I always love to read Ash’s posts, I preordered their book and it should be here today! The reframing helps me so much, every time I read a post by Ash, I have a moment of thinking, “Oh this small shift can make a huge difference.”
In a house of 4 ND people, we love our screens and I spent a lot of time feeling guilty when my kids were little and panicking early in the pandemic when I started letting my youngest watch tv. My oldest didn’t watch screens until he was more like 15 months and I had stopped working when the daycare closed so I stopped feeling like I had the “excuse for screens.” My oldest was 3 and I was just starting to understand dysregulation and executive functioning challenges. We are also one of those families that realized we were all ND during the pandemic! My oldest had been on a wait list to receive in class support in the 3 yo class at preschool in Feb 2020 and of course that didn’t happen.
Now at 6 and nearly 9, I don’t see as much dysregulation from my kids with screens and I don’t worry as much. I still have the guilt piece and it is harder to navigate on family trips where I’m managing expectations of them wanting to feel equal to neurotypical cousins. The Switch drama at the Heydary beach trip was not fun for me- we had 2 switches for 5 cousins, and my boys are used to sharing only with each other. But we can watch a full movie with no issue and I’ve gotten better at the “how will you know when you’re done” question and transitioning out with my oldest kid. And I thought KPop Demon Hunters Movie Night at the beach was delightful!
This was so good, I had to listen to it twice. Obviously I'm ordering the book. I'm so glad you asked the question about neurodivergent kids, and about how one of your kids will naturally time out while the other could go all day on a screen. My kids are the same way.
I was surprised to see no discussion about Content at all, except naming that's something to consider. I'm not going to pretend that all 'educational' videos are actually doing something, but there surely is a difference between watching 5 hours of movies vs an hour of educational, and hour of video games and 3 hours of movies.
Would it require more intervention, and sometimes you just don't have that time? Yes. But maybe screen time while a parent cooks dinner is deemed educational time, screen time after school is video game time and weekends are free time? I don't know. But I also feel like handing over an iPad and saying watch what you want might not be helpful depending on the child and the age.
And as someone who works in retail and sees very young children being wheeled around watching videos so the parent can shop (in my decidedly non essential services department store) it does give me pause. Yes, I don't know that child, how long they've been awake and what other alternatives have been tried. But when you see it everyday, it does make an impression.
It’s so hard to cover everything in a single interview! But we did actually cover that topic in my previous appearance on Burnt Toast (and I dig way into it in chapter 6 in my book) so I encourage you to listen to that episode. (My teaser take: the target audience for educational apps are adults, not kids, since adults are the ones doing the purchasing and downloading. And that has major implications about how the content is designed)
I am so excited to read your book and get expanded content from you! The reframing helps me so, so much. I had a conversation with my kids recently about our emotional regulation toolbox and expanding the tools that help our nervous system get back to calm. My oldest is noticing that reading books is another great regulation tool and my youngest loves to listen to music. We have also noticed tv is often an easier choice than video games or apps at the end of a long day.
Yes, that's why I put 'educational' in quotes, because I'm sure those programs are not as educational as they are promoted to be! And I speak as a parent whose kids were raised on Baby Einstein videos, then CDs. As I said to my husband after we watched our first one: we could have filmed this ourselves! But we didn't and the kids loved it, so.
Ash goes MUCH more into content in the book — it’s one of their three pillars (the ABCs mentioned here). I would absolutely caution judgment about kids watching screens so moms can shop — even if you work in a non-essential services retail outlet. Moms need leisure too and in most heteronormative households it is wildly difficult to come by it. You might be the place many moms choose for a little downtime and the screen is how they achieve it. What if you reframed as “how great we can provide this service and help busy parents get a little break in?”
I understand your point re:screens in stores, and I acknowledged that I don't know about the particular child or situation. But I also think screens are the tip of the iceberg in public situations, and didn't want to go into my full scale observations about what 'parents wanting to enjoy their shopping experience' means in reality for workers in stores. So I'll button up now ;)
I don’t know, I see this from a different perspective. I’m a high school teacher and for years I’ve seen the “teach teenagers self control” or the “learn how to use phones as a tool instead of just banishing them” and it never worked for most students. They cannot put down the phone even when it’s in their interest. And I would rather have them doing anything else (reading of course but also pretending to be asleep! Playing checkers while I’m talking!) then benon their phones.
