Please Visit My New Site!

Dear Readers,

Great news! I've enjoyed writing on The Digital Child website about growing up in today's rapidly changing digital world. But I've just launched a new site on the topic—with a new name, a new look and a new mission. It's called Kids Before Screens, and I hope you'll visit it!

Some of the content you've seen on The Digital Child has migrated over to Kids Before Screens—some articles and resources I thought might still be relevant and useful. But everything else there will be brand new, including ongoing reports about all the latest research, studies and news on kids and screens.

Thanks for reading this site, and I hope you'll enjoy reading much more on Kids Before Screens!

Mary Harvey

New Yorker Cartoons on Our Tech Lives Today: A New Roundup

Time to pause for some good old-fashioned tech humor from the brilliant cartoonists at The New Yorker magazine. These fine artists can poke fun at our latest tech obsessions like no one else. Here are a few of my own favorite New Yorker cartoons from the last couple of years—some about children, some about the rest of us, all about life in today's digital world.

By cartoonist Paul Noth, from the November 11, 2013 issue:

(Caption: "And then Winnie the Pooh decided that it was time to check Daddy's email again.")

From the January 20, 2014 issue, by William Haefeli:

(Caption: "I want to make my mark on the world—and have it disappear in ten seconds.")

People will text and drive anywhere. By Drew Panckeri in the April 27, 2015 issue:

Selfie stick! By Will McPhail from April 13, 2015:

(Caption: "O.K., someone, anyone, press the button.")

By Kaamran Hafeez in the May 25, 2015 issue:

(Caption: "You can't list your iPhone as your primary-care physician.")

Kids today, by Bruce Eric Kaplan, from August 4, 2014:

(Caption: "I thought I'd be a successful fashion blogger by now.")

Parents today, by Joe Dator, from August 5, 2013:

(Caption: "My wife is recording everything the kids do until they leave for college. Then I'll binge-watch them grow up.")

By Christopher Weyant, the "Daily Cartoon" on the day the Apple Watch launched:

(Caption: "It's half the size of an iPhone but twice as obnoxious.")

By Shannon Wheeler from August 5, 2013:

(Caption: "Stop fact-checking my story.")

By Benjamin Schwartz, from February 3, 2014:

(Caption: "Come on, men! This is for our kids to live in a free world! And for our grandkids to grow up in a world where they can spend hours a day looking at cats on some sort of fantastic information machine!")

Also by Benjamin Schwartz, from the June 1, 2015 issue:

(Caption: "They're powered by Internet outrage.")

Philosophy, by Bruce Eric Kaplan from September 23, 2013:

(Caption: "If you retweet it and you have '0' followers, was it retweeted?")

By Joe Dator, from January 26 this year:

(Caption: "The National Weather Service is warning these areas to brace for what could be a crippling amount of Instagrammed snow photos.")

Priorities, people. By Drew Dernavich, also from January 26, 2015:

(Caption: "This counts as one wish, by the way.")

Pure genius, from J.C. Duffy in the February 2, 2015 issue:

(Caption: "LinkedIn has finally paid off—it got me two new followers on Twitter.")

Another "Daily Cartoon," from June 30, 2014 by Farley Katz:

(Caption: "Soon the world shall tremble before Web Commenter Man.")

Also by Farley Katz, from the August 25, 2014 issue:

(Caption: "Can we please go back to playing on our phones?)

From March 16, 2015, a kid who's had enough, by Edward Koren:

(Caption: "Please—no technology questions!")

More than 20 years ago, for the July 5, 1993 issue, Paul Steiner penned this famous cartoon...

(Caption: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.")

... and in the February 23 issue this year, Kaamran Hafeez paid homage to Steiner's classic with this update:

(Caption: "Remember when, on the Internet, nobody knew who you were?")

The "Daily Cartoon" by Emily Flake on February 16, 2015:

(Caption: "Here—go make daddy's Fitbit think he's exercising.")

Yikes. From Liam Walsh in the June 9, 2014 issue:

(Caption: "He looks so natural.")

And lastly, this brilliant commentary from Barbara Smaller, from September 9, 2013:

(Caption: "Go out and play? What is this, 1962?")

(Want even more New Yorker tech cartoons? You can find some here.)

Too Much Tech Could Affect Kids' Speech and Hearing, Association Says

Thinking of pacifying your baby with bright, shiny screens? Better think again, says the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). Those mesmerizing screens could be interfering with your baby’s hearing and speaking.

This message is part of ASHA’s effort this month, which is Better Hearing and Speech Month, to raise public awareness about communication disorders and the importance of early intervention.

