Posts Tagged ‘technology’
Anyone with a pulse and a Facebook feed knows that America is a country painfully divided — about our leadership, our economy, our values and place in the world. We’re also deeply divided over our beliefs about how to birth, raise, and educate our children… and keep them healthy in the process. Believe me, aside from the current political situation, few topics generate more polarization at a friendly backyard barbecue than epidural risks or mandated vaccines.
I don’t mean to be a buzz-kill, truly I don’t. It’s just that I made this pact with myself, on behalf of the wellbeing of mothers and babies: I decided several years ago to run a not-so-celebratory, sobering article every year on America’s birthday, as long as our country continues to show up so poorly in world rankings on maternal health.
(Settle in, grab a cuppa, this is not a breezy, 3-minute listicle. It’s important, historic, and deserves all the words it takes.)
Vaccination Nation?
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Tags: autism, birth, CDC, infant mortality, maternal health, Robbie Davis-Floyd, Robert Kennedy Jr., technology, vaccination, vaccines
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Concern over the effects of digital dependence is clearly something you share with me if you’re following these posts. One of the most pressing of these concerns is how it impacts the rapidly-developing brain circuitry of children and adolescents, and can impair and rewire their capacities for social intelligence. (See 1st and 4th posts in the list below.)
Recently it was announced that an action group in Colorado is introducing an initiative to ban cell phone sales to children under the age of 13. (more…)
Tags: children, digital-dependence, handheld devices, PAUS, pre-teens, smartphones, technology, Timothy Farnum, tweens
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Parenting is a daunting safari into the unknown. It is a safari that will routinely lead you beyond the reach of the techno-savvy that has us convinced we can figure out and control everything in our lives. So for many, it’s a safari into parental anxiety.
What can you do about parental anxiety? Develop your own personal anxiety antidote: TRUST. A powerful antidote for parental anxiety, trust connects you to an unparalleled source of strength, paradoxically called “surrender”–perhaps the most important resources in your parenting toolbox! Along with a good supply of onesies, I counsel expectant parents to invest in and actively build their “trust fund.”
I define trust as “calm reliance upon processes outside of your immediate perception and control”; it is one of the seven principles that weave through my book Parenting for Peace. For those of us weaned on the information revolution, trust is probably the most subversive P4P principle of them all. When it isn’t overwhelming us, our instant access to infinite amounts of data on any topic has us convinced that by virtue of our techno-savvy, we can indeed figure out and be in charge of every aspect of our lives.
But Life will always manage to outrun your techno-management, trust me.
Prevent Parental Anxiety: Build Your “Trust Fund”
Begin now, I tell new parents, to cultivate a fond taste for mystery and the unfathomable. (more…)
Tags: anxiety, digital-dependence, faith, handheld devices, pregnancy, smartphones, surrender, technology, trust
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In yesterday’s post I proposed the first three of five tips to help you with summer vacation activity ideas. These are meant to ease your mind and equip you with helpful ideas if you’re one of many parents wondering how you’re going to fill the vast expanses of hot days with “bored” kids… retain your sanity… make it fun and nourishing for all… and maybe even stumble upon some calm, confidence and joy in the process. (What a concept!)
I covered:
- How to avoid one of the most common pitfalls when transitioning to summer vacation
- Why “boredom” isn’t lethal to your children ~ just the opposite!
- Ways to use summer as a “refueling zone” ~ nourishing presence & connection
Today, onward! (more…)
Tags: boredom, schedule, screens, structure, summer vacation, technology
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Along with your child’s school summer vacation, the summer season itself brings many natural cues to slow down: the warmth, the longer days (more time = less need to do things fast), and the luscious grass or warm sand that beckons, Lie down!
But the approach of summer can also strike terror in the hearts of parents. Are you quietly (or not-so-quietly) dreading your child’s school summer vacation — wondering how you’re going to fill the vast expanses of hot days with “bored” kids? How you’re going to stick to your values about screened media, while retaining your sanity? Oh, and by the way, hopefully enjoying some semblance of calm and enJOYment?!
Here are five guidelines to help you not just survive summer, but actually cultivate more ease & harmony as you “wire” yourself and your children for joy & wellbeing in the coming year! (more…)
Tags: boredom, schedule, screens, structure, summer vacation, technology
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Is our technological wizardry with its infinite stream of instant answers eroding what makes us most human? Is digital dependence undermining our social intelligence?
