Media Moms & Digital Dads

A Fact-Not-Fear Approach to Parenting in the Digital Age

Yalda T Uhls

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351861380
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

Is social media ruining our kids? How much Internet activity is too much? What do FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), sexting, and selfies mean for teens? Are you curious about what research says about how media and technology are affecting childhood? Supported by academic research focused on technology, Media Moms & Digital Dads breaks down complex issues in a friendly, accessible fashion, making it a highly useful and, ultimately, reassuring read for anyone who worries about the impact that media might be having on young minds. Each chapter delves into a different issue related to kids and media so parents can easily find their particular issue of concern. Dr. Uhls ends each chapter with quick takeaways, in the form of tips and guidance for parents. Dr. Uhls' expertise as a former Hollywood film executive and as a current expert on child development and the media gives her a unique and important perspective. As a trained scientist she understands the myriad studies conducted by researchers, and as a mom of digital teens, she knows what actually works and can relate to the reality of being a parent in the 21st century. Dr. Uhls also describes the primary research she conducted at UCLA, including whether extensive screen time impacts non-verbal emotional understanding, which has been covered in the New York Times, Time magazine, and on National Public Radio. There are few more important issues for parents today than helping children safely navigate the digital world in which we live, a world that provides immense opportunity for learning and connecting yet also puts kids in a position to make mistakes and even cause harm. Knowing what the facts are and when and how to get involved is perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of modern parenting. Media Moms & Digital Dads offers parents reassuring and fact-based guidance on how best to manage screens and media for their children.

PART ONE

The Basics

CHAPTER 1

Parenting in the Digital Age

Today’s American teenagers are the most sensitive, least violent, least bullying, least racist, least homophobic, most globally-minded, most compassionate, most environmentally-conscious, least dogmatic, and overall kindest group of young people this country has ever known.

—Elizabeth Gilbert, American author

Recently, my friend Linda pointed me to a Facebook post by the best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) called “In Defense of Teenagers.”¹ She asked if I agreed with the crux of what Gilbert said, encapsulated in the quote above.

Both Linda and I share the joy, and agony, of raising a fifteen-year-old daughter. Living with an adolescent makes it all too easy to judge their generation: the constant texting, the inappropriate social media postings, and the short attention spans. When I was growing up I watched the Brady Bunch; the options today include Gossip Girl and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Sex and violence in media content seem to increase every year. For instance:

• The extremely violent title Call of Duty, rated Not for Kids by the nonprofit Common Sense Media, was the number-one-selling video game title in 2013.² In contrast, in the nineties, the top-selling video game was Tetris, a tile matching puzzle.³

• Advertisements in magazines are more sexual than ever; female body exposure increased more than 50 percent from the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties.⁴

• Between 1992 and 2003, movies rated PG-13 had increasing amounts of violence, sexual content, and profanity.⁵

Perhaps more significantly, children can access adult content more easily than ever. Some details of note:

• Ninety-three percent of boys and 62 percent of girls are exposed to Internet porn in adolescence.⁶

• Grisly news reports are readily available to anyone with an Internet connection. For example, input the word “beheading” into Google videos and 2.75 million choices pop up.

These changes in the media environment represent a sharp contrast from the content those of us who are now parents saw growing up. Given kids’ exposure to increasingly mature content, how could they be in better shape than our cohort? In order to accurately answer Linda’s question, I took a look at national surveys that track teen attitudes and behavior. Below are some of the key indicators.

Drugs, Cigarettes, and Alcohol

Remarkably, teenagers today are more wholesome than those who grew up in years past. Since 1975, an annual assessment of high school students called Monitoring the Future asked a random sampling of twelfth-grade students from across the United States questions about their drug, cigarette, and alcohol use. The study is sponsored by The National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, America’s medical research agency, and is conducted by professors at the University of Michigan. In other words, you can trust this data.

In 1975, more than one in four high school seniors (i.e., 26 percent) reported that they had consumed an illicit drug (excluding marijuana) in the previous year. By 2013, this number dropped by around 35 percent; the number of seniors who had used any illicit drug in the past year had decreased to fewer than one in five. And this wasn’t a one-year anomaly; in fact, in each of the five years between 2009 and 2013, only 17 percent of seniors reported they had used illicit drugs once in the prior twelve months.

Drinking reflects a similar decline, dropping nearly 27 percent in the same time frame. The survey asks students whether they drank any alcohol in the last year. In 1975, 84.8 percent of high school seniors answered affirmatively, and by 2013, 62 percent said the same. Cigarette use is cut almost in half, with 73.6 percent of seniors reporting they had tried smoking in 1975; in 2013, only 38.1 percent of the students had tried smoking a cigarette in their lifetimes (however, it should be noted that recent research is finding a disturbing rise in e-cigarette consumption by teenagers).⁷

