Kids Matter!

Screentime Struggles with Screentime Consultant Emily Cherkin, MEd

• Alisa Minkin

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In this episode, Screentime Consultant Emily Cherkin discusses the screentime challenges parents face today, including the issue of screens in SCHOOLS ( Ed Tech). We discuss tips from her amazing book, The Screentime Solution and what it means to be "the first fish".
Consultant Emily Cherkin, MEd
Author, Speaker, Tech-IntentionalTM Expert
As The Screentime Consultant, Emily is at the vanguard of the
fight for our children against digitization, commodification,
and gamification of childhood and education.
Emily is an author, speaker, consultant, and associate professor
of public policy at the University of Washington. Emily’s work has
been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The
Economist, NPR, The Today Show, the BBC, Good Morning, America,
and more.
A former middle school teacher with over a decade of experience,
Emily is on faculty at the University of Washington’s Evans School
of Public Policy. Whether testifying before the U.S. Senate,
U.K. Parliament, or as the lead plaintiff in her lawsuit against
EdTech’s exploitation of children’s privacy, Emily is internationally
recognized as a courageous expert, ready to speak out and hold
companies accountable.
Emily serves as co-chair to Fairplay’s Screens in Schools
group, belongs to the the Advisory Board for Smartphone-Free
Childhood U.S, and is the creator of the UnPlug EdTech Toolkit,
which thousands of parents use as a guide to rethink technology
use in schools.
As a public speaker, she inspires audiences to think critically
about technology and invites audiences to become tech-intentional.
As a leading expert on EdTech, she is at the front of a legal fight
against data collection and privacy violations of schoolchildren via
EdTech products and she invites school leaders around the world to
rethink school-based technology.
As a consultant, she guides parents, advocacy groups, schools, and
policymakers to transform their communities.
As a policy expert, she channels her expertise, wisdom, and

experience to develop tech-intentional policies around school-
based technology.

As a parent, she knows firsthand the challenge of raising children
in the digital age.
No matter her audience, Emily brings people together with humor
and compassion. She is a mediator, a persuader, and a listener,
bringing bespoke services to a wide range of constituents.
Emily’s charisma and professionalism translate to any setting, from
classrooms to courtrooms.

Emily’s Book
Emily is the author of The Screentime Solution: A Judgment-Free Guide
to Becoming a Tech-IntentionalTM Family (released January 2024)
• 2,500+ copies sold and in second printing
• Over fifty 4.9-star ratings on Amazon — ranked
#6 in Parenting Teenagers and #3 in Family Health
• Available everywhere books are sold
Order at link below:

https://www.amazon.com/Screentime-Solution-Judgment-Free-
Becoming-Tech-Intentional/dp/B0CB9JS5KB
https://thescreentimeconsultant.com/
https://substack.com/@emilycherkin


https://thescreentimeconsultant.com/resources/unplug-edtech-toolkit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMRrHR3Pd_k
Cover art by Charlotte Feldman
Please note that while I am a pediatrician, I am not your child's pediatrician. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. For any medical concerns or decisions, please reach out to your child’s health care professional.



Welcome to Kids Matter. I'm Dr. Elisa Minkin. As a pediatrician, mom and grandma, I understand how challenging it can be to help our kids grow into their best selves. We are so much more powerful together. Here I will be sharing the knowledge and wisdom of a wide range of people who understand and care deeply about children. I'm hoping for your input as well because kids really do matter. They are our future.

Alisa Minkin

Welcome back to Kids Matter. Today's topic is something I personally have felt overwhelmed by as a mom, the perpetual screen battles. I am super, super excited to have an incredible guest today to help us all become more empowered to fight back against what feels like an insurmountable challenge. Emily Chikin is a mother, a former teacher, and a world renowned screen time consultant. I love that she's the creator of the tech intentional. Movement and the author of the book, the Screen Time Solution, I have to say, I just read that book. Thank you for showing it to us. For people who are on watching the video version of this, it's also audio. The book, the screen time solution is in my mind, in my opinion, the best book for a parent to read. And the reason that I love it so much is it makes an overwhelming topic feel not as overwhelming, not guilt inducing. It's completely empathic and non-judgmental, and you're very human in there which I really, really appreciate. And I actually love it. If you're looking for a book that gives you rules, do this, don't do that. Buy this, don't buy that. This is not that. It is not for the kind of person who needs to be told A, B, C, D through Z. But I think that's counterproductive, especially the way technology changes and how kids are always ahead of you. They'll always be ahead of you.

Emily Cherkin

exactly.

Alisa Minkin

I, I really appreciate so much of what you're do, and we're gonna also talk about EdTech, which is not so much in that book. I heard you're coming out with a new book.

Emily Cherkin

I'm working on it. Yes.

Alisa Minkin

You're working on it.

Emily Cherkin

Yes.

