Kids turn violent as parents battle ‘digital heroin’ addiction
Kids turn violent as parents battle ‘digital heroin’
addiction
By Dr. Nicholas Kardaras December 17, 2016 | 7:59pm
Experienced sailors, Barbara McVeigh and her husband
exposed their children to the natural beauty near their home in Marin County,
Calif. — boating, camping and adventuring in the great outdoors. None of this
stopped her 9-year-old son from falling down the digital rabbit hole.
His first exposure to screens occurred in first grade at
a highly regarded public school — named one of California’s “Distinguished
Schools” — when he was encouraged to play edu-games after class. His contact
with screens only increased during play dates where the majority of his friends
played violent games on huge monitors in their suburban homes.
The results for Barbara’s son were horrific: Her sweet
boy, who had a “big spirit” and loved animals, now only wanted to play inside
on a device.
“He would refuse to do anything unless I would let him
play his game,” she said. Barbara, who had discarded her TV 25 years ago, made
the mistake of using the game as a bargaining tool.
Her son became increasingly explosive if she didn’t acquiesce.
And then he got physical. It started with a push here, then a punch there.
Frightened, she tried to take the device away. And that’s when it happened: “He
beat the s–t out of me,” she told me.
When she tried to take his computer away, he attacked her
“with a dazed look on his face — his eyes were not his.” She called the police.
Shocked, they asked if the 9-year-old was on drugs.
He was — only his drugs weren’t pharmaceutical, they were
digital.
In August, I wrote a piece about “digital heroin” for the
New York Post, and the response was explosive. More than 3 million readers
devoured and shared the piece — though not everyone agreed on its message. Some
readers felt that the notion of comparing screens and video games to heroin was
a huge exaggeration.
I understand that initial response, but the research says
otherwise. Over 200 peer-reviewed studies correlate excessive screen usage with
a whole host of clinical disorders, including addiction. Recent brain-imaging
research confirms that glowing screens affect the brain’s frontal cortex —
which controls executive functioning, including impulse control — in exactly
the same way that drugs like cocaine and heroin do. Thanks to research from the
US military, we also know that screens and video games can literally affect the
brain like digital morphine.
In a series of clinical experiments, a video game called
“Snow World” served as an effective pain killer for burned military combat
victims, who would normally be given large doses of morphine during their
painful daily wound care. While the burn patient played the seemingly innocuous
virtual reality game “Snow World” — where the player attempts to throw
snowballs at cartoon penguins as they bounce around to Paul Simon music — they
felt no pain.
I interviewed Lt. Sam Brown, one of the pilot
participants in this research who had been injured by an IED in Afghanistan and
who had sustained life-threatening third-degree burns over 30 percent of his
body. When I asked him about his experience using a video game for pain
management, he said: “I was a little bit skeptical. But honestly, I was willing
to try anything.” When asked what it felt like compared to his morphine
treatments, he said, “I was for sure feeling less pain than I was with the
morphine.”
Sure enough, brain imaging research confirmed that burn
patients who played “Snow World” experienced less pain in the parts of their
brain associated with processing pain than those treated with actual morphine.
The Navy’s head of addiction research, Cmdr. Dr. Andrew
Doan, calls screens “digital pharmakeia” (Greek for pharmaceuticals), a term he
coined to explain the neurobiological effects produced by video technologies.
‘I feel like there is a war going on against our
children. And it’s come so fast that we’re not even questioning it.’
While this is a wonderful advance in pain-management
medicine, it begs the question: Just what effect is this digital drug — a
narcotic more powerful than morphine — having on the brains and nervous systems
of 7-year-olds addicted to their glowing screens?
If screens are indeed digital drugs, then schools have
become drug dealers. Under misguided notions that they are “educational,” the
entire classroom landscape has been transformed over the past 10 years into a
digital playground that includes Chromebooks, iPads, Smart Boards, tablets,
smartphones, learning apps and a never-ending variety of “edu-games.”
These so-called “edu-games” are digital Trojan horses —
chock-full of the potential for clinical disorders. We’ve already seen ADHD
rates explode by over 50 percent the past 10 years as a whole generation of
screen-raised kids succumb to the malaise-inducing glow. Using
hyper-stimulating digital content to “engage” otherwise distracted students
creates a vicious and addictive ADHD cycle: The more a child is stimulated, the
more that child needs to keep getting stimulated in order to hold their
attention.
