New York City is on the brink of banning cellphones in schools because too many students are addicted to screen time, and several school districts on Long Island are suing social media companies, accusing kids’ cell phone use of contributing to record levels of mental illness.
But cell phones are damaging us parents, Similarly, the constant connection with our children can spike our own anxiety.
2022 Harvard University Research It was found that 18% of teenagers suffer from anxiety, as do 20% of their mothers and 15% of their fathers.
Of course, parents are always going to worry, that’s basically what the job is.
But until about 15 years ago, we had no choice but to learn to cope.
Today is? The murder rate is lower now. than when many of today’s parents were children in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Child tracking becomes $100 billion marketWe promise peace of mind to parents.
Of course not! Want peace of mind? Get yourself a time machine.
For some reason, long ago when I was in kindergarten, my mom let me walk to school, and even though she knew she needed to call the police, she waited until 3pm to see me.
No text. No tracking.
And so, like many parents at the time, my mother came to trust in me, our neighbors, and even her own parenting — all of which was enough to keep me safe.
Imagine how great that would feel: to trust that everything was going to work out because you had no choice.
The important thing to remember is that trust is like a muscle: To make it stronger, you need to exercise it.
Thanks to the societal norms of the time, my mother’s trust muscle was exercised and grown every day.
Mobile phones stunt that growth.
Instead of getting used to being out of contact for a while, our phones become addictive, making us crave and get reassurance all day long that our kids are OK. Only constant connection keeps us calm.
I am the cessation of development… we As a parent.
In his book The Anxious Generation , Jonathan Haidt explains attachment theory: “Children need at least one adult who is always there for them.”
This adult is their secure base, and their attachment allows them to leave the base and explore.
As soon as the child is old enough to crawl, he rushes off to the dog or toy (or the Ming Dynasty vase) and looks back: “Oh, Mommy’s still there.”
When the dogs bark, they rush back. When they come inside the base, the dogs feel safe. When they go outside, the learning begins. The dogs leave again.
But mobile phones mean that children are less likely to internalize that secure base because: I never have Kids really need to leave — and so do their parents.
I once read a story about a mother who wanted to let her daughter walk alone by a stream, a childhood experience she loved as a young girl, so she gave her a smartwatch, as if the activity was only permitted with the smartwatch.
When a little girl went out on an adventure and the chain came off her bike, she called her father, who rushed over to fix it.
To her, this was a testament to the wisdom of technology. But to me, she was Opposition About her childhood experiences.
The girl never got a chance to solve her problems, and her parents never got a chance to see her succeed. On her own.
And without that feedback, parents don’t have the information to give them a little more freedom.
Another issue is that some mobile devices allow you to monitor your child’s bad behavior.
But this, too, blocks false experiences. Once upon a time, children had the choice to be good or bad and could deal with the consequences themselves, and parents did not have the ability to know or worry about every minute of their children’s lives.
Without the opportunity for real separation, we our Half of the deposition cycle: we Let go, we Afraid, we Let them come back and then let them go again.
Both generations are losing out because technology is restricting us.
I know that most parents use cellular connectivity for convenience, not for control, and most parents feel that it gives their children more freedom, not less.
But the ability to watch, support and reassure from afar removes the need for us to trust our children outside. We trick ourselves into a kind of false freedom.
Today’s technology spares us the pain of truly letting go, but the less we have to trust our children, the less they develop the muscle of trust.
And why more By interacting with children, we more That’s why we feel insecure about them. The opposite of trust, the opposite of believing deeply that our children can do anything, is insecurity.
Lenore Skenazy is Growa nonprofit organization that promotes children’s independence; Free-range children Movement. After Babel Substack.