During my strolls through Costco, a persistent thought comes to me (besides yum, those pizza samples are good): If I were an evil genius wanting to erode the nutritional intelligence of a civilization, this would be a good first step: induce mass consumer hypnosis via the big-box store. (Will return to this point in a bit.)
During my infrequent strolls down streets with actual pedestrians, a persistent question comes to me: How will our culture’s mass digital dependence affect this generation’s social intelligence? (more…)
Tags: Dan Goleman, depression, digital-dependence, Facebook, handheld devices, Siri, smartphones, social intelligence, social media, technology, teens, William Falk
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Whenever you want to make healthier choices, like going on a diet, the most successful strategy is to focus on the benefits and yumminess of what you can have, rather than on what you’re giving up. It’s true with food, and it’s true with tech. Zeroing in on specific priorities, like to protect sleep, is going to make it much easier to tame your digital devotion into healthier balance—and by extension, establish healthier tech habits in your children.
Protect Sleep, The “Royal Cradle of Growth”
Sleep is Nature’s own simple treasure, offered to us nightly free of charge, and yet we frequently shine it on in favor of all manner of other trivial pursuits. And we suffer for it.
The list of reasons to protect sleep is long. And it’s full of things that impact very important features of lifelong health—many of them related to your brain. Protect your sleep and your children’s, and Life will thank you many times over with vitality that cannot be duplicated by any other means.
A Simple Way to Protect Sleep
Here’s psychiatrist (and a longtime mentor in the field of attachment neurobiology) Dan Siegel with a 2-minute crash-course in why you want to get in the habit of turning off your smartphone or tablet an hour or two before bed. (more…)
Tags: Dan Siegel, digital-dependence, handheld devices, insomnia, sleep, sleep deprivation, smartphones, technology
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So let’s say you’ve been nodding your head at what you’ve read so far in this series (not to mention lots of other places) about the quiet costs of digital devotion… but what now?? What do you DO about it?! How do you tame the iBeast you invited in, before you realized it was hacking your children’s brain chemistry to engineer their deepening digital dependence? How do you transform iWorries into iRules? Assuming you’ve checked out the two solid entry-level guidelines I offered a few weeks ago, and you’re looking for some next-level ideas, Janell Burley Hofmann has some road-tested family tools for you.
Starting with her Slow Tech Manifesto: (more…)
Tags: digital-dependence, freedom, handheld devices, Janell Burley Hofmann, mastery, smartphones, technology, tools
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A WARNING FROM TECH INSIDERS
What do you, me and Anderson Cooper have in common? A creeping suspicion that we have, to some degree, an addiction to our devices. That was Cooper’s opening question for former Google product manager Tristan Harris during his “Brain-Hacking” segment on 60 Minutes this week.
What followed makes my job easy for this Wired Wednesday: I suggest… nay, I implore… you to see this episode. And with due recognition to the efficiency demands of our current “attention economy,” you don’t even need to spend the time it would take to watch the episode: CBS News has kindly provided a transcript that you can read through very quickly.
Yup, you can have your (brain-hacked) mind blown in a mere 3 minutes. Is it chilling? For sure. Frightening? Definitely. Surprising? Not really. (more…)
Tags: 60 Minutes, addiction, Anderson Cooper, brain hacking, digital-dependence, handheld devices, smartphones, technology, Wired Wednesday
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TWO PITFALLS FOR PARENTS
“We all understand the joys of our always-wired world — the connections, the validations, the laughs, the porn, the info. I don’t want to deny any of them here. But we are only beginning to get our minds around the costs, if we are even prepared to accept that there are costs.
“For the subtle snare of this new technology is that it lulls us into the belief that there are no downsides. It’s all just more of everything. Online life is simply layered on top of offline life. We can meet in person and text beforehand. We can eat together while checking our feeds.”
This from Andrew Sullivan in his New York Magazine article, “I Used to Be a Human Being,” chronicling his web addiction, recovery and reflections. The piece is extraordinary… and extraordinarily long. So, I aim to tease out excerpts from it to enrich the Wired Wednesday series.
Today, two aspects of digital dependence of particular concern for parents, related to attention deficits: these can have a deep and direct impact upon your developing child’s brain circuitry. (more…)
Tags: ADD, adhd, attention-deficit, digital-dependence, Gabor Mate, handheld devices, smartphones, technology
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