Sit still and shut up
How phones are taking us back to the era of ‘seen but not heard’
Jonathan Haidt is working tirelessly to raise awareness of the way phones have invaded every moment of our children’s lives. Here in my cosy corner of Substack almost everyone seems to be on board with the need to drastically reduce screen use for children, some of whom are barely old enough to hold a device in their own hands.
But in the real world it’s a different story. I wrote for The Critic about how I see toddlers on the bus, holding their own phone and swiping through YouTube videos. I see children sending emojis on WhatsApp when they should be chatting to a parent, reading a book, or just being bored and finding a way to entertain themselves. I see children in restaurants wearing headphones and glued to the iPad, ostensibly out for dinner with their family but actually not interacting with them at all.
The Victorians believed that children should be seen but not heard, and as modern parents we pride ourselves on being more enlightened. We employ gentle parenting, and we empathise with our child when they have a meltdown, instead of giving them a clip round the ear and telling them to get on with it. We are horrified by the parenting not just of the Victorians but of our own parents and grandparents. Thank goodness we know better, we think.
But the prevalence of screens in the chubby fingers of even our youngest children gives the lie to this delusion. What we really want is for our children to sit still and shut up. And we’ve found a way of doing it that is both socially acceptable and eagerly lapped up by the children themselves. Worse, the insidious nature of the technology means that if we later try to go out for a meal without the iPad and headphones, the children become unbearable. We—and our children—are hoist by our own petard.
You can read the full article here.
I am trying to reduce screen time myself over Lent. It’s hard to post regularly on Substack when you’re trying not to use a screen! But I’m still here and have posts in the pipeline. Back soon!
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I hadn’t made the connection between the way people silence their kids with devices and “children should be seen and not heard” prior to reading your article, but WOW…now I can’t unsee it. I was at Costco a couple of weeks ago and saw a mom hand her 18 month old a phone to watch while they were in the checkout line. This baby wasn’t crying, fussing, or anything—she was literally waving at the other patrons in line and being cute. But her mom looked at the people behind her in line and said, “the phone is the only thing that calms her down” and handed it to the baby. I was flummoxed. It was almost as if the mom didn’t know how to interact with her child without the phone, which is even sadder than using it as a pacifier.
I took a break from Facebook two months ago and found I was much calmer and more optimistic. Dr. Amen (a brain science guy on YouTube) explained that the dopamine buzz from the phones and media wears out a "pleasure centers" and makes as feel down and low vitality. Hmmm, what are we doing to our children? Thanks for a good post.