Smartphones are a parenting nightmare. When everyone at your child’s school has a smartphone, how do you be the parent that makes your kid different because they don’t have one? When you do give your child a smartphone, how do you monitor what they are looking at? When your child resists and screams at you for taking away their smartphone, how do you respond to that? How do you protect your beautiful child from the dangers of a digital landscape?

@ecoTrains question of the week is: "Should parents set a minimum age or some restrictions for their children to own a smartphone, and if so what would they be?"

I was chatting to my sister about this this morning, who told me that at my nephew's school, some kids as young as six have Instagram.

Now, to me this is abhorrent. It’s a little like little kids wearing make-up. They’re swimming in adult worlds that they aren’t psychologically ready for – a highly sexualised environment that invites concern for their moral development and, I’m sure you’d agree, puts them in all kinds of dangers. I’m not going to talk too much about the effect of internet use on developing brains, because I think we know a lot about that already:

Research has revealed that overexposure to online devices, such as iPads and smartphones, can lead to attention deficitdisorders. The frantic pace of the Internet can result in the brain’s pruning neuronal tracts to the frontal lobe, an area that regulates emotion (Sowell, Thompson, Tessner, and Toga, p. 8820). Toddlers who frequently engage with technology tend to struggle with their self-regulation and have more tantrums, on average, than toddlers who do not interact with technology (Ward, p. 2). According to Dr. Richard Graham, who oversees a technology addiction program, toddlers “react with tantrums and uncontrollable behavior when their [devices] are taken away… they experience the same withdrawal symptoms as alcoholics or heroin addicts” (Ward, p. 3). Longitudinal studies have shown that the overuse of online activity for toddlers can result in depression and bipolar disorder as they mature (Ward, p. 4).

Thus, my desire to walk up to toddlers who have an Ipad in their hands and snatch it from them is probably justified. I think we can easily agree that they need to wait til they are a little older, and as for any precise age, that's going to be different for every kid.

But is a ban until a specific age really the way to deal with older children who desire access to technology and see it all around them – in the classroom, on television, and most definitely in their parent’s hands? It's kinda hypocritical really - hey, we expect you to be mature and adult, but you can't have what we have: you can't vote, you can't have a voice, you can't do anything until you are some arbitrary legal age. Ugh. Imagine how unfair that would (rightly) seem when we were kids?

We’re at this interesting junction in history where kids are being raised as digital natives. We’re actually not far off becoming cyborgs where the machine has become part of us – an extension of our physical self that assists us in all kinds of ways. I'm not sure you can keep a kid out of that world until a perceived 'adult' age of 16 - just like there's no way we wouldn't have crossed those legal boundaries set for us when we were kids. If anyone DIDN'T drink/smoke/have sex/do drugs before 18 or 21 here, I totally applaud you - but it's not realistic that adults set legal boundaries for kids and expect them to obey and adhere to it.

I don’t buy the argument that ‘the youth of today need to know all the skills that we learnt as kids, because tradition blah blah blah’. We’re spinning toward the future – we can’t hold onto the past, but figure out ways to negotiate where we’re at at the moment. But, just because they're digital natives, doesn't mean they know how to negotiate life, just as being a native of Earth doesn't give you the automatic skills to get around life's pitfalls and complexities.

As adults, then, we have to talk to kids about what it is they want to do, give them the skills to move through a future that's essentially theirs. We have to set restrictions for their explorations - sure kiddo, you can explore, but we are sure as hell are going to talk to you about what this all means, because we love you and have your best interests at heart.

Cyberbullying: Be Aware and Pro-Active

Most teenagers I speak to know that smartphones have their ills – cyberbullying being one of them.
In Australia, the recent suicide of young Dolly prompted her parents to start a campaign against cyberbullying as she was relentlessly targeted via Snapchat. Bullying has always been around – I was bullied as a kid – but I can’t even imagine not having the respite that being at home used to bring for me. My parents never really knew the extent of it, and unless you’re looking over your child’s shoulder at every text or message, there’s no way you can monitor what’s going on your kid’s phone. Campaigns like Dolly’s Dream asks people to talk to their teenagers, to educate about what to do in cases of cyberbullying.

For me, it was important to raise my kid as a compassionate and kind person who empathized with others and wouldn't be an asshole. Sometimes the rules in cyberland are exactly the same as those in real life.

Monitoring Usage – Controlling What they See and Do Online

Let me just firmly say that we can't set 16 as the wise old age for kids getting smartphones. They are far more digitally active, savvy and digitally tribal before that, and many of them would resent such limitations as they are forming their adult selves and need to do this away from parental control.

