On Wednesday, November 13, the SLES community attended the SCREENAGERS film viewing at Carl Sandburg. We had a great showing of families. Way to go SLES and CSMS PTAs for collaborating and bringing this opportunity to our community. We had important conversations at the conclusion of the film.  

The film described here:

“Are you watching kids scroll through life, with their rapid-fire thumbs and a six-second attention span? Physician and filmmaker Delaney Ruston saw that with her own kids and learned that the average kid spends 6.5 hours a day looking at screens. She wondered about the impact of all this time and about the friction occurring in homes and schools around negotiating screen time—friction she knew all too well.” 

“In SCREENAGERS, as with her award-winning documentaries on mental health, Delaney takes a deeply personal approach as she probes into the vulnerable corners of family life, including her own, to explore struggles over social media, video games, academics and internet addiction. Through poignant, and unexpectedly funny stories, along with surprising insights from authors, psychologists, and brain scientists, SCREENAGERS reveals how tech time impacts kids’ development and offers solutions on how adults can empower kids to best navigate the digital world and find balance.”

After the viewing of Screenagers, both students and parents shared their feelings about the film and their observations of how technology is used in their home; many students made connections to the film when they were speaking. Many students also didn’t waste time sharing out their own family’s tech addictions.  Through laughter and meaningful insights from both parents and students from our community, it was clear families were having a wide range of experiences and challenges effectively balancing technology use in the home. Many families agreed that finding a balance of screen time rules for their family was difficult. Many families cited technology rules as a source of conflict and disagreement in their family. Many families admitted they don’t always model tech balance in the way they use their own devices. Many families also shared their concerns about their child having their own device, especially because more and more children are getting their own personal devices at earlier ages.

Some topics that our families have discussed:

• Apps to help regulate screen time for the family
• How to help kids (and parents) regulate themselves; find a healthy balance
• What other schools in the area are doing in reference to cell phone policies and Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD)
• The specific policies of Stratford Landing, Carl Sandburg, and West Potomac for cell phones and BYOD
• Tech rules at home; families can create technology contracts for everyone to sign and follow; make rules together as a family
• Creating more opportunities for families to speak to one another about these topics
• Have a committee for Tech Time; encourage committee or group members to have a discussion in their own friend groups about how tech is used in their homes.

Some initial parent resources that were identified:

• Screenagers Tech Talk Tuesday Guides; visit website (*note, some PG 13+ topics are addressed; this is a parent resource)
• Indistractable (Book) By Nir Eyal
• Our Pact (App)
• Life 360 (App) 
• Screentime (built in iphone app)

From our parent conversations, there was agreement around how important it was for families to talk about this issue and address it together. Families agree they should be very involved in their child’s digital world. When speaking with your child, consider framing your digital conversations through academic learning opportunities, for example:

• Say to your child, “Persuade us (your family) why you are ready for your own personal device?” (write out the reasons or present their reasons and research at a family meeting; explore the pros and cons of screen time, of having their own personal device; set it up like a formal debate).

• Talk with your child about the importance of balancing screen time in their lives; have them make a chart of ways they can have balance; screen time limits, weekends only, screen time only after reading, screen time only after completing homework or some other type of academic activity; what are other activities aside from screen time to engage in during the week?

• Learn the privacy rules of apps with your child; have conversations about what it means to share data, or allow access to camera phone, etc. Quiz your child on types of alerts or advertisements they may see; most young children have no real background knowledge or understanding of our complex digital world, in particular, the possible consequences for their actions online or interacting with media.

• Have your child create a list of all the safety considerations they should take when online or interacting with media (video games, social media, etc.); they can share their list with you and then you can add on additional rules or safety considerations; post on the refrigerator

• Join your child’s favorite app; understand what they like about it; let them teach you how to use the app; let them show you what they know about media and their own devices

• Have your child make a list of what they use the internet for, what apps they use, how they see technology helping them in their day; it is important to understand how and why your child interacts with technology

Parents have been brainstorming ways we can speak more about this as a community. Those families that attended the Screenagers viewing at Carl Sandburg also shared their emails to be included in future conversations or community activities related to family technology lifestyles.

Our PTA president sent the following email to those families that attended the screening:

Thank you for registering for and/or attending the Screenagers film and discussion last week! We were thrilled to have so many parents and students from our community participate! As mentioned at the showing, there will be a discussion group this Thursday, Nov 21 at 9:30 am at Hollin Hall Pastry. 

In addition, the Stratford Landing and Carl Sandburg PTAs are working on ways to continue the conversation, so stay tuned! We'll be posting resources and information about other conversation opportunities on our websites.

Meanwhile, here is an interesting article about helping your child build skills to be "indistractable": https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/stanford-psychology-expert-biggest-parenting-mistake-is-not-teaching-kids-this-important-skill.html

Finally, if you are interested in helping plan or coordinate this ongoing effort, please reply to this email and let us know!

Sincerely, Megan Gottemoeller (SLES PTA) and Karin Dushaw (CSMS PTA)

Bookmark CSMS PTA website: http://carlsandburgpta.ch2v.com!

Parents have had additional conversations since viewing the film and provided these suggestions to engage our community and help create resources for our families:

• Tech Talk Tuesdays for the school community - give families a space (and food) to talk about tech using the guides given by the makers of Screenagers.
• Online group dedicated to tech talk
• Have specific topic threads in online group/ Facebook PTA group dedicated to specific tech topics.
• Live stream further discussion groups/meetings/tech talks.
• Send home in Wednesday folders information for families to use at home (survey of tech time in the home, tips for keeping screen time at bay during the holidays, family challenges around tech time, flyer with different apps that could be used at home to help regulate).

Following through with our conversations, I’d like to invite families to Stratford Landing on Tuesday, Dec 10, at 6:00 pm, for our first PTA Tech Talk Tuesdays. With Pizza😊 This will be a great opportunity for families to connect with one another and learn from one another. What kind of tech rules do you have at home? Do you want to learn what other families are doing? What does the research say? With winter vacation near, and families off of their traditional schedule for 2 weeks, this is a good time to address screen time expectations and family rules.

Please, come join the conversation.

Thank you.