Children, Technology and Healthy Development

How to Help Kids be Safe and Thrive Online

Catherine Knibbs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000452884
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

How can adults keep children safe and healthy online now and in the future? How can we thrive alongside technology? This highly accessible book unpacks the latest psychological research, attachment theory and neurobiology to offer parents and professionals insight into how technology impacts children's development and how to navigate our lives online.

Catherine Knibbs shares her extensive experience to reveal what we know about human behaviour in cyberspace, and particularly that of children using devices, consoles and social media platforms. She offers deeper understanding of how and why children engage online and shows parents and professionals how, rather than being overwhelmed by the dangers and pathologies of cyberspace, we can learn to support children in using technology healthily. She covers key topics including social media use and abuse, impact of screen time, issues around gaming and extreme behaviours online. By the end of this book you will be able to understand your child better, and have an understanding of what is happening in their minds, brains and bodies in relation to the technological and digital world.

Children, Technology and Healthy Development is for all parents, and professionals in psychology, education, social care and the police who are concerned with understanding how we support children in an online world. It will also be valuable reading for those in tech design interested in the impact of technology on the developing human.

Section I

The theory of human development in a world of technology

Attachment, trauma and child development in an exponential technological age

1 Attachment and infancy

The foundation of our behaviour and development

DOI: 10.4324/9781003169390-2

Introduction
Technology and children; the developing child in a cyberspace womb?

There are many children who are now forever captured in cyberspace in their ‘scan pictures’, for which they had no say in being shared via social media channels. For example, parents may share the picture of their developing baby online, and in doing so, what would be the ethical implication if it turned out a professional ‘read’ that picture and detected an abnormality in the image that could have an effect on the child’s health in later life? Would the professional be duty-bound to say something? Would the child have agreed or consented to it being shared in this way? I don’t know the answer to either of these questions and some presented here throughout the book, and whose decision, ethics, morals or values is it anyway? Again, this can be an ethical dilemma for some of us and may need much more thought about when/how/why we share pictures in this way. Most cases of sharing these pictures have a simple explanation: these parents want to proudly announce the impending arrival and success of their fertility (because this is what we do in real life). Rather than waiting for the visible bump to be the initiator of that conversation (because that can take months), we tell people, usually appearing like proud, puffed-up peacocks. Pride is a drive for conversation. We are proud of our reproductive skills and often wish to celebrate with our family, village or tribe.

However, we can sometimes forget that not every human can procreate, and through our sharing of our news, this can be terribly difficult for some to see or hear, especially if they have lost children too. It’s certainly not to say that we shouldn’t share our news with our friends, on- and offline. And herein lies an early question for us in this book: if we forget/don’t/won’t consider the implications of our behaviours online as adults because we are excited, proud, angry (or add in any emotions you feel), why would, should or how can a child?

Babies

So perhaps let’s start with newborns. I’m going to invite you to imagine a picture of a baby; this may be one you already know. I’d like to invite you to think about what newborns do? That probably didn’t take long as I’m sure your answer was limited to a small number of bodily functions. However, I’m going to discuss what infants do, and I’ll put these into a small list here as we come back to the important factors for this book.

Babies, immediately after birth, seek the face of a person (although their eyes are not very sharp in perception/focus immediately after birth, and I will cover blind/partially sighted babies in a moment). This face is usually the mother whom the baby is placed with after birth. They can focus (although it is blurry to begin with) at approximately 30 to 40 cm, which is almost the same distance from face to breast, so babies look towards Mum whilst breastfeeding and ‘imprint’ her face and feelings of safety into implicit memory (without words). They feel her heartbeat, feel the warmth of her skin/touch and, more than likely, hear her voice in this space too. This (face-)seeking attachment behaviour is biologically innate (primal) and strong. This survival instinct is so powerful that it does not need any ‘programming’ for it to take place. It looks the same, even with children who are born without sight who react to their mother’s voices and orientate towards their face, with researchers finding that infants who are blind seem to present the same characteristics of attachment (Demir et al., 2014; Fraiberg, 1977; Werth, 1984). It is much more complex than this, obviously, for children without sight; however, I am highlighting the power of attachment here primarily. We have no conscious control over our primal bio-survival circuitry, so we humans follow biology first and foremost. Alongside this process, there is what Porges (2011) calls a neural expectation, which means that as the infant looks towards the mother, there is an expectation that the mother will also look directly back at the infant. When this does not occur, a feeling of stress is encountered, and the infant may well then engage other communication processes, such as making a noise or reacting with their body. To give you an example of this, have you ever smiled at someone and, in return, they scowl or look blankly past you? Did you notice how your body reacted instantaneously and created a feeling or thought of ‘What did I do wrong?’ or ‘Why are they ignoring me?’ and one remark we often can say when we are telling someone else about being ignored is ‘How rude!’ (the ignorer was). This is your nervous system and brain working together in the social engagement system process whereby, by default, there is this ‘expectation’ of the rules of reciprocal communication which we implicitly know: I smile; you smile.