Also, I think it’s important to talk about the kind of screen time, which you did, but I think it can be even more nuanced. Like, reading substack or Wikipedia is different than watching TikTok and even YouTube to a certain extent. (Right now I’m thinking of those right wing/misogynist/racist rabbit holes that so many young men fall down and then they do bad things.)
Like, the bathtub and grocery store examples: they aren’t designed for you to spend forever in, passively absorb information and only hear people who agree with you. You can see the same logic with playgrounds. Whereas with “the algorithm” that is what it’s designed to do. Maybe a better analogy is slot machines.
P.S. I wrote this all on my phone (!) at work (!!!), so I apologize for any spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Yes and the design aspect came up in the interview as well (as it does in my book). There’s actually a really good parallel to food here that I’ve made before but wish I’d made in this interview for obvious reasons: lots of food- both “ultra processed” as well as intentional breeding like Cosmic Crisp apples- is designed to intentionally be appealing to eat. Some food is designed to make you want to eat more and override your body’s satiety cues. And, we know that banning that food outright, as well as putting kids in total control of their access to it, are not sustainable practices.
Teaching kids digital literacy obviously will have moments where we realize we’ve gone too far: we hand over responsibility and realize they’re not ready for it yet. And that’s a moment to ask “what skill still needs addressing”, take some of the responsibility back from our kids, and address the skill.
And, if I may, teaching digital literacy is something your kids’ school librarians can do (if they are lucky enough to be in a school with certified teacher librarians), so please: support and advocate for school librarians!
I am a school librarian, and I very much appreciate the support for school librarians. However, only four states require kids be taught digital literacy skills K 12, and only four states (but a different four states) require that teachers be taught how to teach digital literacy. Very few states have digital literacy standards, instead they have fluency standards, which are very different things. And I say this as a librarian, who is obviously very tech literate, I did not receive a single class, not even a discussion, about teaching digital literacy skills in my certification to be a librarian.
Education is very behind, they’re still very focused on research skills, and I honestly think that phone bans and tech bans contribute to this siloing because it prevents schools from educating about how digital literacy applies to the technologies that kids use at home because those technologies are off-limits at school. And thus, kids end up seeing“research skills “as academics specific, as opposed to seeing them as skills that apply when they’re writing an essay, but also when they see a claim on TikTok.
You’re a school librarian? I’m a school librarian (or teacher librarian, as we’re called in California)! It’s technically the law that teachers have to teach media literacy and I spend a lot of time and effort begging teachers to let me teach their classes.
It seems like our experiences with phones are very different. In my experience, once a kid has their phone, all bets are off, they are not focusing (much to my chagrin, I can relate).
I am! And California is one of the four states that requires digital literacy so that makes sense! Definitely not required where I am and due to increasing scripted curriculum in core content classes, they can’t fit in time for digital literacy a lot of the time.
“They begin to ask deeper questions: What happens when an entire generation is raised by platforms that profit from our overstimulation, insecurities, and outrage? What happens when our social, political, and emotional education happens through screens designed to keep us scrolling?” -excerpt from a college student Media Studies major.”
