In July, I returned from China to visit my family in South Africa for a vacation. I spent most of my time with my mother, my sister, her three kids, and her husband in Uitenhage (Kariega).While I was visiting them from July to August, communicating with her children was a constant struggle. She has three children: the oldest is a 17-year-old boy in grade 11, the second is a girl in grade 8, and the youngest is in grade 2. The two oldest are both in high school.
When they were much younger, we used to have a lot of fun, play games, run around, and watch movies together or some animated TV series. We would do many different things, from playing board games to watching a movie to playing outside or going somewhere together.
Now they all have smartphones, and the common habit that they have developed is constantly being on their phones: before work, before school, after school, and in the evening. They walk around the house from the bedroom where they are on their phones, each one of them sitting on their own phone, not talking to each other, into the kitchen to get something to drink or some snack, or into the bathroom. Before school, while they are having their breakfast or their cereal, they are on YouTube or listening to some loud music with headphones.
They set a really bad example for the youngest one, who is in grade 2, because she also just ends up being on her phone all the time. When I try to raise it with them, they seem to be very unhappy about it. Sometimes it’s almost like a struggle, a real struggle, when I try to push for them to just put their phone down for 5 minutes and come and do something with me to help me with something, or maybe just do something around the house.
Yes, they do their schoolwork, usually after school, and some homework. The oldest two, the ones in high school, except for the baby or the youngest one who is in grade 2, while they’re doing the homework, they’re on their phones, listening to some music or something. They never, ever, ever take a break from their smartphones. I don’t even know when they have time to charge their phones because they use them so much during a typical day.
Family Time When Children Use Smartphones
When I engage them about what they have been watching on YouTube, they can’t tell me what it is, really, or why they’re watching it, or what they’ve learned. It seems like it’s a combination of music or some talking by people with some stories. I don’t know what it is, because these are not short videos on TikTok or even Instagram, because they don’t really scroll that much. They are not doing constant scrolling. They just have it on and listen to it in the background while they do other things: while they make some tea or coffee, while they make some snack warm in the microwave, while they go to the bathroom to do whatever, maybe in the morning take a bath before they have to go to school. The phone is there constantly, constantly, constantly on, never taking a break.
One of the results of this kind of behaviour is that they never have time to think about what they have been listening to, what they have been watching, because they don’t discuss it with each other. They don’t share any ideas. Even if it’s not a learning experience, they are living what I have always termed a voyeuristic life. Instead of them doing something themselves, like writing something, creating something, building something, or playing some games with some friends, they watch people on YouTube doing things. They are, in a sense, outsourcing their life, you could say.
When I raise this with the parents, it’s basically pointless. They sometimes take their phones away, especially the girl who is in grade 8, and they do their chores sometimes, but most of the time, while they are washing the dishes or sweeping the floor, they are constantly listening to their phones.
I want to know, actually, from you reading this, what you think parents can do about this kind of behaviour. What do you think families can do? Is it better to remove the phone completely, or to put firm limits on how much time per day they can use it? I think it needs a more radical approach.
Jonathan Haidt, the psychologist and the author of The Anxious Generation, makes a very compelling case that only allowing children on social media and YouTube (a kind of social media) after they reach 16 years of age is a limit. There are also some limits, I believe, around what age they get given smartphones. If they need to be contacted, if there’s some transport between home and school, or they need to go somewhere, maybe a phone that is not a smartphone can be used so that they can call you, the parent, if something goes wrong. You can reach them as well if there is an emergency.
It definitely is not a must that every single child in every single family also needs their own mobile phone. I think maybe, at the very least, it could be that parents do not give their children mobile phones. If they need to watch something, search something on Google, or do some homework, they use the parent’s phone for a limited time, and then they give it back, but they don’t have their own. They don’t need their own. There’s no reason for them to have it. They’re much better off reading a book, watching a movie without any distractions, because this concept of multitasking that has become an endemic or an epidemic with smartphones (driving while you’re on your phone, talking while you’re driving, while you’re talking on your phone or texting on your phone, and sitting in a restaurant while you’re eating and checking your phone) just diminishes the experience. Besides actually impeding your ability to focus and complete tasks effectively, efficiently, and properly, it just reduces the enjoyment, certainly if you think about having lunch together or dinner together with people.
This is the impact on family time when children use smartphones constantly.