Are Parents to Blame for Our Children’s Angst and Anxiety?

Posted on July 7, 2020 by E.A. Wickham

I wrote this months before the pandemic hit and we began sheltering in place. Now that I’ve spent 109 days in my home without my normal activities of meeting friends for lunch, traveling, volunteering and hanging out with my swim friends, I’m learning that more and more people are suffering from anxiety and children are being hit the hardest. A friend of mine who is a psychologist for teens said she’s talking to a record number of kids who are talking about suicide. It puts a new perspective on our kids’ angst and anxiety.

randk 3 I watched a video posted on Facebook by one of my children’s former swim coaches about millennials in the workforce and the problems they face. It really made me reflect about my own parenting and kids. There’s an increased number of kids in this age group with depression, committing suicide and overdosing. That’s terrifying, don’t you agree? What can be done about it? And why is it happening?

You can watch the aforementioned video here.

Here are the four main points of the video:

ONE
Bad Parenting

I hate that bullet point and know I’m guilty of some bad parenting myself. The main idea is that our kids were told they are special at every turn, whether it’s deserved or not. Consequently, millennials often suffer from low self esteem. While we’re trying to make our kids strong, mentally and physically, we’re doing something very wrong. We have highly educated, competent kids who don’t believe in themselves. Maybe everyone shouldn’t get a participation trophy in tee ball. It’s one of the reasons why I like swimming. Every mili-second dropped and ribbon received is truly earned. The clock doesn’t lie.

We were unplugged as a family every summer at the beach.

TWO
Technology

Checking our number of likes, texts, etc. give us a jolt of dopamine. That’s why we get addicted to our phones. Social media and cell phones are not much different than other highly addictive substances like tobacco or alcohol. When teenage brains are exposed to dopamine, they get hooked and their brains get hardwired. Hearing this part of the video makes me want to look at my own cell phone usage and make some changes—a good thing to think about for New Year’s Resolutions (I’ll write more about this later). Social media is preventing our kids from developing personal relationships and may lead to depression and being unable to handle stress.

THREE
Instant Gratification

Our kids have grown up in the world of instant gratification. If they want to watch a movie, they turn on Netflix. If they want to buy something, they click on Amazon and it’s delivered the next day. I interviewed a psychologist and wrote about instant gratification here. Job satisfaction and relationships aren’t a click away. Instead they are messy and time consuming, but our kids aren’t learning these skills of waiting and working for things.

FOUR
Environment

Maybe our corporate environments aren’t a good fit for young people. Our kids blame themselves when it could partially be the fault of the company they work for. Companies need to work extra hard to build the children’s social skills and work on their lack of confidence. We need to work on interpersonal relationships and one good way to start is to put the phone down.

What are your thoughts about millennials and their angst? Do you think it’s our fault they are suffering from depression and anxiety? Or, does the environment and technology play a bigger role?

Selfie of Mom and me playing BINGO. She is the best mom and my role model.

Are parents to blame for angst and anxiety?

Posted on November 22, 2019 by E.A. Wickham

You can watch the aforementioned video here.

Here are the four main points of the video:

ONE
Bad Parenting

We were unplugged as a family every summer at the beach.

TWO
Technology

THREE
Instant Gratification

FOUR
Environment

What are your thoughts about millennials and their angst? Do you think it’s our fault they are suffering from depression and anxiety? Or, does the environment and technology play a bigger role?

Selfie of Mom and me playing BINGO. She is the best mom and my role model.

When do we cross the line posting pics of our kids?

Posted on August 29, 2019 by E.A. Wickham

An example of a photo my daughter would not like me to post on Facebook.

Just to be perfectly clear, I post lots of photos of my kids. That said, I read an article this morning where an 18-year-old is suing her mom and dad for posting her life on Facebook. It will be enlightening to see if she wins her case.

I’ve also read articles where it’s dangerous to post your young children’s photos on FB. Here’s an interesting read that explores the pros and cons of posting kids photos from the Wall Street Journal.

My daughter doesn’t like it when I post old photos of her on Facebook. I need to ask her approval before posting any pictures of her.

