Don't let the baby drive the car!

What should we think about when we think about kids and smartphones

I had been trying to write this for ages but I found myself unable to start or finish; something about the overwhelming complexity of the subject in the context of the millions of opinions out there was kinda putting me off! Weird. However, I had several hours of train travel this week and there is something about the transient space of being on a train that makes nothing - not even words I type and send out to real humans in the actual world - feel permanent so I think perhaps that helped get something in shape. Having said that, every time I type a word I then pick up my phone and look at something else [currently Bella Mackie's substack] so desperate is my writer’s block to win this battle. Quite apt though, isn’t it, for an essay about smartphones and social media to be hamstrung by my smartphone. More on that in a different newsletter¹

This is just an overview. I can’t write about everything all at once and I don’t want you to have to read it all in one go. Everyone² is talking about smartphones and social media for children and teens, thanks to various campaigns and ban proposals and of course that telly programme I haven’t watched. I’ve been asked a lot about this lately- not just by you – but there was a week where all the talk radio shows wanted a section. I turned everything down, partly because I don’t really have time at the moment, but also because it is incredibly hard to communicate helpfully about this. Talk radio shows often want you to pick a side and I don’t usually have one. It’s also helpful for radio if you can speak concisely and directly to summarise your point, and I can’t. Nuance and soundbites are not comfortable bedfellows. There are a lot of overblown statements and statistics flying around online at the moment and they make me very twitchy. Even when I broadly agree with the sentiment, I just can’t go along with stuff that is so resolutely one way.

I don’t tend to wholeheartedly love banning things but I understand where the campaigns are coming from and I think they are moving the discussion in a good direction, so I don’t want to be in a situation where I sound like I’m criticising them. By the way, I chatted with Esther Walker about this in her i column here a while ago.

Also, genuinely, social media is not the real villain when it comes to children’s mental health. It’s really not. So as a psychologist who specialises in children’s mental health, I don’t want to add my voice to misdirect attention from what I think is more important. I have had conversations with actual MPs about this where they agree in principle but say that social media is a vote-winner, easily actionable, a precise piece of action that can take centre-stage which they can glory in and get votes³. I imagine the same is true for hgadlines.

A recent-ish newsletter from me outlined a bit about screentime⁴ and younger children, and included some mention of boundaries and dealing with tantrums when you say they have to turn the telly/tablet off. Lots of you really liked the idea that it can actually help you demonstrate boundary-setting, to teach waiting, and to develop emotional regulation in your kids. A child who understands that fun activities have limits, that parents are in charge, and who can wait or stop when they are told – tick tick tick in the box. We have to address the fact that something underlying the smartphone debate is boundaries. Even the telly programme that I haven’t watched yet apparently has a bit about that it – what were the parents doing? There is a huge difference between a teen having unfettered, unpatrolled, unmonitored access to everything on the internet and one who uses their smartphone in an age-appropriate, limited way. More on that in a later screed, I know it is hard to make teenagers be responsible and age-appropriate. That is why preparation for the online world needs to start young! Start when we are raising our young children and continue throughout childhood until a point when we feel they are ready to be completely unmonitored.

But I get it. Parents of teenagers have a lot to do; friendships, schoolwork, exams, career preparation, social behaviour, staying safe in the real world, resisting peer pressure, understanding the dangers of drugs, alcohol, sex, endless preparation for adulthood. And they have to do that to individuals who are undergoing rapid neurological twining, hormonal stinkbombs, psychodynamic separation, and just general cognitive tomfoolery. The very hardest people to manage!!!! I get why a ban is a helpful solution – no negotiation, no middle ground, just nothing. Blessed peace.

At the moment, I strongly advocate for a kind of lifelong training package to the online world. I say the online world but you know, that doesn’t exist in the way it used to. Online and offline living is completely intertwined: my banking, my grocery shopping, my communication with most members of my family ….. all conducted online but in service of the offline one. We can’t really blindly insist that the “online world” is a discrete distinct sphere we can keep separate from our “real lives”. I had an interesting debate about this in a security queue for the Houses of Parliament a few months ago, with a journalist who I respect and admire. She said we should just sack the internet off. A failed experiment that has caused more harm than good and we should pull the plug. Radical, but interesting. But let’s say that’s not going to happen any time soon – you’re not going to wait for a ban, you can’t wait for Big Tech⁵ to take moral action, the internet still exists - what should we do about our kids?

