Is the Number of Hours on a Device Linked to Anxiety?
I am not sure if there is an unusually large number of articles floating around about the increase in anxiety and the link with allowing our kids to experience their emotions, or if I am just noticing this subject more. You know the old situation when you buy a new car, and then you see that car around everywhere! Well, maybe that is why I see these articles: because I am so interested in the subject!
The main reason I am interested is because I am a mother. I have two amazing children with whom I have done my very best to develop into well-rounded, resilient, capable, caring people. This is an ongoing journey, as we all know. Teachers play a huge part in that journey, too. Both my children are in the early adolescent years, so let’s just summarise and say that currently, life in our house is rather ‘interesting.’ For this reason, I also need a lot of resilience for myself. I will admit, even as an internationally recognised trainer of resilience, there has been more than one moment where I have totally lost my control. So always remember to offer yourself forgiveness. You are a human being and even teachers are human beings by the way. You are allowed to make mistakes!
So feel free to go looking for articles around raising resilience. I have previously written one for this magazine and I train all around the country unpacking the neuroscience behind what it looks like to allow our children to experience moments of ‘tolerable’ stress, as well as the importance of having a relationship around to scaffold the calm. I talk about ‘allowing our kids to bounce.’ These trainings are all about creating moments that increase resilience. However, in this article I would like to focus on a different aspect of this whole process of resilience development. It is one that we don’t think about often, because it is so subtle and sneaky, but let’s bring it out to the light now.
Screen time is known to have some negative effects on our children’s development. We talk about it increasing stress levels for elongated periods of time, mainly when playing high-impact games. We know it impacts our socialisation skills, by limiting real-time interaction and increasing conversations that are about ourselves, and share unrealistic or inflated information. We know there is an addiction element to using screens because of the release of dopamine in the brain, an addictive neurotransmitter, when we do certain tasks on the screen. We also know there are some amazingly positive benefits to using screens, such as learning so much more about those which we cannot link directly. It is all about balance when we are considering these aspects. However, another, more subtle impact has been coming to my attention lately. It is the impact that screen use has on our inner messaging, on our practice of emotionally resetting ourselves. Let me explain that a little bit with a story.
When I would come home from school, maybe feeling a bit sad, anxious about something that happened that day, I would have to consider my situation. I may not be doing any of this consciously by the way, but consciously or not, when we perform a task, our brain and body have practiced it. So, I would come home and have to ‘reset’ myself. I might talk to my parents or my siblings, but quite often we had to do our own thinking, on our own, around “why am I a good person?” Or, I could choose to remember the times I have felt better, or I could think forward to a time I know is coming up that is going to be fun. That mental dexterity to reframe and make sense of the world was done thousands of times in the developmental years.
In modern days, when we feel sad or a bit anxious, we will most likely turn to a device to make us feel better. We post something, text someone, reach out for validation from others. This device delivers external validation instantaneously. Something that is great in the moment, but we can see that the effect it is having on our development is negative, in that we are not building the internal capacity to self-reflect, reset or consider, which are really important skills needed for later in life. These screens are also limiting our ability to use our imagination and ‘fill in the gaps.’ Do you remember feeling bored? Driving distances in cars? Waiting for your parents somewhere? Just being at home with not much to do? Well, in those times our brains had to do some mental dexterity to come up with an idea to keep us entertained, or to just be at peace in our boredom.
Our children don’t have to do that now. They simply reach for their device, or the parent hands them theirs. How often have you observed a child arriving at a café, or in the car, or worse, at a sports game (I say worse, because at least at a sports game there is so much to see and do for the child.) Instead we observe children on devices, zoning out from all the learning around them.
There is too much free access to external support, in the form of our technology. I want you to start thinking about this, because without the practice, we don’t have the learning. Our children need to be bored, feel sad, feel anxious, and learn how to handle these feelings and times. Can you see this? They need this for many reasons. But most interesting for me, is this internal processing fact. As a neuroscientist, I train around how the brain physically changes in response to repetition. This makes so much sense to me. We need practice to learn. Our kids need to be doing these internal processes. Step back and let them do it, without our direct help (scaffolding is totally okay, but make sure you do it at the right level), and without the use of a screen. It is going to hurt you, as teachers, as parents, and so on, because it means we have to allow some sadness, anxiety or anger to be experienced for a space of time. But without it, the learning won’t happen. I am going to put this into conscious practice with my children. As a teacher, as a parent, I hope you do too.