I’ve got some great old photos, too. I find them all sweet, funny, cute. She says friends on her swim team scour parents FB pages to find embarrassing photos to tweet.

Christmas 1996. How could I possibly resist posting this?

My son blocked me from his FB, because I didn’t approve of things he was posting and made the mistake of telling him about it. Because I was blocked, I missed the post where he tried to give away our cat and got quite a few takers. You can read more about that here.

Olive the kitten my son tried to give away online.

Isn’t it amazing how different our children’s lives are growing up with social media? We had a chance to escape the pressure of posting selfies, sushi and all the fun and smiles, all the time. We hung out at pizza parlors, long after our salads or slices were finished. We went to football games and dances in the small gym afterwards. We spent time together. We laughed and talked. When we weren’t face-to-face, we had an old-fashioned telephone and talked for hours. We also had downtime and privacy. Lots of it.

I wonder what is going to happen to our kids whose lives are on display? They don’t know anything else and even if we stop posting their pictures, they’ll do it on their own.

Remember when we were “addicted to love” not screens?

Posted on May 22, 2019 by E.A. Wickham

No screens during the beach days.

I wonder what’s going to happen to us as we become more and more addicted to screens? I read an article on The Next Web that discussed the increase in hours children spend looking at screens. Something new that has cropped up since my kids were babies is more children have tablets or smartphones. When my kids were little, they spent time with educational computer programs, but the smartphones and tablets didn’t exist. Along with the increased screen times for kids, there is an uptick in teens with depression, anxiety, and a decline in physical health.

In “Technology and parenting: addressing the friction: Walking the fine line between technology addiction and entertainment” by Anna Johansson, she cites several studies and breaks down the numbers.

“Raising children has always been tough work. Whether in ancient Greece or modern America, there have always been distinct cultural challenges that come with parenting. Each generation of parents must deal with a new set of issues. It just so happens that one of today’s biggest issues is the ubiquitous and addictive nature of technology.”

How Much Screen Time is Too Much Screen Time?

It’s virtually impossible to be a productive or engaged member of society without some exposure to screens and digital media – even as a young child. But there’s clearly a point where too much technology becomes dangerous.

A research project in Canada has been following nearly 2,000 young people from infancy into their teenage years and the results are alarming. Children who spend the most time glued to screens from a young age face the highest risk of emotional, psychological, and physical health issues.

According to journalist Brett Arends, who combed through the study and wrote a piece for MarketWatch, “Those children were more likely to become depressed by age 12 or 13, to be the victims of bullying, to be aggressive, to have lower interpersonal skills, to have unhealthy diets, and to be overweight, the researchers found.”

One surprising thing I read in the article was that children from lower income homes (less than $50k annual household income) spend more hours looking at screens than those from higher income (above $75k). Another fact was that people who work in the tech industry are stricter about screen time for their children than people who don’t work in the industry.

We know our children look to us and model our behaviors. It’s on us to put the phones down. Engage with people face to face. Get out and walk, play in the park, or go for a hike with our kids. As a family I believe it’s a good idea to make an effort to have daily screen free time.

What rules does your family have about spending time on computers, tablets and phones?

Nostalgia for the iPod nano—and the kids

Posted on September 1, 2017 by E.A. Wickham

A view from our seven-mile hike.

I’m feeling nostalgic today. Maybe it’s because I cleaned out my son’s desk drawer or maybe it’s because he spent a few days with us this past week. We enjoyed talking about years gone by, memories of his childhood and listening to music together. We even took a seven-mile hike and camped overnight in the nearby mountains.

Back to today, I decided to clean out his desk and I found his high school IDs, ACT and SAT reports and the most important electronic device in his life—an iPod nano, circa 2005. He would have been in middle school at the time. His nano opened his world to music and he was the envy of many of his school friends and swim mates for a few months—until everyone had one. I remember years with his nano with him at all times.

I searched through other drawers to find a charger that had a really, really wide base. I don’t remember the chargers being that wide, do you?

My son’s 1st generation iPod. It was engraved on the back with his name and “I think therefore iPod.”

I found one in my daughter’s desk—next to one of her formerly prized possessions, a Pantech slide phone. How tricky was that? How on earth did she text on it? I never got the hang of it. She loved the phone because it came with a big sliding screen—and a camera.