We are parenting through a world we did not grow up in. I remember Blue Peter presenters excitedly reading out the very first email they received from a viewer. There was the world wide web, AOL keywords, ICQ, Alta Vista CD-ROMs. The internet trickled into us through clunking beige computers owned by our parents, dial-up modems which shared lines with the phone in the hall. We were online only until someone needed the word processor or until someone else had to make a telephone call. Threats to our safety were identified and excised – remember chatrooms? The online world grew. Wikipedia, MySpace, and Napster. Youtube, Facebook, and Tumblr. Camera-phones. File sharing. Things got bigger, more exciting, more connected but still relatively contained. It grew but slow enough for us to keep pace, and figure ourselves out. But it grew and it grew, quicker and quicker.

Even the youngest of parents came of age in an internet very different to the ones our children inhabit. And so we have no blueprint, no instinctive understanding of what our kids are navigating. So much of what we typically have to guide our children through, we were guided through ourselves. Deep in our psyche we remember how adults helped us understand playground conflicts, stranger danger, how to read.

We don’t have that for our children’s online world and we are unmoored. But here’s a framework, an analogy. Road safety.

Roads and vehicles exist. They pose risk and they create harm. They also have plenty of benefits so on the whole we have adapted to live alongside them, harness the good and mitigate the bad. It is an ongoing process - as campaigners for road safety, climate change, and green space will tell you. As parents, we have a blueprint for raising our children to be independent road users. We remember learning the green cross code, holding the hand of an adult, cycling proficiency tests. Learning about vehicles and road safety is intertwined with our children’s lives and our parenting embeds this kind of risk management from the first day.

We place precious newborns in a carseat cocoon, we flinch crossing the road with our cargo in a pram but we learn which routes we like best, which feel most comfortable. We hold the toddler’s hand, maybe use reins⁶ , we walk on the roadside of the pavement. We teach them to look left, right, and left again. We use pelicans and zebras and lollipops to help them cross the road.

At the same time, we teach them about our motorised world. They have toy cars to bang and smash, they have a playmat with roads and villages; a space for cars and space for people. When they are older, we teach them to ride a bike. First the pavement, then the park, and when they have mastered the skill, they ride alongside us on the road. A little older, a little wiser; they walk alone to the corner shop, to school. A little bigger and the carseat is replaced by a booster is replaced by a seatbelt. Back seat to front seat. Bigger and stronger and cleverer, they cycle alone. Older, wiser, they learn driving theory, they have driving lessons. When we are ready, when they are ready ….off they go to join the traffic.

As safe as we can hope for, we have prepared them all their lives for this.

It's not perfect, there are tragic accidents, near misses. Pollution. I’ve talked elsewhere and will again about the profound impact that the transport infrastructure has on child development. We have moments of stress and fear – my daughter is currently trying to ride her bike to school even though I am crap at cycling and don’t really know how to transition her from pavement to road. We have all had near misses. But we have, excuse the pun, a general roadmap for developing their safety and independence because we did it ourselves. And there’s a societal acceptance that this is something we must do. Imagine hiding them from roads for a decade and then letting them loose to play in the traffic.

I urge us to take a similar approach to digital safety and online behaviour, which includes social media. I’m so glad the talk of a ban is raising awareness and shifting opinion towards the potential harms but I worry that without us undertaking a lot of other thinking and planning, a ban kicks the can down the road. The equivalent of raising our child in the middle of a field then parachuting them to the Elephant & Castle roundabout and telling them to find their way home. In the next few newsletters, I’m going to introduce a few simple ideas or tweaks that you can do from a young age but I won’t have all the answers. I’ll also round up a few other resources, people, or accounts that I think that go into some ideas in more detail – let me know your favourites in the comments.

Really I’m urging you as someone interested in parenting and in social media to consider my road safety approach and see what you think. What should we do? Is there more to ask for than just a ban on smartphones? How do we keep young people safe after they are allowed social media and phones? Does a focus on smartphones draw attention away from other mental health harms – is it the wrong answer to the right question? Or should we just ban the smartphones and then we could focus on the other structural things that are corrupting youth mental health? If we ban social media, would we then finally notice that safe places for children to play and socialise and live have disappeared? Is it hypocritical of me to hate so much of what I see on my own social media but still think we need to find a practical way through? I’m going to stop typing questions now before my brain melts and I delete this whole post. Let me know what you think.

1. Genuinely the biggest harm smartphones currently have on my daughter is the fact I use mine too much

2. Obviously not everyone

3. I paraphrase

4. ugh sorry I hate using that word

5. Is it ok to say that without sounding like a conspiracist?

6. That’s a whole other post. I got actual insults in the street when I had my toddler on reins.