Alisa Minkin

a little bit about about Jared Horvath's book which I also read The Digital Delusion. I know you guys work together, so I'm gonna stop talking and let you talk. And I wanna start with that you are not anti-tech. What is tech intentional please?

Emily Cherkin

Oh, I love that. Yes. That's in spite of all the work I do. I am not anti-tech. I'm tech intentional and to me that just means that we use technology in alignment with what we know about healthy development, in alignment with our values. TLDR, which is the too long didn't read version of my longer definition. Is this being tech intentional means less is more later is better relationships and skills before screens.

Alisa Minkin

I love that, but I do want you to go into your seven, I think it's called, the seven Habits of the Tech Intentional Family. We do need to get to EdTech, but I, I, I want everybody to understand that there are so many things from the book that I cannot bypass.

Emily Cherkin

Me to talk

Alisa Minkin

want me to read them or are you go into them one at a time? Yeah. Good enough.

Emily Cherkin

it.

Alisa Minkin

Yes.

Emily Cherkin

Being good enough. Okay. I love this one because I mean, I always joke that I'm a recovering perfectionist, which is like, because you're not, what happens when you attain it, right? It's all downhill. So the reality is, if we can approach a, A parent educator said this to me once, and I just loved it that there is no such thing as perfect parenting, but there's plenty of good enough parenting. And I actually think that's just. The best thing we can do for our children is show them that we're human too. We mess up. We don't know everything. We're not perfect. So that's what it means to be good enough. And so when it comes to digital tech, you know, look, I'm, again, I'm not anti-tech. I love a family movie night. I love, you know, being able to text my kid and check in with them occasionally, like not at school, which we can talk about. But, you know, there are advantages and good things about technology and when it comes to parenting, we're not gonna always get it right. And so I think there's a lot of powerful lessons in that as a parent.

Alisa Minkin

I love that, and that's, I think, one of the reasons why you didn't make your book about do this, not do that.

Emily Cherkin

Correct. I wanted it to have longevity, you know, because I knew tech would change, but I wanted the values around it and the

Alisa Minkin

Yeah.

Emily Cherkin

about as parents to be true no matter what the tech situation was is.

Alisa Minkin

Right. I love that. Okay, next step is baby steps. I love that one too. This is why you're not overwhelming.

Emily Cherkin

Thank you. I mean, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. You know, just like the, everything. Like the idea is like make small changes because those are the ones that will last and lead to longer change, you know? And so like I always say, one of the easiest low hanging fruit things we can do as parents who are on screens is get our phones out of the bedroom. I mean, almost every parent has their phone in their room at night. Just don't move it to the other room, move it to the hallway, move it to the other side of your room so you're not tempted to roll and scroll in the morning. You know? And thing that that does is it makes your job as a parent so much easier when your kid gets a device, right? It's like, oh no, phones just don't go in the bedroom. We don't do it. You don't do

Alisa Minkin

Right. Right. Don't be a hypocrite. And then family values.

Emily Cherkin

Yes. Yeah, I mean, this one is. So important and so obvious, and yet I think we don't often talk about it with our kids. What do we value as a family? And it, and it can be simple things like when you come in the house, we take our shoes off. like when you come in the house, you put your phone in the charging station, or when we're at the dinner table, we don't have devices out. I mean, the things we value are the things that we wanna spend time on and pay attention to. And those are the ways that we set our kids up for future adult success is by modeling those, talking about them owning when we make mistakes around them. Not demonizing other people for having different values, but explaining why those are important to us.

Alisa Minkin

I love that. And now we have avoid comparisons, the thief of joy.

Emily Cherkin

I was just gonna say that comparison is a thief of joy and what does social media

Alisa Minkin

Okay.

Emily Cherkin

provide plenty of opportunities for us to compare and, you know, feel competitive to other people. So yeah, avoid this is something I think is really important because I. I always joke, parenting is the Jud oft sport I've ever played. And like it's so many things, right? Like do you use cloth diapers? Do you bottle feed? Do you co-sleep from day one? People are judging what you do, and is so hard as a parent, but we also have to remember that it is important. To us as parents to, it's okay that other people do different things, that other families and other parents have different ways of doing things. And so just because we're doing something a certain way doesn't mean another family's bad because they don't do it.

Alisa Minkin

And, and part of being tech intentional,

Emily Cherkin

I

Alisa Minkin

Is,

Emily Cherkin

Sorry. That's right. That's how you win

Alisa Minkin

that's the next one. Slow and steady. It was the next one.

Emily Cherkin

the irony. Yeah,

Alisa Minkin

Yes.

Emily Cherkin

All of these things, again, just like taking our time. If we try to do too much too fast, we will not succeed. We will not be able to help our children. We will not make changes the way we want to as families. And so if we can just do one thing at a time, not let perfect be the enemy of good. All of

Alisa Minkin

Right,

Emily Cherkin

see are variations on a theme. Yeah.

Alisa Minkin

right. And this is my personal favorite. Delay, delay, delay.

