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Perspectives on Childhood, Education, and Parenting: Time to Make Time for Device-Free Hours
Perspectives on Childhood, Education, and Parenting: Time to Make Time for Device-Free Hours
By Tom Northrup and Mike Wipfler
Last month, when I was visiting the high school in Pennsylvania I had attended several decades ago, I spoke with a senior about our school’s stricter smartphone policy on its use and availability during the school day.
What was his opinion? How had the change affected the school’s culture and the student-faculty relationships? Before he responded, he asked me a question. Had I ever heard of Jonathan Haidt and his recent book, “The Anxious Generation?” I was surprised and pleased to learn that he had not only read it, but had written a paper on it.
In response to my question, he said he felt that the limitations on smartphone availability had a positive impact on the quality and authenticity of student and adult relationships.
Over the past year, four of our “ZEST” conversations have featured Haidt’s book. His recommendations have had a profound impact on schools and families. Phone free schools and limiting screen time in homes are on the rise.
You also introduced me to Alison Wood Brooks’s recent book, “Talk.” What are her thoughts on a better use of our time and attention?
Mike: As a professor who teaches a graduate level course on the art of conversation, Brooks believes, “we must fight to preserve pockets of device-free time in kids’ lives—not just to avoid the potential harms of digital activities, but to help kids claim the rewards of mutually-attentive conversation.”
She goes on to say that “every in-person conversation that is replaced or disrupted by a device is a missed opportunity for kids to feel more connected, loved, and alive in the short term; to foster meaningful relationships over time; and to become even passable communicators by the time they reach adulthood.”
Brooks is not an anti-tech warrior. Far from it. She acknowledges the tremendous value of group chats to stay in touch with networks of friends, text messages to touch base and coordinate with individuals, and the internet to quickly access needed information. But she argues that the omnipresence of phones reduces and degrades far richer face-toface interactions.
Tom: Like Alison Wood Brooks, Sherry Turkle, the author of “Reclaiming Conversation” is not antitechnology. She is “pro-conversation.” She explains the essential role that “talk” plays in raising children who will become healthy and ethical adults who lead meaningful lives.
She states that, “We are at a crossroads: So many people say they have no time to talk, really talk, but all the time in the world, day and night, to connect.
When a moment of boredom arises, we have become accustomed to making it go away by searching for something on our phones”.
Mike: Interestingly, Turkle begins her book, which one would assume would be exclusively about the value of give-and-take exchanges with others, with this quote from Henry David Thoreau, who is best known for removing himself from society: “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”
Can you explain how Thoreau’s “one chair conversations” help people “reclaim conversation?”
Tom: In her chapter, “Solitude,” Turkle explains that parents and teachers need to understand and to be comfortable with the important role that “boredom” and “downtime” play in developing children’s imaginations and inner resources. Not being engaged in a structured activity or being online provides the time for children to be alone with their thoughts, to get to know and trust themselves, and to develop th confidence to engage in face-toface conversations.
Mike: That makes sense. It’s hard to be authentic in a conversation if you haven’t had the time to think deeply and develop your own thoughts, opinions, and moral framework. I often feel that the world is coming at me too fast - especially when trying to digest the news - and feel like I just need some time to reflect on what I’ve just experienced or read.
Rather than thinking deeply about any one topic, I usually choose to seek more—like more news articles, analysis, sports highlights, and so on. I’ve often told my wife that I’d really like to keep a journal…maybe now is the time to start.
Tom: So “old school” devices like pen and paper still have an important role today.
Tom Northrup was the long-time Head of the Hill School. Mike Wipfler was a teacher, coach and administrator at Hill from 2001 to 2020 and is currently co-director of Camp Kingswood, a residential summer camp in New Hampshire.