My adult kids are ND, one with ADHD and one on the spectrum, so I have the long term perspective of screens. My almost 28 year old autistic daughter figured out the more she’s in a virtual world and the less she’s in the physical world, the worse she feels. She didn’t speak until she was 4. We lived in a tiny apartment without a yard in a large city. We couldn’t afford cable so she’d watch vcr tapes. That sure helps with transitions. The tape is over! We did lots of crafting. Coloring, playing, cutting out images from magazines and catalogs and using a glue stick to make collages. That bag of flour comment was funny from that dude and also he was on the right track. What did kids do before screens when moms made dinner? They were either in the kitchen helping or entertaining themselves. My kids would make playdo food, sit at the table drawing, flip through a where’s Waldo book etc. It’s not a hard binary of either screens or they are in your way. My almost 24 year old ADHD son really struggles with screens. When your life sucks then screens like vodka or pills becomes a great way to escape your life. Screens are not like food/diet culture. We all need food to live. We don’t need vodka or cocaine to live. And if you need to be wasted to cope with life then that’s a problem and not diet culture for needing to quit. Yeah, a cocktail at dinner is fine. I fifth of vodka a day is not fine. I’m in a support group for parents of adults on the spectrum. The kids in question are 30s, 40s, 50s and the ones with the biggest problems live online. It’s a great escape hatch and one that makes it very difficult to leave from. If your kid is online 12 hours a day that’s 12 hours of not actually living your life. You can make a 6 year old go do other things. Once they are 26 you cannot. It is an addiction. You need to look at the long game. You as a parent can have alone time without always defaulting to screens. You need to teach other ways for kids to self soothe and entertain themselves. Do it now in elementary school. Don’t wait until they are adult sized and have adult sized problems to tell them they need to get in the physical world and live. They will have no skills to live in the physical world. All their experience, all their knowledge, will be playing games online or parasocial relationships with online celebrities. It’s a struggle with my son. When he’s in the physical world he’s so much happier. When we note he’s spending 6,7, 8 hours gaming that is when IRL is falling apart. Screens are a powerful tool that some people can’t handle, like booze. When kids are like you need to teach them other ways to entertain themselves. My parents both worked in the 70s and the only time the TV was on during the day was if I was sick. There are books, music, art, crafts, toys…teach your kids to play solitaire with a deck of cards. Teach them simple card games to play with each other. They can draw cartoons and make comic books. It’s not a hard binary of either screens or they are bothering you. There are many other options. And there are many ways to relax and your 4 year old is not going to magically discover other ways to relax and self soothe. You do have to introduce them to those other ways. Otherwise they will be trained to only seek comfort and rest in the virtual world. And yeah that is a problem. I have a friend with a 16 year old son who has been banned by his doctors and school and court and parents from being online (long creepy story) and my old friend told me he was at a total loss. He had zero interests and struggled with how to live in the world unless he was living inside the Internet. They bought him a guitar and she said it’s the happiest he’s been in years. He’s writing songs, listening to his dad’s cds…my son too is better when he’s IRL. I hate the phrase it’s a slippery slope and yet sometimes it’s true. If people are not taught when they are kids how to function without screens they will not magically learn at 14 or 18 or 25 or 35. It’s tough for me at almost 60 to not be on screens too much and I had years of practice living without them. In 20 years how will it be for the toddlers of today. Will it be like Ready Player One? Parents need to show kids how to live offline, like explicitly show them the joys of the world. No limits on screens for some kids = an adult who cannot function. Not all of course but yeah some. How to make sure your kid becomes a functional adult, that’s our main role as parents.
What did kids do before screens when mom made dinner? Televisions have been common in the American home since the 1950s, and before that there was radio. So the social structures and expectations for what children should be doing while Mother is engaged in domestic labor (and even how common it was for Mother to be at home, engaged primarily in homemaking) have changed rather a lot since "before screens." More likely they were engaged in whatever economic activity Mother was engaged in, or one of their own if they were a bit older. They were probably not idyllically flipping through plentiful books, and the goal of parenting was not to lovingly nurture their imaginations.
Yeah, I’m sure kids who live in neighborhoods where that’s safe to do (which is a function of availability of space, traffic conditions, crime/policing rates, nosy-neighbors-who-call-CPS rates, etc), and are old enough to be outside unsupervised, still get that.
Right, I'm not denying privilege. And actually we had a big back yard with lots of play equipment, which was where she was sending us. Again, not denying privilege.
When we were REALLY little, she just dumped us in the playpen. I'm just reporting from the world of ancient history.
The inequity aspect of this conversation is so interesting to think about. That was helpful for me. Thanks for this whole great conversation.
I always love to read Ash’s posts, I preordered their book and it should be here today! The reframing helps me so much, every time I read a post by Ash, I have a moment of thinking, “Oh this small shift can make a huge difference.”
