- [Narrator] iQ: smartparent is made possible in part by The McCune Foundation and The Grable Foundation.

- All parents hope to be role models for their kids but Mom and Dad, when it comes to media habits, your kids are paying attention and the habits they're picking up from you aren't always good.

Today, we've got experts with tips to help you build healthier media habits, including advice from a psychologist about protecting family relationships in the digital age, plus a pediatrician explains how all those devices are effecting your family's physical health.

It's all about balance and we'll tell you how to set media boundaries that are better for the whole family.

That's coming up on this edition of iQ: smartparent and it starts right now.

(bright upbeat music) Welcome to iQ: smartparent.

I'm your host, Darieth Chisolm and today we're talking about building healthy media habits for the whole family.

But with so many digital devices in our lives, that's not always an easy task.

Our first guest has plenty of thoughts on this topic.

She is Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and author of the award-winning book, The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.

Thanks so much for being here.

- I'm delighted to be here, thank you.

- This book, certainly a wonderful book, and we have to start off by saying that the Wall Street Journal named it the best non-fiction book of the year.

So let's start by just summing up your thoughts about the digital media and how families are being exposed to it.

- Well, we're living through a huge revolution of the digital age.

And on the one hand, everything seems to be the same.

We're in our living rooms, we're laughing, we're reading, we're playing games, but we're not doing it with each other.

And we're all saturated with technological devices that really have changed the nature of how we gather together as a family, and really how we relate.

- How is it then that we, with all of these devices, incorporate them into our lives in a way that we don't feel so consumed?

- Well, one of the biggest things that's happened is now, we're nine years into smartphones, which are actually computers, and we can understand how the human brain interacts with these devices.

And the more we learn, the more we learn that we really have to get much better at self-regulating with our devices, and it's really hard because they are a stimulant to our brain.

So your phone goes off and you get an energy boost, and a lot of people now have what we call phantom ring syndrome.

Their phone isn't even going off but they think they hear it and they reach for it only to discover it isn't.

Or somebody else's phone goes off.

It's not your ringtone and you reach for yours because we've become so psychologically dependent on these devices, and the way our brains interact with them is very powerful.

So we have to learn how to tune them out at certain times, turn them off at certain times, and think about really critical ways to make sure we maintain the kinds of face-to-face communication with our family that we know nourishes family connections.

- Yeah and speaking of that, it is disrupting our relationships so how do we balance it all?

- We have to be much smarter.

We have to outsmart our smartphones and understand it's like a siren call to us.

So we've created new norms in just nine years that are unbelievable.

The first one is, that's really stressing everybody out, children especially, but all of us, is that we are in a conversation like this or you and I are out to dinner and our phone goes off and I'll do this.

(Catherine gasps) "Hold on, Darieth, one sec."

"Just checking."

And we literally turn away from the person we are with, whether they are four or 40, and go into a conversation with somebody who's not even present.

It's so rude and it's hurtful.

And what I heard from kids of all ages, whether they were two all the way up to 30, was that they are frustrated and they are sad and they are mad and they are lonely.

And the research shows that in fact, since our smartphones especially have come out, there's been a significant spike in people under the same roof feeling disconnected from one another.

- You not only feel disconnected, but you also feel as if you don't matter.

It's the sense of, "Well, whatever you're doing on this phone," "it's much more important than me."

And so if you're sending that message to little children who grow up, what kind of society are we creating?

- Well, it's very worrisome because actually, we are their role models in real life.

And you used the phrase, "Not matter."

I interviewed four-year-olds, 14-year-olds.

Didn't matter what age.

One thing they all said was, "It's kinda cool at dinner now."

"We get to be on our iPads" "or I get to play Candy Crush down at my end of the table," "but it's also lonely" "and I guess we're just boring to the grown-ups."

"It's like we don't even matter."

We're communicating to our children that they are irrelevant.

They're not interesting.

We're not curious about them.

