in the stress we are putting on these children from the age of three and four, when they compete to get into nursery school. There’s much more competitiveness to get into university.”
This isn’t to say that helicopter parenting caused the crisis in self-regulation. Children are each born with a unique set of skills and challenges owing to genetics and environmental factors beyond parents’ control. However, supportive, research-informed parenting can certainly help manage a disorder—and potentially ameliorate its impacts or symptoms.
Modern middle-class parents see their children as budding talents to be cultivated rather than as workers vital to the household, farm, or family business. But this perception sends kids the subconscious message that their worth is based on their achievement in all these areas—which, by the way, are extremely difficult to master. When 15,000 kids in your county play in the soccer league, how can you ever be the best? If the click of a mouse shows you a seven-year-old piano virtuoso on YouTube, what’s the use of stumbling through your scales? There will always be someone smarter, faster, and more talented, unless you’re the rare true prodigy.
Seen another way, children are unemployed. So often their days are full of homework, music, sports, and extracurricular obligations, but no true responsibilities to the family or community. Nobody depends on them to care for a younger sibling, to clean the house, or to put dinner on the table. Adults think they’re helping children by doing these tasks themselves, or outsourcing them. In fact, not giving them simple household chores deprives kids of the chance to build skills and be useful. Just think about how disorienting and demoralizing it is for adults to find themselves jobless—is it any surprise that children without any real responsibilities are increasingly anxious and depressed? Moreover, parents miss the opportunity to connect with kids while teaching them cleaning, laundry, cooking, bike repair, lawn work, and other necessary tasks.
This all undermines children’s motivation and well-being. In psychology, self-determination theory holds that humans’ ability to thrive is based on autonomy, competence, and connection to other people. But children today often have little control over their schedule and are given few opportunities to develop life skills or contribute to the smooth running of the household.
I MET JENNIFER WANG AT her home in Great Falls, Virginia, just before 5:00 p.m., when her son John usually returns home from his magnet school for the gifted and talented. He leaves the house at 8:22 a.m. every day for the hourlong bus ride, but after he comes home, “that’s when his real day starts,” said his mom, fifty-three.
She showed me around the French country-style mansion while we waited. It was stunning: nine bedrooms, a four-car garage, an in-law suite, and a hot tub, sauna, and pool, on an immaculately kept 1¾-acre lot. The interior resembled a tastefully decorated luxury hotel, without a stray belonging on the floors, counters, or furniture.
We were chatting outside on the back patio, overlooking the pool and gardens, when we heard noise from inside. In the kitchen, John’s father, Gilbert, fifty-three, was quickly unpacking Styrofoam Chinese food containers. Jennifer joined him to get dinner on the table. Jennifer, John, and I sat down to eat at 5:15 p.m., while Gilbert retreated to his office. He works from home as a trader, so he usually does most of the after-school driving with John.
The dinner felt pressured. Jennifer was eager for John to squeeze in his required hour of piano practice before we left at 6:30 for swim practice. After just seven minutes, she asked: “Are you done?”
But John seemed in no hurry to get to the piano. He wandered to the fridge to get a cheese stick, then demanded cake. She counted out the five remaining pieces of beef in his dish and promised cake if he finished them all. He agreed.
“Okay, hurry up then,” she said. It was 5:29 p.m. The clock was ticking.
John asked for cut-up strips of cheese. Jennifer bustled to the fridge and offered him a selection of sliced cheeses. He chose yellow. All the yellow ones. She cut them up.
At 5:35 p.m., John had only two more pieces of beef to eat. Somehow he managed to stretch out the rest of the dinner, including cake and an Icee Pop, until 5:52 p.m., despite his mother’s repeated injunctions—thirteen by my count—to hurry.
He sat down at the piano, after minimal dawdli
ng, and played several beautiful pieces before we hurried into the car at 6:31 p.m. Once at the pool, he swam backstroke for ninety minutes straight, only stopping when the kids ahead of him in the lane slowed his progress. Then he kickboarded for a half-hour, nearly mowing down the girl in front of him—she was five years older, but he kicked fast.
On Tuesdays, John goes straight from school to an advanced math class, then to swimming. On Thursdays he has lessons with an elite piano instructor, Barbara Wilson. Years earlier, Jennifer had wanted John to study with Barbara, but the teacher thought he was too young. She referred him to another piano studio. The previous year, John had finally aced the audition and won a spot with Barbara.
“We told him Barbara has very high standards, she only accepts the best. Then he will make that extra effort,” Jennifer explained. Barbara Wilson teaches only students who commit to her daily minimum practice sessions, which they log on a time sheet. The expected practice time climbs as the children grow older. Typically, her students gain acceptance to the country’s competitive music conservatories as well as the most selective liberal arts colleges.
On the weekends, John swims for four hours each day—more if there’s a meet—and makes up any practice time he owes his piano teacher because of the Tuesday math class.
The Good News About Bad Behavior Page 3
