ATHABASCA —Athabasca and area parents heard how unregulated technology use is impacting brain development in teenagers and young adults, and what tools one private therapy outlet from southern Alberta recommends for tackling the issue head-on.
Twelve parents joined Edwin Parr Composite (EPC) principal Stacey Mabey for a virtual presentation from a Calgary-based private counselling practice, Juno House, on the evening of May 7.
“This wasn’t fear-based,” said Mabey. “It was much more strategy-based and dealt with the social-emotional regulation for kids, which, if we’re talking about brain development and what phones are doing to them, this was highly useful information.”
“If we’re not choosing to, as parents, be a part of how we’re regulating them and how we’re understanding their impact on our children and their brain development, then we are setting them up for failure, and I think it’s the same in schools,” she added.
Andrea Halwas Larsen, counselling therapist and education coordinator for Juno House, delivered the presentation from Calgary. She touched on the specifics of how technology changes the way teens interact with themselves, each other, and the wider world and how parents can help by instituting ground rules, changing their own habits, and practising emotional regulation.
“We have seen an incredible increase in these anxiety symptoms — in particular since the pandemic, but really in the last 10 years,” said Halwas, who works with young women with anxiety disorders.
“It moved into our lives so quickly and it just crept into every area, and we didn’t realize the detriments of it, we only saw the positives. And now that we see the detriments, all of a sudden, it’s so big and overwhelming.”
She said the presentation, which is also available online through Alberta Health Services Community Education Service, is updated monthly to reflect new data and information.
“The role of technology and the digital world and landscape these children are living in is changing so much, and it’s definitely impacting the mental health of the children we work with,” said Halwas.
Timely topic
The presentation came on the heels of a recent decision by Ontario Education to mandate phone limitations in schools across the province, and a provincial survey of Albertans opinions on the matter.
“It was not only useful, but timely, with the decisions that are being made with cell phones in school systems, but (it focused on) the role of the whole family, the role of the parents in navigating it,” said Mabey.
“That’s the conversation in Alberta right now, that’s the conversation that just happened in Ontario. We’ve been having it as a school division, we’re having it with the parent groups, the school groups, et cetera, because everyone’s observing that this is a problem,” she added.
Aspen View Public School’s (AVPS) current administrative procedure on phone and device use in school was updated in 2015 — although the website houses an older duplicate — and gives each school rein to determine guidelines. A communications officer for the division said the board's ongoing work to develop a more prescriptive policy has been put on hold while results from the provincial survey are reviewed.
The officer also noted AVPS students are required to sign a form on acceptable use of tech when registering, and guidelines for use of AVPS equipment, such as wifi networks, are housed in another administrative procedure.
For Halwas, the issue goes beyond the walls of schools. “It’s not going away,” she said. “We have to help them develop a digital literacy and how to understand themselves in this world.”
Understanding the impacts
The presentation contained both research results into the issue and tools for parents to make positive changes in their kids' lives and their own. According to Halwas, the biggest factor in young people’s relationship with technology can be explained by neuroscience.
“Technology exploits impulse control in the best of the adults, so if we see a child or a teen that already has an underdeveloped brain, their brain cannot actually manage some of the things technology throws at them,” said Halwas.
“As the adults, the ones with the fully developed brain, it falls on us to develop these boundaries for them around technology and safe spaces for their brain to go through the healthy development that it needs.”
Halwas noted that the constant stimulation technology gives us plays on the addictive centre of our brains under the guise of comfort. The dopamine boosts associated with scrolling, texting, and checking emails are not followed up by the internal reflection, face-to-face social interaction, and physical activity needed to process information and scenarios properly.
This can lead to children feeling unsure of or disconnected from their emotions and turning to their devices for comfort, creating a cycle of dependency.
“They’re not developing the same self-regulation skills and social-emotional insights that they need,” said Halwas. “During the pandemic, that was all they had … no parent has ever had to parent this. We are really, as a generation of adults and caregivers, going through something very different.”
Halwas said other aspects of tech use among teens and youth are equally concerning like early exposure to pornography shaping views on sex, vulnerability to sextortion or abuse from online predators, and technology's impact on self-esteem and quality of sleep.
To combat this, Halwas provided parents with suggestions for regulation, such as creating a two-way phone contract between all family members, designating times or locations as “no phone zones,” and practising healthy regulation tactics to understand and manage root causes of youth behaviour.
“This generation of children and teens are the first to grow up with distracted parents, with parents who have been engaging with technology since they were born,” said Halwas.
“Your strongest tool is you,” she added. “You are the best defence. You need to fight fire with fire, and if you want them off their phone, you have to give them more dopamine than a phone can.”
