DEEP DIVE: Emily Cherkin on Tech-Intentional Parenting

0:00Heidi Raykeil:This Monday.com ad was created by a team of people and AI agents. The agents wrote the copy and managed the timelines, while our human creative director made sure it all made sense. Easy. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com. Hello and welcome to What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Margaret and today I am talking to Emily Cherkin. She is a former middle school English teacher and a parent of two. Emily consults with parents and speaks and writes about parenting and screen time to bring her tech intentional approach to as many people as possible. Emily's book, The Screen Time Solution, A Judgment-Free Guide to Becoming a Tech Intentional Family, is an Amazon bestseller and available everywhere books are sold.

0:50Welcome, Emily. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Let's start with the words judgment-free. We try to be a judgment-free podcast. And one of the problems with trying to learn and grow in this space or really how our kids eat, how our kids learn, how our kids spend the summer vacation, it sometimes feels like it's predicated first and foremost on what you're doing wrong. So why was it important for you to address this feeling of judgment-free as part of your title? Great question. I often say that parenting is the judgiest sport I've ever played. Well said. Well said. Yeah.

1:26And I feel like that happens from day one, how you feed, how you diaper, how you sleep, all of those big milestones of parenting. And what I have found is that the second most judgy era of parenting for me has been around the screen time piece. And so I wanted to write and offer services that offered no judgment, or at least as little judgment as possible. I like to think of it as an invitation to reconsider or think about things differently. But I have joked that I need a sandwich board that says, I'm not judging you anytime I meet someone or talk to someone new. Yeah, because it is hard because it is implied with so many of these things like, well, Steve Jobs's kids don't even have screens and you FaceTimed with grandma once and so you stink.

2:15Yeah, your brain's rotten. And it's hard. And I don't want to skip ahead too much. But I think one of the things that I like about how you write about this is it's bigger than you. We always use the example of recycling, right? That like we're scrubbing out our strawberry container, because that's the key to solving the environmental problems, when really these problems are happening on a scale that is so different than what we can control. Yes, agreed. So how does that apply in this area? Yeah. So I think of it kind of like a sunflower, that it doesn't matter what reason brings you to the screen time problem, in quotes, whether it's, you know, you're a pediatrician, or you're a teacher, or you're a parent, or you're even a child, or if you're worried about eye health or physical health, but the center of that, you know, sunflower, so to speak, is children and what's best for children.

3:05And so I think it takes kind of pecking away at all different levels of it. I mean, I am a parent and I was a teacher. So that's sort of the language I speak. But, you know, I think it's very easy. I think the technology industry has found it very beneficial to them to make parents feel responsible for this problem, because that's much easier than them having to change how they do things. And so I think that's where I get angry and feisty about it because I feel like it's not a fair fight. I think parents, I will say to parents all the time, like, look, this isn't your fault per se. I mean, yes, we do give devices, but it's our responsibility to learn so that we better understand what's going on so that we can better support our kids and push back on forces that are much more powerful than we are.

3:54Right, right. Absolutely. And I think seeing myself as a parent reflected in the book that I had my first in what, 2008 now. And I was very concerned. Did you as well? Me too. Yes. So I was very concerned at that time of like, oh, iPads, and that's really the problem. And what I've seen, especially post-COVID, is that screens and education are so interwoven now that the idea that we were in charge of keeping screens out of our kids' lives, which was difficult and challenging and I didn't always do well, is now I have kids who are on a screen eight hours a day because of school. And I was amazed.

4:43I saw a picture of one of my nieces in a college environment where every kid has a laptop open in the class. And I mean, it just makes me realize, is, oh, screens are so different now in terms of they're so foundational to everything we do. And so talk a little bit about how that problem has changed and how we start to deal with screens when they're such an absolute. Yes, that's such a good point. And, you know, the book is really geared towards parents. But for the last six years, my activism has actually been around screens in schools. And I say six years because this was a thing we were worried about pre-COVID.

5:23And, you know, COVID and lockdown and remote learning definitely added fuel to the fire, but it was already growing. I mean, kids were already having. Oh, that's interesting. I feel like I saw it in my house very much post-COVID, but it's also a little bit of that is what age my kids were during COVID. They were heading into middle school. And so I think in elementary school, we were still doing a lot of paper. And then COVID and middle school kind of happened at the same time for me. And then I felt we emerged from COVID like everything is on a laptop screen. Yes, because COVID normalized what was already building.

