This morning, I attended a focus group discussion on screen time for kids, and what parents, teachers and caregivers feel or can do about better managing it.
How did I come by such a focus group you ask?
You see, the main English daily in my country plans to launch a series to help parents better manage screen time for kids. The series would kick off in January 2026, likely through a combination of commentaries, relevant news reports, possibly quick tips/cheat sheets, and even podcasts/videos. In short, all mediums at the daily’s disposal to propagate the message that screen time for young kids should be reduced or, better yet (especially for pre-school kiddies), removed.
To that end, the daily invited parents keen to offer up suggestions, advice or feedback about ways to tackle the issue to join a focus group discussion. To identify ways the daily could help the discourse for this issue of screen time using its various platforms.
So yours truly decided to sign up and get my views heard. Views I’ve shared before on my blog as recently as early this year.
When It Comes To Screen Time, Most Parents Have Myopia On Steroids
There were a total of four focus group sessions that were held over four days, today being the last.
Each session saw up to 14 parents divided into two focus groups, with the daily’s education-beat reporters serving as facilitators and recorders. Each session took some two hours.
While it is clear most of the participants agreed we need to limit the screen time of our kids, what isn’t as obvious is the how and (more importantly for me) the urgency to do it.
Listening to some of the participants today, I fear we’re so far removed from understanding the sheer enormity of this existential crisis, that maybe instead of targeting kids and controlling their use, adults should be the ones we should target the message of restraint at!
One parent proudly declared he and his wife decided right from the start they would not have a TV in their home. And each time their only child, a seven-year-old boy, discusses screens or other matters related to technology, this parent would apply logic and reasoning in the form of targeted questions to help his kid think through these issues “systematically”, and come to the ‘right’ conclusion. Which in his family’s case, is that his son doesn’t need a device.
Like when they were on a public bus, this dad would ask his son to comment about youngsters he see with backs bent over as they doom scroll on their mobile devices while the bus moves along. When his son replies “that kid’s posture is wrong and not good for him”, the dad would feel a sense of confidence that he needn’t worry his son will one day be like one of those youngsters on the bus craving for a device!
I sure would like to check back in with this dad seven years from now (when his son turns 14) and see if this state of affairs remains unchanged!
The late Stephen Covey once said, “We see the world, not as it is, but as we are──or, as we are conditioned to see it.” Most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, believe the world is how it is according to how we live, never mind if our reality or perception of reality is limited to our own lived experience in but one itsy-bitsy corner of the globe, during but one small section of what is an endless tunnel of time!
I call this phenomenon “myopia on steroids”. Which is really my euphemism for stubborn and delusional!
Sadly that father will have to learn this the hard way. For it was clear from this morning’s discussion he would reject any attempts to forewarn him of the train wreck he’s in for. Especially if he thinks he, his wife and his son can escape the digital onslaught the rest of us have been buffeted by relentlessly these past ten over years as the pace of digital roll-outs everywhere accelerated.
I should know. For my wife and I were like him over seven years ago. Now, and sadly on hind sight, we know better. And it feels like too little too late!
Reducing Screen Time For Kids Needs All Hands On Deck!
I came away from the focus group today even more convinced my suspicions have grounding.
What are those suspicions? Cutting back on screen time for kids is not only imperative, it’s also nearly impossible to achieve!
Try as hard as we might, if it’s not a large enough collective effort where every stakeholder chips in, the needle isn’t going to move very much in terms of helping our charges reduce their screen time. Yes, we need all hands on deck!
For once kids have access to their own personal devices — smartphones, tablets or a laptop — it’s going to be a monumental task to get their attention back to the real world.
In the last four years he’s been in secondary school, I’ve watched almost helplessly as my firstborn became increasingly joined at the hips to his smartphone as each of those four years passes!
Given that we had made him sign a four-page contract before handing him his first phone back in November 2021, I guess you can say we started “well”. Sadly, it’s looking like we ended up pretty poorly now.
But I’ve also learned much over the years through research and analyses done by social psychologists and professional observers of technology and trends. Experts like Jean Twenge, Sherry Turkle, Cal Newport, Jonathan Haidt, Gloria Mark, Johann Hari, David Courtwright, Aza Rashkin and Tristan Harris.
And much of what I have learned tells me that when it seems I as a parent have failed, that’s only a fragment of the full picture. There are other state actors and stakeholders that are equally if not more complicit in this digital conspiracy that’s affected our young ones. These players have dealt our kids and the rest of us an unfair hand.
Think of all the movers and shakers in the tech industry. And all the jittery politicians and government authorities with full-blown FOMO, fearing that if their citizenry doesn’t embrace technology from a young age, the country’s doomed!
So if we are to cut back on screen time, stakeholders like these must end their FOMO too.
Or else, we will truly be doomed!
