Letter to my children: Screen Time, Humane Technology, and Limbic Hijacking

“Momma! Stop getting distracted! You are supposed to be reading to me!”

“I know, I know, I just need to finish this sentence.” DAMMIT! I hate this fucking feeling. Stop yelling child. I only have one more sentence to write and then I can press send and not think about this anymore!!

“You just said that! You are not coming!! STOP GETTING DISTRACTED!!”

Fuuucking technoolooogyyyy!!! “I know, just … three … more words.” I frantically pressed send on the text, put the phone down on the kitchen counter, and walked back to the couch. “There, I am coming. I am sorry.”

“Why do you DO that?! You are supposed to be reading to me!”

“I know. I know. I am so sorry. I wanted to check to see if Kate’s Momma had written me back about coming to visit this afternoon. When I looked in my text messages there was another message that I read and wanted to respond to so I could not think about it anymore. I am sorry. It it is not fair to you.”

Dragon looked somewhat mollified.

My dearest Beloveds, it is most definitely not fair to you. Our phones are addictive. They are designed that way. Our phones/handheld computers are also incredibly useful - chock full of useful/useless conveniences which enrich our lives daily. So let us unpack this Both And conundrum of technology.

Recently, Bean you asked me this question.

“Momma, do you love your computer?”

“No, I am addicted to things on my phone. But my computer, like my phone, is a collection of metal and wires. You can’t love a machine.”

You can’t love a machine. But you can love the feedback loop, the constant drip of stimulus, the anticipation of a text/email from a friend, the flood of happiness when you scroll through your photos, the ability to explore and visit the world at your fingertips, the distraction from the laundry/dishes/bills, the diversion from pain, the thrill of the new, the possibility of being stumped by a word on freerice.

There is now widespread acceptance of technology as an addiction. The Center for Humane Technology has a comprehensive list of steps you can take now to increase your digital well being and step outside of the vitriol loop such as turning off notifications, deleting toxic apps (facebook, etc), setting boundaries around use (charging away from your bedside), and following voices outside of your media comfort zone.

Despite the reality of technology addition many schools are willfully experimenting with the next generation of neurons. Prep schools give incoming 9 year olds their own computers in order to learn. 9 year olds whose brain will not be fully developed until they are 25. Even the Sudbury School near us, where children are completely responsible for their education, allows students unfettered access to technology. I don’t know what this means for our future but it is certainly a grand societal experiment.

Your parents got our first mobile phones in our early twenties. So we are the last generation of your family that did not have access to these phones while our brains were developing. The last generation that remembers what it is like to not have companies actively hijacking our limbic brains.

As David Schmachtenberger of the Consilience Project shared “the nature of the ad model doing time-on-site optimization ends up appealing to existing biases rather than correcting their bias, appealing to their tribal in group identities rather than correcting them, and appealing to limbic hijacks rather than helping people transcend them. As a result you end up actually breaking social solidarity” endemic in “the attention harvesting and directing economy.”*

We talk about the “attention harvesting” that happens every time momma checks my email or my message when I wander over to make some tea, or grab an apple to cut up for snack. Suddenly someone who is not part of our morning routine has barged into the room. That is why limbic hijacking is such a good term of what happens.

It is literally as though we are in a play. A play where each person knows their part and their lines. Momma marks down on the lesson plan the morning activities, checking against the list for Day 2 of the week. Bean practices her spelling words. Dragon writes out his numbers.

Momma answers questions. Bean works on regrouping in 4 digit subtraction. Dragon plays with trains on the rug. Momma sharpens pencils and walks over to the kitchen to put the shavings into the compost bin. As she puts the sharpener back into the drawer, Momma glances at her text messages.

BOOM!

It is the plumber wondering if they can come on Thursday instead of Tuesday - which means Momma needs to take off the teaching hat and put on the scheduling hat. The flow of the play screeches to a halt as everyone adjusts to this uninvited visitor.

Hijacked.

Your Momma knows I am being hijacked and yet I cannot bring myself to step entirely away from the joys of technology.

I can look up how to make sunflower butter. I can explore Ansel Adam’s pictures of the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California during WWII in the Library of Congress catalogue. I can write to you letters on my phone when I wake up in the middle of the night. We can listen to Circle Round in the car and I can download library audio books to the Libby App for long car trips.**

I am very well aware our sequestering you both from the wider world of technology is a short term situation (and one of privilege) - but safeguarding your limbic brains for whatever adventures await you in your life feels very important to your parents.

I know you will help me as I get distracted and as you both mature I promise I will do the same for you.

*pg 3 of the podcast transcript

**Huge shoutout to Stockard Channing reading Ramona Quimby, I almost peed myself I was laughing so hard.