I Guess I'm a Fundamentalist Now

Not really; but in banning smartphones for my kids, I sometimes feel like one

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

When you were a kid, what shows and movies were you prohibited from watching?

Every parent has their line—especially for those of us who grew up under the broad umbrella of what is now called evangelicalism. In my tiny charismatic corner, my parents drew the line around witches and wizards and dragons and magic (which likely explains why, to this day, I just can’t get into anything in the fantasy genre…Yes, even Lord of the Rings. I know!).

But for the most part, when I was growing up, I always felt grateful that my parents weren’t like the other kids’ parents in our small, conservative Christian community—my mom and dad were far more permissive when it came to the TV shows and movies that my sister and I were allowed to watch and video games we could play.

Even as a kid, I felt like I understood their thinking and I knew that they made parenting decisions based on who we were as children, and not some across-the-board ban. I could plainly see how some of my other friends would get all fired up after watching an even moderately violent movie or TV show and think, yep, they can’t handle this like I can. I hated watching wrestling with certain friends because it meant that for hours afterward, I’d get pummeled.

Now, in my life as a parent, I try to implement that same thoughtfulness when considering appropriate entertainment for my kids—I seek to understand them and what they respond to when making decisions about what they can watch or play. Did I show them the Star Wars and Back to the Future movies too early? Maybe, but some things must be seen.

But lately, I’ve been bothered by the fact that, in comparison to other parents, I often feel more like those fundamentalist folks of my youth—stricter and less permissive. That is, when it comes to internet-enabled technology—smartphones, tablets, and especially social media—my wife and I have drawn a solid line in the sand: not until high school.

This doesn’t come from any inherent Luddism—though, as I get older, I sometimes feel it coming on—but rather from a strong belief in the beauty of childhood and the desire to let my kids remain children as long as they can.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if this is what it felt like to be one of the culture warrior parents of my youth, to have perceived a danger in the real world and then worked against great resistance to protect their kids from it. That is to say, this particular issue has made me more empathetic to those more fundamentalist parents.

But then, there are obvious differences, as well. By banning smartphones and social media, we’re following the guidance of a steadily increasing majority of experts. Jonathan Haidt, an author I’ve admired since I read The Righteous Mind years ago, has a new book out titled The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness in which he definitively links the well-documented increase in childhood and teen mental illness to the rise in the ubiquity of smartphones in the hands of young people.

Picking up on a thread from his earlier work, The Coddling of the American Mind, he argues that children need to play and explore independently, but as American parents moved away from that kind of unstructured play, phones and tablets arrived on the scene. Thus, rather than giving children freedom in the real world, we set them loose in a far more dangerous digital space with very real repercussions for their mental health.

Haidt recommends parents hold off on giving kids smartphones until high school and prolong the start of social media even longer—age 16. He suggests that schools should immediately enact phone-free policies and that children should be allowed and encouraged to engage in more unstructured free play.

In making these recommendations, Haidt is wandering into dangerous territory. As a culture, we have fostered a very individualistic, hands-off approach to other people’s parenting, often resulting in quiet judgment rather than conversation—I don’t remember other parents talking to my folks about what we were allowed to watch, but even as a kid, I picked up on their subtle judgment. But when it comes to the current mental health crisis, the problem is too real, and the stakes too high. Anyone who works with children and young adults can see it—this is one of the reasons I’ve long made my classroom a device-free space (well that and I don’t like competing with YouTube).

So, maybe it’s rather fundamentalist of me to institute this kind of across-the-board ban on internet-enabled technology until high school. Maybe, in this way, I’m more like those more restrictive parents of my youth; I’m as surprised as anyone! Maybe others will judge, but I can live with it; my kids’ childhood is too precious to concede.

And, yes, that childhood includes magic and dragons—though I’m still not into it.