Think about all the boundaries you were testing as a kid as you figured out who you were.

My 12 year old nephew has an Instagram account. For a while he was right into scooter tricks and wanted to post videos for his friends. Now, it’s all about surfing. My sister knows he does it because he wants to connect to his tribe, just like we all do (think about why we’re on Ecotrain or TribeSteemUp). She knows that these are some of the benefits of his digital foray, plus, she gets access to another side of her son – an emerging identity that will eventually find its own place in a wider social context.

Yet, she’s caring – she needs to protect her child from harm. One of the conditions was that my sister constantly checked his account and unfollowed or blocked people that she knew weren’t genuine friends or that were unhealthy relationships. He quickly learnt to check out people’s profile first and to discern whether they were advertisers dedicated to selling him things through promoted content or what to do if sexualised content arose (which, thank God, has been a relatively rare event). She also uses FamilyZone, an app that helps monitor your child’s internet use and keeps them safe (this is an Australia/New Zealand initiative). She can set usage times – for example, turning the phone off at night.

She also only lets him have 1GB so he has to be really careful about how much data he uses. In this way he’s being educated about digital worlds so when the limitations are finally removed, he’ll be aware of how to travel such virtual landscapes with discernment and intelligence. It's really just like a curfew - I'll let you go, honey, but there's limits to this.

I wish I’d had the FamilyZone app when Jarrah got his phone – I had to literally extract it from his fingers past 8 pm and it’d be the first thing he asked me for in the morning. ‘Hi Mum, can I have my phone?’ ‘Love you too darling, NO’. Then I discovered that he was using his old ipod as it connected to the internet, so we had to turn the wifi off completely at night.

Sure, it’s a battle, but then so is parenting teenagers – there are strategies parents have to adopt because it’s in their child’s best interests. I spent a lot of time showing Jarrah how the internet worked, about the strategies people used to try to sell you products, to brainwash you and socially construct you. As a consequence, I’ve raised a child that won’t fall for anything – so much so that he hasn’t bought new shoes for 3 years because ‘why do I need them when these ones work just fine?’ and rarely posts on social media because ‘it’s all a load of bullshit, anyway’. And here am I trying to convince him to get on Steemit!

Finding Balance Between A Culture of Comparison and a Culture of Connection

Much research points to how Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other social medias lead to increased feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and poor body image and self esteem. A ‘like’ culture is a system of rewards that affects the dopamine system in the brain (yeah – we know that – how did you feel when you got your first #curie?) and we’re more likely to like those that get more likes. It’s good to be liked. It feels good. It’s a herd mentality – we want to be like the herd because it feels good. Thus, if you’re not getting the likes, how does it make you feel? This isn’t confined to social media – as humans, we are always comparing. Am I good enough? Everything from how we look to our position in society is compared.

Yet on the other hand, these communities are also beneficial – if you’re an introvert or have social anxiety, you can monitor how and when you use the internet and the face you present to the world and still connect to others. Like us, teenagers are hardwired socialising and we can’t deny them this. I remember clutching the telephone to my ears for hours talking to friends because I was lonely and reaching out. Thus, marginalized teens can find support and friendship through social media – consider LGBTQ teens or those with mental health issues. Connecting to other teenagers with similar problems is far more beneficial than being alone, or feeling like you are the only one.

If education and conversation can prevent teenagers feeling like they have to compete or compare (I teach mindfulness to teenagers and feel like that’s the way to realise it’s not really reality, only their discriminating mind that’s creating these feelings) then the use of social media then shifts to the positive – finding similarities and connections between us rather than differences.

Assume that Teenagers are Practicing Adults

We've got to be careful about the stories we tell about 'the youth of today' as well. A quick search of images online and there's two camps - one that bemoan and worry that social media destroys communication skills and one that says that kids still are socialising, but in different ways in a different world. If we help them out on the way, aren't they going to figure it out for themselves in the end? Can't we trust them to figure it out for themselves, just as we figured out this big bad scary world?

It's a nutty problem, and even when I'm writing this, I'm totally getting the psychological damage that tech can do. But I'm looking at the 'youth of today' in my world and they're doing okay with the boundaries and limitations that their parents have set or are setting for them. Smartphones are here - we can't totally control our kids lives despite really worrying about how they'll be affected. They need the freedom to figure out who they are and we need to let them to that.

We can't restrict them entirely, but we can sure as hell do our best to guide them through it.

What do you think? Are you a parent? How do you deal with this tricky world of smartphones and kids?

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