Emily Cherkin

Yeah. Yeah. This

Alisa Minkin

Just say no.

Emily Cherkin

Exactly. No parent has ever said to me, I wish I gave my kid social media access or earlier or a phone earlier. It's always the opposite. Always. And I get so many parents who say I wish I had known. 10 years ago, five years ago, what I know now. And just take heed from that. Listen to those who've gone before and know that, we can do things differently.

Alisa Minkin

Your kid is not the only one who doesn't have an iPhone. Okay. They just don't

Emily Cherkin

true. It's getting increasingly less although personally, my almost 15-year-old does not have a smartphone yet, and we've held

Alisa Minkin

go you.

Emily Cherkin

Yeah.

Alisa Minkin

That's incredible. In today's day. Yeah.

Emily Cherkin

It is. We share my phone, which is its own fascinating conversation about what that's been like for our relationship, but it's worked for now.

Alisa Minkin

Share your phone. I saw there was a movement to share the phone. What does that mean?

Emily Cherkin

So the good news is her school does not allow phones. And so it makes it very easy for me as a parent to be like if you had one, you couldn't take it to school anyway. We also live a block from school, so that helps. But basically she does have an iPad at home that she can use. To friends or whatever, and because I have an iPhone, it connects through the Apple id. So she just gave her friends my phone number and told them it was hers, which means I do get text messages from a lot of teenagers and we just have hers text are at the top and mine are below. And we both know that we could read each other's, but nothing's private on the internet anyway, and I don't particularly spend a lot of time doing that. It has provided us some very valuable teachable moments about why do you not wanna be on a group text with 50 people? Because how many text messages you get in five minutes? And it's just worked. Again, like it's not for everybody, but I'm grateful. Yeah.

Alisa Minkin

I would be grateful for the kind of relationship that you have with your daughter that she lets you do that.

Emily Cherkin

Yeah. It, it worked out. She,

Alisa Minkin

Yeah.

Emily Cherkin

with me as her mother, so she knows what

Alisa Minkin

Right.

Emily Cherkin

and she, it's, she knows what I think about things and thankfully that, and I've gotten to talk to her friends about it too. She's a theater kid, so I think that helps a little bit. Just, having big personality and being comfortable being a little out there.

Alisa Minkin

Right, right. She can be in the, with the quirky people. She doesn't have to be conforming to the conformist.

Emily Cherkin

She never was one of those kids. That is

Alisa Minkin

Now that that worked, I can see how that works for you.

Emily Cherkin

Yes.

Alisa Minkin

And then this is something I also really like, worry about the right things. You talk about scary versus dangerous in your book, and I'd like you to explain that please.

Emily Cherkin

Yeah. Yeah, this one was really powerful. I read about it in a different book and about a different concept, but it, I thought it was so applicable to the screen thing. So often I hear parents say I need my kid to have a phone because they walk home alone from school. Forgetting the fact that kids have walked home alone from school for decades. And. The reason they're worried about that is because of kidnapping. And what I say, and actually Pew Research found that the top three parenting fears in America are cyber bullying, youth mental health, and kidnapping. And I always quote Mr. Rogers, one of these things is not like the other, or maybe that was

Alisa Minkin

something.

Emily Cherkin

Sesame Street. Sorry, my bad. Child of the seventies. I should know this. Yeah. And so the reality is is statistically nil in terms of risk. The reason we think it's bad is'cause we are consuming 24 7 clickbait social media headlines where the rare thing that does happen makes our feed. And so worrying about the right thing means if your top two parental fears are youth, mental health and cyber bullying, but. Those are very real harms. We know that we have plenty of data that is a very real problem right now, giving your child a phone to prevent a non-issue kidnapping actually makes number one and two worse. And so what I really want parents to do is to, and I know it's so easy to say this, and much harder to do it, but let go of the fear of worrying about that and remember that, what you actually do by giving your kid a phone is make those things worse. Plus the safety side, you're walking around the street looking at a phone that makes you less safe as a pedestrian, right? There's all kinds of other ways we could look at this. And by the way, I have the fact if you want your child to get kidnapped, which of course you don't, but if you did, you would have to stand outside, put your child outside on the street corner, have them wait there for 750,000 years to be guaranteed of being kidnapped. So I don't think that's a likelihood,

Alisa Minkin

Right. But this is what, this is what social media or media does to us, and that brings me to parents' own use that have parents need to be tech intentional, and you do focus on that. I love that so much. I think one of my favorite takeaways from your book is the concept of living life out loud.

