Metadata#
- Author(s): Richard E. Culatta
- Number of pages: 256
- Year published: 2021
- Year read: 2022
Review#
Finding pro-screentime parenting advice is about as common as finding pro-formula tips. i.e. Completely uncommon because of an enormous cultural juggernaut that moralizes against it. I was starting to feel crazy trying to parse the WHY screens are demonized so totally for our kids - by pediatricians, by “conventional wisdom” etc. Why did I have so much guilt when plopping my kid in front of Peppa Pig? I think the official guidelines are zero screens before 2 years of age. I saw some parents asking if this meant no Zoom calls with grandparents. What!? What, exactly, do these people think screens are doing to their babies?
I sometimes see some data and evidence trotted out: namely, kids who watch more TV are fatter and have more behavioral problems. Two questions, here:
1. Is this correlation or causation? Maybe hyperactive kids need TV to calm down?
2. If it’s causal (TV displaces physical activity), then isn’t any sedentary activity just as risky? Like, say, reading a book? Or drawing?
Also, TV screens are quite different from phone screens and laptop screens?
ANYWAY. So I was happy to find this book. I needed a sanity check. This book was very sanity restoring. He makes a few excellent points. Namely, we prepare our kids to live in the world - we teach them to look both ways, to brush their teeth, to be kind to most and careful around some. That’s all, ahem, IRL. This book makes the EXCELLENT point, that I - a tech person!!! - honestly never even thought about, which is that cyberspace exists and a lot of stuff happens there and so maybe we should… parent for it? i.e. Just like you look both ways before crossing the street, you double check that sketchy e-mail attachment before downloading. Just like you don’t bully a kid in class, you also don’t troll a kid online. And so on.
Culatta removed the high-pitched shriek of moral hysteria from my brain re: screens, and gave me the space and quiet to just THINK about it for a second. Having this space was liberating. And it scared me - how little ACTUAL THOUGHT I had given this issue of, ahem, what’s in the screens! Because abstinence is, indeed, a very stupid way to teach kids both about sex. AND SCREENS.
One of his best ideas - which, again, duh, I feel stupid I never even thought about this - is that you can gradually introduce computers, the internet, and so on to your kids. Most apps have parental controls. But also: the choice isn’t between giving your tween a smartphone and a dumb phone. You can just dumb down an old smartphone - removing most apps, no data plan - and then gradually introduce things, piece by piece.
The book covers lots of interesting things:
- online bullying (and how our “screen education” is literally only ever about that)
- the rise of echo chambers and fake media
- advertising, especially geared towards kid
- how you can (and should! and must!) turn off that damn autoplay feature on YouTube, Netflix, etc.
And so on.
Anyway, this got me pumped. I’ve been pumped about introducing a Raspberry Pi computer to my kids since forever. Now I am feeling even more emboldened. Perhaps you shall have indeed MORE PEPPA.