[humanser] Parenting While Plugged In

[Mary Ann Rojek]

June 9, 2010
The Risks of     
By JULIE SCELFO
  WHILE waiting for an elevator at the Fair Oaks Mall near her
home in
Virginia recently, Janice Im, who works in early-childhood
development,
witnessed a troubling incident between a young boy and his
mother.
  The boy, who Ms.  Im estimates was about 2 1/2 years old, made
repeated
attempts to talk to his mother, but she wouldn't look up from her
BlackBerry.  "He's like: 'Mama? Mama? Mama"' was Ms.  Im
recalled.  "And then
he starts tapping her leg.  And she goes: 'Just wait a second.
Just wait
a second."
  Finally, he was so frustrated, Ms.  Im said, that "he goes,
'Ahhh6'" and
tries to bite her leg."
  Much of the concern about cellphones and instant messaging and
Twitter
has been focused on how children who incessantly use the
technology are
affected by it.  But parents' use of such technology -- and its
effect on
their offspring -- is now becoming an equal source of concern to
some
child-development researchers.
Sherry Turkle, director of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Initiative on Technology and Self, has been studying how parental
use of
technology affects children and young adults.  After five years
and 300
interviews, she has found that feelings of hurt, jealousy and
competition are widespread.  Her findings will be published in
"Alone
Together" early next year by Basic Books.
  In her studies, Dr.  Turkle said, "Over and over, kids raised
the same
three examples of feeling hurt and not wanting to show it when
their mom
or dad would be on their devices instead of paying attention to
them: at
meals, during pickup after either school or an extracurricular
activity,
and during sports events."
  Dr.  Turkle said that she recognizes the pressure adults feel
to make
themselves constantly available for work, but added that she
believes
there is a greater force compelling them to keep checking the
screen.
  "There's something that's so engrossing about the kind of
interactions
people do with screens that they wall out the world," she said.
"I've
talked to children who try to get their parents to stop texting
while
driving and they get resistance, 'Oh, just one, just one more
quick one,
honey.' It's like 'one more drink.'"
  Laura Scott Wade, the director of ethics for a national medical
organization in Chicago, said that six months ago her son,
Lincoln, then
3 1/2, got so tired of her promises to get off the computer in
"just one
more minute" that he resorted to the kind of tactic parents
typically
use.
  "He makes me set the timer on the microwave," Ms.  Wade said.
"And when
it dings he'll say, '-Every on1' and he'll say, 'Don't bring your
phone.'
his
  Not all child-development experts think smartphone and laptop
use by
parents is necessarily a bad thing, of course.  Parents have
always had
to divide their attention, and researchers point out that there's
a
difference between quantity and quality when it comes to
conversations
between parents and children.
"It sort of comes back to quality time, and distracted time is
not
high-quality time, whether parents are checking the newspaper or
their
BlackBerry," said Frederick J.  Zimmerman, a professor at the
University
of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health who has
studied how
television can distract parents.  He also noted that smartphones
and
laptops may enable some parents to spend more time at home, which
may,
in turn, result in more, rather than less, quality time overall.
  There is little research on how parents' constant use of such
technology
affects children, but experts say there is no question that
engaged
parenting -- talking and explaining things to children, and
responding to
their questions -- remains the bedrock of early childhood
learning.
  Betty Hart and Todd R.  Risley's landmark 1995 book,
"Meaningful
Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American
Children,"
shows that parents who supply a language-rich environment for
their
children help them develop a wide vocabulary, and that helps them
learn
to read.
  The book connects language use at home with socioeconomic
status.
According to its findings, children in higher socioeconomic homes
he
an average of 2,153 words an hour, whereas those in working-class
households hear only about 1,251; children in the study whose
parents
were on welfare heard an average of 616 words an hour.
  The question is: Will devices like smartphones change that?
Smartphone
users tend to have higher incomes; research from the Nielsen
Company
shows that they are twice as likely to make more than $100,000 a
ye
than the average mobile subscriber.  If increased use of
technology
encroaches on the time that well-to-do families spend
communicating with
their children, some could become the victims of successes
originally
thought to help them.
  Dr.  Hart, who is now professor emeritus at the University of
Kansas Life
Span Institute, said that more research is needed to find out
whether
the constant use of smartphones and other technology is
interfering with
parent-child communications.  But she expressed hope that more
parents
would consider how their use of electronic devices might be
limiting
their ability to meet their children's needs.
  Part of the reason the children in affluent homes she studied
developed
larger vocabularies by the time they were 3 is that "parents are
holding
kids, the kids are on their lap while the parent is reading a
book," Dr.
Hart said.  "It is important for parents to know when they're
talking to
kids, they're transferring affection as well as words.  When you
talk to
people, there's always an implicit message, 'I like you1' or 'I
don't
like you.' his
  Meredith Sinclair, a mother and blogger in Wilmette, Ill., said
she had
no idea how what she calls her "addiction to e-mail and social
media Web
sites" was bothering her children until she established an e-mail
and
Internet ban between 4 and 8 p.m., and her children responded
with glee.
"When I told them, my 12-year-old, Maxwell, was like, 'Yes6'" Ms.
Sinclair said.
  "You can't really do both," she added.  "If I'm at all
connected, it's
too tempting.  I need to make a distinct choice."
  Articles in this series are examining how a deluge of data can
affect
the way people think and behave.
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