Digital Nutrition and ‘Screenagers’: Navigating students towards the

best of digital technology.

Jocelyn BrewerRegistered Psychologist | Digital Nutritionist

MASCOT PUBLIC SCHOOL

DISCLAIMER

• This is general information not intended as treatment for specific cases.

• I cant comment on specific cases or children, but we can discuss afterwards (or get in touch).

• I really love the internet, games and my iPhone.• I don’t work for anyone who is related to the

games, internet, apple etc industries.

Hello: I’m Jocelyn

• Taught high school social science for 5 years.• Retrained as a school counsellor in 2008.• 4th year thesis was on Year 10 boys and their use of the

Interwebz for leisure and learning.• Became a registered psychologist in 2012.• Replicated my 4th year research in 2014.• Won $15K NSW Premiers Teacher Health Education

Scholarship for Digital Nutrition in 2014 USA study tour May/June 2015.

• Started MAppSci at USyd Health Sciences in 2015.• Tweets @jocelynbrewer

I screen, you screen, we all scream for our screens!

Techno-tantrums! Techno-stress!

We got good at technology, fast.

Technology underpins youth culture(and is like a magic engagement pill)

A detour into Digital Citizenship

My focus is on impacts of use and overuse NOT the cyber bullying or cyber safety aspects (stacks of resources on these already exist)

Digital Nutrition: What it’s NOT about

• Cyber-bullying and its prevention• Cyber-safety and awareness (privacy etc)• Delivering e-Therapy solutions for mental health• Software to block or ban kids from being online

(they don’t need an app for that).

<These already have tonnes of resources involved>

Preventing ‘internet addiction’ = Digital Nutrition

• I started talking about ‘digital nutrition’ about a year ago, it’s still very new.

• Builds on healthy eating pyramid/paradigm that people can relate to (sometimes/junk foods, superfoods etc)

• Rise of Digital Detox and Digital Diets how about teach sustainable skills to kids to avoid need to detox?

Using what we’ve learnt from plates and pyramids

Many names for the issue

Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) orProblematic/Pathological Internet Use (PIU) or Internet/Technology/Smartphone Addiction or

Nomophobia (no mobile phone phobia)And now in DSM5 – Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD)

BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

Basic neuroscience!!

Quadrune brain theory

Executive Functioning skills what separates kids from adults

Blue = mature brain

Adults brain vs kids brain

• Brain development occurs (generally) from back of head to front of head – with lots of connections in between.

• Use of technology can shape and change the way that ‘natural’ brain development occurs.

• Technology use can shape very narrow cognitive skills, leaving gaps in overall skills (verbal especially).

• For the first time in human history, technology is now mobile, wifi is almost everywhere and an expected part of everyday life.

PARENTING WITH TECHNOLOGY

What is this?

What does it do? What is it capable of?We know, we understand it’s limits/capacity….

What are these? How do you play them?

MANY PARENTS DON’T KNOW!

The challenge: understanding their world

Digital and Gaming culture

• Its not just a thing they do• Its their world, its as real as ‘real life’• Invalidating it, says they’re not important.• The hard core gamer stereotype is not the

average gamer – a huge number of people are now gaming daily.

• Remember your own childhood and relationship to your parents!

The challenge: Screen-time limits• Not all screen time is created equally.• Time is too simple a metric to be measuring

screen time and device use via (yet its what China diagnoses ‘addiction’ to the internet based on).

• Consider that some activities are superfoods, others are empty calories.

Screen-time (aka SBMU).

• The American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for screen time (screen based media use - SBMU) are from 2001.

• These guidelines are prehistoric revised in 2013 but only in that they added recommendations around when/where used and for ‘screen-free’ time.

• This is virtually impossible! See Houghton et.al. 2015 (UWA).

The challenge = finding digital broccoli(then getting kids to love eating it)

(then getting kids to choose it over other options)

Indie Games: digital broccoli?• There are over 120 games in the Games for

Change PLAY library• Games for social impact, education, empathy!• Commercial titles are like Hollywood, find the

gems

Apps for health and wellbeing

The challenge: role modelling

KIDS ARE WATCHING (then maybe copying) EVERYTHING YOU DO!!

What do they see? What do they interpret?

The challenge: too many choices

Evaluating/reviewing the quality of apps/games

• 1.6 million apps, no credentialing of those who make apps and label them ‘educational’.

• Overwhelm of parents as peer pressure increases for kids to have games etc.

• Only system of review has been star ratings by users.

• Look to trusted websites and organisations for reviews Common Sense Media, Australian Council on Children and Media (ACCM). etc

Two parts to tech use

1. The Device (s) 2. The social and emotional skills that go with

using the device responsibly.

Emotion regulation andenhancing communication

• 123 Magic and Triple P Parenting • Talk less, listen more by Michael Hawton • Read work of Dr Dan Seigel on whole brain

child and emotion regulation.• This is the hard bit, dealing with

uncomfortable feelings when we’re told to be ‘happy’!

Marshmallow test for the digital age?

Ability to delay gratification increases many predictors of success and adjustment etc

– Walter Mischel, Angela Duckworth

Soft skills not software!• Software cannot replace good parenting• Experts consider that trust and

communication trumps the use of software (unless there are pre-existing issues).

• Implications of outsourcing tricker aspects of parenting to software companies.

• Some egs for when you need to regain control: KoalaSafe, TeenSafe, ScreenRetriever, ParentWare, LearnMeter

Set guidelines and set them early

When you give your child a device, you need to give them the skills that go with using the device• WHAT YOU USE• WHERE YOU USE• WHEN YOU USE

Consider the CONTEXT & FUNCTION of tech use

What you use tech for

LEARNING or LEISURE?

Where you use technology• In a common area, with parental supervision• Set tech-free times & create tech-free activities• NOT IN BEDROOMS or ALONE • Not during dinner time• Not while walking/moving

When you use technology

• Not before school• Not until after homework is completed• Not if you have breached other rules at home• Not for more than 1 hour at a time/in a row.• Not for an hour before bedtime

• Suggestions?

Communicate the rules

• Write them on a poster, make it visible, refer to it often.

• Create technology rewards in line with other chores and responsibility – When you do <goal behaviour> you get <tech reward>.

***Some say that this is dangerous, as sets up time online as a currency***• Be consistent – do what you say you will, get both

parents and key family members to uphold the same rules. Empty threats will make things worse!

Further information and resources

Resources on www.jocelynbrewer.com