Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn Childress,

and on this episode I'm going to talk about what

I'm calling the screen time dilemma. It's essentially

the conflict or the overwhelm or the frustration

you have as a parent when trying to figure out screen time limits.

I'm gonna normalize that and help you understand

why it's so hard and also why maybe this is,

like, outside of your wheelhouse as a parent. I

kinda say sometimes, like, screen time limits are a little bit

above our pay grade as a parent because, really,

screen time is sort of the Wild West of parenting where there's not

a lot of guidelines. There's not a lot of oversight. You're just

one sheriff in a house full of screen

robbers, and they want it all the time. And you don't really even know what

the rules are or how to enforce them. And I wanna give you some perspective

on why that is and give you some, like, a little tiny bit

of history about how rules and limits and

governments establish guidelines and kind

of explain to you that when it comes to screens,

this technology of devices for you and

your family, The reason why it's so overwhelming and so

confusing is because there are not guidelines

yet. There is no license. There's no

surgeon general's warning. There's not a, you know, a

pamphlet, a food guide pyramid, if you will, or a my

basic four food groups of how to manage screens

for families. Because there aren't those

guidelines yet that are out there,

you are trying to figure it out all the time. What's

normal? What's best? What's too much time? What's not enough

time? What are the benefits of screen time? How much should my kid get?

What devices? Is YouTube kids okay? Is YouTube okay?

Should they have a phone? What age? Is it 10? Is it 12? You are

making all of these decisions that are extremely

challenging to figure out because you're not an expert

on the brain, on child development, on the

ways that algorithms work around AI. Right? You're just a regular

person trying to figure it out. That is why it's

so overwhelming. I wanna go through and give you some background, like,

almost like a little history lesson about a couple of different topics,

like, how driver's license were created, how nutrition

facts and food guidelines were created, and how, you know,

smoking guidelines were created. Because I want you to see

that whenever a new tech comes in, whenever

something hits the streets, right, it

takes almost an entire generation. We're gonna see

until the government recognizes, oh, this is a

technology that's causing a problem. We probably need to

protect children. We probably need to give

the consumer more information. We might need

to add regulation to this product or to this

technology. And this has been true throughout time. So I'm

gonna give you a little background on a couple things. Hopefully, it won't be too

much of a history lesson. I hope to make it interesting. I used to teach

history. Did you know that? I was a middle school and high school teacher before

I was a parent and before I was a parenting coach. So I do like

to talk about history and put things in perspective. I think it's really helpful

to understand the way something has worked in the

past and, like, the process that we went through as a society

in the past and kind of apply that to today. Really, I want you to

understand that you are in the Wild West of parenting.

And for the most part, some other

areas of parenting, you kind of know what's best. Like, you

we've heard many times that 8 hours of sleep for

adults is really good. Right? And it's coming out that women need 8 and a

half. Right? And so we kind of have this idea. Like, we

know in general, you shouldn't have sugar at every meal,

and there's not kind of no balanced diet. Like, you should have fiber in your

diet, and you should have fruits and vegetables. Right? Lean meats.

You know, just because your kid wants to drive a car at age 12, they

can't because they need a driver's license. So there's a lot of things in

parenting that there are, like, there's a mental map for how it

should be. But when it comes to tech and to screens,

there's no social mental map.

We are all making it up as we go along.

And news flash, it's not working out very well. Okay? It's

hurting our children, As you know from my previous series in the

summer based on Jonathan Hite's book, Anxious Generation, and I

give you a lot of screen time practices in those episodes. So go

back if you're really, you know, wanting to dive deep into

whether the problems and all that, go back into those episodes and listen to them.

But today, I want you to walk away from this episode feeling

like an exhale, but really like a self esteem boost.

Like, I want you to be able to not feel like you

are a failure as a parent because you can't

get screen limits managed in your family or that your kids keep doing

sneaky screens or you break your own rules or whatever

it is. I don't want you to feel so bad. I want you to

understand, oh, I am a trailblazer.

I am a 1st generation parent parenting in

a tech environment. I am a vanguard.

