Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids-and How to Break the Trance

340 Pages·2016·2.12 MB·English

by  Nicholas Kardaras

GLOW KIDS
HOW SCREEN ADDICTION IS HIJACKING OUR
KIDS—AND HOW TO BREAK THE TRANCE
NICHOLAS KARDARAS, PH.D.
St. Martin’s Press
New York
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Thank you for buying this St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and
other great reads, sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make
this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the
copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
In almost every house we’ve been, We’ve watched them gaping
at the screen.
They sit and stare and stare and sit . . .
Until they’re hypnotized by it,
But did you ever stop to think,
(What) This does to your beloved tot?
!
IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD
!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD
. . .
!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CANNOT THINK HE ONLY SEES
—Roald Dahl Excerpt from the Mike Teavee poem from
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as sung by the
Oompa–Loompas
INTRODUCTION
THE TROUBLE WITH TECH CAPTAIN KIRK WAS THE MAN.
At least that’s what I thought as an impressionable fifth-grader back in 1974.
Watching Star Trek re-runs, I’d fantasize about being on the bridge with badass
Captain Kirk and cool Mr. Spock, traveling to worlds where no man had gone
before; heading at warp speed to exotic planets and confidently seducing green
women—what more could a red-blooded young boy want?
Then there was all of that cool tech! That communicator that he’d so suavely
flip open and command, “Beam me up, Scotty.” Desperate to be one of his crew,
I made hundreds of paper versions of that flip phone communicator while I was
supposed to be paying attention to my teacher, Mrs. Legheart, as she droned on
and on about the Pilgrims or fractions or some such . . . but certainly not
anything as exciting as my Star Trek–inspired imagination.
I dreamed of a time when reality could catch up to my science fiction–fueled
fantasy, not realizing the wisdom of the old adage “be careful what you wish
for.” Because, yes indeed, the tech of Kirk is here—but at a very, very high
price.
Believe me, I didn’t want that to be the case; I wanted—I yearned for—guilt-
free tech. Unfortunately, it seems that we, as a society, have entered into a
Faustian deal. Yes, we have these amazing handheld marvels of the digital age
—tablets and smartphones—miraculous glowing devices that connect people
throughout the globe and can literally access the sum of all human knowledge in
the palm of our hand.
But what is the price of all this future tech? The psyche and soul of an entire
generation. The sad truth is that for the oh-so-satisfying ease, comfort and
titillation of these jewels of the modern age, we’ve unwittingly thrown an entire
generation under the virtual bus.
C’mon—aren’t you being a bit dramatic? you might ask. But look around you.
Look at any restaurant that has families with kids; look at any place where kids
and teens hang out—pizzerias, schoolyards, friend’s houses—what do you see?
The head-down, glassy-eyed zombification of kids whose faces are
illuminated by glowing screens. Like the soulless, expressionless people in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the zombies in The Walking Dead, one by one
our young people have fallen victim to this digital plague.
I had my first glimpse of this nascent global epidemic back in the summer of
2002 on the island of Crete. My newlywed wife and I had planned a trip to
Greece—land of my parents and ancestors—as an escape from a hectic life in
New York.
After the usual stops at Mykonos and Santorini, we decided to take the ferry
down to the more rugged island of Crete and hike several hours down the ancient
Samarian Gorge to the remote coastal village of Loutro. It is a magical place:
Stunning, sun-drenched Greek beach with laughing bathers splashing around in
the clearest blue water; a beautiful, tranquil place that time forgot . . . There are
no cars, no convenience stores, no TV, no flashing lights—just traditional
whitewashed houses and a handful of small waterfront inns and their beachfront
tavernas.
Loutro is also known as a go-to family destination. The seclusion of the
traffic-free village makes it an ideal playground for kids: kayaking, swimming,
climbing of rocks, games of tag, leaps into the water—it is a kids’ paradise.
During our first day there, after having spent the whole morning at the beach,
