Who Are Your Kids Really Playing With?

There is something about walking into a room where we expect to see our kids "playing together" and instead see them all on their individual devices. Truly playing together seems like a hard concept to pass along to this generation. When I approach these young adolescents, they tell me that they are communicating and that I just can't see it. It's true, they say, that it may not be with the person next to them, but it is with someone. “A person or a bot?” I wonder to myself. It’s painful to say addiction and consumers in the same sentence with the word children.

I remember the days when it was blatantly obvious that we were being marketed to because it came by mail or telephone. Parents could see or hear what was happening and teach the difference between a friend who cares and a "friend" who sells and manipulates. Families have changed over the years and research shows that today’s parents are more likely to be dictated to by their children who get their information from their screens. The advertisers pull in kids while they play in isolation, convincing them they must have something. I meet parents all the time who can't emotionally tolerate saying no to their children as they cry or rage about wanting something they can’t or shouldn’t have. Somehow children have become the consumers and parents find themselves wondering how this role reversal happened.

I remember years ago before I became a Therapeutic and Educational Consultant, listening to parents in my therapeutic practice talk about taking back control and then feeling such pride when they did. In the old days when a child wouldn’t stop slamming their bedroom door, I would suggest something as simple as, Surprise! No more door! It's explicit, to the point, and with no preceding threat, it becomes what we call a natural consequence.

There is no such thing as an app, even an educational one, that doesn’t have advertising, subliminal or otherwise. They’re touted as educational, but educational to whom? I recommend a shift to when parents were the decision-makers. We all need to put aside our phones, take off our watches, shut down our devices, and have dedicated family time when everyone is off their technology.  This can be followed by short, finite blasts of time when everyone can then go back on, instead of the other way around.

Advertisers knowingly and purposefully trigger this addiction and make billions while we lose our future. By modeling behaviors, we take back the idea of parenting within a family unit, not parenting by technology’s algorithms. We must help children of every age find their identity through relationships influenced by the normal evolution of growing through multisensory opportunities, not one-dimensional contact with their devices. Children’s development benefits from cognitively stimulating interactions where failing is part of growing up. Children need to develop an awareness of themselves as a singular identity within their family's sphere. It is more powerful and long-lasting for a child to develop inner strength and resilience than the temporary thrill of engaging with the bot on the screen that plays and disappears.