The Screenagers Blog

tech talk tuesdays

NBC's Today Show ran a piece this week where 10th grade students at a school in Tumwater, Washington watched Screenagers and then had the chance to do a one-week digital detox and be filmed for TV. Only some kids agreed to do it and the results were unexpected. Watch this with your kids! My kids thought it was really well done.

tech talk tuesdays

When my daughter Tessa, who is in Screenagers, saw the completed film, I was shocked by one of her first reactions. She said, ”I didn't realize so many other kids are dealing with all this rule stuff like we are." Of course, she had been with me over the years as I was making the film, and yet somehow, she did not know how common it is for families to struggle with setting limits. She went on to tell me how rarely any of her friends talked about their rules around screen time.

tech talk tuesdays

With Thanksgiving this week, it is a good time to think about the various practices of “unplugging." To help find times to unplug, a good starting point is to think more about when our kids are not on screens during each day, rather than when they are on screens. From there it's easier to set guidelines around unplugging. I’ve heard about many creative approaches to unplugging:

tech talk tuesdays

I sometimes get questions from kids and parents about whether reading on a Kindle or another device counts as screen time. I am not concerned about reading on a device, what worries me is when you read on a device that has wifi and apps, it makes it hard to concentrate and stay on task.

tech talk tuesdays

Candidates have used screens for good and for evil this election. They've used it to bully as well as to inspire. Talking to your kids about this issue is a great way to open up the conversation about how they define bullying. Talk your teens today about how they, and you, used social media, polling data and other ways to get engaged and informed about the election this year.

tech talk tuesdays

A new meta analysis published in Jama Pediatrics confirmed how portable devices like cellphones and tablets are seriously affecting our children's sleep. Sleep is one of the biggest pediatric public health issues of our time. I hear this firsthand when I ask groups in the post screening discussions "who sleeps with their cellphones their room?" Most hands in the room go up.

tech talk tuesdays

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) just changed its recommendation of screen use for children. They now recommend that children younger than 18 months “avoid digital media use (except video-chatting),” but kids 18 months and older can use digital media. They also say that children 2 to 5 years should limit their time to one hour a day and for youth 5 years and older they now don't really have a recommended cap on screen time.

tech talk tuesdays

This week the American Academy of Pediatrics released new recommendations on screen time. They now recommend that children younger than 18 months “avoid digital media use (except video-chatting),” but kids 18 months and older can use digital media. They also say that children 2 to 5 years should limit their time to one hour a day and for youth 5 years and older they now don't really have a recommended cap on screen time.

tech talk tuesdays

Finstagrams are “private” Instagrams meant only for your closest friends. Many kids just refer to them as their private Instagram account. Here’s the definition from the Urban Dictionary:

tech talk tuesdays

We, as a culture, are not only engaged in screens most of the day, but we are also often using multiple screens at the same time.

tech talk tuesdays

Cyberbullying is a big concern for parents, but how do we define it and do our children see it differently? The definition of bullying from StopBullying.gov is:

tech talk tuesdays

A recent article in the Washington Post about sexting and a podcast called Note to Self got me thinking about the subject. “Sexting” is the exchange of sexually explicit images between minors (17 years or younger) via tech, usually cells phones. A study from 2012 found that roughly 20% of U.S. adolescents between 13 and 19 reported having sent, or posted, a nude or semi-nude photo of themselves, and 28% said they received a sext message intended for someone else.

tech talk tuesdays

My daughter is in 9th grade in a junior high, and my son in the high school, and it seems every year they, and I, are not entirely clear on the rules at school around cellphones. Tessa tells me that one teacher has a zero tolerance policy. On the first day he told them that if he catches them with a phone, he will put it on his desk—In this first week, he has not confiscated one during her class. Another “more chill” (in Tessa’s words) teacher says if you finish your work you can be on your phone. He added that there are “appropriate times to be on your phone and non-appropriate times.” I’m eager to have a Tech Talk Tuesday tonight with my kids about how this is all working...the different rules, their desire to check their phones versus their need to pay attention, etc.

tech talk tuesdays

Screen time and homework can be a real problem. Our children often need screens to do their homework and then are automatically vulnerable to distraction when they need concentration the most. Famous research out of Stanford showed that when people multitask they feel as if they are doing better and better at the different tasks but actually they are doing worse and worse on all of them.

tech talk tuesdays

When I was young I saw the Truffaut film, Small Change, that made me want to be French. I started working at various jobs at 12 and by 16, I was able to pay my way to France for a summer to travel alone. Ok, why am I telling you this? Well, I remember trying to stay connected with people back home in Berkeley and spending a lot of time picking out postcards to send. I remember hoping the postcards would get home before I did—geez, did postcards to take forever back then, and even now they still take so long. I thought this would be a great conversation to have for Tech Talk Tuesday this week. Here are some questions to get the conversation going:

tech talk tuesdays

As summer break nears its final days and I see the fall frenzy of school-and-everything-else schedules coming my way, I am preparing for the transition. Amidst considerations around supplies, extracurriculars, transportation, and meals is of course…managing screen time.

tech talk tuesdays

When we screened Screenagers to employees at Pixar, the organizer Guido Quaroni, V.P. of Software R&D at Pixar (and also the voice Guido in Cars) and I talked about their recruitment efforts. He told me that the hardest people to find for Pixar were good story writers, animators, designers... not programmers. The creatives, however, he said ... "Ahhh, man, that is hard."