Title: The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age
Author: Catherine Steiner-Adair, EdD (with Teresa H. Barker)
Basic Overview:
Every parent in the Digital Age needs to read The Big Disconnect by Catherine Steiner-Adair. It’s the definitive guidebook for navigating the dangers of a technologically interconnected, digital world into which our children are being born as natives. When I was a teenager, Facebook, iPads, and YouTube did not exist. Almost nobody had a cell phone, and the Internet was just barely coming of age. But our children are being born into a world where these inventions are as obvious to them as electricity was to us. How do digital non-natives help their children harness the powerful forces of tech for good?
Through stories from her vast experience as a clinical psychologist and school consultant, Steiner-Adair helps us understand how tech can threaten child development and family relationships, so we can use this knowledge to make wise choices and establish boundaries to protect “what many believe is the single most important human thing we can do: create loving, sustainable families,” as she explains (pg. 30). Comparing the family to an ecosystem, Dr. Steiner-Adair teaches us that while it’s not necessary to totally eliminate tech, for the survival of our families it is absolutely imperative that we keep it in balance.
Parts I Liked Best:
How This Book Made an Impact in my Life, Especially as a Mother:
Reading The Big Disconnect was a huge wake-up call for me as a parent. I think most parents have at least a vague sense that overuse of screens can be harmful, but the dangers are far, far more serious than I had imagined. Screens are powerful, addictive stimulants for the brain, explains Steiner-Adair, and like drugs, screens can be enormously helpful when used within careful guidelines and strict limits, but extremely destructive if abused. Covering every stage of child development from infancy to young adulthood, Steiner-Adair lays out the threats by relating real-life stories from her work as a psychologist.
For example, she explains that in young children, screens disrupt healthy brain development. Addressing the harm that can come when parents outsource reading aloud with their children to devices, Steiner-Adair quotes Maryanne Wolf, director of the Tufts University Center for Reading and Language Research, who says the result will be lost opportunities for children to develop “the focus, endurance, and the deeper sensibilities they need to move to more profound learning” (pg. 90). Wolf says, “We will have a generation of readers highly adept at handling multiple pieces of information streaming in at them every second, but they will lack the means—literally the very circuits in the brain—for deeper revelation” (pg. 90).
Steiner-Adair’s stories of digital threats to teenagers are equally alarming. The proliferation of increasingly sadistic online pornography has resulted in a violent, vulgar sexual culture and sexual addictions that are robbing young people of opportunities to form genuine, caring relationships. Other issues addressed by Steiner-Adair include cyberbullying, image obsession, and the impact of excessive texting on our ability to communicate effectively. Online, all the pitfalls of human behavior are amplified. As Steiner-Adair points out, when kids act out online, the stakes are higher. Tech takes mess-making out of the organic, naturally renewable world into a silicon landscape where mistakes can leave an eternal footprint.
In light of these risks, a laissez-faire approach to family tech usage is not acceptable. After reading The Big Disconnect, I’ve increased my commitment to setting and honoring boundaries around tech for myself and my children. Limiting access is a good start, but in a world where far too many young children are carrying a screen around in their pocket, it’s almost impossible to control access completely. I need to give my kids a very deliberate and explicit education on how to use digital tools for good while avoiding the dangers. Furthermore, I need to instill in them an intrinsic desire to make good choices.
Of course, the best education I can give is learning to control my own use of tech. Through hundreds of interviews with children and teens, Steiner-Adair learned that the number-one thing that most bothers kids most about their parents is hypocrisy, such as when parents lecture kids about limiting screen time while remaining completely glued to their own laptops and phones. By putting away my smartphone and making the effort to spend focused, unhurried time with my small children, I’m hoping to increase the chances that I will be more important to them than their screens when they grow up.
There’s a line from The Big Disconnect that made a huge impact on me, and weeks after finishing the book this line still frequently rings in my mind: “Let your baby plug into you” (pg. 90). Steiner-Adair was talking about infants in this case, but I apply it to all three of my “babies,” ages seven, four, and two. I used to distract myself with my phone while waiting for my daughter’s school bus to bring her home from school. Now, when I go outside to wait for seven-year-old Abby to get off the bus, I don’t bring my phone. The streets are empty and my mind is clear. Standing on the front porch, I enjoy a moment of quiet nothingness before the afternoon marathon overwhelms us. The bus pulls up at the stop in front of my neighbor’s house, and when Abby gets off the bus our eyes immediately lock. We’re both smiling. After a long, hard day at school, she’s so glad to be home. She runs all the way across the yard, right into my arms, and gives me a big hug. I relish holding my baby in my arms, grateful that she’ll still cuddle with her mama in that uninhibited way that babies do. In that moment, I think she knows that there’s nothing in the world more important to me than she is.
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Shonda says
Looks like a great book. I’m only too aware that this world will forever be changing as my children who are 2 and 5 are growing up seeing mom and dad on smartphones. It seems so backwards for us because we need to learn balance and boundaries first before we expect anything from our kids. I would have to say that would be the biggest example we could give and the hardest one to do!
Chelsie says
Kara!! You’re with power of moms now?! So cool!! I remember when I first told you about their site and now you have your own article on here! Awesome! Sounds like a great book- I need to read it!
Kara says
Chelsie, what a treat to run into you at Power of Moms! I absolutely LOVE this community. One thing I really struggle with as a Mom is getting over that bitter feeling of being “put upon,” like when a child wakes me up multiple times throughout the night, or a kid refuses to eat the food I so lovingly prepared for him :). I don’t want to be a bitter martyr person. So, I come to this website to find inspiration, joy, gratitude, and reminders of my higher purpose. There is no greater work than motherhood.