Sexual Activity

Today’s youth are sometimes called the hook-up generation. So is it true that they are more sexually active? In order to find out, I looked at the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which began tracking a national sample of high school students in 1991; this incredible data set is housed on the website of the nation’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In 1991, 48.2 percent of tenth grade students had had sexual intercourse; by 2013 the percentage dropped to 41.4 percent. And even though many of us hear horror stories about kids being further sexualized at younger ages (certainly the outfits they wear suggest this), in 1991 twice as many kids (10.2 percent) reported having had sexual intercourse before the age of thirteen than reported the same in 2013 (5.6 percent).⁸

Violence

Given the immediacy and ubiquity of news cycles it frequently feels like the world is becoming more violent. In America, however, crime arrest rates for youth ages ten to twenty-four show a decline from 1995 to 2011; for males the difference was over 50 percent (i.e., from 851 per capita to 423).⁹ Hate crime statistics are also dropping: in 1996 the FBI reported 8,759 incidents, but by 2013 the number had dropped to 5,928.¹⁰

Today’s Kids Are All Right

After I ran through all of these annual surveys and statistics, I firmly agree with Elizabeth Gilbert’s premise that the current generation looks to be in great shape. Youth today are less inclined to drink, smoke cigarettes, do hard drugs, have sex, or commit a crime than previous generations. In addition, the current society is more tolerant: 55 percent support marriage equality, up twenty-seven percentage points since 1996.¹¹. And while pure gender equality is still a pipe dream, we are moving in a positive direction. In a 2012 poll, 97 percent of adults supported a woman working outside the home, even if she did not need to do so for financial reasons; in 1970 only 60 percent approved.¹²

It is natural to worry about our children, especially when they consume popular media content outside our control. However, as you reflect on your parenting rules, remember that the evidence indicates that the majority of our kids are thriving, even amid a sea of change in their media environment.

Bottom Line: Even if children are watching inappropriate content at younger ages, their viewing choices do not appear to affect what they are doing. Remarkably, despite the changes in our media landscape, the behaviors of this cohort of high school students are healthier than ever before.

Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives

Frequently, parents feel overwhelmed by technology. Not only did we grow up in another time, but we also feel like digital foreigners, especially when we compare ourselves to our children. Is it true that children intuitively know how to use new technology just because they grew up with it, while adults are left behind, struggling to learn the new “language”? The terms digital immigrants and digital natives allude to a difference in the ways that each generation tackles technology. These phrases so easily encapsulate what we all feel that when I bring them up in parent education talks, everyone immediately understands the terminology.

In 2001, Marc Prensky, founder of Games2Train and author of the book Digital Game-Based Learning, wrote an essay entitled “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.”¹³ In the article, he argued that technology had fundamentally altered the ways that children learn, and as a result, kids think and process information differently than adults. His suggestion? The educational system must adapt to this generation’s new way of learning, and all digital immigrants, aka teachers, must catch up. To underscore his point, Prensky quoted children saying things like:

“www.hungry.com … Every time I go to school I have to power down.”

“I went to a highly ranked college where all the professors came from MIT … But all they did was read from their textbooks. I quit.”

Prensky’s article caught fire because it played into national concerns that our educational system is failing. Many hoped that technology was the answer. Since the article’s release, books were written about how to teach digital natives; foundations created grants to fuel digital media and learning; and numerous educational institutions worked to incorporate Prensky’s thinking into their pedagogy.

Nevertheless, not everyone was positive and others questioned the evidence. In the years since Prensky published the original paper, research debunked the idea that anyone born in the last twenty-five years automatically uses technology in more advanced ways than those born before them.¹⁴ Nevertheless, I do find that the terms “digital immigrants and natives” are useful jumping-off points to underscore that the Internet can be considered a culture with its own language. Some will adapt quickly, and others will choose not to; diverse engagements with technology are to be expected. Which type of digital citizen will you be?

Demographic Differences in Media Behaviors

I attended UCLA in my twenties (MBA) and again in my forties (PhD); each time, the average age of my classmates was twenty-five. As you might imagine, the experiences were quite different, and the second time around I felt totally out of place. The younger students were steeped in the modern educational system, coming straight from college or research institutions. By contrast, I’d spent the previous years changing diapers, holding hands, and wiping noses.

On the first day of my statistics class, the other students typed away on their computers; their brains seemed to grasp every concept intuitively. I sat frozen, feeling like an imposter in a sea of brilliant scientists. Fortunately, I soon realized that while the younger students had more experience with the software, my knowledge as a former executive and as a mom had value. I was used to working hard, managing multiple streams of information at the same time, and thinking strategically. Within a few months, I had picked up the statistics software program and even mentored a few of the much younger students on how to use it.

These experiences highlight my belief that individual differences underlie many of our media practices. Although adults may be at a disadvantage because we did not spend our formative years using computers and mobile apps, anyone who will put in the effort should be able to pick up the basics.

Internet use and attitudes are complicated even within the same generation. For example, as a mother of two children who are separated in age by just three years, I see a difference in their digital behavior. My daughter, the oldest, prefers paper books; my son will only read on his Kindle. Is this because of when they were born, or are other factors at play? Meanwhil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part One: The Basics
• Part Two: Social Media
• Part Three: Learning
• Epilogue
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author