Raising Humans in a Digital World

by Diana Graber

  Similarly, author and programmer Jarod Lanier, who many consider the father of virtual reality, told Business Insider, “The more a parent is involved in the technology industry, the more cautious they seem to be about their kids’ interactions with it. A lot of parents in Silicon Valley purposefully seek out anti-tech environments for their kids, like Waldorf schools.”11

  Suddenly the decision to send our own kids to a public Waldorf school didn’t seem so wacky, especially when two bestselling books reported on this trend. In the opening pages of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, author Adam Alter asks, “Why are the world’s greatest public technocrats also its greatest private technophobes? Can you imagine the outcry if religious leaders refused to let their children practice religion?”12 And in the new preface of the paperback edition of his book, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras interviews Debra Lambrecht, former administrator for the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education, who now runs a tech-free school in San Rafael, California. She tells him, “The argument for technology in the early grades is often rooted in the fear of children falling behind.” She believes it’s more important “to ensure children can effectively use technology as a tool and will bring all of their best thinking, creativity, and innovation to bear.”13

  That’s what Shaheer Faltas told me as well. Journey School’s former administrator now leads the Greenwood School in Mill Valley, California. His school is “no-tech” from kindergarten through fifth grade and “has a purposeful approach to technology” in middle school. By his estimate, approximately one-third of his students’ parents work in the tech industry. “These parents understand that their kids need abundant time away from screens in order to become the caring, creative, socially adept, out-of-the-box thinkers our world needs today. They feel that tech introduced too early stands in the way of that,” he says.14

  As Kardaras writes, “There is not one credible research study that shows that a child exposed to more technology earlier in life has better educational outcomes than a tech-free kid.” Kardaras, who in addition to being an addiction expert is an Ivy League-educated psychologist and former clinical professor at Stony Brook Medicine, advises, “If you really want a child to thrive and blossom, lose the screens for the first few years of their lives. During those key developmental periods, let them engage in creative play.”15

  TO BE OR NOT TO BE TECH-FREE

  Keeping my kids tech-free when they were young should have been easy. After all, this was before we had to contend with smartphones and tablets. But radio, CDs, cassettes, and even karaoke were harder to give up than you’d think, and it didn’t take long before we were guilty of minor transgressions. More than once (okay, every day, if you must know) music blared from the cassette and then the CD player when I drove the carpool to school, all of us singing along with whatever movie soundtrack was popular at the time—The Lion King, Moulin Rouge, Evita, The Jungle Book, you name it. We were indiscriminate movie soundtrack junkies. We also listened to the Harry Potter audiobooks. All of them. Twice. Through the years, every passenger in my car, from the eighth grader down to the kindergartner, knew the rules: When we arrive at the front of the carpool line, not a window was to be rolled down or door cracked open until the music was turned off. We didn’t want to get caught breaking that media contract. (My apologies to anyone who was ever part of my carpool if this is the first you are hearing about this.)

  Aside from finally realizing that treating media use like a crack-cocaine habit—hiding it from others for fear of being judged—is terrible role-modeling, this experience taught me three important lessons:

  •Setting strict time limits on media use sets everyone up for failure.

  •Not all media are created equal, so why throw out the baby with the bathwater?

  •There’s a better way to equip kids for success in a media-filled world.

  A BETTER WAY

  Erin Reilly doesn’t believe in saying “no” to technology, in setting strict limits on its use, or in what she calls “walled gardens,” platforms that restrict a child’s access to other parts of the web. “I would rather have my child feel comfortable sitting next to me and having conversations about what he is doing online and actually asking me questions,” Reilly told me. “I think shutting down access or letting kids figure it out on their own is a mistake, because every kid is going to try to figure it out on his own eventually, and in that case, he or she might not have the mentorship needed to really reflect on technology properly.”16

  Reilly’s instincts lie right in line with the work of technology writer and researcher Alexandra Samuel. Samuel spent two years conducting surveys on how families manage technology, gathering data from over ten thousand North American parents. Her research revealed that parents who play an active role in guiding their kids onto the internet—“digital mentors,” as she calls them—end up with kids who have the healthiest and most balanced relationships with technology. On the other hand, she discovered that parents who focus on minimizing their children’s use of technology, whom she calls “digital limiters,” tend to raise offspring who engage in problematic behaviors online. As Samuel explains, “They’re twice as likely as the children of mentors to access porn, or to post rude or hostile comments online; they’re also three times as likely to go online and impersonate a classmate, peer, or adult.”17

  Samuel compares shielding children from technology to abstinence-only sex education, saying that neither strategy is effective. While she admits that the limiters are successfully fostering their children’s capacities for face-to-face connection, she believes these kids will need help linking those skills with online life.

