A Personal Parenting Tech Manifesto

A Personal Parenting Tech Manifesto

My first daughter is in 3rd grade, and her friends are starting to get cell phones. She joined a text thread with a few school friends, using my wife’s phone. I see cringy misunderstandings, and they have started comparing their drawings. She’s drawing clothing fashion designs — never an interest before. She wants her own bedroom and is carrying her headphones everywhere.

I feel threatened.

Social media is pernicious for preteens, especially for girls. That’s clear to me. The plots below glimpse the bloom of dysfunction among teens since the iPhone was released in 2007. Last week, I tested Apple’s new Vision Pro VR goggles: They are breathtaking. And generative AI will amplify these hardware advances. The disorientation and temptation toward fantasy worlds that we suffer from smart phones will only get worse.

Now is the time to set healthy bounds on technology use before my kids have problems. I need to stake a well-examined position NOW to serve as the basis for the next 15 years of raising kids in my house. I need a personal parenting tech manifesto.

I’ll cover some of these ideas:

  • Information scarcity has disappeared
  • AI will supercharge these problems
  • Content quality
  • Limited attention budget
  • The importance of boredom
  • Worry about watering down intentional ideologies
  • Long vs short-form attention
  • Alone vs together
  • We affect each other
  • Chatting vs putting yourself out there
  • Self-control vs sheltering
  • Autonomy vs sheltering
  • Technical solutions
  • Our minds become cluttered

Information Scarcity Has Disappeared

The Internet serves information: entertainment, knowledge, communication, and entertainment again. Until the Internet, information was always scarce. While there was always a problem of pursuing high-quality information, more information was usually better. It was good advice to read more books and hear more music. Gain exposure! One could see most of the movies and TV shows.

Today, the problem has flipped. We drown in information. Information is inexhaustible.

The Internet removed restraints on sharing information. Now generative AI is quickly removing at least two more restraints: (1) restraints on the quantity of content that humans can create and (2) restraints on understanding content created in other languages.

Just as everybody only has 24 hours in a day, each of us has limited attention. TikTok videos and songs stay stuck in our head long after we watch them. When my children sing Disney songs, they stop making up their own songs. When I argue about national Presidential politics, I stop talking about local mayoral politics.

We’re dying of information exposure! The Bible offers several bits of wisdom here, on this (apparently) old problem.

In Ecclesiastes 12:11–13:

The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails — given by one shepherd. Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them.

Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.

A favorite poem of mine is Dark Night of the Soul, written in the 16th century by a Christian saint, St. John of the Cross. It emphasizes the role of blankness, quietness, and darkness in our human stumble toward God. I have reflected often recently that I’m never constrained from watching a movie, from learning something, from working. I’m never bored so I never pray deeply. I have no more dark nights to stumble into Jesus’ arms.

Our Attention is Tempted and Cheapened

Food scientists have engineered snack foods to not satiate. Doritos, soda, and french fries are delicious and don’t fill us up. We want more. Meanwhile, 60% of American adults are obese.

Food companies don’t specifically want us to eat unhealthy food. They simply don’t care about us. And they have found it is easier to engineer and sell unhealthy food. Our information diets are being similarly warped by amoral technology companies.

Big Food pushes sugar, fat, and salt. Big Tech pushes short-form media, sex appeal, and controversy.

Savvy grocery shoppers have learned tricks. “Shop around the edges of the store; avoid the center aisles.” They have learned that Big Food is out to get them. More educated and richer Americans are thinner as a consequence (a historical reversal), because they are better at playing the game.

Savvy information consumers must learn tricks too. They say Steve Jobs didn’t allow his daughter to have a phone. Personally, I am moving from an exception-based mindset (don’t visit certain sites, but everything else is open) to a permission-based mindset (the Internet is dangerous, so usage should be justified). I am applying internet filters and blockers wherever possible to avoid temptation.

I liken my mindset switch to thinking of the Internet like a pharmaceutical rather than like food. Food is generally good but should be controlled. Drugs are generally dangerous but are sometimes helpful.

Also, I am avoiding and throttling news “feeds.” Feeds are aptly named — like the agricultural equipment used to stuff calories into cattle. My most regretted time and attention on the Internet is spent scrolling in the bottomless pits of Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Google News. I more rarely regret time spent on self-directed browsing, even if it’s silly. If I do consume a feed, it should include a stopping rule, like a preset browsing time limit.

