Technology: How does one know where to set the limits?

By Shon Oren
12/06/2024

Boundaries are a complicated construct. During the pandemic, a new kind of worker has emerged. I am referring to the Homebody-Tech-Millennial whose child jaggedly appears and reappears from beyond her Zoom’s fake background as she speaks in front of the board, or gives a lecture.This worker has taught us that boundaries, as much as we’d like to deny this, are not absolute. The home emerges in work. Work occurs inside the home. Things get murkier when we are required to use devices that are our calendars, books, mailing addresses, Netflix, research tools, GPS’s, and pseudo-professional videography tools all in one glass-slab. Things get murkier still when we are asked to make decisions if and when to let our child access these cursed marvels of engineering—murkier, still, when we are expected to set up boundaries for our children for which apps they are allowed to use, and when, and for what purpose. It can get even more complicated when our own ideas (and ideals) clash with those of our neighbors. How is one to find the best balance between protection and scrutiny, surveillance and safety, suspicion and trust? These are indeed muddy waters. 

When I was a teenager, video games were all I knew. I would wake up in the morning, sometimes as early as 5 a.m., and set up my flight simulator with which I would pilot a triple-seven Boeing from Newark to Tel Aviv (a path I traveled many times growing up) using, as far as I knew, the same procedures and protocols that actual pilots used on that machine. My flight path was such that my plane would be about an hour from landing around the time I got back home from school. Or I would play the marvelously addictive Tibia, a MMORPG bizarrely named after the shin bone, or Call of Duty, or Battlefield. Whichever game I was playing, it was an addiction. I would think about the game all day during school. One day, as a teenager, I woke up in the morning and decided I had had enough, sold my PC, and got a Mac, which in these days was thankfully incapable of running the most basic of games. 

While I lament the fact that my parents did not stop this frenzy sooner, I am grateful to not have grown up in the Age of the Smartphone (or the Age of Data). I would not have been able to resist it, because smartphones are a different beast. Whereas my gaming was relegated to a desktop computer, requiring me to sit at a particular desk, in a particular room, for hours on end, the smartphone offers no such limits. It fits in my pocket, travels with me wherever I go. The problem, then, is not that children have access to games around the clock—but that they can reach games around the clock and access all the information ever produced. Social media. Homework. YouTube videos of SpaceX launches. We no longer play “with” those devices, but live deep inside of them. Ever left your phone at home? You know, as I do, that it felt like you forgot a limb.

While my teenage brain was solely focused on eliminating foes in a game, today’s youth are contending with the relentless demands of social media, where the currency is attention, about which we have all heard a tiresome amount of time. They are not just fighting virtual enemies in a game—but the pressures of social comparison, often without the awareness that what they’re seeing on Instagram or TikTok is a curated reel—far from “real.”

This all poses a stupendously complex task for modern parents in 2024. How do we shield our children from an ever-expanding digital world that feels essential to their being while simultaneously protecting them from its dangers? 

Parents often wonder how much screen time is too much. But boundaries are not binary. They are not about arbitrary limitations—but guidance. Rather than relying on banal rules such as “yes,” “no,” or “only after dinner,” it’s important that parents help their children develop the skills to navigate this digital world with mindfulness and intention.

Here’s the rub: Smartphones, as we know, are engineered to capture attention—and latch onto it like a squid’s arms gripping glass. When the PC was the only game in town, my parents could walk into my room and simply unplug it. Now, teens carry their displays wherever they go, and their displays are always on, often hidden, and ever lurking, like a background noise just waiting to ping them. All this happens behind the guise (and the reality) of productivity—and a peculiar form of tone-deaf, likes-based, lonesome social life.

What’s the solution, then? It is not about banning these devices, blocking all social media apps, or avoiding purchasing a smartphone until after college. Rather, it’s about teaching our children when to step away, when to unplug, and how to use these tools intentionally instead of being used by them.

It’s about having conversations—ongoing, honest conversations—about the impact that these devices have on our mental health, our relationships, and our sense of self. If I had known, as a teenager, just how much time I was losing to these games, maybe I would have made changes sooner. But back then, there was no conversation, no framework for understanding the addictive nature of what I was doing. Today, we have the language, the research, and tools to help our children do what many of us could not: Find a balance between the digital world—and the world.