Right? I'm at the forefront. The next few generations,

they're gonna have it easier. I'm figuring it out

without a guideline. And I want you to really kind of

give yourself, like, a pat on the back because I do deeply

believe that in the next 10 years, there are

going to be government guidelines and even regulations

about how tech is talked about and communicated to

children, what is allowed for children, and all of these things. So

in 10 years from now, that doesn't help you. Right? If you have a 4

year old and at 14, they come out with some guidelines and you're like, well,

I wish I would have known that at 4. I have 18 20 year olds.

I my kids are Gen z. This I was in the Wild West of parenting.

Like, I did not have an iPhone when they were born, and

then I had an iPhone. And so I'm figuring out the tech

alongside of figuring it out with them. I did my best. Right? As

you are. And so I wanted to normalize that you're in the Wild West of

parenting. You're doing your best. You don't have a social mental map. What's right?

What's wrong? What's good? What's bad? Best practices. So I will give

you some best practices at the end of this episode. But I wanted to go

through and talk about some of this history that I was talking

about. So first, I wanna start with cars, and I promise I won't get too

into the weeds on the details because, you know, historians love dates.

But I want you to see that the first

modern car, what we generally regard as the first

modern car was invented by Carl

Benz. Right? Like Mercedes Benz, kind of that Benz, b

e n z. And it was in 1886.

Okay? So just kind of like I don't even know. Was that a 150 years

ago ish? Right? So the first car kind of was registered.

The patent was registered. Over time, more people

got them because of the Model T with Henry Ford. Cars

started replacing horses and started replacing horse drawn

carriages. Now we did not need to create

rules for of who could ride a horse. We didn't have to

create licenses for who could own a

horse or drive a horse into town because they're they weren't

that unsafe. They weren't motorized. But then think about this,

that the first stop sign was not installed

until 1914 in Detroit. You have,

like, how many years is that? 14, 30 years ish

of cars on the roads

without stop signs. That was, like, kind of the beginning. It took a long

time before some city, the city of Detroit is, like, we put a stop

sign here and, like, make there be some sort of traffic pattern

or regulation. The government of Detroit, right,

the city does not get involved for a long time because they don't even know

the problems that are gonna be created. The first car that had a seat belt,

1950. We're talking 66 years later,

we create a seat belt. That's a long time to have a technology without a

safety mechanism. So the safety mechanisms were happening on the

car, right, like, and some things in the city. And then over time, it was

decided that maybe we needed driver's licenses. About 20 years

after the car was invented, we start to see

driver's licenses. The first was in New York, then Massachusetts,

and then slowly over time, you know, more and more states create

driver's license. 20 years of having cars before we have a driver's

license. It wasn't until the 19 fifties

until all states had a driver's license

system. So you have vehicles

for 70 years before the

entire, you know, United States has driver's license. If you're

listening in other countries, I don't really know the statistics of other countries.

When did we decide that children shouldn't get

their driver's license? When was that established?

And it was in Pennsylvania was the first state that said

drivers needed to be at least 18 years old. So

now you start to see 30 years after the car is invented, there's some

rules around when children should be able to get a driver's

license. Start to really think about 30 years, an

entire generation of children

probably trying to drive cars, which is kind of like what we're

experiencing is like children trying to navigate screen

rules for themselves. It's not

possible. We don't want children driving cars nor do we really want children

driving the Internet. But we don't have any rules yet about it. It

wasn't until 1966 that

the federal government of the United States created the

National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. That was

78 years after the car was

patented. 78 years. That's an

entire lifetime. Right? That's 3 generations before

we have really strong regulatory rules. I thought this was kind of

funny. In California, the, they created a little

booklet of, like, rules for the road. And that

was like, a really, really thin booklet, and now it's a 1,000 pages.

So I think that we might have gone overboard on creating

rules. I'm not sure. I don't know. I've never read the

California vehicle code. But now we're like in this oh, I

mean, a lot of government regulations when it comes to driving. But my point is

that in the beginning, there were none. And now there's a lot.

