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by
Nir Eyal
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October 28 - November 15, 2021
Parents don’t need to believe tech is evil to help kids manage distraction.
If we are going to help our kids take responsibility for their choices, we need to stop making convenient excuses for them—and for ourselves.
Chapter 30 Understand Their Internal Triggers
Just as the human body requires three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat) to run properly, Ryan and Deci proposed the human psyche needs three things to flourish: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When the body is starved, it elicits hunger pangs; when the psyche is undernourished, it produces anxiety, restlessness, and other symptoms that something is missing.
Without sufficient amounts of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, kids turn to distractions for psychological nourishment.
LESSON 1: KIDS NEED AUTONOMY—VOLITION AND FREEDOM OF CONTROL OVER THEIR CHOICES
Mayan parents “feel very strongly that every child knows best what they want and that goals can be achieved only when a child wants it.”
It may be the case that children give up control of their attention when it’s always managed by an adult.” In other words, kids can become conditioned to lose control of their attention and become highly distractible as a result.
Whenever children enter middle school, whenever they start leaving home-based classrooms and go into the more police-state style of schools, where bells are ringing, detentions are happening, punishment is occurring, they’re learning right then that this is not an intrinsically motivating environment,” he says.
While such a restrictive environment isn’t every American student’s experience, it’s clear why so many struggle to stay motivated in the classroom: their need for autonomy to explore their interests is unfulfilled.
parents who address internet use or screen time with kids in an autonomy-supported way have kids who are more self-regulated with respect to it, so less likely to use screen time for excessive hours,”
LESSON 2: CHILDREN STRIVE FOR COMPETENCE—MASTERY, PROGRESSION, ACHIEVEMENT, AND GROWTH
LESSON 3: THEY SEEK RELATEDNESS—FEELING IMPORTANT TO OTHERS AND THAT OTHERS ARE IMPORTANT TO THEM
Sadly, spontaneous socializing simply isn’t happening as much as it used to.
Long before studies correlated screen time with rising rates of depression, Gray identified a much bigger trend that dated back over sixty years: Since about 1955 . . . children’s free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children’s activities .
Somehow, as a society, we have come to the conclusion that to protect children from danger and to educate them, we must deprive them of the very activity that makes them happiest and place them for ever more hours in settings where they are more or less continually directed and evaluated by adults, settings almost designed to produce anxiety and depression.
Ryan believes many kids aren’t getting enough of the three essential psychological nutrients—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—in their offline lives. Not surprisingly, our kids go looking for substitutes online.
The more you talk with your kids about the costs of too much tech use and the more you make decisions with them, as opposed to for them, the more willing they will be to listen to your guidance.
Knowing what’s really driving their overuse of technology is the first step to helping kids build resilience instead of escaping discomfort through distraction. Once our kids feel understood, they can begin planning how best to spend their time.
Chapter 31 Make Time for Traction Together
When it comes to how we spend time together as a family, the important thing is to define what constitutes traction versus distraction.
Working with our kids to create a values-based schedule can help them make time for their personal health and wellness domain, ensuring ample time for rest, hygiene, exercise, and proper nourishment.
Without a clear plan, many kids are left to make impulsive decisions that often involve digital distraction.
“If the only reason they study is to get you off their backs, what will they do when they get to college or start a job and you’re not around? Maybe they need to know what failure feels like sooner rather than later.”
Empowering children with the autonomy to control their own time is a tremendous gift. Even if they fail from time to time, failure is part of the learning process.
If we want our kids to fulfill their need for relatedness offline, they need time to build face-to-face friendships outside school.
Research studies overwhelmingly support the importance of unstructured playtime on kids’ ability to focus and to develop capacity for social interactions. Given that, unstructured play is arguably their most important extracurricular activity.
scheduling family meals is perhaps the single most important thing parents and kids can do together.
Chapter 32 Help Them with External Triggers
As parents, we often forget that a kid wanting something “really, really badly” is not a good enough reason.
As kids get older, a good test of whether they are ready for a particular device is their ability to understand and use the built-in settings for turning off external triggers.
Though these interruptions seem trivial, any disturbance at the wrong time is a distraction, and we must do our part to help kids use their time as they planned by removing unwanted external triggers.
Chapter 33 Teach Them to Make Their Own Pacts
The most important thing is to involve the child in the conversation and help them set their own rules. When parents impose limits without their kids’ input, they are setting them up to be resentful and incentivizing them to cheat the system.
It’s only when kids can monitor their own behavior that they learn the skills they need to be indistractable—even when their parents aren’t around.
If there is one lesson to take away from this section, and perhaps this entire book, it’s that distraction is a problem like any other. Whether in a large corporation or in a small family, when we discuss our problems openly and in an environment where we feel safe and supported, we can resolve them together.
Part 7 How to Have Indistractable Relationships
Chapter 34 Spread Social Antibodies Among Friends
According to Graham’s theory, people adopted social antibodies to protect themselves, similar to the way our bodies fight back against bacteria and viruses that can harm us.
The remedy for distraction in social situations involves the development of new norms that make it taboo to check one’s phone when in the company of others.
To help keep things cordial, a simple and effective approach is to ask a direct question that can snap the offender out of the phone zone by giving him two simple options: (1) excuse himself to attend to the crisis happening on his device or (2) kindly put away his phone.
Phubbing, a portmanteau of phone and snubbing, means “to ignore (a person or one’s surroundings) when in a social situation by busying oneself with a phone or other mobile device.”
Distraction among friends can take on other forms, including our own children.
“Social antibodies” are ways groups protect themselves from harmful behaviors by making them taboo.
Chapter 35 Be an Indistractable Lover
We implemented a ten-minute rule and promised that if we really wanted to use a device in the evening, we would wait ten minutes before doing so.
Distractions can take a toll on even our most intimate relationships; the cost of being able to connect with anyone in the world is that we might not be fully present with the person physically next to us.
Instant digital connectivity can come at the expense of being fully present with those beside us.
Mark L. Wolraich, David B. Wilson, and J. Wade White, “The Effect of Sugar on Behavior or Cognition in Children: A Meta-analysis,” JAMA 274, no. 20 (November 22, 1995): 1617–21, https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1995.03530200053037.
