Growing Up Social: Raising Relational Kids in a Screen-Driven World

by Gary Chapman

Is technology bringing your family closer together, or is it driving your family farther apart?

The training necessary for growing up social isn’t found on a phone or tablet. There’s no app or video game that can replace interactions with other human beings. Social skills must be practiced in real life, beginning for a child in the home.

Being social isn’t just about making small talk in the cafeteria. It involves showing other people you care through eye contact, conversation, and empathy. The ideal place for a child to learn to be social is in his home, where a loving mother or father can model what healthy relationships look like.

Unfortunately, there is a subtle shift happening in many homes that is profoundly eroding the relationship between parent and child. The average American child and teenager spends fifty-three hours a week with media and technology, far more time in front of screens than interacting with parents or people.1 How is a growing child supposed to learn about getting along with others when the vast majority of her time is spent with a screen?

It doesn’t take much effort to join the digital crowd and entertain your children with what makes them happy (and quiet).

Screens are not the problem; the problem lies in the way we constantly use them. When your child has free time, what’s his default activity? For the average family, free time equals screen time. It’s one experience to gather around the television to watch a DVD with your family. This is intentional screen time that can bring a family closer.

Screens have moved out of the background into the foreground—for adults and for children as well. Pixels instead of people take center stage for the average American family. Children are like wet cement, and nowadays most are being imprinted by screens, not by parents.

there is no difference in the person who intends to do things differently and the one who never thinks about it in the first place. Have you ever considered how often we judge ourselves by our intentions while we judge others by their actions? Yet intention without action is an insult to those who expect the best from you.2

Is technology bringing your family closer together, or is it driving your family farther apart?

“The more a child is involved in screen time, the less time there is for interaction with parents, siblings, and friends.”—DR.

the more a child is involved in screen time, the less time there is for interaction with parents, siblings, and friends.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that parents avoid television viewing and screen time for children under the age of two.1 The AAP believes the negative effects of media use far outweigh the positive ones for this age group. Despite the luminous claims of educational videos and software, little evidence supports educational or developmental benefits from media use by children younger than two years. You’d never know that, based on the glut of electronic educational products geared toward making smart babies and toddlers!

Young children grow by discovering the world.

Young children learn language best when it’s presented by a live person and not on a screen.

A study from 2007 reported that 90 percent of parents allow their children younger than two years to watch some form of electronic media.3

In spite of these negative effects, almost one-third of children have a television in their bedroom by age three.6 It isn’t wise for any child, regardless of age, to have a television in her own room

The average American child age eight to age eighteen spends more than seven hours per day looking at a video game, computer, cellphone, or television.7 By the age of seven, a child born today will have spent one full year of twenty-four-hour days watching screen media.8

The symptoms of video game addiction are similar to those of addictions to alcohol, drugs, or gambling. Video games begin interfering with everyday life. Personal hygiene isn’t practiced. Assignments, chores, and responsibilities are left undone. Family relationships suffer. Nothing is quite as stimulating or rewarding as playing video games.

In their twenties, they remain in a prolonged adolescence that prevents them from going out into the real world to find jobs, to socialize, and to become independent.

High school girls average 4,300 texts a month, while boys trail behind at 2,600 texts a month.10

The AAP recommends that children older than two years old should get no more than two hours a day of screen time.11

Although each family should use personal judgment on the amount of screen time, every family must set clear boundaries. Children always do better if they have clear boundaries. Screen time requires time limits and parameters, or it will take over your child’s free time.

Both lessons are important: to teach children to make decisions and to teach them to live within boundaries.

Fast-forward to today: Technology has given us instant information and entertainment on televisions, personal computers, tablets, and smartphones. We no longer have one television to gather around as a family. The family television of the past is now multiplied in every family member’s pocket, purse, or backpack. And even though television wasn’t necessarily wholesome then, it’s certainly more vulgar, sexual, and violent now.

What factual data is my child learning from this program?

What kind of character traits is this program seeking to build in my child?

How does this program treat family members?

Is this program consistent with our family values?

It is your job as a parent to teach your children the difference between appropriate and inappropriate content. Do not leave this task to a teacher, pastor, or counselor. In the same way you would not allow your child to eat candy bars for dinner each night, you cannot allow your child to consume screen-time junk food. You are the gatekeeper of your child’s mental diet.

Emotions have to do with relationships. They are the responses to what happens in our lives, both pleasant and unpleasant. Children must learn to process emotions, and none of that is learned in front of a screen but by interacting with parents, siblings, and other people in real time, face to face.

A world dominated by screens is a false, controlled world that revolves around pleasing your child. If your child doesn’t like something on a device, he can just move on to the next thing until he finds something of interest. Kids don’t have to learn to wait because gratification is instant.

It’s never too late to start doing what’s healthy.

Instead of learning how to live in the real world of communicating with people and occasionally feeling bored, they are given a screen world for their entertainment pleasure. More and more studies demonstrate the adverse effects of screen time on the brain and your child’s social and emotional development.

In the year 2000, before mobile phones and computer apps were popular, the average person’s attention span was twelve seconds. Since then, our attention span has dropped by 40 percent.1

More and more children are being taught how life works from a screen instead of the real-life classrooms of responsibility, chores, and family relationships.

Technology trains children to find what they need at the speed of light. The art of patience is lost.

Kids know all sorts of things about video games, cartoons, and the latest apps. But they lack instruction about character. Virtues are behaviors that show high moral standards. Responsibility. Compassion. Persistence. Faith. There is no virtue app you can download into your child’s heart and mind. Virtues are taught and caught as children observe and listen to their parents talk about what is right and what is wrong.

skill of affection

Every family needs the ingredient of affection to thrive: eye contact, hugs, appropriate physical touching, and affirming words. Healthy children learn to give and receive proper affection from their family members. Relationships within the home that consist only of a few words and text messages fall short.

skill of appreciation

skill of anger management

Parents do their children a tremendous service when they teach them to recognize the difference between “bad” anger and “good” anger and how to deal with feelings of anger in a positive manner.

skill of apology

Accepting responsibility for one’s words and actions is the first step in learning to apologize.

skill of attention

They are not characteristics some children are born with and some are not. They are learned abilities that seldom happen automatically.

You are the parent in your family. Your child is not in control, not even of the electronic devices in your home. If your children are not interacting with the family in a way you consider healthy, it’s your responsibility to make a change.

The next generation is at great risk of losing the art of personal conversation.

Family mealtime is a perfect opportunity to practice the five A+ skills with your children. Ask questions like: • Who did you enjoy spending time with at school today? What do you like about him or her? • What is something you are thankful for that happened today? • Did anything happen today to make you feel angry or upset? • When was the last time you apologized to someone or someone apologized to you? What happened? • Which subjects in school are the easiest to pay attention to? The most challenging?

Remember to make family meals fun and meaningful. Silence cellphones and turn off the television. As you gather around the table, make it a special time for conversation—not with screens but with each other.