Behind and Beyond the Smartphone-Free Childhood

Introduction

Is the smartphone really ruining the lives of tweens and teens? Do we need to protect them by keeping them away from the tool? The movement of the Smartphone-Free Childhood is big, and it is fed frequently by the repetition of fearful statements.

Let me just remind us all, that fear is never a wise teacher. In the best of cases, fear is a signal to stay alert and to use our humanity: our cognition as well as our intuitive wisdom.

Behind the movement for a smartphone-free childhood isn’t just concern - There is anxiety, which leads to control and a deeper disconnect from what children truly need, what humans really need.

This question isn’t about screens, the algorithms, the social media, the games or the cameras. It is about adapting to a wholesome life in the reality we are born into - and we need to stop and think about how we want to do that, what values and truths are at play.

We need to look beyond the surface and go deeper, not close the case with rules and restrictions - rather open it with love and presence.

Please open the windows in your echo chamber!

In my Substack feed, I make sure to read things I disagree with. The echo chamber is nice and comforting, but I also need to listen to the other voices. The other voices were the ones that got me started on blogging in the first place, as I find they are not just wrong but contagious, dangerous, and too widespread.

There are two things we need to be aware of in this context, and then I will get to the question of the smartphones.

One is the mechanism of conservatism. The momentum of “this is how it was always done” creates a barrier that stops us from thinking, keeping us locked in doing things and believing strategies that might have been relevant in a distant past, but now are obsolete in the good cases and damaging in the worse.

The other is the mechanisms around fear. This one is a hard one. And it sweeps up a lot of freedom of thought. Once we venture out of habitual living, fear will keep us in check and help us make inefficient decisions, using techniques of control rather than connection. Power takes over and love is the victim.

This is a general problem. In today's case, I am making my way through a Substack article on the smartphone-free childhood, and that got my engine started. I often talk a lot about wanting to write about teenagers and electronics, including smartphones, but I seem to get lost in living.

This Substack article, though, was a call to action. I am not going to link to it, as I believe there is enough of that out there, and I do not want to feed the monster.

The Problem Isn’t the Phone

There is no doubt, the author of the article has done his research, and collected all the other research to point the finger at the smartphone as one of the most toxic elements of childhood and teenage life, reinforcing the trend of keeping children and teens away from it—the Smartphone-Free Childhood movement.

But wait a minute.

Let’s just take one step back and recognise there is a global mental health crisis among children and teenagers, especially in what we call the Western world.

And if we breathe for one second and broaden the horizon, let’s not forget that the adults struggle as well.

There are many reasons for this crisis. Families torn apart by the modern life of everyone going in their own direction five days a week.

Mothers are suffering as they give up their babies to strangers, trying to fool themselves into believing this is the right thing to do.

Bombardment of commercials tricking us into thinking materialistic wealth is all we need.

Hyper-processed, toxic and non-nutritional food creates a baseline of a non-thriving and stressed-out body and brain.

An outdated childhood spent locked in schools.

Premature and forced maturing of children, in the applause of all the adults who got it wrong.

There is no fast lane to a mature, wholesome, balanced person. There is no benefit in skipping years of childhood, yet we are so busy from the day they arrive: the faster they walk, read, wear jeans, kiss girls, the better we think it is.

You are all welcome to complete the list, as I am sure it is longer. So many things contribute to the general problem of mental health in our shared culture.
At the same time, I am working my way to the point of the day, my not-so-humble opinion on the matter.

It is true that the smartphone allows access to potentially harmful mechanisms that did not exist when people who write blogs today were kids. It is easy to point our fingers at this and say: this is the main reason, this is too high a risk, this is something we need to keep away from our children as they mature. The algorithms are powerful, and the development of AI will for sure make this electronic hacking of the human mind even more efficient, faster than we can imagine.

But let’s not forget that we are the humans. AI is something we created. AI is liberating us from doing things that can be done by machines. AI is reminding us of what we need and what is truly important. The smartphone is not installed directly in our brains, and the screen is not projected on our contact lenses. We have all the freedom we want. We are born with this freedom and can claim it all the time, with every breath, in every moment.

Elverhøj, Crocodiles, and the Seven Sins

The toxic use of smartphones—children and adults alike—comes from a place of disconnection, bad choices and the loss of humanity. There have always been temptations that would take you to a bad place in life. Since the beginning of human time we have stories of this, all cultures have versions of stories and moral codes addressing the problem: You can get lost in this life.