Babies also turn towards certain sounds, such as mum’s voice and changes in their visual periphery (e.g. flashes of light/movement). Babies turn their heads towards these stimuli and away from visuals/sounds that are overstimulating/loud. A new and novel (not-too-loud) noise or light causes the orienting response to be triggered (Marios et al., 1983), and here the baby will look towards the sight/sound, an important fact that we will return to later. However, the regularity of the stimuli (sound) results in what is called habituation. (It loses its novelty.) Therefore, you may have seen doctors clap near newborns to assess whether they can hear.

Like temperature control, babies cannot regulate many of their bodily responses in the first few months, such as shivering, management of their feelings, toileting habits or hunger, and need help do these things. If a noise is frightening and makes the baby jump or if they feel scared, overwhelmed, hungry, wet, cold, warm, irritated, in pain, lonely, fed up, tired and so on, they will communicate this to the people around them. This concept of protesting this uncontrollable feeling means they are requesting regulation. For example, think of a thermostat that controls your heating; babies and many children and young people need you to be their emotional thermostat until they can do this for themselves. This might just be until they are in their 20s. Yes, their 20s! This is called Emotional regulation and is perhaps the most important aspect in terms of attachment and what we will discuss in this book in the how to help sections.

Babies, in general, do not have a regular sleep pattern in the first few weeks or months. They can’t tell the difference between night and day (to begin with). To keep this brief, I explain this is because they have been in an environment for 9 months where it was always dark. Babies’ brains need to learn the difference between light and dark, and the part of the brain that controls this is learning with each day too. This is called the circadian rhythm and is controlled by light passing through the eyes to the light receptors at the back of the eye which then tell the pineal gland in the brain to make a hormone called melatonin, which makes us sleepy when it gets dark (Panda, 2018).

Also, babies can generally only stay awake for small amounts of time before the brain gets fatigued from all the new learning and because of the brain state it operates in (more on this later). The way we consolidate information, memory and learning is through sleep (this will also be important when we get to adolescents and how to help).

Babies learn without words. It has been said that babies are born blank slates, and I don’t personally or professionally agree with this. I do agree, however, that they learn a set of patterns based on what happens in their environment. Babies need to learn about their role and their environment, and to do this they rely on repetitive patterns of behaviours. Their brains are highly open to learning new things every day, and repetition is a way to consolidate this. If they can create an automatic memory of these everyday occurrences called a ‘schema’, this helps them focus on the new stuff, as the brain creates a shortcut to stop focusing on this aspect, like when they learn to crawl or walk. It’s a bit like learning to tie your shoelace; it requires a lot of concentration at the beginning until you know how to do it, and then you don’t concentrate on it at all really.

Babies create an invisible attachment to their caregivers, who are usually Mum and Dad primarily (I use the academic term primary caregiver to mean these people) and then bond with other people such as siblings, grandparents and extended family members. As babies are born, they cannot control their body temperature, crawl or walk within the first few hours like other baby mammals, so they needed to develop other strategies to survive. If you think for a moment, what babies do is very clever and works a treat, and it is not manipulation. It is survival of the cutest/loudest/quietest, whatever works for this child in this family. They have a very loud cry (protest), and they have facial features that make you feel like you want to help, such as big eyes and soft round cheeks. Most babies are adorable, and to their parents, they say they are the most beautiful people on the planet. And they need to be to recruit their parents into caring for them! Evolution is very wise and clever. This is also one of the reasons we find baby animals so cute. It’s an invisible mechanism in our brains that almost magnetically pulls us towards an infant to take care of it. Now maybe the kitten and puppy pictures on the internet make sense as to why we like them so much. And maybe kittens are indeed like the cutest things ever?