We don't value family conversation anymore.

This is not who we are at our best.

It speaks to the power of these devices and also that we are in a very early stage of adaptation.

- And it's habitual and it has become commonplace, and so at what point, how do we unplug and when best can we?

- I think having interviewed 1,000 kids from the ages of four to 18, and then 250 18 to 30-year-olds, I tried to synthesize tons of research into some critical times of the day, and here are some critical times of the day that I think as parents, if you can put your devices away, all of them, it will help your family stay connected.

The first one is get up a half hour earlier than your children if they're still home, and do all your email and then put it away as soon as they're up and with you because your tone of voice changes.

Our empathy goes down.

Actually, our capacity to hear goes down, which was why so many kids say, "I have to go, Mom, Mom, Mom!"

(Catherine snapping fingers) Or like this to get their parents' attention.

We're not focused on our kids first thing in the morning and that's a frantic time in households and they need us to be focused on them.

And the other time that's very critical is in the car on the way to school.

If you still have people in the car with you on the way to school, don't be on Bluetooth.

It tells them that you're not interested in them.

And often when you're on Bluetooth, it's stressful to them and they have to listen to something that's boring.

And most of all, they will not talk to you about what's on their mind, what their worries are.

And when children are playing Ninja Fruit Fly on the way to school, it makes the car ride quiet and calm.

However, it's not what they need.

Children need to give their brains a rest, they need to stare out the window, and they need to deal with what we call anticipatory anxiety.

- And so we talked about how parents can unplug, but then how do we do this with our children?

- Well, you keep your car as a cell-free zone, a screen-free zone.

And I think the other thing that we've seen a huge impact on childhood today is that when kids come home, they get a snack and they play but they play on an iPad, and what children need desperately from 0 to 10 especially is to play in the real world, to play outside, to be physical, to create, not to be on a tablet all the time.

And dinnertime, of course, is a critical time, and bedtime and bath time's a critical time.

But another parent habit that we've seen is parents walk in the door now in a conversation.

Six-year-olds, 16-year-olds say, "I don't run and hug my mom or dad anymore" "because they always go," "Shh, hold on honey," "I really wanna hear about school but this is work."

Stand outside, stand in the rain.

If you walk in like this, you're bringing work home.

You're not coming home from work.

- We have to do better at modeling for children.

- We really do, and we can.

There's nothing here we can't get better at.

- Just a question.

Can some of this be reversed?

Because it's just so pervasive and habitual.

- Well, I think it can be reversed.

We reverse smoking once we learn about the impact of nicotine on our health.

And I think there's a lot we need to pay attention to also about the impact of technology on developing brains in small children.

- Well, this is a subject that obviously parents have got to pay close attention to, and we thank you so much for being here to talk about it.

- You're so welcome.

My pleasure.

- Thank you very much.

Coming up, discover the health risks your family faces when too many digital devices take over a household.

But up first, hear how parents' television viewing habits influence their kids.

(bright upbeat music) - [Narrator] Parents, if you worry that your kids spend too much time in front of the television, the first tip is to take a look at your own TV viewing habits.

A recent study revealed that each hour of TV viewed by parents was linked to an additional half hour of viewing time for their kids, and that fact held true regardless of the kids' ages.

Researchers suggest parents turn off the TV when they have free time.

That will teach kids to do the same, promoting other hobbies and habits that don't rely on television.

- Our next guest is Dr. James Huguley, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Social Work and Center on Race and Social Problems.

Thanks so much for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- And since we're talking about healthy media habits, we thought we'd bring you on to get your thoughts on how certain media messages may be impacting the people in the African-American community.

- When you look at the content of the media, when we talk about violent images, when we talk about the sexual images, for Black families, they are usually represented in these ways in the media, in perpetrators of violence and hyper-sexualized characters.

And so what Black families have to do is sort of navigate that for their children and try to let them know that that's not the true story of who we are.

