How to Help Your Child When it Comes to Screen Use

Dr. Michael Rich helps children who struggle with interactive media in their lives. Known as the “Mediatrician,” he is the founding director of the Digital Wellness Lab and the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is also an associate professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, where he cares for young people dealing with developmental issues related to the screens they use. 

In the final part of our 4-part series, I talk with Dr. Rich about the need for media literacy, dealing with social media, sharing online, and artificial intelligence – or AI – in our children’s lives. If you missed the first three installments, go back and read part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Eden Pontz: How important is media literacy in helping young people be less vulnerable to what they see online and on air?

Michael Rich: Media literacy and digital literacy are exceedingly important. But they need to be taught well. Digital literacy is about learning to navigate this environment in ways that maintain the kind of person we want to be. I actually approach the issue of digital life as an environmental health issue. We are surrounded by screens everywhere we go. We have them in our pockets, on our wrists. We are living with screens, so we need to learn to live well with them and in this digital environment. We achieve this by being critical viewers, critical thinkers, and critical creators online.

EP: Is the idea of limiting a young person’s screen time outdated? We know screens are a part of our lives, whether we like them or not. What do you recommend to parents who feel they need to limit their children’s screen time?

MR: As someone who has been involved with the American Academy of Pediatrics for a long time, dating back to the days of television, when we recommended only one to two hours of quality educational screen time a day, I will be the first to say we can no longer measure screen time. We do not use screens the way we did in the era of television, when there were programs that started and ended at certain times, and we could measure it. Also, it was the only screen in our lives. We now have multiple screens in our lives, and we move seamlessly in and out of them all the time.

The whole idea of screen time limits is obsolete. It didn’t even work in the era of television because it created something forbidden that kids would always push to the limit. What we should be doing instead of limiting their screen time is optimizing their non-screen time because that is something we can control. We can say go out and play in the backyard or go hang out with your friends. Leave your phone at home. Let’s spend time together around the dinner table without screens. Let’s practice the original social media — conversation.

Consider what we are doing when we are off-screen as more valuable. Rather than using screens as a default behavior, use them in a conscious, intentional way to do what they do well and put them down when they’re not the best tool for the job.

EP: What are some things you suggest to parents who are dealing with a child who is seemingly attached to their screens, whether it’s social media, gaming, or something else? 

MR: When you look at these interactive media and the screens in our lives, they are now a necessary resource. We need them to study, learn, research, and connect and communicate with people; so let’s think of this as a necessary part of life. What we have found with every one of the kids that we have taken care of is that the driver of problematic interactive media use is psychological, affecting the mind. What we have found is that kids who have truly lost control of their interactive media have one or more of four underlying conditions that are driving this. First is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The second is social anxiety. The third is autism spectrum disorder, and the fourth is depression. In some cases, these conditions were already recognized but undertreated. In other cases, they had gone unnoticed until these problems became clear in the interactive media space. So, we have to take a step back and ask, “Is this an addiction when it’s a necessary use and when it’s driven by psychological means, and when our goal is not self-restraint but self-regulation?” 

One of the things we can help parents with, whether their child is actually struggling with problematic interactive media use or not, is to stop acting as police and start supporting success. One of the real issues that parents face is determining whether their child’s screen and media use is unhealthy or not. They have a hard time separating problematic use from what we call the next normal. Today’s new normal is tomorrow’s old normal, so we must help parents understand how these tools fit into the normative behavior of teenagers in the 21st century. And in what ways is it actually impairing their physical, mental, or social health?

EP: How can parents or adults help kids recognize where to draw the line on what they share online? 

MR: What we all have to recognize for ourselves and help young people recognize is that anything they post online is going to go far, go fast, and it’s going to be sticky, particularly if it’s edgy in some way or another. Edgy content grabs people’s attention in the tsunami of information that’s coming at them online. Kids who are posting online have to recognize that they are building a digital footprint. Back in the days of television, we worried about the effect of what they were seeing and hearing coming at them from a one-way receptive medium. However, they are now using an interactive screen where everything they do, show, or say in gaming, social media, or texting is visible and spreads quickly. Young people are creating a permanent record of themselves at a time when it can be difficult for them to think beyond next week.

They must learn that what they put out there could end up in their college application or employment file. Encourage them to use the “Grandma Rule.” That is, don’t put anything online that you don’t want your grandma to see. Because she can. And our relationship with our grandparents is one where we respect them and hope for unconditional love and respect from them. Our parents, we can mess with, but for our grandparents, we want to be the best versions of ourselves we can be.

EP: What should parents consider when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence, or AI, in their children’s lives?

MR: AI is definitely here to stay. AI is a rapid consolidation of the body of human knowledge. It has remarkable potential, but there are a couple of things we have to learn about AI. First is that it creates patterns that, while they may be factual, lack the kind of warmth and empathy that interacting with a human being has. They also make mistakes and don’t realize when they’ve made them. Kids are smart enough to use AI to write a school paper or create an image. In fact, some kids have created deepfakes with their classmates by middle school. So, these kids are good with the technical piece of it. What they haven’t really grasped is the human implications of this. Those may include things like: Is it plagiarism to ask ChatGPT to write your paper on Hamlet? Or how is it going to affect you and others if you create a deep fake of someone doing something that is not appropriate or healthy in some way? I think we have to move from trying to police our kids from using AI to cheat to understanding that this is a powerful tool. It is a deep search engine that can be used like a Google search on steroids to learn a lot of things, while understanding that all it’s got to delve into is the language that has been fed into it. So, if that language is racist or politically charged in one way or another, or is only part of the knowledge picture, we need to be able to maintain our humanity and, with critical thinking, ask, “Is this really true? Is this really what I want to put out there? Is this my statement, or should I look for something different? Should we look into these algorithms? Is this really the right way to think about it?” 

EP: How can parents help increase their child’s awareness of influencers or manipulation in the media or social media? What are some questions that they should be asking themselves?

MR: There are some basic critical thinking questions that we should be applying to everything we see and hear. First of all, ask, “Who created this message?” We must understand that this is not reality, but a carefully created message. How did they want us to respond to it? But more importantly, what did they exclude from this message? How might other people, of another age, another culture, language, religion, see and hear what I’m seeing and hearing? And ultimately, how does what I am seeing and hearing reflect in relation to my humanity, in other words, does this make sense to me? Is there a counterbalancing perspective – another way of thinking about this? And how do I fit it with all I have learned, felt, and experienced? How do I fit into this reality?

EP: Is it possible as a parent to allow your child to find a healthy balance that includes media and technology and real life? And what are some essential things a parent can do to help ensure this? 

MR: Part of parenting in the 21st century is that we have to parent them in the digital space. So, it’s about being present with them. And just as we teach them another very powerful tool that gives them a lot of freedom and a lot of possibilities, but can harm themselves or others when used unwisely – driving an automobile – when we start them off, we help them learn the rules, and then we finally sit, white knuckled in the front seat next to them.

It is okay to sit next to them as they learn a smartphone for the first time. It’s also okay to keep that dialogue moving forward, recognizing that your child spends approximately half of their waking hours in the digital space as well as in the physical space. We need to help them to recognize that, to accept it, and not blame or shame them so much as to help them learn who they want to be, how they want to represent themselves, and what kind of people they want to interact with in this space, just as they do IRL – in real life.

If you missed the first three parts in this series, you can go back and read part 1, part 2, and part 3. It’s not too late to catch up on other essential things you should know when it comes to dealing with your children and media’s impact on their lives.