So in the beginning, nobody knew who should drive. And how do

we prove that they can. And then eventually, it was like, oh,

we need a learner's permit. Oh, we need to, have them do a

written exam. Oh, we need to have them do a physical exam. There was, like,

more and more guidelines. That's my whole point. Okay?

Also, they changed the laws a lot of states from 18

to 15 or or 16 or 17. Different states have different

licensing agreements, but we all agree. Right? We all

agree 8 year old shouldn't drive cars. Right? We all

agree that you should be an adolescent before you even

get permission to be behind the wheel.

Now I know really rural places, those

rules are less applicable because people drive

farm trucks and things like that. Young people will participate in

the, like, homesteading and things like that. But we're talking

about for public safety, in general, what is

the best practices. And we've all decided

somewhere between 16 17, we think

that people are mature enough to handle a vehicle.

But we have no guidelines yet for how old someone

should be able to handle the Internet. I was talking to my

husband about this topic just a few minutes ago, and I was telling him

what I was gonna talk about. And I said, do you remember when I used

to tell the kids, like, they'd be like, mom, can I have a phone? Mom,

can I have a phone? And I'd be like, no. I'm not giving you

the www. And they'd be like, what? And

I'd be like, I'm not giving you the www. I'm not giving you the

World Wide Web. I said, we have the

entire world on the Internet. I'm not handing you the

world. You're not ready. You're not ready for the world. I would make it a

joke. Right? And I'd be like, you can't handle the world, the w w

w. But it is true. Do I think an 8 year old can

handle navigating the entire World Wide Web?

Nope. I do not. I do not think they should have unlimited access to

that. Now, a couple other examples I thought were kind

of interesting was one was around food. So

this could get it could bother people. I don't know. But in general,

prior to the 19 sixties, most

food was prepared at home with basic ingredients,

which means it was like whole food like butter or

wheat or, you know, sugar, but you could see how much you were pouring into

something. You had beef. You had chicken. You had eggs. Like,

you had the ingredients. You had the whole ingredients, and then you were preparing the

food. But after World War 2,

when there was all this revolution in terms of

creating technology for the war, basically,

for, you know, ammunition and I don't know all the words for

war stuff, but, like, you know, war stuff, airplanes and

bombers, and I don't know. A lot of technology was created in

order to create that machinery. And then

when the war was over, production shifted

to creating new types of machines

for home life. So that's when we started to see a washing machine

and refrigerator and refrigeration and, different things like

that. Not only did they create consumer goods, but

they also created a lot more machinery for agriculture.

This is the end of the history less than I promised. But there was a

revolution in agricultural technology and

food science was developed, advancements in food

science. So we had this technology being created

that increased the amount of food and

farming changed. How we produced food changed. How we

processed food, stored food, and distributed food.

Then there was also advancements in terms of freeze drying, juice

concentrates, artificial sweeteners, coloring agents, preservatives.

All these different things happened at the same time as the food

industrial revolution was happening. So all of a

sudden, there is a glut of

cheap processed foods on the market.

And we start to see that the processed foods

become common in the marketplace. Then

alongside of that, the surgeon general

starts to notice in the eighties, so, like, you know,

30 years later, they start to notice that we

as a society have decreased nutrition,

poor health, chronic diseases going up, and they're starting

to look at the diet of the American people and saying, hey, we might have

some problems here. We probably need to do some education.

Right? They don't really put any limitations on what can be allowed to be

produced. They don't. They don't create any guidelines

around what the producers can put out there. So you

can have, I mean, there's, like, titanium dioxide and

Skittles. Right? Like, there's not a lot of guidelines about what gets

put out, but there was a lot of consumer education

provided. So you had the FDA,

the Federal Drug Administration, or Food and Drug Administration

saying we need to have nutrition labels. That happened in 1990

that there was published proposed rules for the

mandatory nutrition labeling of almost all packaged food. That was so

that consumers could make good choices. But if you're a consumer

and you don't know what any of those things mean, you don't know what

carbohydrate is or fiber or sugar or calories.