- So how would a family help their children better interpret that?

- I think there are two really important conversations.

One is the media literacy conversation.

Two, consume media with your children and that goes for news media and entertainment media because both of those industries tend to be negatively slanted for African-American families.

And you consume it together.

There's some purpose behind it that's not necessarily just about telling people's truths, but then there needs to also be a conversation about positive images and accurate representation of the history of the people.

Some of that is historical racial pride, racial heritage stuff, and some of that is just presenting positive dramatic images in entertainment media.

- Is there a particular age?

Because I would think that some of this is, maybe for younger children, a bit much to present, but if it's the way that you counterbalance with those negative images, at what age, if there is an issue of age appropriateness?

- Right, and we find in our work and talking to parents that age appropriateness really matters when you're thinking about racism and bias, and there is some concern for parents of doing that too young and scaring their young children.

But when it comes to positive imagery and positive racial socialization, which we know from our research and others, is associated with positive academic outcomes, positive mental health outcomes, that can happen very early.

- Any final tips that you would offer to parents on even how they start some of the conversations, and the process of really helping their kids consume healthy media?

- I think what's also important is that this doesn't just effect African-American families.

This is a very segregated country and we know historically and currently, much of mainstream America or White America gets what they know about African-Americans from the media.

So these parents, White parents, they have an imperative to also present their children with diverse imagery, diverse content in their books, in their movies.

I ask my students, I give them what I call the Black movie quiz.

I have most of my students it in my program.

They haven't seen Black movies.

They haven't seen Black movies with positive images and these are 20s-and-30-year-old people.

- So it's imperative that everyone be involved in this.

This isn't just for families of color, but everyone plays a responsibility in teaching all children about the images that they see.

- [Dr. Huguley] Absolutely.

- Unfortunately, we've run out of time but thank you so much.

It was certainly good to have you.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- We're turning our attention now to all those digital devices families use and how they may be keeping your kids from getting a good night sleep.

Sleep is crucial to kids' healthy development and yet 87% of teens report they get less than the recommended eight hours of sleep each night.

It turns out technology is one of the things that's keeping kids awake.

(light upbeat music) - Our kids are busy and as parents, we're busy too.

If you're not actually thinking about it, saying, "It's 10 o'clock and it's time to go to bed," if you're not intentional about it, it doesn't happen.

- [Narrator] Dr. Elizabeth Miller is the Chief of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

When it comes to sleep deprivation, she says teens' busy schedules are only part of the problem.

Teens don't need more sleep than adults but they do need it at different times.

The body's natural sleep-wake cycle, what's called circadian rhythm, shifts during puberty.

Teens have a biological urge to go to sleep later and to wake up later.

(clock face shattering) But early school start times means teens can't sleep in.

This late-to-bed, early-to-rise lifestyle leads to something called sleep debt.

- I think that there probably are factors that are contributing to worse sleep for adolescents today compared to 30 years ago.

The story with cell phones and computers is certainly a big piece of this puzzle.

- [Narrator] That's because digital devices are keeping teens up even later as they use them for homework and late night socializing.

To make matters worse, the artificial light leads to more disruptions in the body's circadian rhythm.

- And on some level, as physicians, I think we have an obligation to essentially write a prescription for a young person that says: Cell phone out of the bedroom, laptop out of the bedroom.

Sleep touches just about all aspects of adolescent health.

Things like obesity, car accidents, academic achievement, depression, increased risk of suicide.

- [Narrator] Research also shows teens with insufficient sleep get less physical exercise and they're more likely to smoke cigarettes, use alcohol and marijuana, have sex, and get into physical fights.

Long term, poor sleep is associated with an increased risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, and diabetes.

- These are really serious health issues and the more that we ignore sleep, we're not gonna be able to address all of these other serious adolescent health issues, so we really do have a challenge here but I don't wanna simply say, "Oh, we just have to throw out all social media."