The effort includes a new public service ad: A baby is heard giggling and cooing in a crib. Soft, tinkling mobile music is playing. But what’s that dangling over the baby’s head? A mobile made out of smartphones, with cartoons shining on their spinning screens.

This simple sentence appears near the end of the 17-second ad (seen below): “Too much tech and too little talk could delay communication development.”

The ad comes at a time when hearing and speech disorders are on the rise among children and adolescents. Speech problems among U.S. children increased dramatically in the decade between 2001 and 2011, rising 63%, according to a new study published in Pediatrics in August. Hearing disorders jumped nearly 16% during the same period.

It also comes at a moment when more and more babies and toddlers are being exposed to increasing amounts of screen time, just as their most rapid period of brain development and language development is taking place.

Many recent studies have reported sobering news when it comes to young children, even babies, and screen time today—particularly time spent looking at mobile devices. A new survey released this month from ASHA is no exception. 

As part of ASHA's Identify the Signs public service campaign, the poll asked 1,000 U.S. parents of kids ages 8 and under about their children’s tech use. More than two-thirds of the parents’ 2-year-olds (68%) use tablets, more than half (59%) use smartphones, and 44% use video game consoles.

Even among 1-year-olds, device use was surprisingly high, with 59% using tablets, 53% using smartphones, and 47% using video consoles. The numbers didn’t even drop too significantly for the under-1-year set.

In a USA Today column titled “Babies Don’t Need Smartphones,” ASHA president Judith L. Page warns that overuse of technology can translate into an underuse of the very things babies and toddlers need to develop their vocabulary and communication skills: Listening, talking, reading and interacting with other real, live human beings.

Page, who is a speech language pathologist, writes, “[When] the consumption of technology eclipses or begins to diminish social interactions with very young children, we have a problem—and a big one. The image of a group of toddlers sitting apart, all engaged in their devices rather than playing together, isn’t some far-off notion.”

An image from ASHA's Identify the Signs public service campaign.

As a society, we’ve become far too used to seeing groups of college-aged students, high school students, and even middle-schoolers sitting amongst each other, completely entranced by their phones, not looking up, not taking in their surroundings, and not talking to one another. But toddlers?

I say this all the time, and Page says it even better: “Anyone who has traveled by subway, walked through an airport or, really, seen people in any public setting knows that adults live in their devices: ear buds in, heads down. The difference, though, is that we grew up without these devices—and that’s an important distinction.”

Yes. Whatever potential risks or pitfalls we might face today when it comes to our own mobile tech use as adults, we did not face these as toddlers—and thank goodness. Even today’s teenagers, who are certainly a pretty “plugged in" group, weren’t swiping mobile screens as babies. I’ve heard parents of teenagers today express relief that their kids didn’t start off in a world filled with apps and online games for babies, that they at least got to experience a few years of growing up before they could carry the Internet around in their pockets.

We are still in “uncharted waters,” as Page writes, when it comes to having real information about what exactly this increased tech use might be doing to such tiny developing brains, including to the development of the ability to communicate.

“However,” Page writes, “we do know that nothing substitutes for human interaction when it comes to speech and language development—not even technology.” (She links to this study on brain mechanisms in early language acquisition.)

“Hearing-wise, technology can do outright damage,” Page continues, “if it is allowed to repeatedly emit unsafe sound levels close to the ear.”

She notes that the World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported that 1.1 billion teenagers and young adults worldwide are at risk of losing their hearing due to the “unsafe use” of audio devices, including smartphones. WHO found that nearly half of 12- to 35-year-olds in middle- and high-income countries are exposing their ears to unsafe levels of sound when they use personal audio devices.

Babies and headphones? Be sure to check the sound levels.

Parents today are definitely concerned about this, the new ASHA poll found: 72% of those surveyed agreed that loud noise from technology might lead to hearing loss in their kids.

And they’re taking precautions: Across parents of all age groups (from birth to age 8), 85% or more monitor the volume level of their kids' devices that have earphones, headphones or ear buds, and more than 80% monitor the length of time their kids spend listening to them—which is all good news.

In general, the ASHA poll found that parents of young kids do allow a good deal of screen time, across the board. Some additional key findings:

• Fifty-five percent of kids 8 and under use technology devices on car trips; 22% use them in restaurants.
• About one in four 2-year-olds (24%) use technology devices at the dinner table. By age 8, this percentage nearly doubles, to 45%.
• Parents of 2-year-olds think 35 minutes a day is an appropriate amount of “tech screen time”—which includes video games, smartphones, tablets and computers, but not TV.
• Two-year-olds spend a mean of 28 minutes per day using earphones, headphones or ear buds. By age 8, this jumps to 67 minutes per day.
• The mean age parents think kids should first be allowed to use smartphones is 8.5 years old. (The mean age for appropriate first use of Internet-enabled tablets is 7.7.)
• By age 8, a majority of kids (58%) would rather have technology present than not present when spending time with a family member or friend.
• Fifty-seven percent of parents of 1-year-olds and 59% of parents of 2-year-olds say they rely on technology to help their children learn “outside of a school setting.”

