So, it used to be, you know, when you're in school that you just have to, between classes, right, you have to like perform, hi, how you doing, you know, do all this stuff, but you'd go home and you can relax. But today a kid has to perform all the time.
Wow. Because now it's not just in the hallway in class, but it's, I've gone home and I have my device and maybe I'm missing something, so I better make sure I'm not missing something. And then in the middle of the night, like maybe someone might say something, I don't want to miss that because then I'll get to school in the morning and everyone will know about something and I won't know about it. So, it's this constant feeling of missing something. Arlene Pelicane joins us again today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
I'm John Fuller. John, last time we talked about, you know, using smartphones and screen time with kids and I said at the beginning of that program, this is probably the number one thing that we get contacted by parents about. They want to know what should I do. And we did mention that last time, what experts are now saying for screen time for zero to two, which is none, three to five, et cetera.
So, if you missed it, go back and get it from the smartphone app or, you know, go to the website and you can listen to that program. We're going to pick up the conversation today. I think we probably, not intentionally, probably scared a lot of parents with what we talked about. There's solid data about brain development or poor brain development when it comes to too much screen time and that's part of it. We've got to be so much more mindful as parents today than say 20 years ago, 15 years ago. Technology can destroy children and we're seeing that in the data, you know, loneliness and separation and cyber bullying and all those kinds of things. And when, you know, use of screens goes up, empathy for children goes down, the ability to learn empathy. Again, we covered all that last time, get it. But we're going to pick up today and talk more with our guest and her great book, Screen Kids, Five Relational Skills Every Child Needs in a Tech Driven World. Every parent needs a copy of this book.
Yeah, and it's never too late to go back and address some shortcomings. Arlene talked about that last time as well. Arlene Pelicane is a popular speaker and author.
She's got three kids, two of them adults, one in the teens. And she, along with Dr. Gary Chapman, wrote a terrific book addressing this topic. It's called Screen Kids, Five Relational Skills Every Child Needs in a Tech Driven World. This is a terrific resource and we've got copies of it here.
Check the program description for more. Arlene, welcome back. So much fun to be here.
Always good to have you. And last time we did kind of do a little shock to the system of parents and say, here's the data. Let's go back and just recap some of that data so that parents can be mindful of what it's telling us. You know, the statistics are not supportive of too much screen time.
That's the bottom line. I mentioned that the Surgeon General now is saying they want to have warning labels basically up there on the screen when kids and adults enter into social media platforms. That should be a signal that they want to put a warning up.
It's about time, actually. I've watched some of those congressional hearings where the owners of those platforms, whether it's Facebook or you name it, Snapchat, TikTok, they're getting grilled by the Congress for the data they have that shows how they're wiring kids today, hitting them with dopamine, with the addiction of staying engaged with their games or whatever it might be. It's all thoughtful on their part to connect and hook these kids into their platforms. So I've done some of the job. What else can you tell us about the statistics? Yeah. You think about the average child being on a screen for amusement for eight hours a day.
I mean, what could you do with eight hours a day? Let me shock you again. I read your book. So it said, you said in there and you've looked at the research that by the time a child is seven, they've already spent a year on screens. All of us should go, what?
I would think maybe a few months would be okay. I get that. They've already spent a year on screens by the time they're seven. It's crazy.
It is a crazy amount. And just think what would happen if they put that time into a sport, into reading, into playing like this is what childhood is supposed to be. Imagination.
Imagination, being a kid. And so there's a new book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, who is a social psychologist. And he is really showing from the research that my goodness, this mental health crisis, what happened of this hockey stick that depression goes up in girls, anxiety goes up, it goes up, suicidal tendencies go up, you know, one hundred and sixty three percent for girls, ninety one percent for boys. What is happening?
What happened? And it was the advent of the smartphone and what he calls the great rewiring of childhood, where we move from a play based childhood to a phone based childhood. And in this there are harms. And that's what we have to realize as parents that, okay, we don't want the harm of our kid being ostracized. Let's say that they are the five percent that don't have a phone and ninety five percent of the kids do. But guess what we're signing them up for? We're signing them up for social deprivation where they don't have real friends. They just spend time with their device.
We're signing them up for sleep deprivation. You know, Arlene, I'm thinking about, oh, my goodness, being a teenager way back when. Just how normally how loneliness crept in and in feelings of inadequacy. And it's so awkward that age junior high.
