Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives (14 page)

Because Asher is so young, I’ve found that it’s more important for my husband and me to set rules for ourselves to make certain that we’re not the ones spending too much time on our phones or laptops. Whenever I catch myself sending a text message or reading a blog post instead of engaging with my son as he’s tugging on my leg and holding out a train or puzzle to play with me, I start thinking about the famous Harry Chapin lyric, “And the cat’s in the cradle with the silver spoon,” where the dad keeps telling his son that soon he’ll stop working, soon he’ll stop being busy, soon they’ll hang out. But by the time he actually gets around to it years later, his son is too busy. I know that one day I’m going to be desperately trying to get Asher’s attention, and he’s going to brush me aside, half paying attention as he buries his face in his phone.

During a recent family trip, as we used Google Maps on my husband’s phone to guide us, I felt weirdly conflicted. On one hand, this technology was essential for navigating. On the other hand, my husband was spending so much time engrossed in his phone I felt like he wasn’t seeing the sights around him or experiencing the adventure. I worried that we were setting a bad example for our son.

Many of my friends complain that at Thanksgiving, the adults are way worse than the teenagers when it comes to checking their phones, texting, and answering e-mails at the dinner table. A recent, terrifying article published in
USA Today
reported that adults text while driving at a higher rate than teenagers. Even though texting has long been thought of as a “teenage” problem, 98 percent of those texting adults admit that they understand how dangerous texting and driving can be. Even scarier, 30 percent of moms text while driving with their babies or young children.

It’s really, really hard when we’re in the moment to remember that our children model their behavior after us and we need to be the ones setting a good example. When that work e-mail is burning a hole in our pockets, or that text message is begging to be answered right away, it’s important to take a long-term approach to tech–life balance. We need to be models for our children and show that actual face-to-face human interaction is still incredibly important and meaningful. More important, we need to demonstrate that safety comes first.

This doesn’t mean never using tech in front of our children. Keeping our kids entirely away from technology is not the right approach either.

Barely a day goes by without there being another sensationalist blog or newspaper column decrying the dangers of technology. This kind of knee-jerk reaction toward technology goes beyond the usual sensationalist media voices. Speaking to the
New York Times
in an October 22, 2011, article, one Google executive expressed his support for banning computers from the classroom. “I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school,” he said. “The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.”

But this viewpoint is based in a reality that no longer exists. As technology is becoming ubiquitous, it’s impossible to keep it out.

First of all, anyone who says that you should never let a young child play with a phone or a tablet has obviously never taken a baby or toddler on an airplane. When you have a screaming child on your lap and you’re about to go on a long plane ride, you start to care a lot less about balance.

I also don’t know what I would do without Skype. When I’m on the road, traveling for work, I live for those few minutes each evening when I can see my husband and son and connect with them face-to-face. It always seems so incredible to me that our kids are growing up in a world where they will think it’s perfectly normal to talk to another person through a computer screen. To me, it still feels a little bit like magic. But our kids are going to grow up completely used to it.

My friend has a two-year-old, and once when they came over to our house, the child saw my computer, pointed at it, and said, “Grandpa!” The boy is so used to Skyping with his grandpa, he thinks his grandfather lives
inside the computer.

Who says technology doesn’t bring your family closer?

But even if it
were
possible to deny our kids access to technology, why should we? When technology is used the right way by children, it makes a positive difference in their lives. This doesn’t mean technology should replace ordinary face-to-face interactions or any number of the critical learning experiences of growing up. Technology provides a powerful supporting role, enhancing those educational and developmental experiences by fostering creativity and intellectual curiosity. New innovations, along with our digitally obsessed culture, will continue to fundamentally alter education and social development. We’re already seeing exciting new companies emerge in the “ed tech” (educational technology) field, and we’ll see many more in the coming years.

Ten years from now, education may look completely different from how it looks today. And that’s a good thing. There is no going back. So, we need to embrace these changes and collectively rethink outdated approaches to education and child development.

The reality is that preventing our children from being able to explore all the great digital resources will set them back as they grow up. No parent wants his or her child to get left behind. We wouldn’t wait until our children were three or four years old to speak to them or let them hear language. So, if technology is the language of the future, why would we wait to introduce our kids to the tools that are going to define virtually every aspect of their lives, their relationships, and their careers?

While the iPad is not a babysitter, it’s also not an enemy. It’s amazing to me that at such a young age my son can already navigate the phone so well, play with apps, and swipe across the screen. If he didn’t know how to do that, and all his classmates did, wouldn’t I be doing him a disservice? The sooner children get their hands on technology and start familiarizing themselves with it, in a responsible and supervised way, the greater their chances of understanding, engaging, and thriving in the world.

After a recent panel discussion I participated in on this topic, I was moved by an e-mail I received from a friend in Phoenix. She included a photograph of her five-year-old foster grandson and asked, “Is this child already behind?” She talked about the parents she sees who aren’t introducing their children to technology early on, because they have less disposable income to spend on tech, because their children spend the majority of the day in day-care centers that don’t have tech, or because the parents simply don’t know or care enough to prioritize having devices in their homes.

She makes an interesting point. While of course my conversations with more privileged families center around the question “Are my kids getting too much technology?” it is more rare, but just as important, for all parents to ask themselves “Are my kids getting
enough
technology?”

Although they do things children with more structured lives don’t have time to do, like play outside with other kids on the block, they don’t do the things that will help them up the ladder higher up in the middle class their parents struggled to enter. In order for these kids to avoid the tribulations their parents had, they are going to have to develop the same [tech] habits [that more privileged kids] have. The iPad and its Android relatives aren’t just things that take kids away from human relationships. In the case of my foster grandchildren, they are problem-solving tutors, teaching them skills they will need to succeed in a world where their parents still struggle to compete.

