MFP 284: Is Your Child Addicted to Screens?

Messy Family Podcast : Catholic Conversations on Marriage and Family

The destructive effects of video games are not on boys' cognitive abilities or their reaction times, but on their motivation and their connectedness with the real world.

~Dr. Leonard Sax

Technology can be a blessing or a curse. It can be used for great good and yet it can expose people to grave evil. Helping our children learn how to responsibly navigate the use of technology, especially social media, is one of the immense parenting challenges of our age. In this podcast, we look at the unique challenges that technology presents to parents and why parents must meet this challenge head-on! We talk about how to discern your tech use as a family and why just locking down every device is simply not enough. Like most areas of parenting, we need to first train ourselves and then take the time to train our children.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Don’t be naive. Stay on top of what your kids are watching and what they are engaging with. It is our responsibility to prepare and guide them.

• Discern your tech use as a person and as a family. Walk them through the seven keys to empower them to make good choices because tech is a powerful gift of God and should be used for good.

• Seven keys the church gives us to guide us in using technology

• Does it communicate a balanced worldview?

• How is the creator's attitude oriented towards the subject?

• Does it dignify the human person?

• Does it speak the Truth?

• Is it inspirational?

• Is it done with skill?

• Is it motivated by experience?

• Train your children to use it as they grow. Like driving a car, prepare them to use it as they mature and are old enough to use it wisely and virtuously

COUPLE DISCUSSION

• In what ways have we been blessed by media and technolgy? How has it helped us?

• How can we discern our media use as a family?

• If our goal is to form our children to become adults who can make good media choices, how and when can we give our children appropriate freedom? What does that look like for our kids today?

Resources:

Infinite Bandwidth: Encountering Christ in the Media. By Dr. Eugene Gan

https://www.afterbabel.com/p/algorithms-hijacked-my-generation

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2799042

https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/are-video-games-and-screens-another-addiction

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-childhood-smartphone-use-mental-health-effects/677722/?gift=9xPqLPcwLfFbf_nnCRecvKJ-3gklcv6nZX-Hliug6W4&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-your-son-addicted-to-video-games