In comparison, paper newspapers were always feeds, but at least they were finite. (The joke about the New York Times was “All the news that fits, we print.”)

We Become Isolated

When information is limited, we consume it together. Playing games, reading books, attending meetings, and watching movies were shared experiences before the Internet. Today, they are isolating, at least from physically present people.

Take an external view. What would a visiting space alien see if they watched us on our tech? A person sitting still, alone in a room (or worse, on the street), hallucinating.

Board games were played in a physical group; video games are played in separate rooms if other humans are involved at all. Children can observe what physical books their parents read and ask about them; but it’s indistinguishable for kids whether their parent is on Instagram or Kindle, much less the topics their parents are reading. When TVs were expensive, tablets didn’t exist, and movies had to be rented, Fridays were family movie night; today we have as many streaming devices as family members and unlimited movie options.

Relationships are healthy. Biologically, humans have evolved to prize in-person relationships. Remote relationships (nonexistent until recently) are OK, but they are cheap substitutes. They are just OK, and they displace vibrant, healthy, physically present relationships.

Building relationships is investment. If an old friendship is more fulfilling than a new friendship (it is), then we don’t see the full benefit of building a friendship until later.

To be happier in the future, build strong, vital, physical relationships today.

The Real World is Also a Social Network

Starting and maintaining online social networks is notoriously difficult and mercurial. There’s a chicken-and-egg problem. To be useful, your friends must use it. Your friends won’t use it until it is useful. Remember what happened to MySpace.

The thing is — the physical world is also a social network. Schools, businesses, families, churches all rely on people to participate. Cities hum because of density. When populations shrink, institutions shrivel because the remaining people become too spread out. They have lost density.

The physical world is poised to lose people density in several ways: shrinking population at least in the developed world, less participation in the physical world because we are hallucinating in the “cyber” world, and more automation that replaces would-be personal interactions. Again, AI is poised to ramp up the last two trends.

Fewer people in absolute numbers is OK, but we’ll need to adjust to maintain density of people in our lives. We must find ways to interact and depend on each other in healthy ways, meeting strangers (physically, not just virtually). Wealth allows us to grow apart and live alone. But if relationships are an investment (they are), it is wise to push back and embrace the inconveniences of meeting people.

Giving Your Preteen a Phone Undermines Other Parents

My daughter thinks her friends have phones. That’s why she wants one. It’s another collective action problem. Parents need to organize. An anti-phone cartel for elementary kids like this: Wait Until 8th.

We Become Insecure

They say ninety percent of communication is nonverbal. If so, then text-based, asynchronous communication (e.g., text messages, social media feeds) only communicates 10% of our meaning. It makes for ambiguous communication. “What did he/she mean? Why did they leave me on read? Do they like me?”

Texting is good for unambiguous and inconsequential topics. “What time will you be home?” and “Can you get milk at the store?” are hard to misinterpret. Silly memes are hard to cause offense with or be judged on.

If my daughter spends an hour drawing and shares a photo with her friends, she is waiting on tenterhooks for their responses, their judgment of her worth. Is she a good drawer? When they do respond, what does it mean? And if her friend sends back her own drawings, is she being competitive or just excited to play along?

This type of judgment-filled interaction is safer and faster in person. Her friends won’t be mean because empathy is more natural in-person, my daughter will confidently understand their reactions based on their body language and context, and the moment will pass more quickly so there’s less time to obsess about it.

Don’t do high-stakes or value-determining communication via text.

Become Smarter About Addictive Habits

The biggest companies in the world right now are Internet giants. They all make more money if you spend more time on the Internet. Social media (Meta) and search (Google) are advertising businesses, selling access to your attention. Product companies (Apple), gaming companies (Microsoft), and subscription services (Netflix, Disney, Microsoft) want you engaged so you keep on paying. Shopping apps (Amazon, Shein, Temu) want you to keep on shopping.

Designing products to be addictive is intrinsic to the Internet.

As people continually shift more of their activities online, intentional and explicit focus on habit formation will become more important than ever.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, if you’re not paying, the product is you.”

When choosing to engage on a new social media platform, I know the experience will be habit forming and hard to stop once I start. Thus, I must carefully predict ahead of time whether the habit will provide me a net benefit. Once I’ve spent some time on the app and learned about the costs and benefits, I should summon all my rationality to determine whether to continue. Perhaps a pre-arranged accountability partner can help me make that determination. If it turns out I should quit the new app, strategies and resources are available to help me do it.

