Parents want to cut kids' screen time. Can it work?

0:01So Caitlin, we're going to talk today about kids and their screen time. You and I, we were pregnant at the same time, and we were on maternity leave together. Our daughters are now seven, almost eight, which is really hard to believe. So in our house, our daughter, she has TV access. Sometimes she has access to our phones, though not as often as she would like. But she does not have an iPad. This has been a big point of contention between us and her. I'm curious, how do you handle screens with your kids? Yeah, similar. Our kids, you know, they watch movies. They have TV shows that they watch. They have tablets that are for travel only.

0:45So they do not have access to them at home ever. They literally come out when we're either on a really long car drive or we're getting on an airplane, which makes the long car drives in the airplanes way more doable, I will say. And exciting for them. Yeah, exciting for them because it's not something that they have access to otherwise. So there's that kind of special feeling. But that's how we've handled it so far. Caitlin Gibson writes about families, parenting, and children for The Post. And she has spent a lot of time thinking about a question that many, many other parents struggle with. When or even if to give kids access to things like iPads, tablets, and phones.

1:26There's so much pressure in trying to figure out when is the right moment to let a kid have access to a certain form of digital technology. And I started to notice that there was kind of this, not always explicitly articulated, but ambient sense of, like, once you give them something, the ship has sailed. Like, the genie's out of the bottle, and, like, that is what it is. And then questions emerging, like, well, okay, but what if you give them something, and then it isn't going well? Like their behavior is changing or you realize that, you know, the app that you've been letting them use is actually maybe not safe for them.

2:01How do you claw it back? And like, and what is, is that doable? And how do we do it? And what does it look like for the families who've done that? It felt kind of worthwhile to see if there's a roadmap for that.

2:19From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Kolbie Echowitz. It's Tuesday, November 25th. Today, kids and their screens. Caitlin explains why some parents are choosing to scale back their kids' access to devices and how to navigate the big feelings that may follow.

2:45Caitlin, I am so, so thrilled to have you in the studio today. I am delighted to be here. So, Caitlin, there are screens everywhere. They're absolutely unavoidable in our lives today. Schools use screens for learning. You can order your food in a restaurant off of a screen. Parents are always with their phones. I mean, how big of a problem is it for kids that they have this access to screens kind of all the time? Yeah, I mean, it is an increasingly significant area of concern for parents. I mean, we're seeing in places where parents congregate with one another and are talking about issues that are on their mind, access to screens and technology is rapidly becoming a really significant topic that comes up.

3:30In fact, Pew recently released some data that was showing that in one of the Reddit forums where a lot of parents gather, as much as 18 percent of the posts in there are focused on concern about technology. And researchers have been really delving much more deeply into this issue over the last decade or so too. And now we're starting to see more compelling longitudinal data coming out that's showing us what it means when kids are engaging with screens and with social media on screens from so early in their childhood. And what is that data showing? So one of my favorite sources to talk to on this topic is an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California in San Francisco.

4:14His name is Jason Nagata. And he has deep expertise on this issue and has been studying the impact of screen use and social media use on physical and mental health in children for years. And he has had really fascinating study findings. Some of the ones that really stood out to me and that I've covered over the years have included that when they studied the use of social media in tweens over a three-year period, they found that an increase in social media use predicted a future rise in symptoms of depression. And that's significant because we've known for a long time that there's correlation between social media use and mental health issues, but it was really difficult to tell in which direction that was going.

4:54And so his study was showing that actually kids who were in those tween years. And tween years are what exactly? Like what age range is that? Between ages of 9 and 13. So almost our daughter's age. Yeah, almost our daughter's age. And what he found in that same study was that social media use surged tenfold over those years. So it went from about 7 minutes per day at age 9 to 74 minutes per day by age 13. Oof. Yeah. Beyond that, he's also been looking at the fact that screen use is generally pretty sedentary, and his work has started to show a link between more screen use and future weight gain, higher blood pressure, higher diabetes risk.

5:34So there's like some pretty clear physical issues that can emerge from a disproportionate amount of time spent on screens. And one of his most recent study findings was finding that even a low level of social media use, like just about an hour per day in children under 13 was associated with poor cognitive outcomes just two years later. Wow. And that's social media specifically. That's not all screen use. That's not all screen use. That's right. That's social media specifically. And that is a really important distinction, right? Because like all screen use is not the same. Like screen use can be watching a movie.

