there's only two places in society where
we can tell people where to go what to
think what to eat who to be friends with
how to dress and that's school and
prison how do we raise in distractible
kids as the father of a tech loving
eleven-year-old I remember when my
daughter was only two years old and some
of her first words were iPad time iPad
time well we want to make sure that we
are raising our kids in a way that they
themselves can deal with distraction I
think that this will be the skill of the
century so there's a few things that we
need to realize following the
indestructible model when it comes to
raising in distractible kids we need to
find the root cause of why our kids are
getting distracted and not be satisfied
with just blaming the proximal cause you
know parents have been blaming all sorts
of things for their kids
bad behavior for generations in my
generations it was video games or
television before that it was the radio
all the way back to the written word was
blamed for causing distraction and when
it comes to kids these days people find
some reason why kids are behaving the
way they are but as opposed to being
satisfied with just the proximal cost
let's dive deeper to understand why kids
overuse technology a very widely
accepted theory of human motivation says
that all of us need three things for
psychological well-being
according to self-determination theory
we require a sense of competence
autonomy and relatedness and when we are
denied those things the needs
displacement hypothesis says that we
look for them wherever we can get them
and when we look at kids lives today
they are deficient in these three
psychological nutrients consider
competence with the rise of standardized
testing a good number of kids these days
are constantly told that they're not
good enough they're not competent in
their school activities and when they
feel that way they look for competency
elsewhere well of course the tech
companies are more than happy to give
them a feeling of competency when they
play a game online now consider kids
sense of autonomy this is the most over
scheduled generation in history between
after-school activities like Kumaon and
swimming lessons in Mandarin
kids have very little time for free play
and for those families who can't afford
all those after-school activities many
parents are scared to death by the
message we've heard in the media that
our kids are somehow going to be
abducted at any minute turns out this is
the safest generation in American
history and those fears are unfounded
and yet many parents keep their kids at
home where they have little choice but
to look for a sense of agency and
control through their devices so when
kids are constantly scheduled throughout
their day and restrictions placed on
them they look for a place where they
can feel agency and autonomy in fact
researchers tell us that kids today have
10 times the number of restrictions
placed on them as an average adult twice
as many as an incarcerated felon and so
when kids don't feel a sense of autonomy
offline they look for it online they
play fortnight or minecraft or whatever
other game because that's where they
feel like God's they own that
environment they have a sense of agency
and control that they so severely lack
offline finally consider relatedness
researchers tell us that kids today have
very little time for free play not
supervised by coaches or parents but
time to just be kids it turns out that
free play is incredibly psychologically
nourishing free play is where we
understand others and are understood
ourselves we need this time for proper
socialization but kids have less time
for free play than ever and so when they
don't get that sense of relatedness
offline where do they go well they go to
Instagram or snapchat or tik-tok these
apps these social media companies give
kids the sense of relatedness that
they're striving for so the root cause
of overuse in most kids lives is not the
technology itself but rather the fact
that they are missing these three
critical psychological nutrients of
competency autonomy and relatedness get
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