That means we need to create education for the consumer. So that's when

you start to see food guides. Before World War 2, food

guides were created in order to make sure you got enough nutrition. They were

like, you need to make sure your children get enough calories. So they

started to tell people, hey. This is the bare minimum of what you need to

provide because there was a great depression. There was a dust bowl. There was all

these problems in our society where there wasn't enough food. Then slowly,

there's a lot of food. So the education shifts from

make sure your kids get these basic nutrients to actually make sure you

limit these other types of foods.

Let's make better food choices. So I

think it's fascinating that you can see and I'm not,

like, miss government regulation bring it all on. I'm

only wanting to point out that technology

comes out, and it has an effect on

society. And we don't always know what those effects

are gonna be. For 1, if you look at the food thing, you

don't have people starving. Amazing. Right? That's a good thing. We

wanna have a plethora of food. But we also created

poor quality food in order to get it to more people. And then

we had health. So then you need education and

then you start to see, like, when I was a kid, it was the 4

basic food groups. Right? And they were like, you have to have the 4 basic

food groups. And they were just a rectangle with 4 squares and that was what

you put on your plate. Then they created the food guide pyramid and it was

super confusing. Nobody really understood what it meant.

And now they have my plate, which is simplified

everything. So you see my that the government

is like, uh-oh. We probably need to give guidelines. And then as

the person in the home who is

purchasing food and preparing food and serving

food to your children and yourself, you can make an

informed decision. So you look at cars. You have an

the ability to make an informed decision about when your child should

drive. At the bare minimum, your kid cannot get their driver's

license or their permit until the certain age. 14,

15, 16, depends on the state. But around

adolescence, that is the rule. And it's

to protect the children and protect others

on the streets. With food, the government is like

here is all the food. You can have everything at the market. There it

is. And in general, this is the best

practices for your children. This is what they should make sure that they have

access to at each meal. So there's guidelines.

But we look at screen time and there are no

guidelines. You're making it up. You're like what is the food guide

pyramid version of tech screen

limits? What is my plate for my tech?

And there's no answer yet. Right? The good news is that

answers are coming, that the surgeon general of the United

States is creating recommendations,

and we are moving towards having

guidelines. Okay? The last one was smoking. I won't go too far into it

because it's so obvious, but I thought this was interesting that there was some

changes in the way that cigarettes were made, and it made it a

lot easier to get cigarettes. And that kind of was

part of the, you know, tech and agriculture revolution is

that you could, get packaged

cigarettes a lot easier. You didn't have to just get tobacco and get

paper and roll it yourself. That there was, like, almost, like, processed ready

made cigarettes, and then more people start smoking. The

government starts to see a lung cancer

epidemic. And, of course, the cigarette manufacturers are like, no.

We didn't cause these problems. That's not us. Who knows what's going

on? But over time, the evidence became something you cannot

ignore, and that's when you start to see rules.

You start to see that, like in 1964,

the surgeon general publishes smoking is bad for you. And

then they put a label within that year. They put a

label on the cigarettes, and then they just start

banning advertising on television and radio.

Then they start to establish a minimum age of legal access.

So at first, that legal access was and this was in

1920, by the way, that the legal access was 21 years

old. You could not get cigarettes a 100 years ago unless you were

21. Then it went down to 18. And now as of

2019, a 100 years later, it went back to 21.

President Trump signed that legislation when he was president in

2019. We see that we have

rules around when children can smoke, when children can drink,

when children can drive. We've given families,

parents guidelines of what are the best practices when it comes to feeding

your children. You know, in general, how much sleep they should get. Now,

here's the thing with the Internet. The Internet, I

thought this was so fascinating, came out in 1993. The

www became public. I graduated high school in

1993. So kind of my adult life, I've been,

like, learning about the Internet. Right? I've been but it's all been

in my adulthood. The Internet is a fairly new technology,

and then we don't have smartphones or handheld devices that

access the Internet until, like, 2008, 2009, 2010,

something like that. And they don't become ubiquitous for a while

being in everybody's hand. But now that it's

been 20 years or so, we can

start to see that there are foundational

harms on children when they have access to Internet

based activities. They are deprived socially.