But parents are also concerned about the misuse and overuse of tech:

• More than three-quarters (77%) agree with the statement “Misuse of today’s technology can be harmful to young children.”
• More than half (55%) voiced concern that misuse of technology might be harming their children’s hearing; 52% said it might be limiting their children’s speech and language skills.
• Fifty-nine percent worry that misuse of technology may cause behavior problems, and 52% worry it may cause academic problems.
• Fifty-five percent worry about using technology too much to keep their children entertained. Thirty-five percent report that they often rely on technology to prevent behavior problems or tantrums by their children. (Among parents of 8-year-olds, nearly half—48%—report doing this.)
• Many (52%) are concerned that technology is negatively impacting the quality of their conversations with their children, and that they are having fewer conversations than they would like because of technology (54% report this).

It’s completely understandable today that conversations with kids might be suffering due to so much time spent on screens—by parents and kids alike. As parents today, we own more screens than any generation of parents who came before us could have ever even imagined. The more they become an important part of our own daily lives, the easier it becomes to hand them over to our children—or, I should say, the harder it becomes not to.

It makes sense that today’s children—even our very littlest ones—have more exposure to screens than children ever have before. 

But that doesn’t mean we have to accept it.

We can serve our children best by remembering what ASHA president Page stresses to us: That there is no substitute for helping young children develop communication skills through real, organic conversations. That the less time babies and toddlers spend conversing, the less opportunity they have to develop strong speech and language skills. 

And that it’s talking and reading together—not swiping and gaping at screens, alone—that will build the communication skills our kids will need and use for a lifetime.

10 Reasons to Keep My 3-Year-Old Screen-Free This Week, and Every Week

This is a week of worldwide unplugging—a much-needed break for some at a time when the average smartphone user picks up his or her device 1,500 times a week.

Screen-Free Week, an annual international event sponsored by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, kicked off Monday and runs through Sunday, May 10. Begun in 1994 as “TV Turnoff Week,” Screen-Free Week today encourages adults and children alike to power down all devices, recharge, and reconnect to the vast offline world. (Note that the focus is on unplugging from all forms of digital entertainment; using screens for work or homework is forgiven.)

There’s a lot of talk these days about “unplugging.” There’s a National Day of Unplugging, held each March for the past six years. There are entire blogs devoted to unplugging and living a less distracted life. There are even retreats for unplugging and an “unplug” hashtag.

And it’s no wonder. The average mobile user spends almost three hours a day on mobile devices, according to a recent study by the research group Flurry. Pew Research Center reported last month that 46% of smartphone users say their device is something they “couldn’t live without.”

The Web is particularly filled these days with advice columns, blog posts and tip sheets on how to unplug your children and limit their screen time, such as this from the Mayo Clinic, this from an Internet addiction specialist, and this, which digs into some neuroscience and explains how those little hits of dopamine keep us endlessly reaching for our phones.

This wave of advice is only natural at a time when more kids than ever seem glued to smartphones and tablets. It’s not your imagination: More than six in 10 kids aged 12 and under owned their own Internet-enabled mobile devices in 2014, according to a report by Ipsos MediaCT—a 250% increase since 2011. In 2014, parents were “significantly more willing to pay for online content for their children” compared just to 2013, according to the report.

And today's mobile users are getting younger by the year. Last year, Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, released its second large-scale study in two years on children and media use in the U.S. It found that the percent of children ages 8 and younger who had used a mobile device nearly doubled between 2011 and 2013, from 38% to 72%.

Among children under 2 years old, 38% had used a mobile device in 2013, up from just 10% in 2011, according to the study. In just these two short years, there was a five-fold increase in tablet ownership among families with kids ages 8 and younger, up from 8% of all families in 2011 to 40% in 2013.

Even babies as young as 6 months old are now tapping away on smartphones. In a study by pediatric researchers presented last month, more than a third of parents said their baby had “touched or scrolled a screen” before turning one. Fifty-two percent said their baby had watched television on a mobile device.

“We didn’t expect children were using the devices from the age of six months,” said the study’s author, Dr. Hilda Kabali of the Einstein Healthcare Network. “Some children were on the screen for as long as 30 minutes.”