Emily Cherkin

Yes. That is one of my favorite things. Again I learned this from another teacher who is applying it to helping children learn executive function skills, but I was like, oh my gosh, this is even perfect for applying it to parenting or on screen time. And literally all it means is narrating what you do as you do it anytime you reach for your phone, anytime you open your computer, and it's a play by play, it's like I'm reaching for my phone. I'm gonna look and see what time soccer practice. Starts, I'm going to call the, the teacher, I'm gonna email your friend's, parent, whatever it is. I always joke that it's working when the kids are rolling their eyes because. Mom and dad are being annoying and talking out loud about what they're doing. But what it does is it does improve executive function, right? At least it lets us know. It lets us show our children how we are using these devices as tools or as entertainment because we can also add the emotional component. Can say, I'm standing in line at the grocery store and I'm bored. And so I reached for my phone, I opened Instagram.'cause I'm just bored and I'm waiting like. And it's like that thing where you like, write down what you eat, you pay more attention to what you eat. It's a little bit, that's the thinking is like at, by speaking it out loud, you're paying more attention to what you're doing. Now, this is a thing for parents to do. You can invite your kids to join you. They may not, but the fact that you do it again, we're going for the 80% of the time. The good enough, right? The, if we do it, they will start to do that, or at least be aware of it themselves. So I will do this with my. I have an almost 18-year-old, and I'll say to him, if he's starting to reach for his phone, it's live your life out loud. I don't need to know what you're texting, but I want you to say out loud. I'm reaching for my phone to text my friend.

Alisa Minkin

I love that. And also if your kid sees you on the phone and you're saying, oh, I'm making reservations for a restaurant. They know you're not just fobbing them. Right.

Emily Cherkin

Exactly, and I think that's so important. When you think about what a child sees, it's the back of your phone. I could be writing the next, Nobel Prize winning piece of literature. I could be playing Candy Crush. Looks the same to the child. Yeah.

Alisa Minkin

The saddest children's books I've ever seen is, I think it's called, you're Missing It. Have you seen this book where the father's going on a walk with his child and he is on his phone and all these things are happening and he's like sitting there on his phone. It's really, really sad,

Emily Cherkin

Oh God. I'll have to look that up.

Alisa Minkin

But I love that story about your husband lying on the bed next to your son with the phone, like hanging beneath the level of the bed. And he's like, and your kid's like, I can't compete with that iPhone.

Emily Cherkin

Yeah, and that was probably eight or nine years ago,

Alisa Minkin

Yeah. This is important from the earliest infancy, and I didn't realize that until I read your book, but also, I'm a grandma. I have a grand baby, 11 months old. She already knows how to text. Okay.

Emily Cherkin

I know. I know.

Alisa Minkin

drawn to that phone, like moths to light, and they're watching you not pay attention to them every time you're on it. So I think that,

Emily Cherkin

don't talk about enough is

Alisa Minkin

yeah.

Emily Cherkin

effect. And look, I am not in the business of shaming parents, but I think parents need to know.'cause I always say it's like it's not our fault, but it's our responsibility. And when we know better, we do better. And I'm hearing that the theme of eye contact and what that means for development and social skills and cues and. Compassion and empathy. It starts day one. That I should say the caregiver parent bond, with looking into each other's eyes and know, the number of parents I have heard who say I can't change my baby's diaper without an iPhone. I. We've been doing that for millennia without an iPhone. Like it is very possible. It's just harder. And that's one of the things that I really wanna stress is that's the work of parenting is figuring out how to do that.

Alisa Minkin

Wait, do you mean giving the baby the iPhone so they stay still?

Emily Cherkin

Yes. I hear that a lot.

Alisa Minkin

Oh, wow. I mean, that's a whole separate conversation about how kids need to learn to regulate without, without any screens that

Emily Cherkin

Brett.

Alisa Minkin

there's a myth going on that screens are regulating. I've heard

Emily Cherkin

A

Alisa Minkin

parents of neurodivergent. Yeah. It's, it's not a thing people, it's not,

Emily Cherkin

not, it's a

Alisa Minkin

especially for babies.

Emily Cherkin

Yeah, exactly. And again, I have a great colleague. I'm happy to connect you with Michael McLeod at Grow Now a DH

Alisa Minkin

Yes. No,

Emily Cherkin

this.

Alisa Minkin

was one of my first interviews. That's how I found you.

Emily Cherkin

That's right, of course. He's brilliant and is

Alisa Minkin

I love him.

Emily Cherkin

Me too. So

Alisa Minkin

Yeah.

Emily Cherkin

it's worrisome because you, again, you, what you're doing is establishing this, the phone as a norm, as something that it is fine to hand over in moments of distress or boredom or frustration. And then that's what we learn. That's how we learn. self-soothe and we, and I know that's not what you want, is that you don't want teenagers turning to social media to soothe.

Alisa Minkin

At any, at any age. At any age. And, and I, I love how you talk about how learning comes from friction. That we want everything to be so smooth and easy, and yet that's not how you learn, which is going to get us into ed tech. We need to talk about ed tech for.

Emily Cherkin

do it. Let's do it. I love it.

Alisa Minkin

Yeah. I love how you say EdTech is big tech with a sweater vest. That's,

Emily Cherkin

Yes.

Alisa Minkin

I should trademark that line too.

Emily Cherkin

I know I really should. And my, and for my abroad friends, I say ed tech is big tech in a school uniform.

