Chris Colley: 0:12

Welcome everyone. We are back here at Shift Ed Podcast. I have a local not a local, sorry a Canadian author. I have Catherine Martinko coming in with us today. A great author editor put out this amazing book Childhood Unplugged Practical Advice to Get Kids Off Screens and Find Balance and balance, catherine, is what we're all about, but I do feel our world is off balance a little bit. Thanks for coming and joining me and I really want to get into the meat of this topic because it's a hot topic that we're dealing with now with our kids social media, screen time. It's so relevant right now. But I'd love to kind of get a little bit of a background on how did you come to get to this spot in life? I know the book has been super well received. Maybe like what was the journey to get to writing this book and getting it out there in the world for the people to read?

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 1:18

Yes, well, it's great to be here with you, chris, this morning. I'm honored by the invitation to be on your podcast and that's a good opening question. What got me to this point? It's certainly an unconventional place to be in this world today that's so tech saturated, and I would say it happened organically, genuinely. It was not something that came about that consciously.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 1:37

I was raised in rural Ontario in a region called Muskoka, which is cottage country for those who are familiar with that area. I grew up on a lake with no year-round neighbors, very remote. I was homeschooled for a number of years, so it was quite an unconventional, unorthodox way to be raised with my younger siblings, and so I spent a lot of time playing outside, tons and tons of time out in the wilderness, in the forest, out on the lake, in my rowboat, building a homemade potato gun, building forts, exploring, and I didn't have TV at home. I didn't have an internet connection. In fact, my parents still don't have an internet connection in their home, which might sound quite archaic, but it is just the way that they chose to live.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 2:16

And when I met my husband, he'd had sort of an opposite upbringing and he's a wonderful man. He was raised in Mississauga and was raised on a diet of video games and excessive TV shows, and so when we heard stories about our childhoods, he very much felt that he had missed out on a play-filled, adventurous childhood, you know, joining in with other kids in the neighborhood, riding bikes around, having all kinds of outdoor games, of manhunt and whatever it may be. And he didn't have that. And he heard my stories and felt like my childhood had just been so play filled and so rich and exciting, and we decided that we wanted that for our own kids. So in a way, we acknowledged from the start that it's a lot easier to just not start down that path than it is to claw back technology that's already been introduced, and this was back in 2009.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 3:01

I think that our view was a little bit ahead of the time. We didn't realize it at the time, but it was shortly after that that tablets and smartphones exploded into families lives and really took over, and so we continue to raise our kids without devices. We don't have TV in the house today. They've never been given tablets. They still don't have smartphones. That being said, we are not anti-tech. We are very much pro modern technology being a powerful, useful tool in our lives. But that's what it has to be a tool, not a toy, not the primary source of our entertainment.

Chris Colley: 3:29

Absolutely, absolutely Well said, and I totally get this disconnect from nature and playing. I work a lot with preschool teachers as well and we see it even at these early young ages where we know play is the way. What do you think some of those things were that started this withdrawal and I love in your book too, because it does talk about sitting too much, not sleeping enough, like all of these consequences that social media and screen time have on us. Where do you think that this all started? Coming from, this backing off of and retreating to the indoors, to this sedentary kind of withdrawn life and this illusion of social ability or socialness via screens?

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 4:22

Yes, Well, I would draw your attention to the term the great rewiring of childhood, which was coined by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book the Ancient Generation. I also work with Jonathan I do a lot of speaking on behalf of his organization so this is something that I like to talk about, and it refers to a clearly documented transformation in the way that children spend their time. It started in the late 90s, early 2000s, with the arrival of the internet in people's lives, and at first this was fantastic, you know, bringing together people who had previously been separated by distance. They could now communicate over email. There was, you know, a certain amount of gaming. That was quite enjoyable and that was wonderful.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 4:57