It's just not realistic.

But I think starting to think about how parents can have that conversation with their child about at 10 o'clock, we all park our cell phones in the kitchen.

That's where the cell phones get charged.

We all do this.

And when it's bedtime, if you're working on a laptop, that laptop comes out of your bedroom so that you're not tempted by other people trying to reach you to connect.

Now, I think that is hard.

It's a little bit like cutting the umbilical cord for some young people, and even for parents.

Adolescent sleep is vital to the health of our young people and when we think about really supporting the health of our children and getting them on the best trajectory ever, teaching them now the importance of sleep is going to carry them for the rest of their lives.

- [Narrator] Jessica Levenson is a clinical psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh, and she's running a research study to come up with realistic recommendations to help teens get better sleep.

- Teenagers do care about sleep.

A lot of them will say, "Yeah, my sleep is important to me" or "When I get better sleep, I do these positive benefits."

The challenge for us it figure out how to fit sleep in because there's a lot of competing demands and so it's a choice to prioritize sleep.

So what we're doing is interviewing adolescents and their parents, and we wanna find out where does sleep rank as a priority for them?

What are the things that influence their sleep?

What would motivate them to actually wanna make changes?

For adolescents, maybe that means that if I get enough sleep tonight, I'm actually gonna do a little bit better on my test tomorrow.

Or maybe that means that at my basketball game, I'm gonna have a little more stamina.

(buzzer goes off) (crowd cheering) We're trying to figure out how to make getting more sleep attractive.

- [Narrator] Choosing to sleep is the first challenge.

Falling asleep is another feat and it's all about location, location, location.

- When we think about the bedroom, we need to think about the entire sleep environment.

Is your bedroom dark enough, cool enough, quiet enough for you?

Do you not have shades on your windows and therefore the light is coming in too strong?

What I would also recommend is to try as much as you can to keep the bed for sleep only.

Really keep the other activities, whether it's TV, video games, chatting on the phone, homework, reading a book, keep that outside of the bed for the most part.

And we find that the more you can keep your bed for sleep only, the better your sleep will be.

(teen snoring) A lotta teenagers sleep with their phone next to them.

It's their alarm clock.

(smartphone ringing) But we also know that those text messages go off in the middle of the night.

They can wake them up.

They can disturb their sleep.

Watch, is the phone too close to your bed?

Do you wanna turn your ringer off in the middle of the night?

What things can you do to stop the disruptions that come from social media during the night?

Try to get a regular amount of sleep and keep a regular sleep schedule across the week, so not just the five school days, but the seven days of the week.

Most teens, when you say that to them, they say, "I'm not gonna get up at six o'clock" "on a Saturday or a Sunday."

And what we're encouraging teenagers to do is to just limit the amount that they sleep in on the weekends.

Many teenagers sleep until noon, two o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday and a Sunday, which can be really hard for them come Sunday night, Monday morning to get back on a sleep schedule.

And we call this social jet lag.

It's almost like every Sunday night, they have to travel back two or three time zones in order to get back onto their weekday schedule.

It's important to talk about sleep as a family, as a whole, and if sleep doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal to the parents, maybe it doesn't need to be as big a deal to me.

So that's a discussion to have with your kids.

What do you see me doing?

Do you think that I have good sleep habits?

Should I be changing them?

What about you?

Do you have good sleep habits?

How could we help you get better sleep?

If we can really improve sleep, not only does it make us feel better at night.

We're warm in our beds getting a great night sleep.

But tomorrow, we'll probably feel better as well.

(bright upbeat music) - Scientific research shows even a little light from a digital device stimulates the brain and tricks it into thinking it needs to be awake and alert.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends going completely gadget-free at least 30 minutes before bedtime to give your mind time to unwind.

And now let me introduce our final guest today, Shelley Pasnik, who is the director of the Center for Children and Technology.

Shelley, thanks so much for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- Glad that you're here.