Alisa Minkin

Ooh.

Emily Cherkin

'cause they don't, sweater vest doesn't mean the same thing in the uk. So they don't know what that is.

Alisa Minkin

They have a, hold the word for sweater anyway.

Emily Cherkin

Exactly and like vest means tank top. It's very

Alisa Minkin

Right.

Emily Cherkin

I've learned. But yeah, essentially what that means is, look, it's fantastic that we are finally making this connection between smartphone, social media use, and children's mental health and development. And like for some people, we've been, I've been at this since 2019, so this has been years, and it's thrilling to see movement around this, and I support it wholeheartedly. But the thing that I really want people to understand is that. The business model of big Tech, the way it keeps us hooked and engaged is exactly the same techniques being used within ed tech platforms, within learning apps, within digital curriculum. And so we have, that's what I mean when I say big tech is ed tech. Tech is big tech in a sweater vest because it's the same business model, and if we're worried about handing kids phones and social media as we should be, we need to worry equally about the fact that schools are also handing these problematic products to children at school.

Alisa Minkin

What is this with this one-on-one? I wasn't even aware, you know,'cause my, my kids are grown up that kids are now in school getting Chromebooks or iPads one-to-one, almost across the board. I.

Emily Cherkin

Starting in kindergarten, I'm five year olds with their own personal iPad. Oh, I have some horrible, again, I'm very angry about this and I will tell you, I left the classroom over 10 years ago and I am still finding myself shocked by stories I hear of just the last few years. Because I think unless you've had a kid in elementary school in the last five years, you have no idea how bad it's gotten. And one example is that I had a kindergarten teacher tell me that. When they were assessing for readiness, just to see is this child ready to come to kindergarten? What numbers can they identify, and what letters? When the child sees the number 11, they say, pause as in the pause button. Now what? That's shocking in and of itself, but what shocked me even more is when I posted that how many people jumped on and were like, oh, that's so cute. Why is that bad? Stop shaming parents. Why is a kindergarten? Or was I as a 4-year-old, need to know what number 11 is? That's not the point. The point is that we've normalized a child visualizing seeing the pause button as part of their everyday experience. They're not looking at it and saying, that looks like two tall trees. This is a very different experience for young children these days, and as a teacher in the early two thousands, like we would worry about what were kids doing at home when they went home. Were they playing video games? Were they watching tv? Like all this extra screen time. That was what we talked about in the early two thousands. But we knew that when they came to school, nobody had a phone. Nobody had social media, and we had a computer lab. So there was a relatively screen free or very screen light experience in education. The opposite is true today. Children are averaging seven and a half hours of screen time outside of school hours, but in school they are spending anywhere from, 20 or 30 minutes a day to six hours a day on their devices. And that is an abdication of adult responsibility to care for children. That is my opinion on this. And. I'm very careful about, I don't want this to be seeming like this is all teacher's fault. It's not. I think teachers are

Alisa Minkin

Teachers,

Emily Cherkin

Some teachers, and I think

Alisa Minkin

I think.

Emily Cherkin

have just ignored the research about the harms because it's so convenient for them and they give, it gives them all this data that shows they've made. Progress. But it's all, children aren't widgets, children aren't standardized. We can't, put numbers on them and call that progress because look what's happening. Just walk into a classroom full of eight year olds with headphones on, hunched over a laptop. And another parent told me just a couple weeks ago that typing club, which again, I have a lot of issues with giving kids internet connected devices at school. I don't think they need'em, period. But. We aren't even teaching them technology skills like typing. And so occasionally they have to do something called Typing Club, which is like a typing app to learn how to type bare minimum tech skills. I would argue this mom told me that in a 15 minute period, she watched your 8-year-old doing this add after ad popping up in the sidebar for Roblox, a woman showering for a Home Depot commercial and the worst part, three video ads for gambling websites. four, an 8-year-old. This is on the school issued computer. So again, like this is the norm. It not. I really believe that schools aren't all fully aware of what's happening. I don't think they for example, this principal, when the parent complained, said, I thought we had an ad free version. But then this gets to the problem of the high cost of free products. We are the product, right? I am what a Instagram wants when I'm scrolling for free. But for a child doing a typing app, being pitched, gambling videos is. Shocking because that has no place in school, first of all. But like the fact that these ads have even infiltrated products, they're used by children is wrong in the first place, like they shouldn't. And so to charge schools more for ad free versions. Is also deeply inequitable, right? And this is one of the counter myths. We hear all the time that technology is going to close the digital divide. It will democratize education, it will level the playing field, but the opposite is happening. The opposite is happening that children who are in under-resourced schools or have you know, fewer resources at home or less supportive. even supportive parents, but parents can advocate for them because they have to work two jobs. Those are the kids spending more time online and we know that kids spending time online is harmful at this day, at this point, I, it's mind boggling to me that we have to say this out loud, but children should not watch pornography at school. I feel like that.