This study, which polled parents of young children in an urban, low-income community, found that a majority of kids were using smartphones or tablets by the time they reached age 2. Fourteen percent of one-year-olds were using a mobile device at least one hour a day. By age 2 this number jumped to 26% percent, and by age 4 to 38%.

Many parents know by heart the most recent guidelines on screen time and children from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP): No screen time for any child under 2, and no more than one to two hours for older children. But clearly these guidelines are not meshing with much of today’s reality.

The Common Sense Media study, titled “Zero to Eight: Children's Media Use in America, 2013,” found that children under 2 years spent an average of about an hour a day (58 minutes) with screen media. Two- to 4-year-olds spent an average of about 2 hours a day (1 hour and 58 minutes) with screens. And that was just in 2013.

The AAP itself, in a resource called “Why to Avoid TV Before Age 2,” states that “Surveys tell us about 40% of infants are watching some sort of video by age 5 months, and by age 2 the number rises to 90%.” In “Tablets and Smartphones: Not for Babies,” the organization states, “Unfortunately, when the use of tablets, smartphones, and computers is added to TV time, it has been estimated that the average 12-month-old is exposed to up to 2 hours of screen time a day.”

Let’s pause for a moment for some math. Two hours a day equals 730 hours a year—or the equivalent of 30 straight 24-hour days out of the year spent looking at a screen. And that’s if the child didn’t sleep at all. Taking out the time a baby or toddler might spend sleeping—let’s say approximately 12 hours a day—that’s 60 straight 12-hour days of screen time in a year, or about one-sixth of the child’s year.

I have a very personal interest in these numbers and in the creep of mobile screens these days into smaller and smaller hands. It comes in the form of an adorable tiny human who’s running around our home, delighting us with her hilarious antics and huge, infectious giggle.

The iPad debuted in April 2010. My daughter debuted the following year—and thus she is part of a brand-new, budding generation of children born after smartphones, tablets and apps began permeating every facet of life.

My daughter and her fellow i-Era toddlers entered a world in which caretakers could hook iPads to their bouncy seats and strollers—even to their potties. They live at a time when the company BabyFirst, with its expanding array of videos, games and apps for babies as young as 6 months old, is reaching 50 million homes through cable TV alone.

Ten years ago a 4-year-old would not have been seen watching YouTube—it had only just launched in February 2005. Today’s 4-year-olds have an entire YouTube Kids app, just for them—a gigantic repository of videos that even “preliterate” kids can easily access through a voice search function.

Even today's toys have gone mobile. Remember those classic barnyard sets, where you could open the doors and play with the little figures inside? Well my daughter can have the iPad-added version. It’s part of a whole line of “Apptivity” toys by Fisher-Price devoted to iPhone and iPad play, some with a target age of 6 months and up—even “birth & up.” From one product description: “Share the technology you enjoy every day, with baby… Your device locks securely inside to protect against baby’s messy dribbles, drool and teething.”

My daughter knows there are screens in her world. But watching or using them is not part of her daily life or routine. She’s seen her dad’s iPad. She’s taken pictures with it here and there and also with our iPod Touch. She knows what taking a video is all about. She knows that my laptop can produce dazzling, alluring images and videos. We’ve watched a few short clips on it together—we once watched the “So Long, Farewell” bit from The Sound of Music, and she’s loved acting it out ever since. This past holiday season, we all watched A Charlie Brown Christmas (bless you, Charles M. Schulz) and had a great time.

But she’s never used an app or video game made for kids. And our cellphones and devices have never been go-to items for keeping her busy—we’ve just stuck with old-school toys instead. When she’s around, the TV is off—and she doesn’t seem to miss it. (Weirdly enough, neither do we.) She’s made it three and a half years without being interested in our TV set, and frankly I’d love to ride this wave as long as possible.

I think of screens in my daughter’s life the way I think of lollipops and cupcakes. She’s seen them. She’s eaten them. She knows they’re out there. She loves them with a deep and powerful passion that sometimes borders on fixation. But she doesn't eat them every day, every week, or every month. They make extremely rare appearances—usually tied to her toddler friends’ birthday parties or special holiday events. They bring her ridiculous joy. But in her regular, daily life she is certainly fine without them.

My daughter will have her whole life ahead of her to be inundated by screens of all kinds. Early childhood is a magical time—a time for digging and building and climbing and gluing and pouring those same objects out of a container and putting them back in again over and over and over, just to see how it all works. There will never be another time like this in my daughter’s life—I know this. Her early childhood—this, right now—may be the only chance she’ll ever have to not be reliant on screens and devices as an important part of each day.

This alone is usually reason enough to keep the screens away as much as possible during these first fleeting years. But in honor of Screen-Free Week, here are 10 more reasons for keeping my little one “unplugged” this week, and every week.