6:00And schools spent millions of dollars on tech platforms and computers, and they couldn't just walk away. I mean, think about the cost, you know, taxpayers or investors who were like, what? You just spent this many millions and now you're not going to use it. So it was a perfect storm. It was already brewing. COVID just sort of added fuel to the fire in terms of the excessiveness of it. And I think simultaneously, parents kind of got a peek behind the curtain of how much was happening online. I mean, even so we have kids the same age. I joke they were born when Apple products were released because I had my son around the iPhone and my daughter around the iPad.

6:35And, you know, when my son entered kindergarten, he's now 16. The very first day of kindergarten, he came home with a sheet of paper that said he had to learn Control-Alt-Delete so that he could log into the school computer to take standardized testing. And I was like, okay, I don't teach kindergarten. I taught seventh grade, but I'm pretty sure that he can't even write his own name, but I'm supposed to teach him this computer skill to take a test on a computer where he... I mean, it was so bonkers to me that that's where we were starting. And that was in, what, 2013 or something? So it is so much more impactful now.

7:12And you talk about college classes with laptops. Now go to sixth grade. That's what sixth grade is. I mean, my daughter's school has a laptop program. Most schools do or are moving towards or have them, and a one-to-one, which means each kid takes home a device or has a personal device at school. This is happening as young as kindergarten with iPads, you know, in the name of teaching children how to read. And one of my approaches that I write about, but also talk about a lot is I'm not anti-tech. I'm tech intentional. And so, I really believe that there is a place for it in education, in our careers, but we are displacing absolutely important skill building and human development first.

7:55We're pushing those aside in favor of more tech. And we've been sold this message that more tech is better, that it will make our lives easier and convenient. But there's a paradox here because we learn in moments of friction. And so when we make things easier, we stop learning. And as adults, one could say, whatever, you know, Google knows everything I do, everything, you know, whatever, I'm done, I'm already fully baked. But for my kid, that brain is still developing. And so that's where I get pretty angry at the focus on so much tech at the expense of critical developmental skills first. That's right.

8:31Because and I want to kind of hone in on that, because I think it's really interesting. It's not that I do think the future, I know somebody in medical school right now, and talking about how medicine is starting to change because the emphasis in medicine used to be memorizing gigantic amounts of information so that any given patient would walk in and you would say, okay, I know that, that now that's Google-able, right? That you can, you don't necessarily want to watch your doctor Google your symptoms because it would be nerve wracking, but that you do have to adjust to the gift of computers, which is that this information is available, but that if you don't learn the fundamentals of it and you just skip to Google, you're not really a doctor.

9:19You're just a person with Google. And so I think figuring out a lot of what you talk about in the book is that resilience. So let's talk a little bit about the relationship between learning and being able to find information. And it seems sometimes like, well, we can find information. Why don't we just do that? Like, what's the benefit of learning instead of just finding? Yeah. So this is really this idea of information versus knowledge, right? Like it is completely possible for me to Google something and get a quick answer. And sometimes that's great. Sometimes that's really convenient. But there's something in the learning experience where the process of finding out that information, challenging your original thinking, learning how to figure out which sources are credible, Like, how do I know that what I'm reading?

10:06I mean, you're talking about the doctors and I'm thinking, well, AI is going to ruin all of that because AI is now built into Google search. So our doctors might be Googling misinformation about a medical condition, which is terrifying, right? The reality is we need struggle to learn and grow. And one of the things I feel is very contradictory to that, again, is more tech in school in the name of convenience or supporting teachers. And we can talk about that. That's a whole challenge. But children need to struggle. They need to have obstacles, both literal and metaphoric, to become resilient. And this is a really difficult thing for parents because both, I'm guessing, we're in a similar age group and how we were raised in a little bit more of a free-range childhood, right, where we could explore and kind of be independent, shifting to that sort of helicopter parenting style of the 80s and 90s of swooping in and rescuing.

11:00And now what we have are snowplow or lawnmower parents, right? When we go ahead of children and mow away obstacles to keep them from experiencing discomfort, hardship, pain, sadness. And I don't mean this to be callous, but our children need discomfort. Our children need struggle. They need adversity. They need to know what it's like to make a mistake because that is where they learn and grow and sets them up then for future adulthood, right? I mean, we can look at, you know, like Julie Lithcott Haynes' book, How to Raise an Adult. Yes, we will link to her episode. We spoke to her about her book on the podcast.

