The Art of Screen Time

Author: Anya Kamenetz

You picked up this book because you're curious and because—let’s face it—you’re a little worried about kids and screens. So am I. I wrote this book to help us both get over it. Shake off your guilt, turn down the volume, step back from the noise, and look a little closer. Then, we’ll make a plan. But first, a story. Late one night in the early 1980s, a little fair-haired girl in a nightgown sat at the foot of her parents’ bed watching TV. On the TV, they were showing a horror movie in which a little fair-haired girl in a nightgown sat at the foot of her parents’ bed watching TV. In the movie, the credits rolled. The parents were asleep. My parents were asleep too. The TV in the movie went off the air. The national anthem came on, with a shot of the American flag. The little girl moved closer to the screen. I moved closer to the screen. And then an awesome quantity of green ectoplasmic plasma emerged from the TV in the movie. The movie was Poltergeist (1982). In that moment, I developed a lasting phobia. Not of ghosts. I like ghosts. I even had a séance in junior high, which is appropriate for the South Louisiana area where I grew up. No, I was terrified of the names that appear in the end credits. The fear has faded over time, but to this day, when a movie ends, I prefer to quickly look away from the screen. And when a TV episode finishes, I must minimize the window before the Netflix countdown to the next episode begins. A quarter century later, my oldest daughter’s inappropriate content exposure concerned potty training. We had tried everything we could think of to get our toddler to sit on the potty long enough to do her business. As a number of other parents had suggested to us, the only bribe that worked was showing a little video on our phones. On YouTube, we found plenty of potty training films: a catchy song about hand washing from PBS Kids; a short skit by Elmo; an overenthusiastic panda speaking Japanese. And then one day, I clicked on a five-minute cartoon. It was titled Potty Training A***. It had millions of views. It turned out to be an episode of a very crude web cartoon series, clearly intended for dumb teenagers. My daughter loved it, of course, and repeatedly asked for it.