Aaron Hartman, MD discusses the harms of early and frequent screen exposure for children, arguing that heavy use of phones and other devices during neural development can increase anxiety and interfere with self-regulation. He contrasts observations from Italy (fewer kids on screens) with U.S. norms, gives a personal example that a weekend/"two-day" digital detox improved his son's regulation, and cites Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation and psychologist Rosanna Capana Hodge (book forthcoming) as supporting voices. The piece is a practitioner-oriented, cautionary call to be judicious about technology use for young children.
Chapters
One of the things I've noticed is there's not a lot of people on technology here in Italy. Let's talk about digital detoxing. Jonathan Haidt has his book the Anxious Generation where he discusses the concepts of digital exposure on kids while their brains are developing and how it actually increases anxiety. So we're on a, on a, on a train coming here a day ago, coming from Lawrence to here and what I did not see, I didn't see a lot of kids on iPhones, Apple watches. I actually saw kids playing cards with their parents across from us, some people with earbuds, listening to music. But I have not seen here the same level of, I don't know what else to call it besides digital addiction. Jonathan Haidt actually discusses this a lot in his book the Anxious Generation. He talks about several things. Three factors that actually can be contributing to anxiety in our young kids. One of those is exposure to social media, is use of phone technology and different type of technology to just keep themselves preoccupied. What happens in the young brain is it's developing, is you're laying down neural networks and neural patterns and if those are laid down using extensive amounts of technology, especially screens, it actually changes the way the kids brains think. And one thing that's interesting is like young brains seek, will seek naturally, particularly young males will seek dopamine hits, will seek stimulation that can look like sugar, can look like sweets, adults it can look at gambling, looking like sex with prostitutes, fast driving, a bunch of things like that. But the issue, the thing about it is you actually get similar activation or stimulation in a young brain if you expose them to technology, if you expose them to iPhones, a bunch of things. Why am I mentioning or talking about? Because here in Italy as I'm going around seeing families, seeing families hanging out with kids, what I'm not seeing is people at the dinner and their kids on the phones, kids all in technology, kids on screen. I'm not seeing that. So what's the point? Culturally we've made this big shift to using technology to basically to babysit our kids, to keep them preoccupied instead of teaching them about self preoccupation, instead of teaching them how to learn card games. Why is this a big deal? Why is this important? Because ultimately for kids mental health, they need to learn how to self regulate. I've kind of noticed this with my son for example, if he's every, at the end of every week he comes back from school, we take the screens away from in the first place day on the weekend, he's dysregulated he's really hyper, emotional, et cetera, et cetera. By Sunday he's playing with the sisters, he's helping in the kitchen. It's interesting how just a two day, quote unquote digital detox for a kid with dyslexia and ADD makes a big difference with his behavior. And our whole entire educational system in our country revolves around exposing young kids at young ages to computer screen style, phones and different technology. Is this mandatory? I don't think so. Other countries around the world don't do this. When we were homeschooling kids before the pandemic and up to the pandemic, we got around doing it. We used books, we used old school technology and it worked. You know, I didn't grow up with that stuff. What's the point? I think we need to be smart about, injudicious about use of technology with young kids. We need to be smart about can we use it and realize that ultimately when they get the education that they need and deserve, they need to learn how to use their brains and not always require some kind of stimulation. So if you have an issue with your kids, I'd be curious, like, what are they doing? What kind of technology are they using? One of our friends, Rosanna Capana Hodge, who's a psychologist who specializes in kids that are neurodivergent and also dysregulated, actually has a book coming out talking about the dysregulated child. And that's one of her big things she talks about is how in this cult culture and society, how today can we help with our kids getting regulated and keeping them away from technology is going to be a big part of that. So if you have a question, drop it here. Hopefully it was helpful and we'll talk to you soon.
