How to Grow a Zombie

There’s not much dispute today that too much screen time can result in lower attention spans, lower impulse control and worse sleep.

The signs were there since the 1970s.

In 1972, Harvard established a Center for Research in Children’s Television. They looked at what visual material would hold a child’s attention and teach them effectively. Sesame Street was using music, sounds, surprise, animation, rapidly changing activities and the like to capture children’s attention.

Kids were learning their ABCs faster. They were learning sounds and numbers. All kinds of useful things.

But researchers began questioning how rapid scene changes, movement and entertainment might foster shorter attention spans for more in-depth learning.

Yale ran an experiment in 1979 comparing preschoolers who watched the faster-paced scene changing Sesame Street to kids who watched the much slower paced Mister Rogers.

It turns out, the kids who watched Mister Rogers showed more concentration, imaginative play and social interaction.

No wonder I didn’t like Mister Rogers as a kid.

Some psychologists feared that because normal deeper learning doesn’t occur in 30-second or 1-minute blocks, and usually not from teachers dressed as characters, that children might learn a few things from Big Bird, but they’d have a tougher time learning in a classroom.

Yet the concerns weren’t taken seriously. Mostly dismissed at the time.

Since then, the variety of television children’s shows expanded considerably through the 1980s and 90s.

Rugrats. Barney & Friends. And Teletubbies, just to name a few.

And with each show, child attention span issues continued to increase.

In 1902, British physician George Still gave the first description of children with what today we call ADHD. Problems with sustained attention, impulsivity, and sometimes behavior control.

While it wasn’t rampant back then, by 1968, the American Psychiatric Association recognized a diagnosis related to attention deficit.

Then in 1980, with attention cases on the rise, and just eleven years after Sesame Street’s debut, Attention Deficit Disorder, ADD, was an official diagnosis.

Fast forward to the advent of the world wide web.

While launched in 1991, it became widely available by 1995 when AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy brought millions online. By 2001, internet access had become part of everyday American life.

More screen time.

The iPhone debuted in 2007, Android in 2008, and by 2010 smartphones were everywhere.

More screen time.

Add in tablets.

More screen time.

But it wasn’t until Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat were released over the ensuing decade that most kids became glued to their screens throughout the day. Screen time since then has skyrocketed.

Not surprisingly, ADD/ADHD diagnoses likewise skyrocketed. A 67% increase from 1997 to 2016.

Between 2003 and 2011 alone, diagnoses increased 42%.

That isn’t the worst part.

There’s a substantial body of research examining social media and attention problems.

The constant notifications. The short videos. Never-ending scrolling. Constant stimuli switching.

It’s no wonder that a recent study found that generation Z is the first generation in nearly a century that is testing less intelligent than the last.

Of course, having attention problems isn’t a sign of a lack of intelligence. I’ve known many brilliant people with attention issues that have gone on to do amazing things.

But it’d also be naïve to think that social media isn’t causing kids and adults on a societal level to be less nuanced. To engage in less critical thinking. To read fewer books. To learn less. Or to not pay attention to things that require more of our time.

I’m not a scientist, but when my kids were born in 2001, 2003 and 2005, I already sensed that the constant barrage of internet and phones wasn’t going to end well for kids.

So, their mom and I did something wild and crazy.

None of our kids was allowed to have unsupervised access to the internet. None of our kids was allowed to have a smart phone. Or any social media accounts.

That paradigm stuck. Two of my three kids are now adults and still don’t use social media.

My third uses it to run an online business, but he isn’t glued to Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok or Instagram 24/7.

All three are able to communicate in the real world. To talk to people.

All three call me and their mom a few times a week to actually talk, not text. They have full-on hour-long live phone and in-person conversations with their grandparents, uncles, siblings and friends.

My three kids weren’t some controlled study. There wasn’t a control group. I’m quite sure there are other factors at play.

But I tend to think that the lack of social media and screen time had a positive impact on their development and is a big reason they’re able to communicate and interact the way they do today.

And it’s why they’re able to see the world in a far more nuanced way than this-or-that type thinking.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.