In a house of 4 ND people, we love our screens and I spent a lot of time feeling guilty when my kids were little and panicking early in the pandemic when I started letting my youngest watch tv. My oldest didn’t watch screens until he was more like 15 months and I had stopped working when the daycare closed so I stopped feeling like I had the “excuse for screens.” My oldest was 3 and I was just starting to understand dysregulation and executive functioning challenges. We are also one of those families that realized we were all ND during the pandemic! My oldest had been on a wait list to receive in class support in the 3 yo class at preschool in Feb 2020 and of course that didn’t happen.
Now at 6 and nearly 9, I don’t see as much dysregulation from my kids with screens and I don’t worry as much. I still have the guilt piece and it is harder to navigate on family trips where I’m managing expectations of them wanting to feel equal to neurotypical cousins. The Switch drama at the Heydary beach trip was not fun for me- we had 2 switches for 5 cousins, and my boys are used to sharing only with each other. But we can watch a full movie with no issue and I’ve gotten better at the “how will you know when you’re done” question and transitioning out with my oldest kid. And I thought KPop Demon Hunters Movie Night at the beach was delightful!
Really feel you on the comparison trap! But truly every family has its own culture/needs/challenges with screens.
So many wonderful reframings and things to consider! This episode healed me and I’m not even a parent!
This was so good, I had to listen to it twice. Obviously I'm ordering the book. I'm so glad you asked the question about neurodivergent kids, and about how one of your kids will naturally time out while the other could go all day on a screen. My kids are the same way.
P.S. I don't know how it took me this long to figure out that Ash has a Substack. I couldn't hit that subscribe button fast enough.
I was surprised to see no discussion about Content at all, except naming that's something to consider. I'm not going to pretend that all 'educational' videos are actually doing something, but there surely is a difference between watching 5 hours of movies vs an hour of educational, and hour of video games and 3 hours of movies.
Would it require more intervention, and sometimes you just don't have that time? Yes. But maybe screen time while a parent cooks dinner is deemed educational time, screen time after school is video game time and weekends are free time? I don't know. But I also feel like handing over an iPad and saying watch what you want might not be helpful depending on the child and the age.
And as someone who works in retail and sees very young children being wheeled around watching videos so the parent can shop (in my decidedly non essential services department store) it does give me pause. Yes, I don't know that child, how long they've been awake and what other alternatives have been tried. But when you see it everyday, it does make an impression.
It’s so hard to cover everything in a single interview! But we did actually cover that topic in my previous appearance on Burnt Toast (and I dig way into it in chapter 6 in my book) so I encourage you to listen to that episode. (My teaser take: the target audience for educational apps are adults, not kids, since adults are the ones doing the purchasing and downloading. And that has major implications about how the content is designed)
I am so excited to read your book and get expanded content from you! The reframing helps me so, so much. I had a conversation with my kids recently about our emotional regulation toolbox and expanding the tools that help our nervous system get back to calm. My oldest is noticing that reading books is another great regulation tool and my youngest loves to listen to music. We have also noticed tv is often an easier choice than video games or apps at the end of a long day.
Yes, that's why I put 'educational' in quotes, because I'm sure those programs are not as educational as they are promoted to be! And I speak as a parent whose kids were raised on Baby Einstein videos, then CDs. As I said to my husband after we watched our first one: we could have filmed this ourselves! But we didn't and the kids loved it, so.
Ash goes MUCH more into content in the book — it’s one of their three pillars (the ABCs mentioned here). I would absolutely caution judgment about kids watching screens so moms can shop — even if you work in a non-essential services retail outlet. Moms need leisure too and in most heteronormative households it is wildly difficult to come by it. You might be the place many moms choose for a little downtime and the screen is how they achieve it. What if you reframed as “how great we can provide this service and help busy parents get a little break in?”
I understand your point re:screens in stores, and I acknowledged that I don't know about the particular child or situation. But I also think screens are the tip of the iceberg in public situations, and didn't want to go into my full scale observations about what 'parents wanting to enjoy their shopping experience' means in reality for workers in stores. So I'll button up now ;)
Oh I’m sure they make your job infinitely harder in a thousand ways! Don’t mean to downplay the stress of retail work at all.
