The New Common Sense on Kids, Screens, and Social Media

Watching a family movie is not the same as setting your toddler loose in YouTube kids. Posting a photo to friends and family is not the same as using your kid for public branded content.

Photo by hessam nabavi on Unsplash

Anytime I open Instagram, I’m greeted by the faces of children I don’t know — children of parents I don’t know. And every time I wonder: Why are we doing this to our kids?

I don’t mean the kids of private citizens who post family photos to their private Instagram accounts — I see plenty of kids on Instagram who I’ve never met, but I know their parents, and I enjoy seeing what they’re up to. I’m talking about everyone else: The writers and photographers and cooks and various micro-celebrities who have tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers. These are not people sharing sweet photos with family and friends. These are people using their children to boost their brand.

There’s a new book out by Fortesa Latifi about influencer families, and I can’t wait to read it. I can understand how, ten years ago, someone may have uploaded a cute family video to YouTube, seen it blow up, and head down a path of monetizing every aspect of one’s domestic life. I am less sympathetic to people who intend to monetize every aspect of their domestic life, even if that means monetizing their kids.

Since becoming a parent, I’ve thought a lot about how much to write for a public audience about motherhood and my child, and I’ve settled on “very little” (you may be surprised to learn, via this post, that I even have a child). That’s partly because I am not sure I have all that much of interest to say, but it’s largely because I don’t think it’s fair to tell my child’s story before he has a chance to craft his own version of it. All parents, I think, create narratives for our children — what they’re like, who they might be, how they are. Our parents created these narratives about us, too, and I suspect that most of us have had the experience of realizing that the stories our parents told themselves about us were maybe not quite right — that perhaps those stories were frozen in some version of a very young self, one that evolved but that our mothers and fathers kept crystalized in amber.

There’s not all that much harm there, except parental-filial relationship tensions. When those narratives get published, though, we make our stories about our children everyone’s stories about them. And when influencers put their children online for public consumption, they effectively put their child in a fishbowl in which the glass only goes one way — everyone looking in, the child having no ability to even comprehend just how much they’re being observed.

Until, of course, they’re old enough to understand, at which point they’ve been trained in the art of watching themselves be watched, of never actually living their lives but rather performing their lives for others.

There is a big difference between the YouTube family influencer who posts her kids’ worst moments with baity headlines (“epic MELTDOWN over POTTY time” or whatever) and, say, the photographer I follow who sometimes posts dreamy and washed-out images of her family in beautiful places. One of these things is far, far morally worse. I don’t think we should be hiding children from public view. But I do wish more parents would consider why and to whom they’re posting images of their kids. I wish there were more protections for children whose parents treat them like YouTube piggybanks.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as more parents have monetized their children online, parents are also letting their children spending tons of time online. The good news is that this all does seem to be shifting as the research on screens and our brains evolves. But still: The average American one-year-old gets more than a hour of screen time per day. Toddlers — those between the ages of two and four — are seeing more than two hours, while young elementary school kids are seeing almost four. It’s hard to overstate how bad this is for developing brains.

But all “screen time” is not created equal.

A two-year-old spending five minutes video chatting with Grandma is a very different thing than handing a two-year-old your phone and letting them spend five minutes scrolling through short-form videos; a three-year-old joining the family for an hour of communal TV time, or watching 20 minutes of Daniel Tiger so dad can make dinner, is very different from handing a kid an iPad and unlimited access to YouTube kids alone for an hour. I’m fairly extreme on the no-screens thing: my child, who is still very young, has only seen a screen to FaceTime with his grandparents, and he’s only done that a handful of times; I usually don’t even have my phone in the room when I’m with him because I want to be distraction-free and to model living life in the actual world. While he knows what a phone is, he does not yet seem to find it an interesting or desirable object. I aim to keep it that way as long as possible.

But the collapse of all “screen time” into one giant to-be-avoided bucket doesn’t seem helpful. As I’m thinking about kids and screens, and also about how adults with kids use their screens, here are a few things I’m considering:

For adults posting their children on social media:

• Who can see this? What are my social media settings? Is my account public or private? Am I comfortable with the viewing audience? No matter how private my account, do I understand that anything I post here might break containment — and would I be ok if this photo were available to the general public?