1. What we know about early learning.

It is well documented that infants and toddlers learn best through hands-on playing and face-to-face interaction with other human beings. During this critical time of extremely rapid brain development, babies and toddlers learn by using their five senses and by freely moving their whole bodies to explore the world around them.

Real-world, physical play helps infants and toddlers develop hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and visual perception—which the AAP says “can’t be addressed in the same way on a 2-dimensional screen.” Our young brains build in response to the stimuli we experience from the world around us—which is why the type of stimuli we experience really matters.

Michael Rich, director and founder of the Center on Media and Child Health (and also known as the “Mediatrician”), puts it this way: “What optimizes early brain development is interaction with other people (like snuggling with a parent or making faces with a sibling), creative, problem-solving play (like trying to roll a ball), and manipulating the physical environment (like knocking plastic containers together to see what noise they make). As sophisticated as they are, screens can't provide any of these.”

The details in the AAP resources “Why to Avoid TV Before Age 2” and “Tablets and Smartphones: Not for Babies” are worth looking at. They note that “Infants may stare at the bright colors and motion on a screen, but their brains are incapable of making sense or meaning out of all those bizarre pictures. It takes 2 full years for a baby’s brain to develop to the point where the symbols on a screen come to represent their equivalents in the real world.” 

On the flip side, “Good evidence suggests that screen viewing before age 2 has lasting negative effects on children’s language development, reading skills, and shortterm memory. It also contributes to problems with sleep and attention”—with toddlers who watch more TV being more likely to have problems paying attention at age 7. “If 'you are what you eat,' then the brain is what it experiences, and video entertainment is like mental junk food for babies and toddlers,” the AAP states.

Recently, researchers with Boston University's School of Medicine zoomed in specifically on young children's use of mobile devices and interactive media. In a new commentary published in the journal Pediatrics, they argued that too much use of mobile media—especially if used to calm and distract children “during mundane tasks,” i.e., as an electronic babysitter—could be detrimental to the social-emotional development of young children, stunting their problem-solving skills, self-control mechanisms, and development of empathy.

2. What we don't know about toddlers and screens.

Research on how smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are affecting young children is truly brand new. As the Boston University researchers point out in their recent commentary, studies on interactive media and infants and toddlers under 2 are particularly scant.

Remember, it was only in 2007 and 2010 respectively that the iPhone and iPad launched, helping propel forward the use of mobile devices by everyone. Ever since, there’s been an explosion of apps-for-kids and new kinds of children’s programming created specifically for mobile. It will take society some time to see the real effects of all of this.

“The impact these mobile devices are having on the development and behavior of children is still relatively unknown,” the Boston University researchers wrote. 

In the study (found here) they state that “research regarding the impact of this portable and instantly accessible source of screen time on learning, behavior, and family dynamics has lagged considerably behind its rate of adoption.”

The researchers stress: “Pediatric guidelines specifically regarding mobile device use by young children have not yet been formulated.” (Emphasis mine.) There is nothing beyond the AAP's general guidelines on children and screen time that more specifically addresses mobile devices. “New guidance is needed because mobile media differs from television in its multiple modalities (eg, videos, games, educational apps), interactive capabilities, and near ubiquity in children’s lives. Recommendations for use by infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children are especially crucial, because effects of screen time are potentially more pronounced in this group.”

That’s enough for me to take a wait-and-see stance about any real effects mobile media might be having on our little ones. I don’t want to conduct social experiments on my toddler. I'm happy to wait and take in whatever new guidelines on mobile device use and children the experts might develop in time.

3. What a lot of teachers say.

Despite a scarcity of research in this specific area so far, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting something may be happening to our youngest generation of learners in this age of mobile proliferation. 

One day not long ago, a well-respected preschool teacher in our community began telling me about a marked change she's noticed in the children she's been teaching in recent years—ever since, in her opinion, smartphones and other mobile devices started becoming ubiquitous in young kids' lives.

A seasoned veteran who's worked with 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds for decades, she described observing that in more and more children today, imaginary play was becoming much more passive. Active imaginary or “pretend” play, which requires that children invent their own “play narratives”—i.e., engage in make-believe using their imaginations—develops important social and emotional skills, language skills, and thinking skills.

Many educators argue that when children use video games and apps, they are given “pre-loaded” play experiences. The narrative is already provided for them. (A good description of the difference between active imaginary play and playing with screen media, along with great ideas for fostering imaginary play, can be found here.)

I've heard other preschool teachers discussing the same thing, concerned by what they see as an alarming trend that's getting increasing attention at today's teacher conferences. 