I charged up the nano and listened to a few of my son’s songs. Then I tried to charge the old phone of my daughter’s. I wanted to take a peek at the photos she took on her first phone with a camera. I texted my son that I had found his iPod nano and I was going to mail it to him. He surprised me with a “please don’t.” I guess I’m the one feeling nostalgic, he’s over it.

I found an article about the history of the iPod. Here’s the section about the 1st generation iPod nano by Jacob Kastrenakes in “The iPod nano had a weird, amazing history.”

Like the iPod Classic three years before it, the iPod nano’s death today was a long time coming. But years ago, before the product stalled out, lost its identity, and was made wholly unnecessary by the iPhone, it featured some of Apple’s finest design and arguably represented the iPod at its peak — tiny, fun, and focused.

1ST GENERATION, 2005
My favorite iPod nano iteration has always been the very first one (seen above). It came in black and white with a silver back, like a shrunken-down version of the classic iPod, and it felt immediately retro. It wasn’t throwing back to anything — just the iPod released a year earlier. But it was as though the nano had leapt so far ahead as to make the traditional iPod feel like a thing of the past, like the nano was a modern riff on technology we used to use and love.

What were your favorite devices 10 to 15 years ago? Did you have an iPod too?

Hiking.

How many parents know about “roasting” a cyberbullying trend?

Posted on August 25, 2017 by E.A. Wickham

The pool is a good place to get away from cellphones.

My daughter told me they had a meeting at her college about their social media use. I’m thrilled to hear that they are on top of it and take it seriously. The students were told that someone is monitoring their social media accounts. The student-athletes were given specific examples of what had been seen and what the consequences were including loss of scholarships or being kicked off the team. Every day I hear about new problems with social media like depression and anxiety as a result of too much screen time–and today I heard about “roasting” a trend in cyberbullying.

On ABC’s Good Morning America, there was a feature called “What parents should know about roasting, a new cyberbullying trend”

Experts are warning parents to be aware of a recent rise in the social media trend of “roasting,” which many critics consider a harmful form of cyberbullying.

The trend involves people asking to be insulted by posting photos or videos of themselves on platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Reddit, usually with the hashtag #roastme. Then friends or strangers online will take turns insulting the person who posted the original video or photo. Sometimes the insults are lighthearted or humorous, but the comments can also very quickly turn alarmingly mean.

ABC News’ T.J. Holmes sat down with middle school students — who asked not to be identified by their full names — to understand more about the online trend that has left some parents baffled.

“Adults don’t really say it … it’s like a kid thing,” one teenager told ABC News of “roasting.”

Another teen explained to Holmes that roasting is about a “50-50” split of good-natured fun and being mean to another person.

The middle schoolers told Holmes that while they do not participate in the trend themselves, they have seen it affect the lives of those around them, saying that some other children from their school were compared to animals online when they were roasted.

“Some people took it as a joke, and then others were actually crying about it,” one student told Holmes.

Cyberbullying is something parents of tweens and teens need to be aware of. On the ABC report, an expert said parents need to have their children’s passwords and see what is going on. We need to know if our kids are being bullied–and also if they are the bully. In another article, it says that half of teens and young adults between 12 and 20 years old have been bullied. That means one out of every two kids experiences bullying. We need to let them know that it’s not acceptable and this is a place where I believe a parent needs to get involved and interfere.

CYBERBULLYING HAPPENS MORE OFTEN ON INSTAGRAM, A NEW SURVEY SUGGESTS
By Hillary Grigonis — Updated July 22, 2017

A new study suggests that half of teens and young adults between ages 12 and 20 have been bullied and 17 percent experience bullying online. The cyberbullying statistics come from Ditch the Label, one of the largest anti-bullying organizations in the world, and a study of more than 10,000 youths in the U.K.

According to the survey, more youths experienced cyberbullying on Instagram than any other platform at 42 percent, with Facebook following close behind at 37 percent. Snapchat ranked third at 31 percent. While the survey participants use YouTube more than any other platform, the video-focused social media was only responsible for 10 percent of the reported cyber bullying.

