Yesterday, I wrote a post about building an app to help families manage technology addiction. You could summarize my post like this:
The symptom: Our kids our addicted to technology.
The cause: Parents lack the systems and self control to set healthy limits on technology and enforce them.
The possible solution: Create an app that helps both parents and children build healthy habits and uses technology as a daily reward to be earned. I want to build this app.
To illustrate how bad this problem is, let me explain what happened after I wrote that post:
We spent the day around the house, enjoying a restful sabbath. (As a rule, I don't do anything besides relaxing with my family on Saturdays, but that's another post.) We had some guests come in and we took them out to supper. When we got back, I needed my eight year old son to take a shower. He had been on his switch for far longer than normal yesterday, hiding out and watching youtube videos. We spent the last few hours of the night trying to get him to take a shower and he never did it. He was so wired from a day with too much tech that any instructions from us went in one ear and out another. We are going to have to give him no access for several days so he detoxes himself from this.
Again, my son's behavior was the symptom. The cause was the fact that I was already in bed, my wife was feeding our baby and we were watching a show. The cause was my own laziness and lack of self-control. Had I more closely monitored his tech throughout the day, collecting it so he had no more access at a certain point, and had I got out of bed and made sure he did what he was supposed to, the whole affair would have been over in minutes.
No app is going to magically inject me with self-discipline or better habits - but it could have helped:
The symptom: Our kids our addicted to technology.
The cause: Parents lack the systems and self control to set healthy limits on technology and enforce them.
The possible solution: Create an app that helps both parents and children build healthy habits and uses technology as a daily reward to be earned. I want to build this app.
To illustrate how bad this problem is, let me explain what happened after I wrote that post:
We spent the day around the house, enjoying a restful sabbath. (As a rule, I don't do anything besides relaxing with my family on Saturdays, but that's another post.) We had some guests come in and we took them out to supper. When we got back, I needed my eight year old son to take a shower. He had been on his switch for far longer than normal yesterday, hiding out and watching youtube videos. We spent the last few hours of the night trying to get him to take a shower and he never did it. He was so wired from a day with too much tech that any instructions from us went in one ear and out another. We are going to have to give him no access for several days so he detoxes himself from this.
Again, my son's behavior was the symptom. The cause was the fact that I was already in bed, my wife was feeding our baby and we were watching a show. The cause was my own laziness and lack of self-control. Had I more closely monitored his tech throughout the day, collecting it so he had no more access at a certain point, and had I got out of bed and made sure he did what he was supposed to, the whole affair would have been over in minutes.
No app is going to magically inject me with self-discipline or better habits - but it could have helped:
- An app could have set a todo list that my son had to complete to get his tech in the first place.
- An app could have reminded me after he had had it for a set period of time.
- An app could have reminded me to check logs of how long he was spending on YouTube.
- An app could have reminded me to collect his switch so that tomorrow didn't start the same way.
- An app could have given me a place to subtract points from his score, which he is collecting towards a reward.
Again, nothing magic here. But it could have helped me develop better parenting habits while helping him develop better self-discipline habits. If nothing else, it would give us a scoreboard to see how we are doing and simple goals to achieve and remind us of those goals.
They say it's easier to sell pain-killers than aspirin. This is a pain me and many other parents are feeling. I think it's time for this thing.