A guide from TRUCE

TRUCE, a national group of educators concerned about the effect of children's media on children's play and behavior, addresses what it calls the “escalating misuse and overuse of screen technologies in the lives of even the very young” in a detailed guide for educators called "Facing the Screen Dilemma." Created together with the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Alliance for Children, the guide states: “There’s no question that screen technologies are drastically changing the lives of children,” and “It’s clear that both the nature of what children encounter on screens and the amount of time they spend with screens are vital issues."

The group urges early childhood educators to make careful, evidence-based decisions when it comes to “how, why, whether, and when to incorporate screen technologies into their settings.” As a parent, I take heed as well. TRUCE, which stands for Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment, has additional guides worth looking at, for educators and parents alike, on screen media and young kids and how to encourage active play.

4. Potential risks to physical health.

Tech neck, tech claw, netbrain, iDisorder, digital eye strain: An array of new maladies seem to be resulting from our modern technology use.

You can find details about a host of them here from WedMd. Some have to do with repetitive strain injuries and bad posture. “Tech neck” has been used to refer both to the danger of damaging your spine due to looking downward into devices and to a newer discovery—saggy, wrinkly neck skin caused by our tilted heads.

From Dr. Kenneth Hansraj, Surgical Technology International 

And how about this one: Using multiple devices at once could be causing the structure of our brains to change, according to one study.

Maybe my young child wouldn’t be at risk of such things just yet. But too much screen time has long been linked to other physical problems, too. “Studies have shown that excessive media use can lead to attention problems, school difficulties, sleep and eating disorders, and obesity,” according to the AAP. What's meant by “excessive” here? Pediatricians often define this as more than two hours of screen time a day. 

We know that sleep problems and the risk of obesity are longstanding concerns when it comes to kids and screen time, and new studies continue to provide new information. One published in Pediatrics this year detailed many ways that sleeping near small-screen devices—tablets, smartphones and other cellphones with screens—can interfere with children's sleep.

A new study on obesity and screens finds that even a low amount of screen time might affect children's weights. Its authors found an association between watching just one to two hours of TV a day and an increased likelihood of being overweight and obese in kindergarten and first grade.

I won't delve deeply here into the complex topic of cellphone radiation and questions about possible links to cancer, but one quick overview of research on mobile phones and cancer, from Cancer Research UK, can be found here. I read its conclusion with interest: “Mobile phones are a relatively recent invention. So far, studies have indicated that using these phones for about 10 years is unlikely to cause cancer. But we cannot be completely sure about their long-term effects. And there have not been enough studies looking at how mobile phone use could affect the health of children.” 

In a 2013 appeal to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct further research into cellphone radiation and adopt new standards, the AAP wrote: “Children are not little adults and are disproportionately impacted by all environmental exposures, including cell phone radiation. Current FCC standards do not account for the unique vulnerability and use patterns specific to pregnant women and children. It is essential that any new standard for cell phones or other wireless devices be based on protecting the youngest and most vulnerable populations to ensure they are safeguarded throughout their lifetimes.”

I am not a scientist or medical professional. I’m not a science or medical writer. I won’t pretend to understand all the ins and outs of some of these potential risks—particularly when it comes to radiation. On this one I go with my gut. I'm content to see my daughter sitting on the floor fiddling with wooden puzzle pieces, blocks, tinker toys, a magnifying glass, and other analog sources of amusement, knowing no harmful rays are being emitting.

5. Potential risks to mental health.

We don't need studies to tell us some people are addicted to their devices. But if we want verification, there is plenty to be found.

Interestingly, a new study from the UK concludes that “the more you use a smartphone, the higher the risk of becoming addicted.” The researchers of this study, which classified 13% of its participants as being addicted to their devices, actually advise that prospective smartphone buyers be “pre-warned of the potential addictive properties” of the technology.

When it comes to mobile devices, concerns about potential mental health risks, especially for children, go well beyond addiction. The Telegraph recently ran a sobering report on children and mental illness, with one child psychotherapist's take in particular on the impact of having constant round-the-clock Internet access. Despite a sensationalistic title—"Are Smartphones Making Our Children Mentally Ill?"—the report raises serious concerns as it explores some specific challenges that children and young adults of a generation ago—even a decade ago—were not up against.

Young people today can “access the Internet without adult supervision in parks, on street, wherever they are, and then they can go anywhere,” says the psychotherapist, Julie Lynn Evans. “So there are difficult chat rooms, self-harming websites, anorexia websites, pornography, and a whole invisible world of dark places. In real life, we travel with our children. When they are connected via their smartphone to the web, they usually travel alone.”