I don’t know, I see this from a different perspective. I’m a high school teacher and for years I’ve seen the “teach teenagers self control” or the “learn how to use phones as a tool instead of just banishing them” and it never worked for most students. They cannot put down the phone even when it’s in their interest. And I would rather have them doing anything else (reading of course but also pretending to be asleep! Playing checkers while I’m talking!) then benon their phones.
Also, I think it’s important to talk about the kind of screen time, which you did, but I think it can be even more nuanced. Like, reading substack or Wikipedia is different than watching TikTok and even YouTube to a certain extent. (Right now I’m thinking of those right wing/misogynist/racist rabbit holes that so many young men fall down and then they do bad things.)
Like, the bathtub and grocery store examples: they aren’t designed for you to spend forever in, passively absorb information and only hear people who agree with you. You can see the same logic with playgrounds. Whereas with “the algorithm” that is what it’s designed to do. Maybe a better analogy is slot machines.
P.S. I wrote this all on my phone (!) at work (!!!), so I apologize for any spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Yes and the design aspect came up in the interview as well (as it does in my book). There’s actually a really good parallel to food here that I’ve made before but wish I’d made in this interview for obvious reasons: lots of food- both “ultra processed” as well as intentional breeding like Cosmic Crisp apples- is designed to intentionally be appealing to eat. Some food is designed to make you want to eat more and override your body’s satiety cues. And, we know that banning that food outright, as well as putting kids in total control of their access to it, are not sustainable practices.
Teaching kids digital literacy obviously will have moments where we realize we’ve gone too far: we hand over responsibility and realize they’re not ready for it yet. And that’s a moment to ask “what skill still needs addressing”, take some of the responsibility back from our kids, and address the skill.
And, if I may, teaching digital literacy is something your kids’ school librarians can do (if they are lucky enough to be in a school with certified teacher librarians), so please: support and advocate for school librarians!
(And all librarians obviously)
I am a school librarian, and I very much appreciate the support for school librarians. However, only four states require kids be taught digital literacy skills K 12, and only four states (but a different four states) require that teachers be taught how to teach digital literacy. Very few states have digital literacy standards, instead they have fluency standards, which are very different things. And I say this as a librarian, who is obviously very tech literate, I did not receive a single class, not even a discussion, about teaching digital literacy skills in my certification to be a librarian.
Education is very behind, they’re still very focused on research skills, and I honestly think that phone bans and tech bans contribute to this siloing because it prevents schools from educating about how digital literacy applies to the technologies that kids use at home because those technologies are off-limits at school. And thus, kids end up seeing“research skills “as academics specific, as opposed to seeing them as skills that apply when they’re writing an essay, but also when they see a claim on TikTok.
You’re a school librarian? I’m a school librarian (or teacher librarian, as we’re called in California)! It’s technically the law that teachers have to teach media literacy and I spend a lot of time and effort begging teachers to let me teach their classes.
It seems like our experiences with phones are very different. In my experience, once a kid has their phone, all bets are off, they are not focusing (much to my chagrin, I can relate).
I am! And California is one of the four states that requires digital literacy so that makes sense! Definitely not required where I am and due to increasing scripted curriculum in core content classes, they can’t fit in time for digital literacy a lot of the time.
“They begin to ask deeper questions: What happens when an entire generation is raised by platforms that profit from our overstimulation, insecurities, and outrage? What happens when our social, political, and emotional education happens through screens designed to keep us scrolling?” -excerpt from a college student Media Studies major.”