Everybody remember that PE class, you know, back when I was saving a shower in front of the other guys. I mean, it's all that stuff. And you're just just so desperate now on top of those things that, you know, for the most part are still occurring. Now we add the phone with all the stuff going on, the cyber bullying and girls particularly who are desperate for friendship.
And yet it's so thin and so empty. Man, we've got to be mindful of what we need to do as parents. And we want our kids to have the strong relationships. So how does that child, how do we unhook? Just think that girl.
Yes. Just that 13 year old girl that that's been her her life. How does a mom say, OK, or dad?
OK, we're going to start to kind of detox. We've got to give our kids a taste for something better where then something else pulls them. So it can be, you know, social media and big tech does so well because they observe your child all the time. What do they click on?
What do they like? They probably observe their child. Exactly. So you as a parent observe your child, spend a week, observe, ask them, what are you looking at? You know, why do you find that interesting? And then you might find out, oh, my child is really interested in art or in mechanical engineering or in fixing a car, or they might really enjoy learning a language or whatever it is.
But basically observe your child and then find them activities in the real world that they can do so that now, instead of having a swath of eight hours, they have now a swath of four hours, you know, like like fill their life with other things. That takes some thought. It takes some thought. But guess what?
When you have your mind made up, because what's at stake? What's at stake is your child growing up completely dependent on a screen. Yeah. And in that context, again, that 13 year old girl, I think about that loneliness trap. The irony is, as parents, I think we see them connected, chatting with friends, posting cute pictures, you rationalize as the parent.
Oh, that's good. They have friends. But again, the inverse is what's happening. The loneliness index is going up for those kids. Explain if researchers are finding out why, why, how could they be so highly connected and so lonely and increasingly lonely in that kind of context?
Yeah, there was a, they did a research thing of 33,000 students in college. It should be the most social time of your life. And two out of the three report being lonely. And I have to think of Jonathan Haidt's what he writes in The Anxious Generation in that when you're online, it's disembodied. So you're not with a person, you're just with a device.
You're not with a body. It's not synchronous. A lot of times it's not happening in real time. You're posting something and then you're waiting for someone else to post. You're communicating one to like the world.
Gee, I hope someone's listening instead of one to one or one to a few. And it's easy to jump in and out of relationships online versus in real life. It takes time to cultivate a real friendship. You have to spend time together.
You have to do things together. So there are two very different experiences. So if a kid has, you know, 500 followers, they might think, wow, like I'm amazing. But they did this thing where a Facebook person, they had this and it is an old study. That's why I say a Facebook person. But they had a real birthday party in real life and they figured I've got like hundreds of followers and one person showed up. And that's the depth of it.
Right. It's like, let's say you get sick. Who's going to come visit you? Who's going to tell you, I'm so sorry that your mom has cancer? Who of your friends, quote unquote, friends online is going to make an effort to reach out to you?
Probably very few right online. But in real life, if you have a friend in youth group, if you have one friend at school, if you have one friend you've grown up with since kindergarten and you still stay in touch and you as a parent try to nurture that friendship as much as possible, that friend, they'll still be your friend 15 years later. So it's so different. And that's why kids are so lonely, because they are been sold this bill of goods is to be social, is to have lots of followers and to look good and to have the status or be on a video game and do really well.
But you don't have real friends and you don't have real skills, real competence. And that really undermines the confidence of a child. Well, you and Gary Chapman, as you wrote this book, did you have a discussion about temperament? I mean, I'm always intrigued by temperament. Typically, we marry the person that is different from us because that's what attracts us.
And, you know, the scripture talks about it as a completer, that person completing you, your wife completing you. And, you know, it's usually that obvious thing of introvert, extrovert and other things down the line. But in that introvert and extrovert space, especially for our teens online, do those temperaments play into that? I mean, I could see the extrovert, which I am one, you know, going out there and posting everything. Look at this. Look what I did yesterday.
I mountain biked, I snow skied, whatever. And then the introvert is finding some connection there because it's hard for them to relate in person. And it brings a benefit that they can express themselves easier because it's not a fearful, you know, one to one face to face kind of thing.
Is there any of that analysis out there? We write about the shy child. You know, a lot of parents will say, oh, well, my, you know, the parent introduces their child to a friend. Oh, say hi to Mr. Smith.
Hi. You know, they won't look up. Well, my child is just shy because guess what? We're really bad at eye contact right now because we're looking down at screens a lot. And so a lot of times the kid is not shy and we might think, oh, they're introvert so they can't talk to people. They're very shy, but it's just their brain that we enable that. We haven't trained them to overcome that to say, oh, this is easy. Let's practice at home.