Alisa Minkin

I mean, can you, can you tell me more about that? I couldn't believe that.

Emily Cherkin

yes. So a couple of examples. More than once I have heard stories of teachers discovering that kids have found porn on school laptops. One teacher found it by seeing the reflection of the child's screen in the window behind him that she had no idea otherwise. Another family had a six-year-old who figured out how to use Ask Siri on his iPad.'cause the district will block certain things and again. I'm sorry. The best it administrator in the world can't block everything and there are very easy ways to get around it as any middle school child will tell you and show you. But one of the problems with the second example, I was, the 6-year-old watching porn on, on his iPad was the school blame the parents. They said you raised a perverted child. Why is your kid looking at porn? Yeah, so again, not all teachers, not all principals are gonna say that, but there is a set. You can look at the privacy, so when children start school now they get, all the paperwork you have to fill out. Unfortunately a lot of that paperwork are things like, my child will use this school computer responsibly. My child will not search inappropriate content. It's all about. How a child will not misuse the tech the school provides. Nothing in there says how the school will keep children safe. Nothing in there says how children shouldn't be able to access these things in the first place. And so I find that so offensive that you would give these children products where they can access this and then hold them responsible for when they encounter it. Developmentally speaking, kids are curious. That's a good thing.

Alisa Minkin

Or hold the parents responsible for something they have no control over. You do not have control. And the teachers too, by the way, I, I heard that there's a program I came up in The Guardian or something

Emily Cherkin

Go

Alisa Minkin

where. Go Guardian, where the teachers are supposed to be monitoring every single laptop to make sure they're on task, which I heard 38% of the time they are not doing whatever programming is there. That's ridiculous.

Emily Cherkin

It's ridiculous. And GoGuardian is one of numerous apps that company or that schools will contract with. I call them surveillance ed tech, because all they do is, and I did a webinar last night and I showed a picture of what a teacher's view is. It's a screen of screens. So a teacher sits at their desk and sees the screen, individual screens of each of the children in the classroom. Even if you had amazing vision and quick processing, 30 screens of screens. That. Is that why we go into teaching? I cannot, that's like a, you do if you're like an surveillance person. Nobody went into education for that. And look, again to me, the solution of. Keeping kids safe online at school is to not give them internet access in the first place.

Alisa Minkin

Isn't that obvious?

Emily Cherkin

you would think, but I have been called all kinds of things for, claiming to be anti, that I am anti-tech, I'm anti-progress, I'm anti future, I'm anti 21st century skills, which is ridiculous.

Alisa Minkin

Okay. I I need you to just explain for a minute the difference between ed Tech and Tech Ed.

Emily Cherkin

Yes, because again, I say I am not anti-tech. And what I mean by that is I believe more than ever that children need technology education. And what that means is, again, bare minimum technical skill, like typing how to do a search. What is good research? Like we used to go to the library and the librarian would teach you how to look up information in a book and write a bibliography. All of those are skills that are still important and relevant. I would add there's a whole nother secondary host of skills about using the internet that children need teaching on. What is an algorithm? How do you know when something is real or AI generated? These are very important skills. None of that is happening, or if it's happening, it is. Done in a digital wellness, or I know, media literacy program, often funded by tech industry, by the way, a child's device. And so what I always say is you can teach technology education without technology. Just like we teach teenagers about drugs and alcohol without giving them drugs and alcohol. And certainly in K eight, they need tech ed from the beginning of kindergarten. Absolutely agree that they need this more than ever. But you don't do that by giving them iPads?

Alisa Minkin

Absolutely. I wanna talk a little bit more about why this ed tech is really, I, I consider it malevolent.

Emily Cherkin

I do too.

Alisa Minkin

I don't like to be alarmist. I really don't, but I think people just need to understand, you know, we've talked about the access to the internet, we've talked about advertising. How about the actual educational apps themselves?

Emily Cherkin

Yeah. Spoiler alert, they don't really teach kids much of anything except how to operate the app. And Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, who wrote The Digital Delusion, he is a colleague of mine, we testified together before the US Senate in January, and his opening statement was, children today are less cognitively capable than they were of previous generations which is a really nice way of saying that kids aren't as smart today as they were previously, and. The more money we spent on digital tech. And you can look, and this is global data. This isn't just the United States. But when we started introducing digital tech into the classrooms at scale, not just like a few, computer labs we're talking one-to-ones test scores immediately started to drop. And this is pre COVID. This was not pandemic related. Pandemic made it worse in many ways. But that's a problem and instead of and looking back and reflecting on maybe we should do something differently, I see the school districts doing the opposite and doubling down and now talking about AI literacy, which is just shocking and appalling to me that we have spent more money for worse results and we are doubling down and. Yeah, I, when we talk about ed tech, there I have four questions that I really think need to be asked by school district, administrators, teachers, parents. The first is it effective? And Jared's research shows, no, it's not for the most part. never. Is it effective? The second part is it safe? We've just demonstrated that children are accessing porn at school. I would argue that is deeply unsafe. And there's many other harms like visual health, postural health, body movements, eye contact. All kinds of other things that we should be worried about from a safety perspective. Number three is legal. Is it legal? We know, and I am the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against one of the largest ed tech companies in America that they are allegedly selling, collecting, and selling data about children to third parties without parental consent. And. To me, this is a very much a civil rights issue that if you are collecting people's data and giving it to other people without consent, that's a problem. We we are running

Alisa Minkin

We.