Their sleep is impacted. Their attention is

fragmented and it creates addictive tendencies. This is from

Jonathan Haidt, the author of anxious generation. We

have quote from Vikvak Murthy who is

the Surgeon General of the United States. And he says, this is a

quote, the mental health crisis among young people is an emergency

and social media has emerged as an important contributor.

And he's mostly talking about adolescents. And he says a surgeon general's

warning label, which requires congressional action,

would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media

has not proved safe. We

need more regulation when it comes

to technology in our children's hands. I actually

don't think a warning to protect

adolescents is enough. I think we need to go to younger ages and

create guidelines for younger ages

before they get to 14 or into adolescence.

So I have some best practices, which I do

talk about in my previous episode. But I think, in

general, no child should have a

smartphone or a handheld device until 8th grade.

There is a movement called wait until 8th. And if

we can get more and more people to commit just to say to their

friend group, hey, we're not gonna do devices until 8th grade.

That is a powerful statement, and it will be contagious.

You can influence the people around you by saying we are gonna

wait until 8th. No smartphone. And I'm gonna go further to say

no iPad. I think this is iPad is a cheat that a

lot of parents will use is they get an iPad and then the

kid has this handheld device with the iPad.

It's not maybe they're looking on Instagram because they're 7,

but they're getting accustomed to having an individual handheld device

at a young age that they think is theirs. No

devices. No no child should own a device. Be

honest with you, my kids each had back then, they were called

Itouches, and they were allowed to use those on car

rides longer than an hour and a half and airplane flights.

And that was it. So it was road trips and flying. And

then when we get to our destination on the vacation, they would get put away.

We actually would put them in the safe in the hotel safe or whatever because

I didn't want my kids on those devices, on, individual handheld

devices. Another really important guideline, no

social media until 16. I didn't do that.

I'd I don't know. I think my kids got

smartphones in 8th grade, and then I don't know. I just didn't even really know

how to put limitations on social media. But I think, you know, it's

really good recommendation. And if everybody does it,

then everybody does it. Just like you could let your

14 year old drive a car, but everyone would be like, you're crazy.

And you almost want to create that you're crazy to be like, you don't

let your kids go on social media. You're crazy. We wanna flip

that to be like, what? You let your kids go on social media? You're

crazy. Right? We kinda need to change our social

understanding of what's good and bad for kids.

Other, recommendations, no screens before school.

That is not a great time for kids to be watching TV or on devices.

Absolutely. They need to be getting ready for school so your morning routine

goes smoothly and kind of doing a little play, being in their body before

they go sit in a classroom. I would recommend no

screens on school days at all. But if you do, do them, wait for an

hour after they've been home from school before they get their device or get

to watch TV. I love collaborative or

social viewing or watching. So I would recommend having instead

of individual devices that kids learn to compromise to

sit in their living room, pick something to watch, pick something

to play, and, participate together and have

a mutual experience, a shared experience because that

creates a little bit more of that social cohesion and also compromise

and things like that taking turns. Making a commitment, I said that, like,

as a community, if schools could take on commitments,

principals and teachers really talking about this and and committing

as a school. Let's do screen for your weeks. You know, let's not do tech

in the morning. No children should have a phone before 8th grade. If we

had more social normalizing of that in our communities, that

would be great. And then we should be demanding government action. We

really should. And, I'm trying to think if there was one other one.

I can't remember. Okay. The other thing, like, I was,

like, writing if I was in charge of the government, what would I do?

I don't know. I'm not in charge of the government, but I was thinking we

should have universal hardware bans. So, really,

the technology available to kids in 8th grade, you can

do hardware bans where certain serial numbers

of devices are not allowed to download social

media. But the hardware bans only happen at the

platform level. Like, the Snapchat can do a hardware

ban on your phone. But not so it's not with your

IP address, not your Internet address. It's the actual serial number of the

hardware itself. When I learned that, I realized we could probably be

doing hardware specific for children

that you can't put, social media apps on there and

limit the ability for kids to circumvent family screen time

limits, you know, through your own, like, screen time app and the

aura and the eero and all those things. Really kind of

having it be like you purchase a kid friendly phone. Wouldn't

that be amazing? Because a lot of you want your kids to have

access to phones, but you know that they'll be able

to get on, like, you know, sneaky screens and stuff like that.