Just look me in the eyes, shake my hand and practice that. Right. So sometimes we just label it like, oh, they're an introvert, they're shy, they're going to sit in their room, they're going to play video games, they're going to social media and it's good for them and that it's okay for them. But then for that parent has to say, wait, but they need those exercises in real life where I have to look at someone, I have to like step out of my comfort zone and shake someone's hand and do those things. And then for the extrovert, I think they would tend to more be like, I can't just sit in my room all day.
I got to go out and meet people. But they also would be more prone to the criticism of, let's say they post something and it's like, yes, what do you think of me? Or like no one responded.
Like where's the noise? You know, that that would be very hard to take. And that's a lot for a 12 year old, a 14 year old to have all that input. It's too much input.
Yeah. Great insights today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Our guest is Arlene Pelicane and along with Dr. Gary Chapman, she wrote this book, Screen Kids, Five Relational Skills Every Child Needs in a Tech Driven World. Get a copy of that book from us and find other resources. We've got details in the show notes. Arlene, you've identified, I think you call the five A plus social skills every child needs.
Give us the list of five and then we'll go as deep as we can with the remaining time for each one. So just think of your child. If they get A pluses in school, yay.
But you know what? If they get these A pluses, way better. And it's to succeed relationally because at the end of life, you're not going to be like, oh, I killed it in Minecraft or I was the social media queen or you're going to say like, who do I love and who loves me? So the first A plus skill is affection. Does your child know how to give and receive love?
Do they feel loved in real life? The next one is appreciation. Do they say thank you or do they say I want more or I want the yellow one or, you know, you give your kid an iPhone and they're like, this isn't the latest one, you know.
So gratitude. Are they grateful? Anger management. Your kid is going to get mad.
Do they know how to manage it? Can they tell when they are being mad over a true injustice or they're just mad because they didn't get their way? Apology. Can your child apologize and mend a relationship?
And the last one, attention. Can your child take their wandering attention and listen to that teacher, listen to that pastor, read that book assignment? You know, kids more than ever, they do not know how to pay attention unless it is on a screen, exploding, exciting, always changing, very edgy, etc. So can your child just sit in nature and be fine? Yeah. You know, can they do that?
Can they go on a camping trip with no Wi-Fi for four days and be completely fine and not complain about that? And that's all the skill of attention. And again, a lot of the science is showing this is really beneficial to mental health, that idea of being in nature. Let's get through some of these. Affection, that was one you mentioned. You have a funny moment with your husband James.
We have many funny moments. Yeah, you're looking eyeball to eyeball. He was working on his affection development, but what happened? He's looking at me during our dating and he says, do you know what I see when I look in your eyes? What do you see? I see the letters AV, your contact lenses say AV and I popped out my contact lens.
I looked at it in the bathroom and I did not even know that on the ridge of the contact I said AV. And I was like, are you kidding me? This person is looking so deeply into my eye. He must have like super sight or something.
I have no idea. That's pretty good, right? I've never noticed that.
Right? So I was like, you are looking at me so directly and that's what categorizes like when you fall in love, you look at the person. You don't tire of looking at the person. And so that eye contact is so important. It lets people know I care about you and it's such an easy thing to give, right? It doesn't cost you anything.
It's the same amount of time. All you do is avert your gaze from your device, let's say to the person. But what happens years later, it's like you're everyone, husbands, wives, kids, everyone glued to devices. Nobody knows what, no one even knows if you're wearing contacts or glasses because nobody's looking at each other. So this idea of eye contact usually important and something you can do in your home is just say, I'm going to work on eye contact all week that when I have a person entering my airspace, I call it the pivot, I will pivot away from my device. I will look at the person and say, how are you? Or you know, even at the doctor's office, even in passing when you're in the grocery store, look up at the person approaching you, make eye contact and say good afternoon. Like it's such a very small thing, but it helps break this trance of we're just all alone with our screens. So eye contact is super important. Yeah, the yeah, I understand. You're staring at me. I'm looking at some of the prep here. Appreciation, that other skill you mentioned, I think the opposite of that might be entitlement.
I don't know. But indulgence. So appreciation.
I mean, that can be, again, in a social media context, it could be over the top, it doesn't feel sincere, all those things. But describe the real appreciation. The real appreciation is, wow, I get to do this. I get to be here. Not this like, I got to go to school.
I got to be a parent. I got to do these things. Appreciation says, wow, God, thank you. Thank you for the breath you give me. Thank you for these kids. Thank you that I live, you know, I have a roof.