Emily Cherkin

very slippery slope of the erosion of other civil rights when we start doing things like that. And I think most parents have no idea that this is happening. And then I have recently added this fourth question to me because I worry that tech industry is gonna say, oh, this is effective, it is safe, it is legal. We meet all these parameters. And then to me the fourth question still has to be, but is it better than a human teacher? That's the fourth question, and the answer to that is going to be almost always no. Now, could a teacher use technology from her side of things to demonstrate a concept to show a video? Of course. is not what is happening. And I would love to see a day where that is what education looks like again and I actually think it's just a matter of going, we just swung too far to one side. I think we need to go back to computer labs. We need to get librarians and technology education teachers who are trained in. All languages of this that are who are not funded by tech industry money who have a vested interest. To me. I hear a lot of this, this is a me media literacy or digital wellness program, and the problem with that is if those are. Fun. The foregone conclusion is that children have this, that they are existing in it, and therefore we need to teach them how to use it. Now, I don't disagree. Children need education about it, but I don't agree that all children need it or have it or will have it. That's up to us to stop that and to me, when we talk about we just have to help them live in this world, this is the world that we live in now. That's akin to saying, we just need to design a safer cigarette. We need to stop giving children cigarettes.

Alisa Minkin

This is really following the same tobacco, big tobacco playbook, all of these.

Emily Cherkin

A

Alisa Minkin

But I do wanna, I wanna, mm-hmm.

Emily Cherkin

oh yeah. I was just gonna say the difference is that cigarettes weren't being handed out by teachers.

Alisa Minkin

I do wanna point out though, that there is a role for technology, assistive technology for children with disabilities. Neurodivergence. We're not talking about that here. I wanna make that crystal clear. Yes.

Emily Cherkin

I write about this in the book too, and I, that is always the exception, but just because one student needs prescription eyeglasses in the classroom doesn't mean the whole class gets the same prescription eyeglasses. We meet the children, the needs that they have. Now, this is a little bit cuspy though, because what I'm hearing are, it's a flipped, we're having AI, right? IEPs, individualized education plans. That's a very big problem, right where we are having. intelligence generating plans for children, deeply problematic. There's a report out of Georgetown about this. We are also seeing families request or to your point about regulation earlier, you know that children need their iPad or they will be dysregulated during the school day because of, and then they have an I-A-B-I-E-P or 5 0 4. I am not diminishing that. There are certain circumstances where that absolutely is a tech a tool. That changes a child's learning experience, but I think there is a very slippery slope with this as well, where we have just, again, over-prescribed technology as the solution. And so I think there is something to be wary of there as well.

Alisa Minkin

That, but speaking as a parent of an autistic young adult, screens for neurodivergent, kids tend to be extra addictive. It's an extra big problem with dopamine, which we didn't even talk about for the general population of kids with the gamification. So I just wanna point out that you may, you may in the short run, get that kid to be quiet with the iPad, but you're not solving problems. You're not.

Emily Cherkin

No. And I just heard a parent or a teacher at a very high needs school for medically fragile children with really severe issues mental health, where the district, the IEP said she needed the iPad all day. She doesn't have a, she doesn't have a real curriculum to follow, but the, they're insisting on giving her the iPad where she is making spreadsheets of all the ways to self harm. That's how she's spending her time.

Alisa Minkin

No.

Emily Cherkin

And they won't take it away because it's part of her IEP. I would argue that's a massive safety issue. So yeah, again, this is the problem. We are just so tangled in with this, that extricating, I call it digital whack-a-mole, right? You're just constantly trying to bop these issues. But to me the issue is pull the plug, get rid of, and ironically, I think if we got rid of the internet on all these products, 90% of these problems will go away. But the irony is a Chromebook. Is an internet connection. That's all it is. It doesn't work without it, it's not gonna work.

Alisa Minkin

Used to be we had software and you could upload the software and you didn't have to have internet. What happened to that technology?

Emily Cherkin

Not enough money. You can't update it, you can't, upsell, you can't add a, additional improvements or, I, again I hate to say it, but again, this comes back to the business model. Like it's, and I say this all the time, the business model of big tech and the business model of ed tech are identical and they are fundamentally at odds with child development.

Alisa Minkin

I'm, yeah, I'm speechless and.

Emily Cherkin

I

Alisa Minkin

I really am. I, I, I, I, I was hearing a another person talk about another program, I think it's called Prodigy,

Emily Cherkin

Yep.