But if there was hardware bans, it would be helpful. I was thinking

about this. I was like, why don't we have an Internet license? Like,

you have to have a license to drive or an age limit for smoking.

Why do we not have an age limit for phones?

You can buy this phone once you've taken this class and you've

shown me that you know how to, like, I don't know, navigate bullying or I

don't know. I don't know what the rules would be. But I was like, why

don't we create an Internet license? I told you. I'm raking it

up. No screens or tech in schools. I don't know why it's

necessary for kids to have a Chromebook. The Chromebook is a huge problem for

parents. It's a big old issue at home to get them off of it. They

lie. They sneak. They tell us we have homework all the time. If you wanna

have device use in the school, have it in the school, but don't

put that on the family to also have device use. I know the

intention was to make sure that everybody had access to technology.

I love that making a more cool society and more

equitable access to tech. I get it. It is important,

and it's creating a lot of social harm. So I don't know

which is more important. We we kinda need to think about that. So getting rid

of Chromebooks or only having Chromebooks at school, something like

that. I was thinking maybe we have face ID,

right, to determine your age before you can launch YouTube or

Discord or TikTok or Snapchat or Instagram or whatever technology

is coming down the pike. There are better face

ID scans. I don't really love the idea of having children's faces

on the Internet. So I don't know. I don't know how to do it properly,

but I just was thinking it would be cool if you

could verify somebody's age through a verification

system that was kind of established. We need

a universal kids messaging app probably or something like that. If kids

are gonna have devices and they wanna talk to each other through devices, we

probably need to figure that out. Maybe that is on the television. So

it's kinda like old school. You know who they're talking to. You can

hear them talking. You can see that person's face.

It's I don't know. Some sort of messaging app or

some kind of way to communicate FaceTime, things like that. But in the

family environment, not on tiny little devices that are easy

to hide. And then, of course, I'm full favor of a

surgeon general warning, but not just on apps. I think we need a

surgeon general warning on the devices themselves.

Okay. This episode is to know is for you to know that

you are not alone If you're struggling

with screen limits and not knowing and feeling confused and

overwhelmed, I hope some of these suggestions I gave at the end

and, like, in previous episodes are helpful. But I also want

you to know you're in the Wild West of parenting. You are

a trail blazer when it comes to tech in in children,

and you're doing your best. And

I'm here to help guide you and create your family

limits. Find out what actually works for your family and what

you need. So that's some of the things we do in the Com Mama Club.

You know, we talk about we talk about screens a lot. We talk about homework.

We talk about chores. We talk about tidying up. We talk about bedtime.

We talk about all the basics, right, that families struggle with in

their homes. And, of course, screen screen limits. This is

new generationally, and it's a challenge. And I

I just wanna give you, like, I wanna give you a hug because

it's so hard. And I also wanna give you a an

attaboy. Right? Like, I wanna give you, like, a, you know, slap on the back.

Like, good job. You're doing great. And, and then, like, a

little, swat on the tush. Like, get back out there. You can do it.

So, apparently, I just wanna hug you and support

you. So think about your own rules and what works

for you. You're in the Wild West. So that means you get to make it

up and you get to decide and you get to enforce those limits. And remember,

your kids hate limits because people do, but deep down they love them.

I don't love a speed limit on

a freeway, but I also do like a speed limit. Because

when somebody goes really fast near me and they're going a 100 and I'm going,

you know, 70, I'm like, woah, they're going so fast. Jeez. They're

totally going past the speed limit. Like, it makes me feel unsafe.

So I like speed limits. I like rules,

because it helps us all kind of trust each other a

little bit more, and we know that we're healthy and

thriving as a society. So don't

be afraid to put those rules in place, mama. You've got it. And if

you need any help, I'm here. Reach out. Book a consult with me. Free

discovery consultation or just join the comm mama

club. $30 a month. You can join anytime. Show up at a Tuesday

call, and I'll get right into coaching you. Alright.

Greetings from the Wild West, and I will see you next time.