Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 420

 

Here is an excerpt from a book I recently read, "How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes: Science-Based Strategies for Better Parenting--from Tots to Teens," by Melinda Wenner Moyer.

 

At the beginning of her book It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, technology and social media researcher danah boyd (her legal name is uncapitalized) shared what she saw while attending a high school homecoming football game in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2010. All the teens at the game had cell phones, but they were not spending their time engrossed in their devices. Usually, boyd said, when they looked at their phones, it was to briefly share something with people around them. “Although many parents I’ve met lament their children’s obsession with their phones, the teens in Nashville were treating their phones as no more than a glorified camera plus coordination device,” she wrote. 

But some people, she saw, were glued to their devices almost the entire time. The parents. 

According to a 2016 Common Sense Media survey, parents spend more time on screens than their kids do—an average of nearly 9.5 hours a day, with more than 80 percent of that time devoted to personal screen use (not work-related use). And yet, this survey also found that 78 percent of parents think they are good media and technology role models for their children. Ha!