This brings me to the type of care an infant receives and the feelings/attachment story (without words) they tell themselves about who they are and who cares for them and makes them feel safe. I know babies can’t speak; however, they are able to understand routines, the people in those routines and the feelings associated with those routines, and these result in what we academics call an attachment style. I will reiterate this part of the book is really important in terms of how I will describe online behaviours so having an understanding of how infants make sense of the world you can see how older children and adults make sense of their world both online and with other people.

For you to understand the differences in attachments styles, I’m going to tell four short stories. These will be slightly exaggerated, so you can understand the differences; however, in my line of work, these are not necessarily untrue events, and children do have/had these experiences. As a cautionary word, I discuss things that may be uncomfortable to read and may jiggle an old memory or feeling for you. This is where I suggest that you read at your pace and, if need be, take that self-care break.

As I have no control over who reads this book, I emphasise the self-care suggestion as readers may be affected by the content within the book. Although it is my intention to educate, I am aware and sensitive to the fact that this content can take you back in time to moments of your past. If this happens, please do what you need to take care of yourself.

Attachment

The following stories talk about lanes of traffic (on a motorway/freeway) with colours denoted to these lanes. This is based on my explanations to children and families in my clinic, where I also created content on my website to reflect these in relation to stress and trauma (Knibbs, 2019). To make this as easy as possible for you to understand, think of a motorway (freeway in the US) that has three lanes. The middle lane is green, and the outer lanes are red and blue, respectively.

Story 1 takes place in the green lane: I’m going to talk about a child who has a picturesque home and parents. They live in Disney-made-up land where everyone has a wonderful home, enough money for food, holidays and there is harmony with their neighbours; they have cats, dogs, horses and plenty of space to roam, and everyone is healthy. In this city lives a family. Let’s call the child Susie and her parents Lola and Joshua.

Susie was a planned pregnancy and one during which Lola was able to take a large amount of maternity leave and could potter around her home getting ready for Susie’s arrival while feeling comfortable and relaxed. Joshua worked hard, and when he came home, he supported Lola, and they decided to have a home birth with the help of a doula. The birth was very calm and serene, and Susie was born without any complications. Susie was placed on Lola’s chest, and they were left to bond for as long as was needed. In this time, Lola and Joshua marvelled with many ooohs and ahhhs at Susie’s arrival, and she was held, cuddled and breastfed when she was ready.

Lola and Joshua understood the developments in brain science and knew that they could help Susie develop by connecting with her at her pace in what’s called an attuned regulation or ‘serve and return’ pattern. They learned facts about Susie’s communication and knew when Susie turned her head away this was Susie’s communication of ‘I’ve had enough of this’, and her parents would respect this fact and wait for Susie’s signal of permission and readiness for them to return to communicating with her. They talked in motherese (like a sing-song voice), sang to her, massaged her and told her how she was loved, wanted and adored even though they knew she may not understand the words but that she would understand the intention behind them. They also picked her up when she cried because they understood that being left alone when crying was detrimental to her emotional regulation skills. They knew if they left her to ‘cry it out’ too often, this would result in something called toxic stress and avoided it where they could, whilst also being compassionate with their selves to know that 100% attuned emotional regulation is not possible for any parent. They attended to her needs and understood that they were the ‘grown-ups’ and that they had to be her regulator of emotions, schedule, temperature and her internal story of “I am safe and secure with my parents”.

Susie was a securely attached infant and she knew this deep down to her core. She felt it and knew her parents were reliable and would help her manage any distress she felt now and in the future. She also knew that she was going to be okay and to be able to manage tolerable distress by herself when it arose and that she could use her parents to help her manage when this became too much to bear. Susie was cared for like this all the way through her childhood. In terms of a phrase that is appearing more and more in health and education Susie would be called resilient. I am going to add that this may be called secure resilient.

Stories 2, 3 and 4 are not so picturesque and perfect, and these are the children ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Section I The theory of human development in a world of technology: attachment, trauma and child development in an exponential technological age
• Section II Gaming: pitfalls, positives and processes: how to help
• Section III Social media: relationships in the palm of your hand: the what, why and how to help
• Glossary
• Index