My adult kids are ND, one with ADHD and one on the spectrum, so I have the long term perspective of screens. My almost 28 year old autistic daughter figured out the more she’s in a virtual world and the less she’s in the physical world, the worse she feels. She didn’t speak until she was 4. We lived in a tiny apartment without a yard in a large city. We couldn’t afford cable so she’d watch vcr tapes. That sure helps with transitions. The tape is over! We did lots of crafting. Coloring, playing, cutting out images from magazines and catalogs and using a glue stick to make collages. That bag of flour comment was funny from that dude and also he was on the right track. What did kids do before screens when moms made dinner? They were either in the kitchen helping or entertaining themselves. My kids would make playdo food, sit at the table drawing, flip through a where’s Waldo book etc. It’s not a hard binary of either screens or they are in your way. My almost 24 year old ADHD son really struggles with screens. When your life sucks then screens like vodka or pills becomes a great way to escape your life. Screens are not like food/diet culture. We all need food to live. We don’t need vodka or cocaine to live. And if you need to be wasted to cope with life then that’s a problem and not diet culture for needing to quit. Yeah, a cocktail at dinner is fine. I fifth of vodka a day is not fine. I’m in a support group for parents of adults on the spectrum. The kids in question are 30s, 40s, 50s and the ones with the biggest problems live online. It’s a great escape hatch and one that makes it very difficult to leave from. If your kid is online 12 hours a day that’s 12 hours of not actually living your life. You can make a 6 year old go do other things. Once they are 26 you cannot. It is an addiction. You need to look at the long game. You as a parent can have alone time without always defaulting to screens. You need to teach other ways for kids to self soothe and entertain themselves. Do it now in elementary school. Don’t wait until they are adult sized and have adult sized problems to tell them they need to get in the physical world and live. They will have no skills to live in the physical world. All their experience, all their knowledge, will be playing games online or parasocial relationships with online celebrities. It’s a struggle with my son. When he’s in the physical world he’s so much happier. When we note he’s spending 6,7, 8 hours gaming that is when IRL is falling apart. Screens are a powerful tool that some people can’t handle, like booze. When kids are like you need to teach them other ways to entertain themselves. My parents both worked in the 70s and the only time the TV was on during the day was if I was sick. There are books, music, art, crafts, toys…teach your kids to play solitaire with a deck of cards. Teach them simple card games to play with each other. They can draw cartoons and make comic books. It’s not a hard binary of either screens or they are bothering you. There are many other options. And there are many ways to relax and your 4 year old is not going to magically discover other ways to relax and self soothe. You do have to introduce them to those other ways. Otherwise they will be trained to only seek comfort and rest in the virtual world. And yeah that is a problem. I have a friend with a 16 year old son who has been banned by his doctors and school and court and parents from being online (long creepy story) and my old friend told me he was at a total loss. He had zero interests and struggled with how to live in the world unless he was living inside the Internet. They bought him a guitar and she said it’s the happiest he’s been in years. He’s writing songs, listening to his dad’s cds…my son too is better when he’s IRL. I hate the phrase it’s a slippery slope and yet sometimes it’s true. If people are not taught when they are kids how to function without screens they will not magically learn at 14 or 18 or 25 or 35. It’s tough for me at almost 60 to not be on screens too much and I had years of practice living without them. In 20 years how will it be for the toddlers of today. Will it be like Ready Player One? Parents need to show kids how to live offline, like explicitly show them the joys of the world. No limits on screens for some kids = an adult who cannot function. Not all of course but yeah some. How to make sure your kid becomes a functional adult, that’s our main role as parents.
So often it’s about our *relationship to something* and not the thing itself
What did kids do before screens when mom made dinner? Televisions have been common in the American home since the 1950s, and before that there was radio. So the social structures and expectations for what children should be doing while Mother is engaged in domestic labor (and even how common it was for Mother to be at home, engaged primarily in homemaking) have changed rather a lot since "before screens." More likely they were engaged in whatever economic activity Mother was engaged in, or one of their own if they were a bit older. They were probably not idyllically flipping through plentiful books, and the goal of parenting was not to lovingly nurture their imaginations.
Mom told us to go outside and play until she was finished cooking dinner.
Yeah, I’m sure kids who live in neighborhoods where that’s safe to do (which is a function of availability of space, traffic conditions, crime/policing rates, nosy-neighbors-who-call-CPS rates, etc), and are old enough to be outside unsupervised, still get that.
Right, I'm not denying privilege. And actually we had a big back yard with lots of play equipment, which was where she was sending us. Again, not denying privilege.
When we were REALLY little, she just dumped us in the playpen. I'm just reporting from the world of ancient history.