A lot of succeeding as an adult is avoiding being mastered, between alcohol, drugs, overeating, overshopping, child support, legal trouble, video games, porn, and Internet entertainment generally. It’s a dangerous world. I feel like we should all be in a preemptive 12-step program.

In the Odyssey, the ancient Greek epic poem, when Odysseus passes the island of the Sirens, he ties himself to the ship’s mast so that he won’t be overcome with desire and jump overboard. Knowing how addictive and dangerous the Sirens’ call will be, he restrains himself while still maintaining enough of his abilities to function.

I work all day on a computer, and — in that moment — I’d rather browse than work. Outside of that moment, I regret wasting my time and wish I had focused on work. Like Odysseus, I can plan ahead by restricting my own freedom of action while working.

I use an app called Freedom that schedules time blocks when my devices can’t access distracting websites. Importantly, I cannot shut it off once a block “session” starts. I’ve learned that gently persuading myself to focus barely works — I need a hard restriction. Since discovering the app last year, my work productivity has grown, my bedtime has become more regular, my prayer time has improved, and my interest in pop culture drama has fallen.

I cannot overstate what a difference this ability to make binding forward commitments has made for me.

Let Go of Control Gradually

My freshman college dormitory was a sweaty zoo. It was an exhibition of every type of dysfunction and self-discovery.

The guys with the bumpiest journeys were those that lived repressed teenage years. The one who couldn’t get out of bed without Mom screaming at him, the uncaged gamer who played World of Warcraft until 5am until he failed out, and the guy who came out as gay.

I saw it with friends from high school too: My friend from a conservative family who could only watch PG movies got a full arm sleeve tattoo. Another friend was so burnt out from earning the IB Diploma in high school that she buried herself in trashy science fiction novels and C grades in college.

Those of us who had more autonomy as teenagers had an easier time. Those of us who understood and agreed with the rules of living under our parents’ roof (or who had experience living independently), stayed saner. Leaving home wasn’t such a change.

Kids need to be taught why their tech use is restricted. They need to build muscles for healthy use. And they need to be given progressively more freedom as they approach independence.

During the last expected 12 months at home, I hope to remove all Internet/tech restrictions on my kids. Wake yourself up, send yourself to bed, do your own homework, and regulate your own habits.

Conclusions and Takeaways

I work in tech, my whole professional success is based on learning obscure information from the Internet, and I spend lots of time in front of screens. The Internet has lots of good aspects, and I’ll continue using it.

But…I’m convinced the Internet hurts children, and it can hurt my children. I’ve over-relied on YouTube for free childcare. We have done a bad job immersing our children in religious instruction, watering it down with the ideologies of PBS Kids and Disney. And there’s nothing more guilt-inducing than a child begging for just one phone-free afternoon.

In early childhood, we at least maintain control and visibility over our children’s tech use. I’m quickly losing that control and visibility with our 3rd grader. Control over our kindergartner and 3-year-old’s tech use will slip through our fingers even younger.

So, here are my takeaways to succeed in this next stage of parenting cyber kids:

  • Get ahead of the problem. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
  • Fixing my own Internet habits is necessary to model for my kids. I’m using the Freedom app for this.
  • Kids’ Internet access should be permission-based, limited, filtered, and observable by the parent. I’m using Firewalla Purple to manage this.
  • Expose kids to my (appropriate) information diet. Show them what we read and watch online. Any good suggestions for how to do this?
  • Avoid “feeds.” Pre-set time limits if we do use feeds. I like the Unhook YouTube browser extension, which hides suggested videos.
  • Ban short-form videos. They are like pure, refined sugar with no fiber. Anything less than one minute is haram!
  • Tech should be used together by siblings. For example, only allow TV on one tablet at a time.
  • Find a strong community of real, physical relationships to join. Like church or sports.
  • Work with our kids’ friends’ parents early to coordinate the age when the kids get a phone.
  • Disallow consequential communication by direct message or social media posting. Texts should be light, airy, and nonconsequential. It’s a little like the maxim, “Don’t discuss religion or politics in polite company.”
  • Never take a naked picture of yourself. Ever, ever, ever.
  • Learn about habit formation. A bit niche, but I like “A Theory of Rational Addiction” (Becker, 1988).
  • Know when to let go. Remove restrictions gradually, and completely for maybe the last 12 months the kid is at home.

Wish me luck. Wish us all luck!