You know, obviously, I could get real cheesy on here. Thanks for this little bread you gave me, you know, all these things. But it is this attitude.
It's an attitude. And I have enough. Like, I'm grateful and I have enough. But what does the screen teach you? You don't have enough.
You always need more. And the screen trains us and our kids that we can have whatever we want, because we just asked Siri and she tells us the exact information that we want. We can. Okay, wait a minute. That's pretty convenient.
What's the weather today? We don't have to wait for things like super convenient. So if it's inconvenient, we get really thrown off because we're super used to inconvenience. And then the kid of today, they can watch, you know, 400 different shows where the kid of yesterday might have just had like four shows, you know, to choose from.
But today, like it's endless. So all this choice makes kids very entitled that, oh, you only have that at grandma's house. Well, I don't want to do that.
I'm used to doing whatever I want. And that really puts that entitlement on steroids. Anger management.
I know there's that movie, I think, a long time ago. But anger management is an interesting one. I hadn't thought about anger in that regard, that it's something we need to develop. But how do you attack anger management in a healthy biblical way? Well, you think about that kid who you say you can't play that video game, you're gonna see some anger and you're gonna have to learn how to manage it, right? So, so the idea here is there is righteous anger, right? It's be angry and do not sin. There is righteous anger so far as to realize, okay, if there is a true injustice happening, and Dr. Chapman is the expert in this, you know, if there's a true injustice happening, okay, let's deal with it. Let's make retribution.
Let's, let's make this right. But if it's just you won't let me play my video game, you took this away. I didn't, you know, whatever it is. So helping your child say, I am angry because, and just get them to that point. Now your child is going to act out either with words, girls will do it a lot of times with words and boys will do it with behavior.
They'll kick things. That's very typical. So maybe it's, hey, go run around the block a few times and then come back here and talk to me. You know, it could be something like that, but let's get to that point where we say, I'm angry because, and you can tell me. If your kid's yelling at you, you take it, you just be like, think like you're the robot. Really don't yell back and just take it and then be like, you're not ready to talk right now.
So when you're ready, we'll talk about this and just kind of really make yourself numb in that moment. Okay, for the parent that struggles with that, how do you develop that skill? I mean, it's not easy. Like honestly, rehearse it in your mind.
Kids are dragging you into the pen. Rehearse it in your mind. Like think of the elite athlete that's rehearsing that swing over and over. So you rehearse, okay, my kid is going to yell at me, my kid is going to curse at me, my kids, and I'm just going to stand there like a statue. And honestly, like it's unnerving. You can make it funny like to yourself.
I think that to like practice with your spouse so that it actually becomes something that you find entertaining. I know that might sound funny, but honestly, like take the sting out of it. Take the power away from your kid to be like, I'm ready. I've rehearsed this. I know you're going to yell at me. I know you're going to unleash these things at me and hey, guess what?
I'm not going to yell back. And your kid is going to be like, wait a minute, I'm off my game because they're not doing the script of what I'm used to. You know, because kids are more look at your kid if you're seeing that they are becoming more angry. Is it a particular video game that they've just started playing? Is there a certain boy that they're starting to hang out with, you know, trace it back to, you know, what's going on?
And we really are trying to help our kids manage their anger so that they do not become the kind of people that no one wants to be with. That's what we're kind of wanting for them. Interesting. Yeah. What about A.I.? There's a lot of talk about artificial intelligence and you know, we're looking at it to a degree when you're running an organization, a business, some of it's extremely helpful.
But with A.I. and parenting, what should we be concerned about? I think you should be concerned. And two things come to mind. One is the race for intimacy.
And what I mean by this is we already have A.I. in our lives. That's how all these social media things know what we like. And it's been the race for attention. They want our attention. So I want you to look at me. I want you to our kids to look at TikTok. I want our kids to look at this.
So it's this race for attention. A.I. is going to take this a step further of intimacy that now I'm going to be your A.I.
friend. So, for instance, a kid is on Snapchat and they want to talk to someone, but no one is online that they know. But they can always talk to the my A.I. So they type in their question to my A.I. and the A.I. talks to them.
Well, guess what? If your kid is just used to texting people all the time, that's not going to feel that different of having the A.I. talk to them. So all of a sudden our kids are attached to this A.I. because it talks to them.
It texts them. And guess what? The A.I. knows all the stuff about your kid.
The A.I. knows. They reach out. Oh, you have a soccer game today.
