Chapter 5: Week 1: Getting Ready: Set Your Child Up to Succeed
Chapter 6: Weeks 2–4: The Electronic Fast: Unplug, Rejuvenate, and Reset the Nervous System
Chapter 7: Tracking and Troubleshooting: Deciding What’s Working and What’s Not
Chapter 8: Dealing with Doubt and Shoring Up Support
Chapter 9: Elimination vs. Moderation: A Game Plan Going Forward
Part Three — Beyond the Reset: Action Plans for Home, School, and Community
Chapter 10: Everyday House Rules and Protective Practices
Chapter 11: School Daze: Concerns in the Classroom
Chapter 12: From Grassroots to Global Awareness: Building Support for Overcoming ESS
Appendix A: Table of Physiological Mechanisms and Effects of Interactive Screen-Time
Appendix B: Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) and Health: A “Charged” Issue
Appendix C: Parents’ Most Frequently Asked Questions
Acknowledgments
Endnotes
Index
About the Author
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
Several months ago, a colleague I barely knew pulled me aside as I passed by her in the hallway at work. “Can I talk to you?” she whispered urgently. Without waiting for an answer, she launched into the litany of problems she was having with her eight-year-old son, Ryan. Over the past year, Ryan had become increasingly depressed, irritable, and isolated. Meltdowns and tears over seemingly minor incidents had become a daily occurrence. He was spending less time with his friends, preferring to remain alone in his room for hours, playing games on his cell phone. He was failing nearly every subject in school, and his teachers felt frustrated with his distractibility and lack of organization.
Ryan had been evaluated and treated by two child psychiatrists and three therapists over a six-month period. He was first given a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, then high-functioning autism, and finally bipolar disorder. He was on his fourth medication trial, but his mother felt each regimen only made him worse.
“I don’t know what to do at this point,” she said, frowning. “I feel like something’s being missed. I wanted your opinion about all this medication.”
Sidestepping the medication question, I explained to her that I see children with Ryan’s “problem” every day, and I gave her some background on how electronic screen devices irritate the brain and overstimulate the nervous system, especially in children. And I advised her to try a seemingly radical — yet simple — plan before considering any more changes: to remove all video games, handheld electronic devices, computers, and cell phones from Ryan’s possession for three weeks — in essence, to put Ryan on an “electronic fast.”
As we talked further, the explanation began to make sense to her, especially when it occurred to her that Ryan had received his first cell phone — a “smart” one at that — the year before, shortly before the onset of his troubles. Desperate for some improvement, my colleague immediately took action and stuck to the plan I outlined.
Four weeks later, she sought me out and excitedly reported that Ryan was doing “much, MUCH better.” Her face, body, and even her speech seemed more relaxed. She was inspired enough to continue the “electronic abstinence,” and six months later, Ryan would be weaned off all medication. His grades had improved, and he was playing outside with his friends again.
“He’s back to himself,” she told me proudly.
Why had Ryan been so significantly misdiagnosed, even by well-respected professionals — two of whom were faculty at a major academic institution in Los Angeles? And why had he been placed on so many medications, none of which seemed to help? Unfortunately, Ryan’s experience with receiving ineffective mental health treatment is hardly unique. But before we get to the underlying reasons, consider some emerging trends in childhood mental health disorders. In a mere ten-year span from 1994 to 2003, the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children increased forty-fold.1 Childhood psychiatric disorders such as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), autism spectrum disorders, and tic disorders are on the rise.2 Between 2002 and 2005, ADHD medication prescriptions rose by 40 percent.3 Mental illness is now the number one reason for disability filings for children, representing half of all claims filed in 2012, compared to just 5 to 6 percent of claims twenty years prior.4
Now consider that this rise in childhood psychosocial and neurodevelopmental issues has increased in lockstep with the insidious growth of electronic-screen exposure in daily life. Not only are children exposed to ever-increasing amounts of screen-time at home and in school, but exposure is beginning at ever-younger ages. Children aged two to six now spend two to four hours a day screen-bound — during a period in their lives when sufficient healthy play is critical to normal development.5 Computer training in early-years education — including in preschool — has become commonplace, despite lack of long-term data on learning and development.6 And according to a large-scale survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2010, children ages eight to eighteen now spend an average of nearly seven and a half hours a day in front of a screen — a 20 percent increase from just five years earlier.7
Handheld and mobile devices account for most of the more recent growth. These devices compound toxicity due to the fact that they are held closer to the eyes and body, are used more frequently throughout the day, and tend to be used during activities that previously facilitated conversation (such as riding in the car and eating out). From 2005 to 2009, cell phone ownership among children nearly doubled; about one-third of ten-year-olds now have their own mobile phone.8 Two-thirds of American teens now own cell phones, and 70 percent own an iPad, tablet, or similar device with Internet capability.9 And according to a 2010 Nielsen report, US teens text over four thousand times a month, or about 130 times a day.10
No doubt, modern-day life presents unique challenges to children’s brains, minds, and social development for parents and clinicians alike that have never been encountered before. The explosion of Internet use, video gaming, cell phone use, and texting is a relatively new phenomenon, and the full implications of such excessive technology exposure have yet to be played out. As I write this, the iPad and other tablets have taken us by storm in just a few short years. Meanwhile, despite a growing body of evidence that suggests electronic screen media exposure inherently causes harm — beyond simply wasting time or being sedentary — much of the research on this development remains disparate, highly technical, or overly focused on limited concerns, such as violent games or Internet addiction. Review of the research on “typical” use is difficult to evaluate, in part because what is typical is constantly evolving, and in part because relevant studies are being conducted in a variety of fields, ranging from sociology to quantum physics, making findings difficult to assimilate.
Adding to the confusion is the unfortunate fact that the public receives conflicting messages about electronic media’s effects on the brain from the press on a nearly daily basis. People have no way of easily determining whether a particular study is considered methodologically sound, whether any of the researchers had financial conflicts of interest, whether the media sensationalized the findings, or whether they’re hearing about a study so prominently because of a heavily funded and carefully orchestrated press release. As such, it’s difficult to get a sense of what the balance of unbiased research shows. Parents are given vague advice to “moderate” usage and are often led to believe that limiting screen-time only applies to video game play. They’re told to avoid violent games, but