—Francine Hardaway

Of course, that doesn’t mean that tech should replace normal kid activities. I agree with people who say, “They’re kids! They should get out and play! Just send them out into the backyard with a baseball mitt and a pile of rocks!” For young children, tech–life balance should skew
way
in favor of the life part.

It’s our job as parents to not only be role models, but also help our children find the ideal balance that works for our specific families and situations. As we know from our own lives, tech–life balance is a vital skill for children to learn early on.

We live in the real world. There can be great benefits to teaching our children about different technologies and engaging with them in constructive dialogue about the pros and cons of gadgets or websites. We just need to be as mindful and conscious as possible about our own use of technology. Good digital habits for our children begin with us.

Share Wisely

The first thing we need to pay attention to as parents is how we share online.

When I worked at Facebook, I’d always correct people who assumed, years after the site had launched, that it was still something just for college kids. When we looked at the data, guess who the power users of the site were. Yes, moms. New moms spend an average of two hours
per day
on Facebook. Compare that to the forty minutes per day the average user spends on the site, and you have one wild bunch of moms who love them some sharing.

That’s a whole lot of sonograms, baby photos, stroller tips, and graphic potty-training descriptions. And we’ve all seen it. We all have those friends who feel that no detail about their kids’ lives is too small, or too gross, to share online.

I’ve definitely had times of being an oversharer myself. When I was five months pregnant with my son, I turned to my husband and said, “I’ll never be one of those moms who goes from having her own life to suddenly only posting a million baby photos online. I have my career. I have my own life. I’m too busy for that.”

“Of course you’ll be one of those moms,” he said to me sweetly, “and it’ll be great.”

Sure enough, four months later my Facebook profile was an incessant stream of baby photos, thank-you messages to people who sent adorable Onesies, and the nonsensical ramblings of a person getting only two hours of sleep at a time.

Yet there were also times when sharing proved incredibly helpful. One evening I woke up in the middle of the night feeling extremely ill. I had been having some problems with nursing and knew that mastitis was a possibility. Since it was three in the morning, there was nobody for me to call, and I was sending myself into a freak-out spiral by looking at WebMD. So, where did I turn? To Facebook, of course. And there, I was stunned by the reaction. Dozens of comments poured in offering advice and sympathy. Some tips were extremely helpful, and most important, I felt like I wasn’t alone. My friends were there to help me, support me, and commiserate.

Don’t get me wrong. The chronic oversharers could help us all by toning it down a notch (or ten). But now when I see something from a fellow Facebook mom that crosses the line for me, I try to put myself in that person’s overworked shoes. If oversharing leads to useful advice, a good laugh, or just a sense of connectedness during a difficult moment . . . well, who am I to judge?

We’ve all been in awkward situations. None of us is perfect. Life is chaotic and messy and exciting, all at once. There are so many people who try to paint themselves as “the perfect parent” on Facebook that I’m actually pretty grateful for the honest ones who tell it like it is, even if it isn’t always the most appetizing lunchtime reading.

I’ve actually seen situations where oversharing saved lives. In 2011, Deborah Copaken Kogan, a mom in New York, posted photos of her sick son, Leo, on Facebook. Leo had been diagnosed by doctors with strep throat, and after three days of medication he wasn’t getting any better. One of her Facebook friends saw the post and recognized her son’s swollen face as a sign of a rare and potentially fatal autoimmune disorder called Kawasaki disease, then urged her to take him to the ER. Thanks to that timely intervention from a Facebook friend, Leo was diagnosed in time to get treated and make a full recovery.

But before you post away, there are a few caveats to bear in mind. We need to remember that our children model their behavior after us. We can’t expect to share every single detail of our lives with hundreds of people online and then turn around and lecture our kids when they do exactly the same thing. That makes for a poor tech–life balance and can lead to the posting of potentially damaging content. That’s something we want our kids to be savvy about.

You should also remember that not everyone wants to hear these details. Chronic oversharing might lead to your friends choosing to “dial you down” in their Facebook News Feeds, so they see fewer of your posts. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but it’s something to consider.

Most important, while parents should feel free to post away, they need to remember that overshares can do more than just weird out their friends; they can shape their children’s digital identities for years to come. If you post naked or unflattering photos of your child online that someone else could download or take a screenshot of, you are creating content that could potentially show up in a Google search of your child’s name for the rest of his or her life.

There’s a blog site called STFU, Parents, which catalogs some of the worst examples of parental oversharing on the Internet. This is just one Facebook post a parent made about her kid: “Another first tonight! Lulamonster pooped in the bath! Haha!! I’m just happy that she got all that out before going to bed.”

That’s not just a gross story. A few years from now Lulamonster is going to be really mad at Mom for sharing that and making it part of her online identity without her consent.

Identity begins before our children have a choice. In fact, digital identity begins before birth. From the very beginning, we need to be careful how and what we share on behalf of our kids.

Parents-to-be put a lot of effort into how they are going to announce their pregnancies online. This means our children are going to be able to look back and see not only photos of themselves as babies, but also photos from the moment the rest of the world knew there was going to be a baby.

When I first found out I was pregnant, I couldn’t wait to announce it on Facebook. I spent days crafting the post in my head and imagining all the likes and comments rolling in. As the time to post got closer, I felt stressed. I realized that some of my friends might be offended if they first found out via Facebook. I made Brent sit down with me for hours to work out which of our friends should hear the news in person, over the phone, in an e-mail, or on Facebook. We had an entire matrix-like spreadsheet, which made me glad that my husband had once been an Excel whiz at McKinsey.