Elaine Dizon is a life and mindset coach, writer, mother of 2, a recognized AT&T Business Cultural Champion, and a 2021 recipient of the AT&T Spark Award – the company’s highest honor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work bridging Tolerance to Understanding. She supports working moms with their next courageous conversation by reconnecting and advocating for what they would really like to say in personal and professional spaces.
As parents, many of us are on our screens for work or for pleasure. What happens when we employ technology into our lives? From entertainment to business, to learning, and for resources, we are surrounded by blue light and screens of various sizes all day long and if we are not careful, it could be all night too. I’ve been trying to find the sweet spot, the right algorithm, or more importantly, a way to calibrate the connection to things I need access to on my devices while I connect with my children. The older they get, they continue to discover things that interest them. From different toys, books, and crafts…to apps, videos, and video games. The transition to more online viewing and gameplay happens quickly. Suddenly, I am fighting for their attention to tend to the basic things and losing because the basics can’t compete with the dopamine and adrenaline rushes they get from games, you tubers, and streaming content. Before another month passes in 2022, I reached out to Emily Cherkin, The Screentime Consultant, whose work has been featured in The New York Times as well as appearances on the Today Show and Good Morning America.
When I met with Emily, I shared my many starts, stops, and fails in getting the balance just right for me and my family as it relates to screentime. My experiences around parental settings, parental controls, and addressing the disparity of time adults spend on technology and children felt hypocritical and inconsistent – hallmarks of frustration. One of my go-to phrases, when I am backtracking with my kids, is, “Mind your OWN screentime!” Emily listened, laughed, and did not lay any judgment. In fact, there is no judgment. Emily normalizes the experience because she is going through it with us. She admits some of her ongoing learnings come from her day-to-day experiences with her own children – ages 13 and 10. With her background teaching in an era when technology went from zero to at least eight iterations of the iPhone, she was keenly aware of how technology was changing the educational game and how parents needed to find a way to keep up because technology companies will continue to design applications and solutions that are persuasive, always on, holds infinite amounts of content, and easy to use. One of her greatest tenets (and incidentally, one of my favorite Instagram reels) is
“I don’t recommend parental controls. I recommend parenting.”
During my conversation with Emily, she breaks down the screentime discussion as another topic of parenting. Just as we talk to our children about chores, homework, and personal hygiene, let’s not be afraid to add technology, screentime, and applications to the parenting topic list. In fact, it’s important that we integrate it as soon as we are comfortable to do so and to find a way to keep it a point of ongoing discussion. As technology iterates and evolves, our conversations should ebb and flow with it too. I asked Emily for a three-step simple start. Here’s her advice:
Replace judgment with curiosity
I felt that in my initial discussion with Emily. It’s my hope to mimic that when I talk to my family about their screentime. Rather than address the situation exasperated about using technology, generating interest into what they are looking at would open the space to learn more about what excites them, bores them, or engages them right now. Hearing the word curiosity makes me smile…and truthfully, I may learn something new in the process.
Go backward to go forward; connection first
Don’t be afraid to backtrack and apologize if you fail or have a misstep. When my task list seems never-ending, my frustration peaks and addressing screentime amid that task list can throw me off my conscious parenting game. If it does, connecting back to my children is essential. Emily’s trademark term “tech-intentional” captures this moment for me. Connecting to being a kind and loving family member is intention number one…and pivoting to a conversation about “how and why we use our technology” (Emily’s definition of tech-intentional) is the name of the game. I look forward to talking to my children more about their tech-intentional ways. I can see how some of it feeds into their creativity and enjoyment and at the same time, we should talk about how it can also ooze time away from other activities and relationships in their life.
Live your life out loud
Offering children glimpses of our own trials and tribulations with technology can be helpful in demonstrating how we plan and organize our time, creativity, money, and relationship with online tools and applications in front of them. Emily’s principle can be defined as “narrating, out loud, what we are doing when we are doing it.” This puts the voice and purpose out there when we talk about being “tech-intentional.” I’ve described my screentime on my phone as connecting and engaging with collaborators, family, and friends. When my children notice me playing games on my phone, it’s odd…and they call me on it. I’ve shown them some digital wellbeing features and ways to stem my possible ongoing ad infinitum time watching YouTube shorts because those shorts, add up.
Since speaking with Emily, I have been minding my screentime and working on how I can be more tech-intentional myself. As it relates to business or connection, social media screentime is an important component to how I engage; where it gets dicey, when I start going down rabbit holes or videos that are moving me away from engagement and into the feeling of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Another truth, is the number of hours I can spend streaming a show. What starts out as one episode can lead to burning half the day away because I can’t stop watching a narrative. As I see myself in these experiences, I can see how my children can fall into these traps too. To gently move our screentime usage conversations into a place of curiosity rather than judgment, I plan on talking about my own observations and inviting my family into this conversation to connect our thoughts and ideas around screentime and start from there – and not from an all-hands-on-deck OMG moment, “We’re all on screens too much! Everybody STOP!”
Another facet of Emily’s work is her activism around technology policies and practices at educational institutions. Her insights around data collection – whether it’s through school applications or children’s profiles on different apps – was eye-opening. She offers great guidance on small attainable ways we can advocate for our children and to safeguard their data. If this is of interest to you, she has templates and resources to support parents in understanding more about commercial-free campaigns and data privacy.
Perhaps the most important thing in my conversation with Emily was about how children learn best. The ideal climate for a child’s learning is experiential, tactile, and three-dimensional. Synchronous learning and connecting concepts to support brain development. I believe that as we get older, this type of learning is beneficial for continuous learning as a parent too. To sit down and build learning experiences with our children, to play, and to discuss what we are learning. It is so easy to lean on technology to buy us time and make things convenient. If we think about the intentions behind what the technology is bringing into our life and align it to our own core values, we can find that fluid balance to do what’s right, at the right time, and for the right reasons.
Emily Cherkin is a tenacious, passionate, and curious mom. Her purpose is to help children thrive in a tech-saturated world by teaching parents tech-intentional strategies to create a better balance with screentime.
If you are interested in Emily’s work, please go to her website – The Screentime Consultant.
Her services include parent coaching, school presentations, and corporate consultations.
She has a 12-week course beginning on March 1, 2022 and she is taking applications now from parents who would like to attend.
I believe I have only scratched the surface of what I can learn from Emily and believe that I can at least start talking about screentime in a way that is mindful, curious, and open with my family. I invite you to share your screentime discussions with me – the good, the not so good, and the hopeful ones – through a virtual coffee chat. Sign up here.
Be well, be safe, and be loved.
Your Coach Mom,
Elaine