But then, after 2010, when it when high speed internet arrived, when smartphones were in people's pockets, when social media apps were developed, when the forward facing camera was developed and kids could start posting selfies online, it became so easy to spend time online that kids just started to do a whole lot more of it. But simultaneously, a lot of parents were becoming less eager to let their kids wander around outside. So there was a very well-intentioned but disastrous shift to overprotecting children and restricting their autonomy in the real world, and so parents became very paranoid about high-profile news stories they were hearing about kidnappings. They started to think that any child wandering alone outside was going to attract sexual predators or kidnappers, and so they started keeping their kids closer to home, which was also facilitated by the access to all of this technology, because, trust me, you don't have those devices in the house. You will not want your kids indoors for 12 hours a day.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 5:50

It will absolutely drive you crazy, and so I think, in a way, we have set ourselves up for this technological addiction by retreating from the real world and making the indoor world so much more appealing to both us as adults, as well as our kids.

Chris Colley: 6:05

Absolutely. It's almost like this perfect storm you're painting that we had this kind of withdrawal at the same time as this introduction and it's really kind of like caused a lot of chaos amongst our young kids. And I think Jonathan's book really reveals the statistics behind it that since the dawn of the forward-facing camera, a lot of the social media and stuff has exploded and they've taken advantage. I think you know, um I heard that you were speaking um on another podcast about, uh, this idea of um treating social media similar to like getting a license, like a car license, that there are certain awarenesses or restrictions we have to be aware of to help our young people because they just don't have the capacity yet. Could you expand on that idea a little bit? I just love that comparison that there is a similarity between the two. You know, even like smoking, you know, or vaping or whatever you know, like it tends to be this just kind of forget about it.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 7:12

Oh well, they'll deal with it, or oh we'll let the parents deal with it rather than looking at it as a societal problem. Mm, hmm, yes, so that recommendation about being 16 years old is actually that relates to getting a smartphone. So getting a smartphone should be on par with getting a driver's license. And that recommendation comes from Dr Jean Twenge. She is a psychology professor at San Diego University and the author of many well-known books, including iGen and Generations. She's one of the original researchers in this field of the effects of technology on kids, and for a long time I wondered when she would let her kids have devices.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 7:48

This is a common question I have, like when do these experts let their kids have phones, despite everything that they're saying? Because I do think there's a really big disconnect between the official guidelines and what people are doing. So I heard her in an interview say that she would give her own three teenage daughters smartphones when they turn 16. And that has become my guideline. So that is a little bit tougher than the recommendation issued by, say, Jonathan Haidt, which he says 14. I think that he's trying to be a realist.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 8:14

You know, there's so many kids who are getting phones at age four or six, eight years of age that to hold out until 14 is already considered really impressive. I think we should achieve 16 if possible. That's what I'm striving for with my own kids. And then social media. I don't think we should be on it. Our kids should not be on it until 18. I think they should get through puberty, they should get through high school, ideally, and it's just not a place for kids to be. And this has been underscored by last year's official advisory issued by the US Surgeon General, who said that we do not have adequate evidence to determine that social media is safe for kids and thinks it's as harmful for kids, as you know. It's as serious an issue as you know seatbelts in cars and safe aircraft and food safety and all of these things, and yet we're just sort of brushing it off. It gets this free pass because everyone's doing it.

Chris Colley: 9:02

Oh, I, totally, totally. I do think we need to tighten up those rules a bit. Yeah, yeah, and you had mentioned too in a previous interview as well, that schools are going after the social media companies without reflecting on what they're doing as their own practices. What's your opinion on school taking action against? You know too much screen time in their schools, like, where do you stand with that? Like, are you, are your kids in a school where there's limited screen time that they have access to, or can you expand on that a bit?

