Welland Tribune e-edition

How should we handle screen time?

NAVNEET ALANG CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST NAVNEET ALANG IS A TORONTOBASED FREELANCE CONTRIBUTING TECHNOLOGY COLUMNIST FOR THE STAR. FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER: @NAVALANG

To be a parent in 2021 is to be in a constant battle over screen time. As iPads, hand-held video games and laptops have become a normal part of both entertainment and education, one of the responsibilities of having kids now is curtailing the use of tech.

That tech must be constrained at all speaks to the profound ambivalence around it. Barring extreme cases, most parents wouldn’t mind if their progeny had their noses buried in books for a few hours a day. But despite the fact that tech can, of course, be used for all kinds of positive things, we also have a sneaking sense that too much of it is just not good for us, especially the young.

In some places in the world, that realization is prompting extreme measures. Over the past year, China has instituted a series of policies meant to limit how much young people use tech. As technology journalist Alex Kantrowitz reports, the makers of TikTok have put in new measures to constrain its use, from 40-minute time limits for users who are children, to simply shutting off access to the app from 10 p.m. to 6.a.m. In addition, the state also put in place new bans and limits on video gaming.

That sort of control of course comes from the strict power of the current Chinese government. Not only must the state know who you are to log on, it also has the sort of centralized control necessary to establish rules in the first place.

It seems fair to say that a democratic, free society should not want something similar. Part of freedom entails the freedom to pursue one’s interests if one wishes, even if others consider them harmful.

But if China’s solution is not for us, we are still facing the same problem. And it may be worth thinking about how we mitigate the ill effects of tech without falling into a desire to censor or halt innovation.

That too much tech is bad, however, is more than a feeling. We know, for example, that Instagram use can elicit feelings of inadequacy in young people as they are bombarded with images of the impossibly perfect. TikTok is perhaps even worse in this regard as, rather than just influencers in their 20s posing in swimwear, the app is full of teens just discovering with and grappling with the complexity of their own desires and desirability.

Young children’s brain development can be affected by too-early exposure to screens, particularly because there is at least some research that suggests that, unlike adolescents and adults, they don’t learn well from screens.

For older youth, there are also the problems of exposure to extreme, violent or merely incendiary content. While it’s true that pornography and sex work can provide avenues for curious or even empowered young people, misogynist forms of adult content, for example, can make routine the submission or objectification of women, distorting a healthy view of sex and relationships.

Then there is just the more basic fact of social media and video games: that despite the creative or pleasurable dimensions of those things, they can have an addictive quality to them, and an excess of use can be detrimental. A few hours of video games a week is hardly going to ruin anyone’s life — as I and most people I know are testament to — but a few hours a day is quite a different proposition.

What then do we do short of instituting an excessively draconian, CCP-style regime of rules?

There are a number of steps. The first would be encouraging major digital firms either through threats or cajoling to build in suggestions for limits through design. We are already seeing steps in this direction, like Apple’s attempts to allow limits on the use of certain apps.

The next and more important task would be to think about the use of tech as part of public health. In much the same way that we don’t ban fast food, but do have public health campaigns to make people aware of the risks of excessive consumption, so too could we think of tech as something to be legally protected but socially constrained.

At its root, technology is a way of mediating a relationship to reality. As a medium, it can be incredibly powerful and liberating, and thus we must keep room for intense or novel uses of it.

At the same time, however, it also seems clear that an excess of tech runs the risk of harm, especially for the young. To protect individual freedom but also the health of the body politic, it seems necessary to build a series of public information campaigns — to make as a normal part of child rearing an awareness of the potential harm in tech.

No, we don’t want to emulate the current Chinese administration, but we do want to give people some semblance of control. In the battle against the more insidious aspects of tech, we should bring to bear the weight of society as a whole, lest parents and kids be left to fend off big tech by themselves.

BUSINESS

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2021-11-27T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-27T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://wellandtribune.pressreader.com/article/281930251253237

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