So you're the author of the PBS publication Parents Guide to Children and Media, and so what are your thoughts about parents really helping their children with healthy media habits?

- Parents are a crucial part of experiences that young children have, and the number one thing that parents can do is to be deliberate.

So often, we think that technology is something that happens to us, and bringing back the power that parents have to make thoughtful choices about what's gonna happen in their home with their kids and with themselves makes all the difference.

- Setting guidelines, setting boundaries.

- Sure, I think it's important to think about what your media habits are gonna be as a family, so some of these can be concrete.

No screens during meal time, for example, or not watching videos before bedtime.

Not texting while driving.

That's a big one for parents and certainly for teenagers as well.

But being deliberate and really thoughtful about what you do and don't do as a family can really change how families engage with one another.

- So let's talk about this term, joint media engagement.

What is that?

Break that down for us.

- Yeah, so that's an academic term that professors at Stanford or some of my research colleagues like to use, but what it means is doing and playing media together and really thinking about that media is something you engage in.

We tend to think that media is something that we absorb when in fact we have an active part to play in translating or making sense of the media.

And so for parents of young children, for example, getting down on the floor with the iPad with your children just as you would with the blocks, rather than thinking of it as something that happens that a parent doesn't need to participate in.

- Do you think that there are some things that parents are doing that they think is good, but in fact may not be?

- I think parents can fall into a trap of assumptions, thinking that they know what's happening.

For many years, we've talked about the halo effect that hovers over digital media.

Just assuming that it's educational when in fact it may not be educational, or thinking that they know what their child is getting from the experience when they haven't really sat down and played the game or watched the video on YouTube or on Netflix.

So really wanting to participate together and not just assume that you know what your child is getting from the experience.

- Is there a way that parents can help their children create more positive media in terms of helping them to make those choices themselves?

- Sure, I think going back to the essence of media engagement and that is we all wanna connect.

It's a very human impulse.

And so not assuming that media is anything other than that.

It's an opportunity to connect around information, to connect around entertainment.

And so being thoughtful and having your children make selections that really make them feel good about themselves and not just receiving the media experiences that somebody else has designed for them.

- And so what advice would you have for parents who just aren't tech savvy?

And oftentimes they're kids know more about the devices they're using.

In fact, they turn to them and say, "Hey, can you figure this out?"

"Can you set this up?"

- [Shelley] Yeah.

- It's almost like we're giving them the power and yet we wanna help them make better decisions.

What about parents who just are not tech savvy?

- I think it's important to distinguish between technical experience or savviness, and understanding who your child is.

So sometimes, parents can feel intimidated because they don't know their way around an iPad the way that their four-year-old does.

iPads are intuitive, they're gestural.

But instead to think, "What do I know about my child" "and what he needs or what she needs?"

And to know that a parent doesn't have to have the answers.

They can pose questions and really engage with their child and that will set them on a path of having a conversation rather than just feeling that intimidation.

- We've got only 30 seconds but I have to ask this question.

What do you think parents should demand of media makers?

- I think media needs to reflect our full lives, and so we need to insist that there are a wide range of stories that we get to receive, not just parts of our culture that get all the attention.

And also parents need to understand that we all can be media makers, so it's not just them versus us.

Instead, seeing that we all can create stories and we all can take pictures and we can weave them together.

And being a participant in the media-making can go long ways in absorbing the media that is made by others.

- Great advice, thanks so much for being here, Shelley.

We appreciate it.

- Thanks so much.

- Parents remember, we hope today's guests have given you the confidence to build healthier habits for the media your family watches and for the media your family makes.

Thanks for being here and join us again next time for more iQ: smartparent.

- [Narrator] Want to learn more about iQ: smartparent?

Visit us online at iQsmartparent.org for more episodes and additional tools and resources.

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(bright upbeat music) iQ: smartparent is made possible in part by The McCune Foundation and The Grable Foundation.