6:06And that is a really very different experience from scrolling Instagram if you're 12 years old. Yeah, because I often think about this, you know, growing up in the 80s. Like, I don't know about you, Caitlin, but my TV time was pretty much unlimited. Like, I could watch as much Saved by the Bell as I wanted on any given day. But now my husband and I, we really do try to limit our daughter's screen time day to day. We don't want her just sitting in front of a screen all day long. But I wonder what's changed in the thinking around it from when you and I were growing up to now us raising our children.

6:45Well, I think the options that we had were just not the same. I mean, like you're saying we could watch as much Saved by the Bell as we wanted, but it was like on at a specific time. Right, right. That was even pre, like, TiVo, you know? I mean, we couldn't—we didn't have these things streaming on demand or we could watch unlimited amount uninterrupted. And we—I know that there were video games when we were growing up, but they were like the old school. Like, you know, Carmen Sandiego, Mario Kart. Like, it was not, it's just not the same kind of content. And we surely didn't have iPads and phones, like little computers on a telephone that would let us scroll through anything resembling TikTok.

7:22So just in terms of the volume, the nature of the content itself, the way it is affecting a young developing brain, just that constant activation, the constant pivot from, you know, one short piece of content to another. It's just really kind of not the same. And I think at first people didn't fully understand how different they were in terms of the way it affects children. But again, now that we're a little bit deeper into this, we've had a few generations that have come of age with access to those kinds of screens and social media apps. Now we're starting to get more of a handle on what that does.

8:02And anecdotally, again, just from talking to a lot of parents about this over a number of years, I feel from the conversations I've had that there's a little bit of a pendulum swinging back now. That parents that are kind of in our age cohort, the millennials are pretty concerned about this. And there seems to be more of a push toward, let's really think thoughtfully about this and not just give unfettered access to this. Well, so that brings us to the story that you recently published about all of this and how there are parents that are trying to limit and in some cases like completely eliminate screens.

8:38And you talked to some of those parents. What did they say? What did you learn when you talked to parents who have struggled with screen time limits or have thought about, okay, how do I kind of scale back what I was allowing my kids to watch? Yeah, I talked to a number of families for this story. And something that I really thought was really interesting about all of them is all these parents had noticed that something with their kids and the technology they were using just wasn't working anymore. They had noticed that their child had developed a relationship with this technology that just was not going to feel sustainable for their family.

9:14And one particular example that stood out to me was a mom who had two young children in the pandemic. and she had a two-year-old at the time when she made this decision that they needed to kind of step back. And this two-year-old was really attached to her iPad and to the PBS games that she was playing on there. This mom had put educational games on the iPad, was definitely feeling like it was the best possible content for a two-year-old to have on an iPad. But she had noticed that her little girl was just really did not want to be separated from her iPad. And it kind of came to a head one day where they were trying to get the kids out on a beautiful morning to go to the park, and her toddler was just having an absolute fit and didn't want to go.

9:56And that was the moment where the mom realized, okay, this isn't going to work, and we need to do something different and take this away.

10:08Similarly, there was a dad I was talking to who was using also an iPad to have his kids practice language. So you would think, again, this is like... Yeah, it's educational. Yeah, yeah. He's using it to learn another language. But those apps are kind of gamified, right? And so he noticed that his kids were like, when can I have access to it? Like, when can I play? And like, we're kind of freak out when it was time to put it down and come to dinner. And so he felt like, you know, you can learn another language a different way. You don't need to learn it this way. And I'm putting this away. Mm-hmm.

10:37So the thing that stood out to me, I would say, is that they all noticed something was wrong. And even though I think they could all sense that it was going to be a challenge to take something away from their kids, they were very clear on the fact that they knew their kid. They knew what felt okay to them and what didn't, and that this was not working, and that they needed to do something, so they were going to do something about it.

11:03And the kids, like, did they push back? Like, were they like, did they throw a fit? I'm just trying to imagine what my daughter would say if I was like, you cannot watch your favorite shows anymore. You can't play your math games on my computer or. Yeah. So, and I think this also kind of depends a lot on how old a kid is and what it is you're taking away, right? Yeah. The mom who took the tablet away from her toddler. Yes, there was definitely like a toddler sized fit. But what was interesting there, though, is she was saying that, you know, within a couple of days, the number of requests for the tablet had really dropped off.

11:38So with a younger kid, it might not take as long. Right, they can adapt a little quicker. Yeah, exactly. So then there was a mom who had a teenage boy. And that was trickier because she was telling him, like, you can't have access to your phone. I don't want you playing video games as often. And so there was definitely more resistance there. But she was saying that even with him, when she really kind of stuck to her guns on it, he wound up adapting. He was outside more often. You know, he's playing with friends in three dimensions. The kids do adapt, even if the initial period of adjustment is rough.