Seventy-one percent of the survey participants said that social media platforms do not do enough to prevent cyberbullying.

The survey also considered the other side of the story, asking the same age group how often they were the bullies, instead of being on the receiving end. Nearly 70 percent of those surveyed said they were abusive online toward another user, compared to just 12 percent that admitted to bullying in general. Despite the prevalence of youth initiating the bullying, more than 60 percent disagreed with the idea that “saying something nasty” is less hurtful online than in person.

“Cyberbullying continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing young people online,” Ditch the Label CEO Liam Hackett wrote about the cyberbullying statistics. “This research uncovers the true extent and impact of online abuse, finding that the majority of young people have at some point done something that could be considered as abusive online behavior.”

Has your child been the victim of cyberbullying? How did you handle it?

At What Age Should Children Get iPhones?

Posted on June 22, 2017 by E.A. Wickham

This is what our kitchen phone looked like.

When I was young, we had a party line. It was a black telephone attached to the kitchen wall in our tiny house on Emerson Street in Snohomish, Washington. When you picked up the receiver to make a call, someone might be on the phone in another house, so you’d have to wait for the line to be clear before you could dial out.

Sometimes you could hear someone breathing lightly while you were talking. There were some nosy neighbors who listened in on calls, which was really bad manners. Trust me, my mom never did that and wouldn’t allow us to eavesdrop, either.

This is a view from outside my hometown.

Long distance was a big deal. I’d hear my mom say, “You’re calling long distance?” when a family member or friend would call from across the state. Those calls would be super short. You wouldn’t waste a minute of that expensive time.

The idea of a cell phone that was a personal computer, camera, game center and internet was unthinkable back then. Oh, that’s right. We didn’t know what personal computers were. There was no internet. No digital cameras, either.

An early car phone.

My kids didn’t grow up with cell phones and I’m glad. They missed out on the era of smartphones owned by young kids by just a few years. Their first phones were given to them before they went to Swim Camp at USC. They must have been 11 and 14 at the time and they were so excited to get their little pre-paid flip phones. We were at a meet at FAST the day we took them to camp and gave them the phones. My son used up his minutes texting to all his friends who owned phones before him. The silly thing is that he was texting to kids who were at the meet! And of course, the phone was meant to be used in case of emergency to reach mom and dad.

That’s what bugs me about phones. Kids would rather text each other than talk face to face. I’ve watched kids sitting under the tent at meets, looking down at their phones and not playing cards or games together. They are communicating with each other but through their devices. It’s just weird, don’t you think?

I wonder what impact it will have on the kids who are growing up with smartphones as young as first and second grades? Will it impede their ability to communicate in person? Is it changing how their brains work? I can’t wait for the studies to come out years from now about the generation raised with their phones attached like an extra appendage.

It reminds me of a Dean Koontz novel I read years ago where people were physically melding into their computers. Their fingers would melt into the keyboard and become permanently attached and cords would hook up to their bodies. I think the novel was called MIDNIGHT.

My kids and teammates hanging out together at a meet–before iPhones.

There are a few good reasons to give your young children smartphones. But, I think there are more reasons against kids under 13 or 14 getting one. I heard a physician in Colorado has proposed a law banning children from having smartphones under age 13. But, how would you enforce that? I think it should be a parent’s decision and not up to the government.

Here are a few links to articles that discuss the pros and cons of kids and smartphones:

From the New York Times July 20, 2016:

“Common Sense Media polled 1,240 parents and children and found 50 percent of the children admitted that they were addicted to their smartphones. It also found that 66 percent of parents felt their children used mobile devices too much, and 52 percent of children agreed. About 36 percent of parents said they argued with their children daily about device use.”

10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Hand a Smartphone to Your Children

When Should You Get Your Kid A Phone
When did you give your children a smartphone? What are your thoughts about children and phones?

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Tag Archives: technology

Are Parents to Blame for Our Children’s Angst and Anxiety?

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Are parents to blame for angst and anxiety?

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Remember when we were “addicted to love” not screens?

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Nostalgia for the iPod nano—and the kids

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At What Age Should Children Get iPhones?

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