11:38She's amazing. Yeah. And that was several years ago at this point, right? We're talking like it's even worse now. And I shouldn't say it like it's a problem we can fix and address, but kids are hitting milestones later. We can look at Jean Twenge's research on that too, in terms of developmental milestones. What a 16-year-old was like in our adolescence is very different than what a 16-year-old is like today. Part of that is the pandemic didn't help, but just the overprotectiveness of parents and fear, I think, is the other part of that. The world feels more scary than it did. Part of that's because we're getting older and wiser, but I would argue too, it's because we have 24-7 access to clickbait media, that ups our anxiety.

12:25And then in turn, that impacts how we parent. Yes, yes. We use that touchstone sometimes. Like, how would you feel about this if you didn't have a phone? Like, would you be as dialed into this? And it is, it's a very, very changing world. I want to talk about technology for all ages and stages, because we have parents listening who are all sorts of different ages. And we're going to talk about this kind of year by year, or at at least era by era for childhood. I am talking to Emily Cherkin, the author of The Screen Time Solution, and we'll be right back. Amy, let me tell you about a magical place that is so exactly designed to be enclosed space, year-round fun for the whole family, that I bet you already know what I'm going to say before I even say the name.

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16:41So let's just kind of outline that a little bit for the listeners. And then spoiler alert, we're going to talk a little bit about how the kind of overarching thesis is delaying technology as long as possible, which I missed the boat on. I'm not going to lie a couple of times, but no judgment. Yes. So let's talk about really young kids, people who have toddlers. What are they facing in terms of technology? So it is a different landscape than it was when our kids were toddlers. And again, the normalization of that, we look around and we see a lot of toddlers holding phones and holding iPads and you can buy the kids' cases for iPads now with the handles.

17:24Yeah. And I actually think the easiest way to explain my approach, developmentally speaking, is in what I call my TLDR, too long, don't read. So if you don't want to read the book. In every chapter, there's a little section at the end that's like, okay, I didn't want to read this all, but here are the salient points. Very helpful for busy parents. And if we take my TLDR of my entire book, it is my definition of tech intentional, which is really three things. Less is more, later is better, relationships first. And so any age, this is relevant. So for toddlers, less is more. If you FaceTime with grandma a couple times a week, that's fine.

18:06Because in my opinion, that's using the tool, the technology as a tool to maintain a connection you have with someone you care about. Right? And you get a back and forth. It's still dialogue. It might be face, right? That's still valuable. Are you FaceTiming 24-7 with grandma? No one's ever said they're doing that. So I'm not worried about that, right? Right. Right. And usually the toddler's running off, let's be honest. Exactly. We know toddlers are active and busy and they need that. So again, less is more and later is better. So less is more for toddlers means occasionally, I mean, I always say a little bit of screen time's fine and a lot's too much, which is not helpful.

18:43It's not a number because I get asked that a lot as well. But more important, and the AAP and the WHO have similar but also still vague numbers about total hours. And I appreciate that on one level because I think that if you are too restrictive, too strict, too specific, then parents feel like they've already failed, so why bother? And I would rather have parents focus on what does matter for development at these ages that's going to help your child. So less is more just means any time that is as possible to pick a non-screen option, great. And don't rule out audio. I think there is value, and I don't mean in lieu of reading to your children, but I'm saying if you're trying to get dinner on the table and there's chaos, turn on music, turn on a child-friendly podcast.

19:31There's actually quite a few out there. Something that still can be engaging, but doesn't require sitting, right? Part of the problem with that passive consumption is it's just not moving, right? You're not having these tactile three dimensional experiences. And so when I talk to, I love talking to occupational therapists because they see this clinically. And, you know, I talked to one a couple months ago and she was like, look, I used to work with this sort of toddler to six year old age group on fine motor skills, like, you know, gripping a pencil and that kind of thing. And she's like, I'm not even there.

20:03She's like, I have to teach children how to turn the pages of a book. That's where I am. And I, you know, shocking to me in some ways, because I don't think about that as a skill we have to learn, but it is. And, you know, when you watch a toddler or a teenager, let's be honest, it's all tapping, right? It's like touch tap. Or you watch a toddler, if you ever try to give them a magazine and they try to expand the pictures, they're pinching and pulling because they're trying to get it. Right. And to me, that's actually really a powerful indicator of how quickly children learn. And so I hear a lot, well, my kid needs exposure now so they can figure it out later.

20:42But I will tell you that, first of all, what tech you and I used in elementary school is not the tech we use today. And even engineers and technologists and coding people and all the tech people, they didn't learn all those skills until college or graduate school. You know, sure, they knew how computers worked or they had email or whatever it was. But more important and, you know, full disclosure, my husband works in the tech industry. So I always like to highlight that before I get pushback because it's true. And I mean, I live in Seattle, right? Like it's half the city. And the reality is, you know, he will say, I don't hire an engineer because they're good at whatever.