The article notes that admissions to child psychiatric wards in the UK have doubled in the past four years, with the number of young adults hospitalized for self-harm growing by 70% in the past decade. While it's unclear if this is in any way related to the rise of mobile device use among young people, Evans believes there's a connection.

“Something is clearly happening,” she says, “because I am seeing the evidence in the numbers of depressive, anorexic, cutting children who come to see me. And it always has something to do with the computer, the Internet and the smartphone.”

“When they are 15,” Evans says, “you don’t, for example, let them go to pub, or stay out in the local park at four in morning, yet they’ll get into much less trouble physically there than they will on their smartphones on the Internet. I’m not talking about paedophiles preying on them. I’m talking about anorexia sites and sites where they will be bullied.”

While my own daughter is still too young to be facing such potential dangers, children of younger and younger ages are now owning their own Internet-enabled devices—and it may not be long before I start hearing requests for one. (I have a good friend whose 6-year-old has been begging her for a smartphone.) In 2013, 7% of children 8 years old and under owned their own tablets—about the same percent of parents who did in 2011, according to Common Sense Media's 2013 report on kids and media use. These types of concerns for even young children are here today, and will be tomorrow.

6. Habits formed during childhood can last a lifetime.

“Screen media can be habit-forming,” states the report “Facing the Screen Dilemma.” “Young children who spend more time with screens have a harder time turning them off when they get older.”

A Common Sense Media column notes: “Remember that kids quickly develop routines. If they associate going to restaurants or driving in a car with playing games on your phone, it will be difficult to transition them out of this behavior.” This seems like a no-brainer, and yet I still have to remind myself of this constantly.

Going to restaurants when my daughter was a baby and younger toddler was certainly tough. There were the rushed and truncated meals, the sometimes stressful efforts to keep her occupied and calm—not to mention the huge tips left as apologies for the gigantic mess we always made.

But as she grew and learned to talk and communicate more, family mealtimes, even in restaurants and diners, became a new kind of delight. She relishes the social aspect of meals, chatting away about her day in nursery school, giving running commentary about anything and everything she sees all around her, asking questions, joking and making up new word games and songs.  

We hope this will keep going throughout her life—the association with meals and talking, connecting, sharing, and laughing. It's the kind of habit we want to instill, no matter how much effort it takes. If we'd conditioned her from the beginning to use screens during meals—at a time when distracting her with one certainly might have made our own lives a little easier—I know we would all be missing out today.

7. I think knowing how to entertain yourself in a line, a waiting room, or a car is an important skill to have.

There are definitely a lot of situations in life that are potentially boring. But I don’t think handing my daughter a screen to help her get through them is doing her a service.

I can remember plenty of long car rides when I was a kid. We did what kids did—look out the window, play games, read, do activity books, write Mad Libs (back when it was only in paper books you could write in). We'd listen to the radio, sing, chat about this or that. And we'd learn from doing all these things. I actually liked settling in with my little book of crosswords during some very long car rides to visit grandparents several states away. I liked watching the changing scenery outside.

When I was 5, in the mid-1970s, my family took a flight from Boston to LA. I don't remember the ride very well, but I imagine my brother and I did similar kinds of things—activity books and games. I thought of this recently, on a similar cross-country flight (New York City to LA), where I was surprised by how well our 3-year-old managed. It was amazing how much time she killed with a couple of plastic eggs filled with silly puddy and a handful of crayons. There was a screen on the back of the seat right in front of her. She poked at it some and definitely enjoyed it. But we didn't buy any movies, and ultimately she seemed much more interested in examining all the new things around her and looking out at the clouds.

Learning to occupy oneself as a kid in these situations isn't just useful. It helps develop patience, resourcefulness and creativity. Little kids are so naturally great at making up their own fun and games. They have an innate ability to entertain themselves, and the results can be impressive when we let them.

8. I don’t like the marketing targeted to kids through various screen media.

I mentioned earlier the new YouTube for Kids app. Last month, a group of children’s and consumer advocacy groups filed a scathing complaint against it with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), urging that the commission investigate whether YouTube's owner, Google, is violating longstanding laws that protect children who watch TV.

The group claims that the app uses unfair marketing practices, such as combining commercials and videos in ways that are deceptive to children, having “branded” channels for toy and other companies, and endorsing toys, candy and other products through so-called “user-generated” videos without disclosing the business relationships that the video makers have with these products’ manufacturers.

“To cite just one example,” the group's press release states, “Google claims it doesn't accept food and beverage ads but McDonald's actually has its own channel and the 'content' includes actual Happy Meal commercials.”