12:14Yeah. One thing that stuck out to me in your story, and I could really relate to this, is how screen time rules kind of went out the window during COVID. Oh, yeah. I remember there was a pediatrician even being like, we're all in survival mode. If you need to use screens to get through this time, to get through the day, like there are no rules right now because this is not normal. And it's been hard, I think, for some parents to now walk that back now that we are essentially back to normal. So how do you reestablish a new normal after going through a period like COVID? Yeah. So, and here I'm going to point back to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

12:50actually, their official advice is that families should establish something called a family media plan. And the whole idea of a family media plan is that it is a fluid, adjustable document. It's not like one set of rules that applies forever in perpetuity to every single person in the house. So the whole point is that you do revisit it together as a family when your circumstances change, whether that's, okay, it's not summer vacation anymore. We're all going back to school. So what are our technology needs? Realistically, how do we adjust to account for that? Same thing with the pandemic. If there's an acute, historically extraordinary episode that everyone is navigating together and you're in survival mode, yeah, I think all of us kind of, you know, the screen time rules went out the window.

13:36They sure did in our house. I mean, my daughter was watching Unlimited Sesame Street during the pandemic, and I somehow convinced myself that that was the same as preschool, basically. You know, but when that time ends, especially with kids that are old enough to have a conversation about it, and that might be younger than you think because you can tailor the conversation to an age-appropriate level. But the advice is really to kind of sit down together and say, okay, so we were, you know, in a place where we needed to use screens to get through the day a little bit more than we do now. And now we're going back to a different kind of routine.

14:13So we're going to create some new guidelines and here's what they are. And let's talk about how we feel about all that. Like including the kids in the discussion is a really good way to do it. And with older children, if you're scaling back and you're saying, listen, I've noticed that when you have your phone in your room at night, which incidentally is not recommended, don't let your kid have their phone in their room at night, that's not working for you. That's really disrupting your sleep. Our new rule is going to be that you need to leave the phone downstairs. You can't bring it up into your room.

14:40And here's why. You know, I've been reading about what that means for your brain and your sleep. And my job as your parent is to keep you safe and help you grow up strong and healthy. And so this is why I'm making the decision. I think the advice is often to not have it feel punitive and like invite them into the conversation to explain your reasoning. Come up with rules that also apply to grownups. Kids love that. They love, as you know, they right. They love being the referee of what parents are doing. My daughter will 100 % be like, why is your phone at the dinner table? Oh, 100%. And I love it.

15:13I'll be like, you know what? You're right. Or I'll say, well, I'm on deadline, babe. So yeah. My daughter is always telling me to put my phone away. Right. She's like, mommy, get off your phone. Yeah, yes. But I think actually empowering them to say, this is a rule like when you guys are home in the evening, yeah, your parents, we're going to put our phones away too. And if you see us not go abiding by that rule, you have a right to tell us that we're not, you know, you should remind us too when we're not doing it. One of the other studies that the professor I mentioned earlier, the pediatrician, found that one of the biggest predictors of adolescent screen use is parental screen use.

15:46So beyond us just setting rules for kids, we are constantly modeling something that they are really absorbing. So that's kind of where the family media plan as an evolving, changeable document that we revisit together as a family is a really powerful tool. Yeah, I love that.

16:09After the break, the potential dangers of social media on kids. and what other advice experts offer to parents of young children struggling with screen time. We'll be right back.

16:32Good journalism is even better when it's shared. With a premium subscription to The Washington Post, you get three extra accounts to share with friends and family, so they can stay informed too. Right now, you can get a premium subscription to The Post for$6 every four weeks. Just$6 unlocks trusted reporting to share with other people in your life. After your first six months, it'll cost$19 every four weeks. You can cancel anytime. Head over to WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe and get premium access to The Washington Post today. That's WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe. So one thing I wanted to ask you, Caitlin, is almost a decade ago, you and our colleague Jessica Contrera did this incredible award-winning series called The Screen Age, where you examined what it means for kids who have lived out so much of their lives on social media and screens.

17:27But how has your understanding of screen time changed now that you yourself are a mom versus back then when you first started reporting on it and it was, you know, you were not yet living it? Oh, yeah. Right. I mean, it's such a different experience coming into the reporting when you're in your early 30s and you're not a parent yet. And all of it feels sort of theoretical. And I didn't even feel that much older than some of the kids that we were talking to. too. It's just a wildly different experience. I will say being a parent has been really helpful in that I am now seeing new questions and having new thoughts about it that just would not have been accessible to me when I was a younger reporter looking at this issue.