• What might this mean for my child later on? How might my kid feel about me posting this? Is it embarrassing for them? Does it tell a story they may prefer to keep private? Does it convey some narrative about them that might not actually be true?

• Whose story is this to tell? The difference can be subtle, but there is a difference between writing about one’s experience of parenthood, and telling a story that more fully belongs to your child — and is perhaps not yours to tell.

• Why do I want to share this? “So my family and close friends can see my sweet little baby” is a very good reason to share a photo of your sweet little baby on a private and carefully-cultivated account. “So I might get more brand sponsorships” or “so I can get a bunch of little hearts” is a less-good reason. “So I can make everyone laugh at my kid’s emotional distress” or “so I can gain sympathy through my child’s suffering” is a bad reason.

For children’s screen time:

• Is there a story with a plot that my child has to follow, and is there a meaningful moral lesson? Watching a movie or a television show that has a narrative arc and a meaningful message can be good for kids. Storytelling through visuals is incredible. But there needs to be a story. There needs to be a plot that requires the viewer pay attention and use their brain. There needs to be a purpose other than simply “attention capture.”

• Does it foster in-person or at least meaningful connection? Using a screen to FaceTime with Grandma — a person your child knows and loves — fosters an important relationship; using a screen to scroll through TikTok does not. Family movie night fosters connection; an iPad at the dinner table does not.

• Cast a skeptical eye on ed tech. Apps and other screen-based tools that advertise themselves as “educational” can be the hardest to parse. But ask yourself: What is this replacing, and does it actually seem better than the analog version? We know that our brains do not process information on screens the same way they do words on a page. If your kid is using an app that promises it will teach them how to read, that is a not in fact better than the analog version (a book). If it promises it will teach them math, that is not actually better than the analog version. These are moments in which these apps can be useful, and I think the people who make them genuinely believe they’re doing good. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the benefit of many of these ed tech tools is primarily more money for ed tech companies; they are often trying to sell parents products more than they are actually teaching children.

• How is this training a child’s attention span? One of the most corrosive aspects of our increasingly screen-based world is that it’s depleted our attention. I don’t want a ton of short-form videos, but still, even when I’m reading a book or listening to a podcast I find myself picking up my phone to check my texts / email / social media / whatever ever twenty minutes or so. I don’t like the compulsive relationship I have with my phone, and I’m an adult who didn’t grow up with a smartphone. Kids, with their developing and very plastic brains, have far fewer cognitive guardrails. So ask: Is whatever screen-based thing you’re giving them encouraging them to extend their attention span? Or is it teaching them to avoid concentration (or boredom) by constantly scrolling to the next and the next and the next? If it’s a kids’ television show, does it include extended scenes shot from a single angle? That is, does the viewer have to watch Mr. Rogers play with the train set for a full three minutes, or Elmo have an extended stoop convo? Or is it cut-cut-cut-cut every two seconds with different colors and scenes and characters and sounds, training your child’s mind to always want next-next-next-next (i.e., Cocomelon, which I just watched for ten seconds before feeling like I might have an aneurism)?

• Is this a genuine pinch moment, or am I just afraid of letting my child be bored? If the entirely family has the stomach flu, maybe Miss Rachel comes out for longer than usual. If the toddler is screaming and there’s no other adult around and you need to get the baby to sleep, maybe that’s a call to Paw Patrol. But if it’s just that your kid might get bored or might even get fussy, what are they learning by being handed a screen to avoid discomfort? (How much are you avoiding boredom or discomfort by turning to a screen? I know I sure do that a lot).

• Am I living out my values, too? If you don’t want your kid constantly reaching for a screen, then you need to train yourself not to reach for a screen (this is hard). If you want your kid to read actual books, then you need to pick up an actual book. If you want your kid to be able to tolerate boredom, tolerate discomfort, and learn to exist in the real world, then you need to practice those skills too. This sounds very simple! It is very hard. It is still worth doing.

How else are you thinking about these questions, either for your kids or yourself or both?

xx Jill