  LINKING OFFLINE SKILLS WITH ONLINE LIFE

  Over the years, I’ve visited dozens of tech-free schools that deliver Cyber Civics lessons to their students, beginning in sixth grade, specifically to help them link face-to-face capacities with life online. I believe kids like these, who’ve had a chance to hone their social skills and cultural competencies offline and then learn how to wield these capacities online, will be well equipped to withstand the digital world’s inevitable pressures—an unkind text, a post that doesn’t get many “likes,” an unsolicited advance from a stranger, a request for a sexy image, a humiliating photo shared online, or a barrage of f-bombs, which my students tell me is the normalized language of multiplayer games. I’d bet my last dollar that the online problems adults fear most, like cyberbullying and sexting, would simply disappear if more kids had a chance to develop “human” capacities that could guide them online. Alas, today, even very young kids are spending more time with screens than with people. Those who don’t use devices in school still have access to them at home, or at their friends’ homes, or at their grandparents’ house. Some even hide in public bathrooms, where they know they can secretly gather around their friend’s phone and access Wi-Fi (true story!). Even the most well-intentioned, tech-free family or school exists in a plugged-in world.

  So, while limiting tech when kids are young so they can develop social skills and cultural capacities might be the ideal, we have to adapt to a non-ideal world. Children must be introduced to technology, hopefully by their parents, in developmentally appropriate ways. If parents don’t do this “tech mentoring,” kids will be left trying to figure out vast digital spaces without the adult role models or guides they need. Or, even worse, when they do find access to technology, they may binge on the forbidden fruit they were shielded from. I’ve seen this happen too many times. However, there’s a better way.

  DIGITAL ON-RAMPS

  Longtime Waldorf educator and mentor Patti Connolly also thinks there’s a better way to introduce children to technology. “Children see parents on screens, and of course they want to use them, too,” says Connolly. “There are too many positive uses of screens today not to look for healthy ways to introduce their use to young children. So why not put our attention on the positives and help them learn how to use them in this way?”18


  A few years ago, Connolly and I began discussing the impracticality of saying no to tech and, instead, how to introduce it slowly and developmentally appropriately by using “digital on-ramps.” Just as a freeway on-ramp provides a safe way for a vehicle to accelerate to the speed of fast-moving traffic, a digital on-ramp offers the same approach to the information superhighway.

  Today we both visit schools to talk about this slow-tech approach. We’ve found that parents like concrete ideas on what, when, and how to introduce their kids to technology. Instead of shutting down their children’s natural curiosity, they can on-ramp them at appropriate ages and stages. Also, a focus on the positive uses of tech—using it to connect with loved ones, to learn new things, to be creative—breeds positive online habits that will, hopefully, last a lifetime.

  Here are some “digital on-ramps” that might work for your family:

  AGES 0–2 * Videoconference with loved ones, with child on lap and parent providing explanation.

  AGES 3–6 * Co-view educational content, with parent explaining.

  * Write emails together to friends and family.

  * Send texts and photos together to relatives and friends.

  AGES 7–9 * Play child-friendly video games together.

  * Find and use creative apps together, like a drawing app.

  * Keep online notes, recipes, homework reminders, and more.

  * If you go on a family trip, keep a digital journal, and post the photos/videos you take.

  AGES 10–12 * Do school research together.

  * Help your children pursue their out-of-school interests online.

  * Find homework help or tutorial videos online to assist with schoolwork.

  * Show them (or ask them to show you!) how to download and read ebooks and music.

  These digital on-ramps serve another purpose. By becoming involved in your children’s online lives from day one, you’ve planted yourself as a “guide on the side,” who will be there if and when things get confusing or uncomfortable online.

  Feel free to adapt these suggestions for your own family, keeping in mind that some children will express more interest in tech than others, and some families will want their kids to have more or less exposure. The point is that saying no is not only next to impossible, but also sets kids up to lie, hide, or be unprepared for a digital world that is here to stay.

  PEOPLE FIRST

  No matter how or when you choose to introduce technology to your children, please remember one thing: Don’t ever let tech get in the way of a chance for your children to develop the social skills and cultural competencies the online world demands from its users. The easiest way to remember this is to follow a simple rule I learned from Erin Reilly: “When my son was in the zero to five range, the rule that we gave our family was this: People before technology. Three simple words any child at this age can understand. He knew if anyone in the family said, ‘People before technology,’ it was screens down, heads up. It was ‘pay attention to me, I’m talking to you, and you’re ignoring the people around you because you’re putting technology first.’”19

  Today, at fourteen years of age, Reilly’s son remembers and knows this rule. It helped him grow up with tech yet develop the life skills he needs to be a well-rounded human being.

  TWO E-SSENTIAL ELEMENTS FOR YOUR FOUNDATION

  Thus far you know how important “human” skills will be to your children’s future endeavors as a digital citizen. Before moving on to building the actual structure that will help keep your children safe and protected online, you must know about two final foundational elements: ethical thinking and empathy. Both are e-ssential to raising kids who will have a healthy relationship with technology.