we stopped by one of the cafés for a frappe. While there, I asked the waiter
where the restrooms were and was pointed toward some steep stairs down to a
dimly lit, low-ceilinged basement. Once downstairs, I could see an odd glow
emanating from a corner in the darkness. Squinting to adjust to the darkened
room, I was able to see the light source: it was Loutro’s anemic version of an
Internet café—two old Apple computers on a tiny table in a corner of the
depressing cellar. As I looked closer, I could see the dark silhouettes of two
pudgy American kids playing video games with their round faces illuminated by
screens just inches away from their faces.
That’s odd, I thought; one of the world’s most beautiful seascapes, where the
local Greek kids were playing from sunup to sundown was just a few feet away,
yet these two were holed up in the darkness in the middle of a sunny afternoon.
As I chanced into that café a couple more times over the week that we were
there, those two kids were always in that basement with their illuminated faces.
Not being a parent myself yet, I didn’t think that much about the pudgy kids with
the glowing faces and wrote them off, rather judgmentally, I must admit, as
probably just the unhealthy children of bad parents.
Yet I never forgot the hypnotized expressions of those boys playing in that
horrible cellar while paradise was just over their heads. Slowly, as with the drip,
drip, drip of a faucet, I began to realize that the hypnotized, glassy-eyed stares
were spreading; like a virtual scourge, the Glow Kids were multiplying.
Is this just a harmless indulgence or fad like some sort of digital hula hoop?
Some say that glowing screens may even be good for kids—an interactive
educational tool.
But the research doesn’t bear that out. In fact, there is not one credible
research study that shows that a child exposed to more technology earlier in life
has better educational outcomes than a tech-free kid; while there is some
evidence that screen-exposed kids may have some increased pattern-recognition
abilities, there just isn’t any research that shows that they become better students
or better learners.
Instead, what we do have is a growing mountain of evidence showing that
there can be some very significant negative clinical and neurological effects on
Glow Kids. Brain-imaging research is showing that glowing screens—like those
of iPads—are as stimulating to the brain’s pleasure center and as able to increase
levels of dopamine (the primary feel-good neurotransmitter) as much as sex
does. This brain-orgasm effect is what makes screens so addictive for adults, but
even more so for children with still-developing brains that just aren’t equipped to
handle that level of stimulation.
What’s more, an ever-increasing amount of clinical research correlates screen
tech with psychiatric disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression,
increased aggression and even psychosis. Perhaps most shocking of all, recent
brain-imaging studies conclusively show that excessive screen exposure can
neurologically damage a young person’s developing brain in the same way that
cocaine addiction can.
That’s right—a kid’s brain on tech looks like a brain on drugs.
In fact, glowing screens are such a powerful drug that the University of
Washington has been using a virtual reality video game to help burn victims
with pain management during their treatments. Amazingly, while burn patients
are immersed in the game, they experience a pain-reducing, morphine-like
analgesic effect and thus don’t require any actual narcotics. While this is a
wonderful use of screen technology for pain-management medicine, we are also
unwittingly giving this digital morphine to kids.
Ironically, while we’ve declared a so-called War on Drugs, we’ve allowed this
virtual drug—which Dr. Peter Whybrow, director of neuroscience at UCLA,
calls “electronic cocaine”; which Commander Dr. Andrew Doan, who has an
M.D. and Ph.D. in neuroscience and heads addiction research for the U.S. Navy,
calls digital “pharmakeia” (Greek for “drug”); and which Chinese researchers
call “electronic heroin”—to slip into the homes and classrooms of our youngest
and most vulnerable, seemingly oblivious to any negative effects.
Meanwhile, China has identified Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) as its
number-one health crisis, with more than 20 million Internet-addicted teens, and
South Korea has opened 400 tech addiction rehab facilities and given every
student, teacher and parent a handbook warning them of the potential dangers of
screens and technology. Yet here in the United States, clueless and sometimes