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 9:37

Yeah, I think that there are so many facets to this problem and so many different levels of problem solving that need to happen. It can be very easy and tempting to just pass the buck and say that someone else should be dealing with it, not us. And I've heard the school board say why aren't the tech companies doing something about it? And they're suing the tech companies for distracting children. And yet I have maintained from the beginning that schools could be taking initiatives to solve a lot of these issues at school. So my kids go to a public school here in Ontario.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 10:06

As many of you know, ontario passed a cell phone ban last fall. It's not much of a ban in my opinion, because the kids grade seven and up are still allowed to carry the phones on their person. They're not supposed to check them and, as we all know, that's not ever going to stop a kid from looking at their phone. It certainly doesn't even stop an adult from looking at their phone. It's a complete disaster, in my opinion. So the way that my children are staying focused specifically is they don't have phones. My kids do not own smartphones and even if they did, they would not be allowed to take them to school. Ideally, we would like to see bell to bell phone bans where children do not have access to their personal smartphones phones from nine in the morning till three, 30 in the afternoon, or whatever the duration of the day is. That would include the breaks in between classes, as well as recess and lunch, because those are just as important as class time for forming great social connections with friends and learning interpersonal skills that are valuable in life.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 10:57

And I also think, though, that oh and I should just say that schools that have done this have seen a tremendous increase in test scores in students getting along, reductions in cyberbullying, improvements in, you know, students getting along, reductions in cyber bullying, improvements in mental health. A corresponding decrease in need for mental health services, and cost also has been reduced. Teachers report just greater sense of happiness in the classroom. You know their job becomes a lot easier. They shouldn't have to be policing these devices, so I would like to see schools do that right now.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 11:25

It's up to the teachers in each individual classroom to set the rules. It shouldn't be be their job. Their job is to be a broader, district wide, if not provincial wide. Mandate those phones at the door and say no, you need to have six, seven hours today to focus entirely on learning and not be on a device, and I wish that more parents would step up and do that. But the issues that a lot of parents want to be able to reach their child during the day, and that's a whole other problem in and of itself.

Chris Colley: 11:59

Totally. Yeah. It seems weird that I mean, we want to make sure that our kids are safe but we give them phones and just let them, you know, freely explore the internet. You know one thing Emily Shurkin said she's like until you're ready to talk about porn and like extreme violence because they have access to all this, they shouldn't be on these phones right. Like until you're prepared to have these really big conversations. What, like? What's the point?

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 12:32

Yeah, and there's a great question I've heard from Catherine Price, who wrote a book called how to Break Up With your Phone, and in one of her talks she says two questions to ask yourself if you're considering giving your kid a phone is are you ready for your child to have access to the entire internet? Are you ready for the entire internet to have access to your child? And if your answer is no to either, one of those questions you probably want to hold out giving that device to your kid. And parents really need to reconsider their concept of safety. So these devices are so often handed over to their kids under the guise of safety. The parent thinks oh, because I can reach my child, therefore they are better off in the world. But I challenged that assumption.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 13:08

I had a great conversation with a mother in Vancouver who has two teenage daughters. They ride public transit every single day to school. They don't have smartphones. And they came home and they were telling their mother about how worried they are. Well, first they said how acutely aware they are of the presence of creepy strangers. So if they're standing in a bus stop, they move away. If someone a little questionable approaches them, they know how to respond and sort of preempt the situation before it gets messy. But they told their mother that they're very concerned about all the kids they see who are oblivious to their surroundings because these have their earbuds in and they are looking at TikTok videos or Instagram and they are completely clueless as to who's around them.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 13:45

And the question is, who's really safer in that situation? Is it the kid who could hypothetically call their parent in an emergency you know what's the parent going to do, really or is it the kid who's relying on this ancient neural circuitry to detect and avoid danger and just, you know, avoid getting into a messy situation? Because they're, you know, they've got their senses aware and they're cluing into what's going on around them? So parents also need to think about what they're opening up, the can of worms that they're opening up by giving their kids that phone. So not only is it distracting kids and removing them from the real world, it is also exposing them to overly mature content that we would never let kids have access to in the real world. There are many things that we limit and restrict in real life, you know. You can think about all the age gating that exists in terms of buying cigarettes and alcohol and going to casinos and going to strip clubs and watching X-rated movies, r-rated movies, all these things we try to protect children, but when it comes to phones, they have access to all of that and it's almost like it.