  Ethical Thinking

  Installing ethical behavior—the ability to figure out the right thing to do and how to get it done—ought to be our number-one concern.

  —MARC PRENSKY, TEACHING DIGITAL NATIVES20

  Nearly everything your children will ever do online will involve ethical thinking. Just think about it:

  •Your young daughter is at a sleepover, and she is wondering whether to post a picture on a social media site, even though girls not invited to the gathering will see it.

  •Your son is working on a report for his history class and finds a passage online, which he wants to cut and paste into his paper.

  •Your ten-year-old is engaged in a multiplayer game where other players use foul language, and she sees no harm in joining in.

  •There’s a movie your kids really want to see, and they find it on a “free” video site.

  •To open a Snapchat account, your nine-year-old has to lie about his age.

  •Your young teen is in her first relationship, and her new boyfriend wants her to send him a revealing photo.

  Until they reach about twelve or thirteen years of age, most kids aren’t equipped with the working hardware upstairs to puzzle through the consequences—on themselves or others—of these all-too-real-scenarios. That’s why many young kids make mistakes online that they often later regret.

  How Ethical Thinking Happens

  Ethical thinking is “taking the perspective of others, awareness of one’s roles and responsibilities in the communities in which one participates, and reflection about the more global harms or benefits of one’s actions to communities at large.”21 What is known about ethical thinking today is due largely to the work of two prominent figures who studied cognitive and moral development, Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg.

  While Kohlberg focused primarily on moral development, he based his theories on the cognitive development understandings of Piaget, who forged what is considered the most comprehensive and compelling theory of children’s intellectual development.22 Piaget studied how children played games to learn how they developed a sense of right vs. wrong. He observed that they developed cognitively and morally in four distinct stages:

  •Sensorimotor. From birth to two years, children experience the outside world through their immediate actions, senses, and feelings. Unstructured play, manipulation of physical objects, and interaction with loving caregivers are the essential ingredients for healthy cognitive and motor development at this stage.

  •Preoperational. From ages two to seven, children can solve one-step logic problems, and they begin to think using symbols and internal images. However, they have huge limitations in their abilities to reason, think long term, or anticipate the consequences of their actions. They engage largely in self-centered thinking.

  •Concrete. From ages seven to eleven, or middle childhood, children begin to develop the capacity to think systematically, but only when they can refer to concrete objects and activities. While they are beginning to become aware that other people have their own unique perspectives, they cannot yet guess exactly how or what the other person is experiencing.

  •Formal. From age twelve on, children finally develop the capacity for logical and abstract thinking, which is necessary to engage in ethical thinking. While a child in the concrete stage may understand his actions have consequences (having been told so), a child in the formal stage will realize that her decisions pertaining to moral and ethical issues also have consequences.

  It is critical for parents to learn about these stages before turning over a connected device to a child. Though the average age for children getting their first smartphones is ten, children between age seven and eleven are in the concrete stage of thinking, making it unlikely they’ll fully appreciate the impact an unkind text or an unflattering photo can have on another person.23 It’s not kids’ fault when they do something thoughtless online. They start life with a completely egocentric view of the world and can’t understand how someone else’s viewpoint or feelings might differ from their own. Thankfully, children slowly decenter from this mindset as they move through the developmental stages, but this sense of egocentrism lingers even into the formal stage, or the teen years.24

  Kohlberg furthered Piaget’s work by developing a theory
of moral development consisting of three levels: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. He believed that during the preconventional level, which often lasts until age nine, children are only able to reason as isolated individuals, not as members of a larger society.25 Between the ages of ten to fifteen, when children enter the conventional level, they begin to believe people should live up to the expectations of their communities and behave in “good” ways.26 At the completion of this level, youth finally have the cognitive ability to perceive themselves as citizens of a larger society. Kohlberg’s last level of moral development, postconventional, encompasses the upper domain of abstract thinking. He believed that while this stage could be entered into as early as age twelve, some individuals never attain this pinnacle of moral thinking. (If you need proof of this, take a quick scroll through Twitter.)

  Understanding how ethical thinking slowly unfolds sheds light upon the difficulty many young children have reasoning their way through ethical scenarios like the ones listed above. These situations are, to put it simply, beyond children’s cognitive abilities. Which begs the question: Why are so many young kids online?

  I had the opportunity to hear Joseph Chilton Pearce, the prolific author of numerous books on human and child development, address this topic years ago, shortly before he died. Here is his summation:

  We must encourage children to develop the ability to think first, and then give them the computer. After that the sky’s the limit. But if you introduce the computer before the child’s thought processes are worked out, then you have disaster in the making. This is because, as Piaget pointed out, the first twelve years of life are spent putting into place the structures of knowledge that enable young people to grasp abstract, metaphoric, symbolic types of information. The capacity for abstract thinking developed as a result of the natural concrete processes that have been going on for millions of years.27