In the Danish play “Elverhøj” by Johan Ludvig Holberg, written at the beginning of the 1800s, a man is trapped on a small hill surrounded by dancing elves in what feels like a beautiful evening of joy and play, but when he finally re-emerges, he has lost 40 years of his life.

The Christian idea of the seven sins Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Sloth dates back to the fourth century, and is actually worth to stop and think about - how this can ruin your life. Stephen Fry did a beautiful podcast on that topic.

As humans, we have been on track to be aware of staying safe from the traps of this life, and we still are.

I am not sure it is true, but if the modern-day context and culture of lifestyle and technology and physical environment makes it harder for us to make the right choices then we have to step up to the game, not surrender to the overpowering force of our context.

We need to consider that post-religious cultures in many cases have led to a life without spirituality, and without good long conversations on ethics, morals, the good life and how to carry ourselves through the whole thing. Equally the conversations and practices around what is trapping and dangerous, are abandoned, and there we are: Naked and helpless.

This is what we need to do something about, rather than put our heads in the sand, run away and hide, build walls and hold on to restrictions.

Fear Won’t Keep Them Safe

We live in a world of abundance and we CAN take our time to stop and think, to create healthy habits, to have meaningful conversations, to create a very, very good life. For everyone. It seems as if the boiling momentum of temptation is rising, and we just have to rise to the challenge.

We can do that. Humans and humanity is very powerful, more than I can describe.

And now, let's talk about the issue: The smartphone and the teen and tween.

Keeping our children AWAY from smartphones is not the same as keeping them SAFE from smartphones. Rather, I would say it creates a higher risk. On many levels.

Children who grow up in areas with rivers where crocodiles live, know how to stay safe from them. They know where the crocodiles are and how they behave. They know they would never win a one-to-one. But they do roam the area, they have seen the river, they can take a walk or a bath and smell the air and observe the birds. Living and learning, they grow into powerful and capable adults who would never get attacked by a crocodile.

Children who grow up around trucks driving goods to their area, learn in the same way how to navigate their environment: They can bike and run and play and live their lives, and the risk of being hit by a truck, a crocodile of the modern world, is in reality very very small.

Keeping our children away from smartphones is keeping them away from learning how to act in the context of this technology, with all of its many elements: algorithms, commercial agendas, toxic content, social media, games, filters, feeds, pings, feedback loops - the work. Keeping them away from smartphones robs them of the option of learning to live a balanced life using electronics as a tool and a means to a better life.

And most importantly, keeping the children away from phones is a fear-based decision. Keeping ourselves in check, struggling with mechanisms of anxiety and control, not freedom, wisdom and love.

The Real Risk Is in the Lack of Connection

If there is any truth to the benefits of banning the smartphone out of tween and teen life, it is because the rest of the context of this life is off. And in most cases it is.

The pressure of growing up as an incarcerated person in a rigid and outdated and ridiculous school system all day long, year in and year out in order to get a stupid hat and a useless piece of paper, of obeying strangers and complying to an arbitrary and simply wrong idea of what kids need to do, think and learn, is a classic story of how to create the emptiness inside—throwing us off track.

And this whole robbing of hours, of meaningfulness and connection, of freedom and joy comes just after an institutionalised early childhood creating unstable attachment and wobbly humans, children and parents alike.

Parents are lying to themselves when they claim it is the healthy and right thing to do to give up small kids to complete strangers. The rough and unhealed scars in the relationship between parent and child. The simple math of growing up without a sufficient amount of mature people around you creates a baseline of non-thriving.

This is a system set up to fail, and it proves to do so in a lot of cases. Hence, the mental health crisis.

If things don’t make sense, they don’t make sense.

The emptiness of the meaninglesness, is creating the high risk of getting trapped, grasping for SOMETHING in the huge lack of ANYTHING.

Add to this stressed-out parents, lack of sleep, lack of nutrients, lack of time to contemplate, and yes—THEN the smartphone becomes a real risk.

But let’s not forget it is not the smartphone in and of itself. I dare to say it is the modern-day childhood and the ongoing lies we keep repeating of how this is the good life, the right thing, the necessary way—THIS is the real reason for the mental health crisis, not the smartphone.