21:23I don't know what engineers do at tech companies, but you know, engineering stuff. Do their engineering stuff. Yeah. They do their engineering stuff, which I frankly always think of trains, which I know is not what an engineer at a tech company does. That's not what they do, Emily. That is not what they do. No. My husband is also an engineer and I can tell you it's not trains. There you go. Exactly. But he will say to me, he's like, okay, yeah, they need those technical skills. That's maybe 50 % of the interview. And we're talking adults here who've already received college or graduate degrees.

21:50He's like, but can they communicate? Can they look me in the eye? Can they problem solve? Can they manage their time? Can they complete a project within specific instructions? That is the skills building stuff that needs to be developed in childhood. And a lot of that is executive function skills, which if we bump to the next, well, we went toddlers, but if we went to tweens, right, or late childhood, early adolescence, that brain development is massive, what's going on sort of between ages 10 and 14. And we see it as parents, right? Like, you know, it's certainly a perfect storm with puberty and all of the hormone changes as well.

22:27But there's a sort of triangulating effect at that developmental stage too. We've got the brain stuff, we have puberty stuff, and it's also the age at which we give kids devices, their own first personal devices. And that is where it gets really hard for parents because we see them changing, which is normal, right? And I have to remind parents of this all the time. It is normal for your kid to be all of a sudden sassy and roll their eyes and give you scoffing sighs. Yes. Sadly, it is developmentally appropriate. Sadly. It's also necessary. It's part of their differentiation and building of their own identity.

23:03But then when we give them the phones and they start accessing social media and all their social lives move on to this digital tech, it gets very murky about what's causing what and what's influencing what. And so our instinct as parents is to blame the tech. And let me be very clear. I do and I will. But we have to remember, and this is to my third point about relationships. The way we survive tween and teen years is by focusing on our relationship to our child. Yes, we have to talk about tech. Yes, we need clear boundaries. We need to be role models. But we have to have ongoing conversations with our children just to maintain a connection with them so that when problems occur on tech, because they will, they will come to us.

23:50We are the people that they trust, that they know we will help them. And so that to me parents are especially in those years. Well, what parental control should I download? What's too much time? Should I ban these apps? I mean, I just call it digital whack-a-mole because you can ban one thing. They're going to find something else or they're going to access. P.S. You can get tick tock through Pinterest. If parents don't know this, this is what kids are doing. I will say I've talked about it on the podcast many times. I took a hard stand against TikTok. I was like, we're not having TikTok. TikTok is bad in these 800 ways.

24:25It's bad for body image. It's causing like all sorts of problems for kids. I'm not having TikTok. TikTok is in the groundwater now. So it doesn't matter that my kids didn't have TikTok. They get TikTok on YouTube. They get TikTok on Pinterest. They get TikTok. TikTok is everywhere. If your kid has a phone, And they have TikTok, which is so frustrating because I was like, look at me, no TikTok. And then they're like doing this dance. And I'm like, how do you know that TikTok dance? I thought I banned TikTok. Oh, no, it's everywhere. And even if you blocked everything, their friends are showing it to them at school.

25:00Yes, I'm so glad you said this because I get this a lot. These parents who are, again, well-meaning, well-intentioned, clear values. We've done everything right. We've talked about screen time. and their kids are still on TikTok and they can't believe it. And it's, again, not because you haven't done everything right, but because it's in the groundwater or they're getting it on school computers or their kids, you know, their friends on the school bus have it. Like, so it becomes now that's where it is, whether we like it or not, then it becomes the conversation. So, you know, my daughter and her friends will be hanging out at home and a couple of them have phones.

25:33She does not. She has a light phone right now. And we share my phone, which is a whole nother topic. It's fascinating. But I'll walk by and I'll be like, remember, there's creepy people on there. Remember, don't post any pictures about, you know, personal identifying information. And remember, there's porn. And if you see porn, you need to come and talk to me, right? Like, I am annoying them as much as possible because I want them to know I'm watching and listening. And, you know, that's part of parenting a teen and tween anyway, is just being annoying. They already think we are. So we just accept that role.

26:05But we need them to know that we're paying attention. And that is actually, rather than how much screen time is too much and what parental controls do you recommend, the two most important questions to ask as parents is, do I know what my child is doing online? And do I have a good relationship with them? Those are the questions that I want parents to know the answer to. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it's also the idea that you're only kind of line of defense against what is going on and that they're going to be exposed to. I mean, we can hold off on the devices. We can put parental control.