Not Your Father’s Playboy
Keeping Kids Safe with Technology
As a child and family psychiatrist, I am often asked about technology and how it impacts families and children. Technology has totally changed the way families create and enforce rules in the home. Now that children and teens have instant access to an endless stream of information with their smartphones, they have become really difficult to monitor. Children often outfox their parents. Even with parental controls, some parents really don’t know how to set that up correctly. Families are spending way less “quality time” together. For example, kids are not reading as much and that is affecting the development of their vocabulary.
Something that parents may not be thinking about, but really should be, is pornography.
Fifty percent of parents (half!) underestimate how much pornography their child has seen. And, this is not your mother’s pornography!
For most parents, the extent of “explicit materials” used to be that we would read The Joy of Sex, that 70’s book left in the attic. Maybe you find your father’s old nudie magazines left in some closet. There was a simplicity to the images. Women is sexy clothing or bare breasted. So it is easy for us to underestimate the risks of today’s porn.
As a comparison, it is just like how drugs have evolved. Today’s marijuana is not the same as what was being smoked in the 1960’s. Today’s free pornography can more easily be stumbled upon. Children and teens can write something as simple as “boobs” into their browser, and the results are designed to get them hooked from the start and become life-long users.
80% of free pornography shows violent and degrading images of women. When boys view porn for long periods of time, they are more likely to commit verbal or physical aggression, regardless of age. Allowing your child unrestricted access to the web can have very serious consequences. For boys, studies show this can cause lifelong changes of perceptions of sexuality. Specifically, it fosters presumptions of popularity for less common sexual practices (S+M, etc). It also trivializes rape as a criminal offense, promotes insensitivity toward victims of sexual violence, and promotes men’s beliefs that they would be capable of committing rape.
For both boys and girls watching pornography, it breeds discontent with the physical appearance, the sexual performance themselves and their future intimate partners. Before at least age 10, children cannot comprehend pornography as a fantasy. In the earliest years, a child may not even react. However, many children find pornographic images or videos to be upsetting or confusing if they are accidentally exposed to them.
Sex may look like violence, for example, and it will not be easy to explain the difference. I prefer tight control over the possibility of accessing inappropriate content during these years. In early childhood and the tween years, pornography can have a negative impact on how children view sex. Parents should feel no shame about peering over their child’s shoulder sometimes when they are on their devices and asking what they are watching. You should ask your child what they have been shown by friends, and whether other parents monitor them.
What many parents do not realize is how technology can affect our children’s emotional and psychological well being. “On average, 8 to 12 year-olds use just under five hours’ worth of screen media per day, and teens use an average of just under seven and a half hours’ worth — not including time spent using screens for school or homework.”
To me, this is a shocking amount of time to spend glued to a device. I have seen children get addicted to screens and become irritable and angry when asked to put them down. For example, some children will only eat when a screen is playing. This impedes connections and relationships, and bonding which needs to happen in childhood. Not to mention, violent and graphic images on screen can cause an increase in aggressive acts in children and teens.
What do we do about it? I always recommend the following tips to parents — setting guidelines or rules for technology.
- Install parental controls (good ones) like Qustodio. The existing controls available on most phones that come pre-installed will not suffice. These will monitor all your children’s devices and give you weekly reports as to what they are viewing. It also allows you to switch off the device after a certain time (e.g. 9:30pm) remotely so they can get some sleep.
- Use the technology as a reward, not as a given right. It is a privilege to own a smartphone. Qustodio can allow the child to use the smartphone as a phone for emergencies and only switch on the fun stuff after their homework is done and chores are completed. This will give you control.
- Family meals should be sacred family time. No devices are allowed (that goes for parents, too!). I suggest parents come up with fun, routine meal time practices, like gratitude shares (e.g. 5 things you were grateful for today), or coming up with a high and low of the day. Creating family rituals can also give a child a sense of belonging and raise self-esteem. See more in my blog.
- Speak to your children about pornography. Studies show that parents should address it directly and head on with children. There are many great resources on https://www.culturereframed.org with videos you can watch with your kids!
If you follow these tips, you will be more likely to maintain open communication with your kids, reduce harm, and create more connectivity with the family overall!
Originally post on Psychology Today.
References
1 Pew Research Center, “Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018,” May 2018.
2 Rideout, V., and Robb, M. B. (2019). The Common Sense census: Media use by tweens and teens, 2019. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense Media. www.commonsensemedia.org