Research also indicates that retention rates are lower on
screens than on paper and that schools without electronics report higher test
scores. And then there’s Finland. A standard bearer of international excellence
in education, Finland rejected screens in the classroom. According to Krista
Kiuru, their minister of education and science, Finnish students didn’t need
laptops and iPads to get to the top of the international education rankings and
aren’t interested in using them to stay there.
Yet in the US, there is a national effort to give kids
screens at younger and younger ages as parents worry that their little ones may
somehow be “left behind” in the education technology arms race — the data be
damned.
But not all parents are drinking the
screens-are-wonderful Kool-Aid — some are fighting back.
Cindy Eckard, a Maryland mother of two, is launching a
grassroots campaign to create legislation to limit screen time in schools and
is testifying in front of a state Senate subcommittee hearing this month.
“I was shocked to learn that the Maryland State
Department of Education had no medically sound health guidelines in place
before they put so many of our children in front of a computer every day . . .
The schools keep encouraging more screen time in the classroom without any
regard for our children’s well-being,” Eckard told me. “Our children are owed a
safe classroom environment, and right now they’re not getting one.”
Some parents are opting out of public schools for less
technology-dependent schools. Many Silicon Valley engineers and executives, for
example, put their kids in non-tech Waldorf schools.
Others, like longtime educator and consultant Debra Lambrecht,
have decided to create new tech-free school models. Debra has created the
Caulbridge School, a distinctly “Finnish-style” school that is intended to
serve as a template for future schools throughout the country.
“The argument for technology in the earlier grades is
often rooted in the fear of children falling behind. It is true that most
children will use technology in their jobs and everyday life. It is also true
that most children will learn to drive a car,” Lambrecht said. “Certainly we
would not give a 7-year-old child the car keys to give them a jump-start to be
a more skillful driver. In the same way, we want to ensure children can
effectively use technology as a tool and will bring all of their best thinking,
creativity and innovation to bear.”
A Long Island mother recently contacted me because her
5-year-old son in kindergarten was going to be forced by the school to use an
iPad. When she complained and threatened to pull her son out of school, her
school district threatened to call child protective services. I spoke to her
school’s superintendent, and he agreed to let her son opt out of using an iPad.
But all the other kindergartners still need to use iPads for
standardized-testing purposes. That Long Island mother has already reached out
to her local legislators.
That seems to be the key. Parents need to educate
themselves, find their voices and speak up. If enough parents organize, push
for legislation and put pressure on their schools to limit screen time in
school — as well as to delay the grade levels that screens are introduced into
the classroom — then we might have a chance to slow down this digital epidemic.
Indeed, even the respected AAP (American Academy of
Pediatrics) has just this month modified their screen recommendations
suggesting more tech-cautious guidelines: Children younger than 18 months, no
digital media; ages 2 to 5, no more than one hour daily, to be “co-viewed” with
parents.
But many, myself included, think these recommendations
still don’t go far enough. Because of what we know about screens as “digital
heroin,” I believe that kids below the age of 10 should have no interaction
with interactive screens (iPads, smartphones, Xbox). There should be warning
labels on such interactive screens that read: “Excessive Screen Usage by
Children May Lead to Clinical Disorders.”
Meanwhile, back in Marin County, Barbara pulled her son
out of his suburban tech-filled public school and enrolled him in a more rural,
less tech-oriented school. So far, she’s seen huge improvements in his
behavior.
She just found out last week that all fourth-graders in
her son’s new school will begin learning the increasingly popular skill of
“coding” to design video games. Even in this rural hamlet school, kids were
allowed to play violent video games indoors rather than having to go outside to
play during recess.
She is now hoping to get political about this issue and
to reach out to legislators to end the digital madness in elementary schools.
“I am prepared to go to war with our public education over technology use. This
is wrong,” Barbara said with the determined voice of a mother fighting for her
child’s life.
“I feel like there is a war going on against our
children,” Barbara said. “And it’s come so fast that we’re not even questioning
it.”
Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is executive director of The Dunes
East Hampton, one of the country’s top rehabs. His book “Glow Kids: How Screen
Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids — and How to Break the Trance” (St. Martin’s
Press) is out now.
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