18:10But also, as I mentioned, in that period of time, we've gotten so much more research and more data about what this means. At the time that we did that project 10 years ago, we were kind of, there was not nearly as much out there that felt conclusive about what does it mean when a kid is growing up kind of performing their childhood on YouTube? Or what does it mean when you have a teenage boy who can't stop playing video games? Those were questions that we were investigating. And now I feel like there's just so much more, there's such a deeper wealth of information about what the risks are and what the consequences are for kids who are immersed in this world.

18:51And one of the things that I think is really interesting, one of the through lines that actually kind of stayed in my mind is I remember when we were doing that project back then, being in a room with a bunch of tweens and teens who are participating in a study and talking about how they felt about their screens. And they were all saying that they didn't even really like it, but they felt like they had to be there because everyone else was there. The, like, FOMO was so real. And that has carried straight through to more recent conversations a decade later with adolescents that I've had and with parents of teens who are all saying the same things.

19:33Which is, I mean, it's fascinating and it can also potentially be liberating because if you realize that it's not even that the kids love it so much, right? It's just that they feel like there's not really a choice. And if that's where socializing is happening, they have to participate. Then now that there, I think, are more kind of pockets of people opting out, it creates more of a choice. So you do start to see, you know, and there's a recent topic that I wrote about was tweens and kids and parents who are doing landlines. Right? Like you have these like landline pods where like a group, a social group, a bunch of friends will decide we're all going to get our kids landlines and they can call each other and set up playdates and hang out whenever they want.

20:18And then we're not going to get them smartphones until they're 16. We're just holding the line on that. You're seeing more of that. It's still definitely not the overarching trend. Right. But that did not exist 10 years ago. No. When we were reporting then. So I think that there are some evolving options now that were not in existence then. And to your point, you know, you talked about some of the studies and data that we have now on the harm of social media. And like as parents, I mean, how do you protect your kids from that? Yeah, I mean, I think that's why there are the general recommendations that are out there from a lot of folks who study this who say that if you can keep your kid away from a smartphone until they're a little bit older, if you can keep them away from social media specifically until they are in, you know, 16 is an age that a lot of people bring up for this.

21:17Like, let's keep them away from social media until 16. even though at 16 you are still young you are still very much a work in progress you are still your brain is still doing a lot of growing and changing and developing that is a wildly different age than 12 and if you've had those four years to engage with friends and build relationships and interpersonal skills and a sense of kind of anchoring and three-dimensional reality outside of screens. I think that does make a big difference in terms of the way that you enter that world and the way that you might be able to keep it in balance with your actual in real life life.

21:59Yeah. So that is something that I've heard a lot of the scientists who study this, the experts out there kind of advise that if you can wait longer, it makes it easier to hold it and a healthy balance for older, like, you know, mid-teenagers, older teenagers once they have access to it. And I do want to say, too, it is complicated and nuanced, the relationship between social media and mental health outcomes. It's really difficult. I mean, there is the one study I mentioned earlier that did show more of a causation, like a lot of social media is linked to the development of depressive symptoms.

22:36But there are other circumstances where that is a little more complex, like especially if you're talking about kids who are in part of marginalized communities, LGBTQ kids who might be living in a community, like a physical community that is maybe not as welcoming. There are times where finding community online can actually be like kind of a lifeline. So it isn't all one thing. It's a great point about the nuance because I do think that's what people struggle with when they think about when to give their kids access to these things because they worry, like, am I putting my child at a disadvantage by not giving them access to, say, an iPad, which is where a lot of learning is now happening.

23:20You know, a lot of, you know, my daughter takes all of her math exams on an iPad at school, but then she doesn't have one at home. So, like, is that putting her at an educational disadvantage? Like, I don't know. is not having access to those online communities when you're feeling like isolated and lost. Is that putting your kid at a disadvantage? It is just so hard to know like where the boundaries are and what is harming versus helping. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's right. I think it is really, it is difficult sometimes to navigate those nuances and also to know that they, a lot of them are not one size fits all.

24:00Right. So it depends on your kid. Is your kid someone who has a really great friend group and isn't necessarily as inclined to become fixated or like compulsive in their use of technology? It might be more okay for that kid to have access to certain things. It just depends on so many different variables. where you live, what kind of community you're a part of, what your child's life is like, who your child is. Are they neurodiverse? Are they neurotypical? There's a lot of different factors that can kind of influence the way that they interact with technology. With the understanding that at the end of the day, we have to just take into account who our kid is and what we think our kid is going to need and what's going to set them up for success.