Says Dale Kunkel, Professor of Communication at the University of Arizona, in the press release: “YouTube Kids is the most hyper-commercialized media environment for children I have ever seen. Many of these advertising tactics are considered illegal on television, and it's sad to see Google trying to get away with using them in digital media.”

I could go on about marketing targeted to kids. But suffice it to say here, the less my child is marketed to in these types of ways, through various forms of screen media and “children's programming,” the better.

9. I don’t believe my toddler will be “left behind” if she doesn’t start using a smartphone now.

Some argue that learning how to work the latest technological tools as early as possible in childhood is critical today. I just don't buy it. And I'm not alone.

“There’s no evidence to support the popular view that children must start using screen technologies early-on to succeed in a digital world,” says literature from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. But there is evidence that you can spend your earliest years without any exposure to handheld screens and mobile devices and still grow up able to figure out a new iPhone 6.

That evidence is us. Anyone who is reading this did not manipulate mobile touchscreens or any such thing as a 2-year-old—unless you happen to be about 8 years old or younger. But many of us grownups today, including those working in technology fields, feel we’ve been able to “keep up” with the latest in tech as much as we need.

It’s hard to remember sometimes, but smartphones and tablets did not begin their great and rapid proliferation all that long ago. (Again, the iPhone only debuted in June 2007, and the iPad just five years ago last month.) Even kids born 10 years ago—yes, 10 years ago—were born into a different digital time. Forget about those born 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, or folks like me born more than 40 years back. I made it all the way into high school before ever touching a “personal” computer. I was 13 when Apple's Macintosh arrived with such drama into the world. (I'll never forget this remarkable ad.) It was great, and I loved it, and it was easy to catch on as an almost-adult. And it's been the same with so many new technologies since.

I have not been “left behind” in today's rapidly changing world because I didn't use computers as a baby or toddler or have the Internet as a kid. I am not at a disadvantage today because I lived through 30 years of life (yep, 30) without having a cell phone. And I don't think my life in those 30 years suffered.

I may be sounding a bit old-fogeyish here, but my point is simple: New technologies come along and we learn them. If we have a solid foundation from our critical, earliest years in “learning how to learn,” we should be just fine. In 2011, a New York Times piece about high-tech Silicon Valley employees who sent their own children to a school with no computers or screens drew a lot of attention. It's still worth reading today what these parents had to say.

Even Steve Jobs was a low-tech parent, writes Nick Bilton in a New York Times article from 2014. Jobs wouldn't let his own teenagers use iPads when they first came out. In 2010 he told Bilton, “They haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

Bilton quotes several other “tech parents” who limit their children's screen use seemingly even more than other parents do. CEO of 3D Robotics and former Wired editor Chris Anderson says, “[We] have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself, I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.” If parents steeped in technology in their professional lives aren't worried about their children “falling behind,” then I can't be either.

10. Screens haven’t felt necessary.

I mentioned earlier that our digital devices, and even TV, have never been go-to items when we need to keep our daughter distracted or occupied, whatever the circumstance. We've used the same old stuff that's worked forever: pots and pans, nesting boxes, tupperware, wooden spoons, water-and-floating-things-in-the-sink, play-dough, and books—always books.

In the kitchen refrigerator magnets have absorbed her attention for countless little chunks of time. In restaurants crayons, stickers, and paper have worked when she’s gotten antsy. In doctors' offices she plays with small books or toys of her own if they don't already have some out. Often it's just her own looking around, singing, game-making, and, yes, good old conversation that keeps her completely engaged in these situations.

It's true that it's not easy to get grownup things done when there's a toddler around who needs constant supervising, help, and attention. No—this is not going to be easy. And I don’t think people should expect it to be. We were toddlers too, and we presented the same challenges to our own parents, but somehow we all lived through it without holding small flashing screens in our tiny little hands.

Our parents, in whatever ways they did it, did it. Some probably put their babies and toddlers in front of TVs sometimes—but probably not all, and we don't really know how often. If you're as old as I am, there were only about two shows on for a kid to watch when we were 2 years old. And when they were over, they were over. No 24-hour kids' channels back then. Before TV (which would be nearly all of human history), parents and toddlers somehow managed together too.

So I try to remember all of this. It may not be easy to always keep the screens off and away when the kids are little, but so many things about parenting aren't easy. At the end of the day, I always think of how fleeting this time really is. And how much I'll miss it when it's gone. I love my conversations with my daughter. I love how intense her imagination is, and the endless new games and ideas she's constantly coming up with. Before she could talk, I loved all of our playful games and all that time spent smiling and looking into each other's eyes. Each step of the way, I've marveled at her non-stop changes and never-ending new developments. This week and every week I'll try not to let the lure of any screens take either of us away from this.