9 - The Tools of Awareness

Summary

In 2017, I began giving lectures to parents about technology overuse through my school outreach program. I explained that this is not just about kids playing video games all night, but that it is about all of us. We are all over-users. We all love our technologies too much. We all use them much more than we intend. I talked about the costs to ourselves, our families, and our relationships. I discussed self-help measures because I knew parents wanted a solution. But I was honest about the difficulty of limiting kids’ use of smartphones, social networks, and games. I then opened the floor for discussion, hoping parents could give one another ideas that had worked in their community. During the first year, what followed astounded me. As one parent after another spoke, revealing their struggles, the other parents turned around to one another. “You too?” was the resounding reaction. Followed by reactions such as, “My daughter said I was the only parent prohibiting her from using Snapchat!” There was a sense of surprise, but also a sense of relief that they were all together in this.