Chris Colley: 14:40

You, we've forgotten about that. Right like it's. Like, let's not think about that, because I can get in touch with them when I need to, in case there's a problem. You know, like, what did you do 10 years ago? Right, like it's. And and I guess my, my extension to that is, if parents are always worried, like and it's funny, you talked about helicopter parents I talked with Lenore who is telling me it's more like snowplow parents.

Chris Colley: 15:06

You know she was appropriating it to Canada as well that it's gotten extreme, this protectionism. Yet this virtual is like the wild, wild west, like whatever you know, and she was equating it to like this stranger danger of that it would, it would take hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of a kid standing on a corner before any you know person would, would, adopt, adopt them, adopt them or anything like that. Right, so the, the, the, the reality of it is not hinged in reality, it's. It's this stranger danger of of, I don't know what, but it seems to like have, have, have collided with this, and I think, because your book it came out at a really, really good time, because all of this is like right in our faces now and we're having to have these conversations and kind of be like, hmm, wait a minute. Um, what were some of the most um surprising research that you found when you were writing um childhood unplugged? Were there that you, when you were researching the book, were like, oh boy, this is um interesting.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 16:22

I mean there's a lot that's surprising when you go deep into any topic. I would say there's just the. The statistics are astonishing themselves when you look at the amount of screen time that kids are accumulating. I think often we underestimate how much time people are on devices. But, uh, the latest stats show that kids are accumulating. I think often we underestimate how much time people are on devices, but the latest stats show that kids between the ages of eight and 12 are on their phones for five and a half hours a day, and teenagers between the ages of 12 and 18 are on their devices for eight hours and 40 minutes a day on average. And that is entertainment-based screen time only. So that does not count any screen time that's being used in school or for necessary communications or for homework. So we're talking upwards of nine hours a day and that is going to push out everything else in a kid's life, like that's that opportunity cost is often discussed. So even if the screen time itself is not causing harm to the child, they're missing out on all of these other opportunities to be developing practical life skills, conversation skills, relational skills, to be exercising, to be sleeping, to be eating, to be bored, to develop bodies. All of these things are just not happening because the kids are scrolling on their devices and we know that they might be interacting with people on their devices, but the quality of those interactions is far inferior to anything that you ever get online and there's problems. Or in person, and there's problems that happen when that sort of becomes the primary form of entertainment. So I see the stats are shocking.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 17:38

Another thing that struck me a little bit different, but I tried to interview parents who lived in rural settings as well as parents who lived in urban settings, and both types of families believe that they've lived in the best possible place to raise screen minimalist children with lots of outdoor playtime, and I thought that was so interesting because often one group thinks that the other, you know, would be a lot harder.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 17:57

You know the urban parents always. Often I get pushback saying oh well, you can raise your kids the way you do because you live in a small town, and I don't believe that. I think it's more of a foundational philosophy and approach to life and I proved that through the people that I talked to. I mean one family lives downtown Toronto and they thought this is the best place to live with kids because we have access to all of these incredible resources swimming pools and skating rinks and museums and galleries and theaters and, you know, giant parks, all these things that you can do. And then I talked to a mom with 40 acres in Northern Ontario whose kids go out hunting in the back 40 and, you know, play in a pond, and she said I don't know how we could do it if we ever lived in a city. So really it doesn't matter where you live.

Chris Colley: 18:36

I believe we can make it happen. Absolutely, absolutely Well. This has been really fascinating, catherine. And to kind of end, let's go back to your book, and I mean it's called Practical Advice to Getting your Kids Off Screen and Finding Balance. What are some of those advices that you can share?

