Mommy Wars Screen Time Edition: Why The Conversations We're Having About Kids And Tech Are All Wrong

"Screens" — televisions, computers, tablets, and smart phones — have become ever-more dangerous weapons in the "mommy wars". Not only is the approach parents take to the use of technology within their families an excellent way for them to feel superior to those who take a different approach, "screens" themselves frequently provide the battleground where the technology mommy wars are fought. Many of us are much more comfortable saying rather unpleasant things about other people's parenting decisions if they're physically divided from that person by a screen, after all. Bonus points if you're able to tell your little angel to eat their organic carrot sticks before coloring on recycled paper with their bees wax crayons right as you tell another parent they're abusive for letting their brat watch Naruto.

Screens for kids have received a bad reputation. Sitting behind them, articles all over the web and perhaps reports on your local news will tell you, your kids will likely be met by such phenomena as obesity, aggression, dumbing-down, and reduced social skills.

'But Steve Jobs Banned Screens...'

"They haven't used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home," Apple co-founder Steve Jobs famously replied to a question about whether his kids loved the iPad.

You've heard this before, haven't you, with the added note that many Silicone Valley tech execs completely agree with the late Steve Jobs? The message is clear. If they don't even want to subject their own kids to the rubbish that made them rich enough for you to apparently see them as some kind of authority, why should you feed your offspring a steady diet of brain numbing and obesity risk factors?

People like Steve Jobs obviously know all about the damage iPads and other screens can do to children. If they, who make these things, are so against modern tech for kids, shouldn't the rest of us be paying attention?

Yes. Yes, we should.

Back in 2011, the New York Times ran a report on the large number of Silicone Valley tech execs choosing to send their kids to a Waldorf school. Not any old Waldorf school, mind you, but the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, where preschool tuition fees exceed my annual income.

Waldorf is the name given to schools that follow the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. Characterized, outwardly, by their beautiful wool dolls, the aforementioned beeswax crayons, and stories about gnomes and fairies (which, wait for it, Steiner believed were actually real), Waldorf has some funny ideas about technology.

It seems innocent enough on the surface. Read their official materials, and you'll see they simply want to follow the guidelines on screen time set forth by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dig a little deeper, and you get things like this statement written by a Waldorf advocate:

"I personally feel that there can be some value in the very occasional educational program (provided it is genuinely educational and not just marketed as such), but ideally this would be delayed until the child has transitioned from the dreamy physical realm of early childhood and is now awakened into the intellectual realm, as Steiner sees it (around age 7 and up)."

Here, you get just a little glimpse of some of the more wacky ideas Steiner had, and his advocates still have, about childhood development. Waldorf advocates delay teaching reading until a child starts getting adult teeth for similar reasons: a child's true consciousness doesn't really develop until that happens. By the way, you may or may not want to Google what Steiner thought about the true function of the human heart, or why Steiner believed that the traditional Aryan look was an indication of intelligence.

READ TV Screen Has No Educational Benefits for Young Children

If Silicone Valley tech execs ban screen time for their kids because they've been indoctrinated by the rather frightening philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, anthroposophy, I have to say that I'd rather indoctrinate myself with funny cat videos on YouTube instead, and that I'd rather my kids watch an anti-racist video using a screen than be told they can't use black crayons.

***Note: If you're not familiar with the dark depths of the Waldorf philosophy, please consult Rudolf Steiner's books and read about experiences former Waldorf families are sharing before concluding that this article is unnecessarily hateful.***

Unabashedly In Defense Of Screens For Kids

Use that now infamous term "screen time", and you may just picture a morbidly obese child sitting in front of a ginormous TV while chugging down Coca-Cola and eating chips. Six hours a day. Watching rather unintelligent things, perhaps involving killing people. Perhaps even reality TV following 600-lbs people as they undergo bariatric surgery.

Indeed, as Pete Etchells from Bath Spa University in Britain, whose area of expertise is precisely the one we're discussing, pointed out, the very term "screen time" is not all that meaningful:

"Screen time is a really enticing measure because it’s simple – it’s usually described as the number of hours a day using screen-based technology. But it’s completely meaningless. It doesn’t say anything about what you’re using that time for."

Studies may not, in other words, differentiate between different kinds of activities that have nothing more in common than that they're all accessed using some type of "screen". When research does make distinctions, a more interesting picture emerges, a picture that may show that watching TV is associated with a (slightly!) heightened risk of poor behavior, while the same does not hold true for computer games. Just as spending time outside isn't all that beneficial if all you're doing is sitting down eating hamburger after hamburger, screen time shouldn't be condemned out of hand because some people become addicted to first-person shooting games.

The best sound bite I've heard about the topic of children and technology child development in general comes from Heather Kirkorian from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her area of research is cognitive development, and she said:

"The best research suggests that the content children view is the best predictor of cognitive effects. Children will learn from what they watch, whether that means learning letters and numbers, slapstick humor or aggressive behavior."

Let's hear that again: children learn from what they watch. They learn from what they watch, what they see, what they do, what they experience.

READ Don't Ruin Your Sleep - Stop Staring At A Screen Before Bedtime

Remember Dr Sugata Mitra's "hole in the wall" experiment, in which he placed computers in random locations in rural India and watched on in awe as village kids taught themselves how to use the computer and do all manner of things, including learning English on their own? Not only does his research show that computers can be amazing learning tools, it also shows that the human brain is an amazing thing — not something so inflexible and unintelligent that it would be damaged by looking at a "screen".

Let's be clear, here: I don't care whether your kids are using beeswax crayons as you're reading this, while mine are playing Minecraft or emailing friends half-way across the world. I do hope you won't see me as a neglectful parent because I admit that my kids use technology for learning, communication, and fun. Those devices many are now demonizing have given my children a window into a world they'd never have discovered without them, just like they did for you and me before that.