How'd it go? So it feels so intimate. And so that is a huge thing. Realize, like, I don't want my kid to have an A.I. friend. I want my kid to have a real, real friend. And then the second thing is that the A.I. will do stuff for your kid before your kid knows how to do it.
So if A.I. is writing a paper for your kid, well, hey, if you're an adult and you have to write a report and that's not really your job, that kind of helps you. But you know how to write a report. But if you're a kid and it writes your report, you've never written a report in your life.
You're like, cool, this is awesome. So when it replaces, you know, what your kid knows, your kid doesn't have to learn these things because the A.I. just does it for them. That's a problem because then the A.I. has an advantage and you want your child to be the one who can grow up and make decisions and recognize, oh, the A.I.
was wrong on that. Well, these are all the amazing things to think about. You've written a great book here. Let me end here. You've created a conference in your hometown in San Diego called Parents Rising, which is great.
You've had good speakers, people that have been on the program, Bill and Pam Farrell and of course, Dr. Gary Chapman and Sally Berg. This message of parents rising, there certainly seems to be a groundswell of parents saying, OK, we've had enough. It's harmful to our kids. Why is it especially important when it comes to screens that parents rise up and not be passive?
You think of the parent lying down, right? Like, let's just see where this goes. I don't want to make waves. And then we're seeing through the news, through your own life, through your friends.
This is not going to a good place. So the idea of parents rising is we're not just going to sit by the sidelines and let these things happen. We're going to rise up and we are not afraid to be the only ones. We're not going to wait for someone else to do it. We are going to do it.
And then guess what? When you rise up together and you look across a room like in the conference, you realize I'm not the only parent. There are other parents here who have these same convictions. And Jonathan Haidt, a secular social psychologist, is pushing for no smartphones until high school and no social media until 16 or later for the mental health of this generation. And so if parents can rise up around these very specific ideals and if even 10 percent of us, right, like 90 percent. So most people are still, of course, you're going to use your smartphones, you're going to give your kids, hey kid, you're seven years old, here's the iPad. People are going to do this. But if let's pretend 10 percent of people did this, wow, what a difference that would make. And the church can lead the way in this. You know what's so interesting and maybe this is the proof in the pudding. I've seen it with congressional hearings, but articles that have been written about the Silicon Valley execs.
Yes. They don't let their children do this. I mean, that's that should be the glaring kind of education here.
Steve Jobs did not have an iPad for his kids. Think of that. So they know the damage and they know what can happen. And that's why, again, we need to be like those Silicon Valley exec parents. Let's be smart.
Let's be smart. Limit what your kids do. And Arlene, this is a great start. You've done a wonderful job in a good way alerting us to the downfall of of these devices and screen time and all that. Great book, Screen Kids, five relational skills every child needs in a tech driven world. And frankly, children aren't going to find those on their own.
They need the parents involved to be able to do the homework, read it and then apply it. There's so much good content in this book. Arlene, you and Gary did a fabulous job pulling this together.
It is one of the hottest topics in parenting, at least here at Focus on the Family is screen time. Help me, help me, help me. We're here to help you. So get in touch with us. You know, we do this occasionally, but if you can't afford this book, we'll send it to you.
Just call us and let us know. And we're going to trust others. We'll underwrite that. If you can help us monthly, that's great. A gift of any amount. We'll send the book as our way of saying thank you for being in the ministry.
It's not transactional. This is spiritually driven. Be a part of what we're doing here to help literally hundreds of thousands of parents every year do a better job parenting toward kingdom results. We'll have a far better nation if we together are successful in helping those parents. So be part of the solution. Get great content, apply it in your own parenting journey, and then help others.
Yeah. Join the support team today when you call 800 the letter A in the word family, either a monthly pledge or a one-time gift of any amount, and then request that book from Gary Chapman and Arlene Pelicane Screen Kids, five relational skills every child needs in a tech driven world. Again, our number 800, the letter A in the word family, and we've got details in the show notes. Arlene, again, great to have you here. Thanks for being with us. Thank you so much.
It's been great. And join us next time as Kim Meador is going to help you explore how God reveals himself and his love. His love knows no barrier. Our job is to understand how he's going to do it. Our job is to release the tide of his love through us. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. If the fights with your spouse have become unbearable, if you feel like you can't take it anymore, there's still hope. Hope restored marriage intensives have helped thousands of couples like yours. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face them together. Call us at 1-866-875-2915. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. That's 1-866-875-2915.