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 18:56

to kind of close, yeah, well, I think about it often as being divided into age groups. So I think babies and toddlers, for instance, begin as you mean to go on. So establish the patterns and norms within your household that you want to continue, because it's always better to just start out a certain way than to try to reset it later. You can reset, of course, but it's a lot more challenging. Younger kids are the easiest demographic to raise without screens, because they will accept whatever you establish in the home without pushing back and they're also so easily delighted by you, know simple things and often we were giving them tablets that are hyper stimulating and then we wonder why they don't want something a little bit simpler. But you can sort of recalibrate that and and and and pull back with older kids. Oh, there's so much you can do. I think you can.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 19:42

You can do, like a tech, a tech Shabbat. That's a wonderful practice as a family a 24 hour tech fast where everyone in the family gets their devices and reconnects and spends time outside and does other things. You can buy simpler devices. You can find simpler forms of technology that may enable the kind of communication you want with your kid. We have a desktop computer in our home that we let our boys chat. They can use iMessage from the computer, and so they're still able to text their friends and be part of group chats, get their fair share of ridiculous memes and videos and things like that. And yet that's where it stays. It doesn't live in their pocket, it's not accessible throughout the day as soon as they leave, so you're just sort of introducing little bits of friction there to bring them back into the real world. So there are so many things that you can do. I think that very much it's about putting tech in its rightful place and not letting it, you know, colonize childhood to the extent that it is.

Chris Colley: 20:31

Absolutely. And I remember one thing you said that was so poignant say no. Like it's hard for parents to say no, and I totally get if it's established pre and you're having to kind of pull it back. It's way way trickier. But if you have young kids and you want to establish something, now's the time to do it, to just start saying no.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 20:52

Yeah, and you, yeah. You have the right to say no, you have the right to change your mind, and that's the thing I tell a lot of parents. Many tell me it's too late. I don't know how to do this. You have new information. Honestly, the information that we have now compared to three years ago, five years ago, it's tremendous.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 21:07

The evidence from all of these scientific studies are coming in proving that kids are suffering as a result of this extensive, excessive screen time, and so you totally can sit down with your kid and say look, based on new information I have, we are going to be doing things differently. There are some sample scripts available on the Anxious Generation resources page that are fantastic. So they come from psychologist Dr Becky Kennedy, and she actually will write out exactly what you can say to a teenager. If you want to get them off social media or swap out their smartphone for a basic phone, there are scripts that you can use. So you have permission to do that.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 21:38

And, and one final thing I often tell parents is fix your analog life first. It's really important to fill the analog world, the real world, with interesting things for your kid to do, even if it's just toys, loose parts, books, craft supplies, things that you can just leave them to do on their own. You don't have to entertain them by any means, but making your house a place where they have things to do and then the siren call of the devices becomes a little bit less seductive.

Chris Colley: 22:04

Right, right. And I'd say being bored sometimes is a good thing. You know my kid always oh, I'm going to be bored. It's boring when I, you know, restrict and you've got to just say no this is best for you and you'll thank me one day maybe. Anyway, this is just fascinating.

Chris Colley: 22:24

I mean, this topic is not going away and, like you said, I think that there's been a light shone on it now over the last few years and that we have to start addressing it because, I mean, these kids are going to be growing up and being our leaders one day and we need them to have clear minds and balance in life, rather than just all one way.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 22:49

Yeah, I agree, and I think that I don't really buy the argument that we need to be teaching them tech skills from a young age in order to succeed professionally. I do think that this technology is evolving so rapidly that it's not going to look anything like this by the time they enter the workforce. It's designed to be intuitive, you know. We all learned it. Later in life they can too, and what is going to really matter are knowing the skills that make them human, these skills that set them apart from the machines, and I think that that will put them ahead in the long run.

Chris Colley: 23:17

Absolutely Real, concrete relationships with real people that are live in front of you, face to face. Well, Catherine Martinko, thank you so much. Thanks for putting this book out. It's helped me in my practice and I share it a lot with the people that are around me. Childhood Unplugged practical advice to get kids off screen and find balance Excellent book Please go out and get it. Find balanced excellent book Please go out and get it, Catherine. Thank you for your insight and wisdom and putting this book out and the words that you put in it, I think, will help us in the long run. So thank you for that and thanks for joining us today.

Katherine Johnson Martinko: 23:56

Great. Well, it was my pleasure. I'm so happy to hear that you enjoyed the book. Thank you.