What I See

You see, in the balanced kids, in the free spirits, in a life of time and respect and love and freedom and meaningfulness and wholehearted and free choices, I see children and teenagers use smartphones in a completely different way than this fear-based description of what smartphones do to young people.

I see teenagers connect over photographs.

I see them stay in touch with friends and family via text and video.

I see them have fun with filters and effects.

I see them researching via intellectual websites.

I see them staying informed on Reddit, Wikipedia or the like.

I see them finding their way around with the navigational systems, exploring their real world context, solving problems.

I see them buy tickets and find solutions to practical problems.

I see them having fun.

I see them learning languages, skills, and academics intentionally.

I see them creating memories on platforms that are potentially toxic, and I see them navigate it with wisdom.

I see them make mistakes and learn from them. I see them grow. I see them sharing with their parents and their friends’ parents. I hear conversations and laughter.

They read and even write books on their smartphones.

They start businesses and have success venturing into providing for themselves.

I see them fact-check, stay informed, have fun, explore, learn, love, and laugh.

They learn to live with this overwhelming, amazing tool in their back pocket, and they do it so much wiser than the adults, I have to say.

I see it ALL the time, when I move in groups of unschooled, free, traveling, wholesome powerful amazing teenagers, and I do NOT see the phone as a problem. At all.

Not at all.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

We stop and think.

If there is a real risk to your mental health, or to your child’s, take a breather and navigate it with wisdom, presence and love.

Control and fear-based solutions will never make your way to a good life. They will keep you safe from panic for a while, but they will not set you up for a peaceful and happy life.

No one can beat the algorithms, I say.

When my husband and I did two consecutive episodes on the Self-Directed podcast with families who had opted completely out of the internet, we put a lot of thought into this. It is true, no-one can beat the algorithms, so much so, Jesper designed a t-shirt: 'I don't co-parent with algorithms.

(the two episodes you can find here and here)

And I do not. Certainly not. 

But here is the thing. No one and nothing will ever be stronger and more powerful than love. When we meet the world with true inner peace and with love, we do not need to BEAT anything; we just need to stay true to who we are as humans.

The base of human life is connectedness: To each other, to the big questions of everything, to ourselves. If we do not navigate life based on love, we are lost anyway. With or without the smartphone.

Life, including childhood, should be based on unconditional love, on allocating time to what is important and to stay true to the relationships we base our lives on: Our people. Extending it spiritually to the entirety of humanity is recommended, but maybe not necessary to begin with.

When we stay present and true like that, nothing can beat us, nothing can get to us. Nothing at all

This strategy, if you like, will allow us to become that person who is not glued to the phone, and to become that parent who shares with your kid instead of trying to control, and your children will grow up knowing where the crocodile is, what the price of the joy of dancing elves is and how to look both ways crossing the street.

Bonus Thought from THE Park in Budapest

Another useful allegory is the walk I take several times a day these days, as we are attending the enormous Worldschool Pop-Up in Budapest with more than 60 families gathered. The majority live temporarily in the same district, and the teenagers hang out in the same park, day in and day out. And nights.

As I walk there I pass an interesting list of human culture, hence human nature. Depending on the time of day, the balances vary. We are based in a party area, everything from shopping for cheap jewelry, vintage, karaoke, escape rooms, bars and restaurants to hard drugs and prostitution is optional on my less than one kilometer commute to the community park with green grass, playground, basketball court.

And you see - this is what they chose: The park. A bit of ventures into cafes and takeouts, older ones might have nights out at bars with music and drinks, but the majority of the time is used in the park, as community is the centerpiece.

My point being. There is a lot to choose from, there always has been. Our physical context can have dangers and our human nature has risky elements, met by temptations out there.

We need to stay true to the truth of who we are, and do what is right: Stay in unconditional love, stay in spiritual connection, stay present and available for each other. When we do that, the commute to the park is just a fun mirror of what this world is like, and how we are fortunate enough to have the option to choose.

Don't shoot the messenger, and do not succumb to fear. That is my point.

We have to meet our lives with humanity, with love, with presence.

The only things that can keep our children safe from the dangers of life are connectedness, wholeheartedness, love, integrated personalities, knowing who to reach out to when life is a struggle, and knowing how to spot it if someone needs help. There is no way around this. But when this is the rock you stand on, everything can be part of the light.

Even the smartphone.