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By BETH J. HARPAZ, Associated Press Beth J. Harpaz, Associated Press Wed Oct
27, 5:05 pm ET
NEW YORK Let's face it: Teenagers spend hours texting, socializing on
Facebook and playing video games. And it's driving their parents nuts.
Sure, there are real dangers associated with all this screen time everything
from cyberbullying to couch-potato obesity. Not to mention driving while
texting, shortened attention spans and Internet porn.
But many of today's parents spent hours as kids sitting in front of screens too
only they were TV screens.
Which raises an interesting question: Is Facebook really worse for teenagers'
brains than the mindless reruns of "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch"
that their parents consumed growing up?
Douglas Gentile, a child psychologist and associate professor at Iowa State
University in Ames, Iowa, who studies the effects of media on children, says
texting, Facebook and video games are not inherently bad. Nor are they
inherently better or worse than watching TV, although they do pose different
risks, such as cyberbullying.
But research has shown that the more time kids spend in front of screens
whether it's TV or instant-messaging the worse their school performance.
"That doesn't mean it's true for every kid, but it makes sense, that for every
hour a kid is playing video games, it's an hour that they're not doing homework
or reading or exploring or creating," he said.
Gentile calls this the "displacement hypothesis. If screen time is displacing
doing their homework, that's bad. But if their homework is done, well, so what?
"
Gentile, who admits that his own teenager crossed the "9,000 texts in one month
barrier" last summer, acknowledged that parents are struggling to adjust to a
world in which kids would rather look at words on a cell phone screen than have
a conversation.
"The older generation, it's not their culture," he said. "There is a resistance
to it."
Watching TV as a family, as mindless as that experience can be, is now regarded
with nostalgia by parents. If your kid is sitting in the living room watching
"American Idol," you can plop on the sofa with them, and "it's a shared
experience," Gentile said. But if they're texting or video-chatting with a
friend from school, "it's a private experience. It's like they're whispering
secrets. And we find it rude."
Patti Rowlson, a mother of two in Everson, Wash., says this "has been a topic
of discussion in our house for years now." She and her husband started out
limiting TV time when their kids were little, but "then technology crept in.
Cell phones, laptop computers, iPods with Wi-Fi. We, as parents, were no longer
in control of screen time because we could not even tell when they were using
it."
Recounting a struggle that will sound familiar to many parents, Rowlson said
that at first, she and her husband imposed limits on tech use.
"There were battles and even groundings," along with the confiscation of iPods,
she said. "We were constantly policing and the kids were constantly getting in
trouble. We were trying to fight for the old ways, and it was causing a lot of
stress and tension in the family. It was ridiculous. So we loosened up. And
it's made everybody happier. We were fighting something that you can't hold
back. It's how they communicate with their peers."
What's been the result? Two good kids, she said. "In the end I'm not sure if
having boundaries early on helped them or made no difference at all."
Ron Neal, who lives in West L.A., has a teenage daughter who is "tech-driven
and passionate about it. ... I don't know how it's going to play out, but I
don't have this fear and dread about it."
Neal, who admits to watching a lot of "Gilligan's Island" growing up, added:
"We had our minds numbed by TV, and maybe they're looking at useless things on
the Internet or YouTube, but I also think they're developing a lot of skills
through this technology that we could never comprehend. For my daughter, when
she is home, she does have everything going the TV, the computer,
communicating with friends, and doing the homework at the same time."
He admits, though, that there are some frightening aspects to the dependence
today's teenagers have on technology. "They are so emotionally connected to
being tied in with their friends 24 hours a day, if they get a text, they feel
obligated to respond in seconds," he said. He recalled a group of girls showing
up for a birthday party at a restaurant, and "everyone of them had their head
down, texting."
The explosion in teen screen time is well-documented. A recent Associated
Press-mtvU poll found that one-third of college students use computers, cell
phones or gaming consoles for six or more hours daily. A Kaiser Family
Foundation study published in January found that total media use among 8- to
18-year-olds, including TV, music, computers, video games, print and movies has
increased from six hours, 21 minutes daily in 2004 to seven hours, 38 minutes
in 2009.
"Try waking a teenager in the morning and the odds are good that you'll find a
cell phone tucked under their pillow," the Kaiser report said.
The Kaiser study also found that the more time kids spend with media, the lower
their grades and levels of personal contentment are.
Gentile said the impact of screen time on school work can be mitigated by what
he calls "protective factors." Those might include good teachers and a
high-performing school, love of reading, coming from a family where education
is valued, and exposure to experiences that are culturally and intellectually
enriching. "If you had all these protective factors," said Gentile, "then that
one little risk factor (screen time), who cares?"
He added that surprisingly, the amount of time kids spend watching TV has not
declined precipitously with the popularity of computers and gaming, but "they
don't pay nearly the attention (to TV) that they used to." The TV might be on,
but "they're also instant-messaging, they're on Facebook, they're texting."
One thing parents should worry about, Gentile said, is the way electronic
devices encourage multitasking.
"Multitasking is not really good for anyone," he said. "Your reflexes speed up,
you're quicker to look over your shoulder and notice little noises or lights.
This is not what they need when they get to the classroom and you're supposed
to ignore the kid next to you. Scanning to see when the next message comes,
this may not be good for kids. The more distractions you have, the worse your
performance is." Getting kids to turn off their phones, iPods, and computers in
order to concentrate on homework and reading, he said, "I think that's a fight
worth having."
Bottom line: Never mind that your kid is spending two hours on Facebook each
night. As long as they do their homework without texting in between math
problems, it's probably no better or worse than the hours you spent watching
"Star Trek."