Alisa Minkin

she was saying how there's different levels of that and the kids whose parents can't afford to buy these more expensive versions of it, and then the kids that can't feel left out, but it's still gamified stuff.

Emily Cherkin

It's not, it's math. And I put that in quotes. It's not, they're not actually learning math. They're learning how to game the game. And yeah, again, we go back to the equity question and then you get comparison within the another. Another program that's really common is IXL and which is another math game, and I found out when my daughter was in the fifth grade and was using it that there's a leaderboard so that a teacher can put. In front of the class on the big board who is ranked top in the math game, which is gross enough, but get this, they're not ranked just by the points. They're also ranked by the number of minutes they spend in the game. Yeah. So they're rewarding engagement, which is why, again, I go back to the business models are the same because that's exactly how social media works.

Alisa Minkin

Just thinking about, I think it was Jar Cooney Horvath who said, the only time we use the word user is for addictive drugs and software.

Emily Cherkin

in one of my talks. Re I quote that a lot. That's Edward Tufty. Yeah. The only two industries that refer to their customers as users are illegal drugs and software. Yeah,

Alisa Minkin

you do the jug, and then the jug does you,

Emily Cherkin

exactly.

Alisa Minkin

I wanna end with positive things. I want to talk about your, you took Jonathan Height's, four new norms, and I love Jonathan het. He is incredible. And I love the idea of grassroots, by the way. So everybody who's listening to this, you can help, you can be part of the solution. So you had another, he had four new norms to free the anxious generation, and you came up with four solutions to EdTech, what should I call it that.

Emily Cherkin

Or the four norms of EdTech.

Alisa Minkin

Norms of EdTech? Yes. Yes.

Emily Cherkin

yes. Yeah. I just, I adapted from what he had said about, the way he had phrased it. And the way I'm actually trying to pull it up so I make sure I say it I

Alisa Minkin

I could read it to you. I have

Emily Cherkin

Let's do it. Great. Tell me what,

Alisa Minkin

no internet connected. One-to-one devices in K to 12.

Emily Cherkin

Correct. Yep. That's what I was just saying. I think, and again, notice that I say internet connected devices, and I say K to 12 because I see what's happening in high school. Again, I just don't think, we didn't even talk about AI really, but kids are using AI at very high rates to do their homework and write their papers.'cause we gave them a homework machine, right? I just think about what rolled doll might have written, right? Like literally we gave them a homework machine and then told them not to use it. Like that's ridiculous from a developmental standpoint. Of course they're going to, so yeah, get rid of it. This, that would solve so many of these problems.

Alisa Minkin

They're also about half the time they're in class, they're on other sites anyway.

Emily Cherkin

Yeah, exactly. They're multitasking, toggling between screens. They know how to, like when a teacher walks by to pop the screen, they're supposed to be up. And even if they're even in Google Docs, right? Like kids are chatting in Google Docs. I don't dunno if you've heard this'cause they have Google Classroom, they can go in and they start chatting within a Google Doc. It looks like they're working on an essay and they're really just chatting with their friends. Or Pinterest,

Alisa Minkin

kids always pass notes. I don't care about technological pass notes. It's everything else they're doing.

Emily Cherkin

Exactly. The point is it's just being used for entertainment and distraction. It's not actually being used the way, that the companies quote unquote intended. And also I'll point out that the companies like to push back and say this is not being applied with fidelity, or teachers are doing it wrong. And Jared will debunk that myth in a

Alisa Minkin

Stream.

Emily Cherkin

that's totally unfair. And that, it, it puts the burden back on teachers and schools. And that's ridiculous,

Alisa Minkin

It's part of the playbook. It's our fault. It's always our fault.

Emily Cherkin

Exactly. Exactly.

Alisa Minkin

Tech Ed versus ed tech we talked about.

Emily Cherkin

Yep,

Alisa Minkin

You don't have to go elaborate on that. Something we didn't talk about is more paper, more handwriting, more relationships.

Emily Cherkin

Yes. Yeah. The most advanced technology tools that should be in a classroom are people, paper and pencils is what I say. And it's wild to me. My own child's middle school counselor told us a couple years ago that the school is not equipped for paper. Just think about what that, like their budgets, the way they distribute resources at the district level is not about paper anymore. There are no textbooks. They're all eBooks. There are no workbooks. They're all digital learning platforms. I personally print out everything. I read almost a. Exclusively because I

Alisa Minkin

Yeah.

Emily Cherkin

reading on a screen. Yeah. And but we're asking kids to scroll through PDFs. Again, there's all kinds of research about like location, memory, like when you're reading in a book and it's on that lower left hand page. But when you're reading on A PDF, there's none of that's happening. It's all getting lost. So it's deeply problematic. Yeah, so just prioritizing the things that we know work human relationships. Children learn best in the context of human relationships, physical text, being able that tactile, sensorial experience of reading a book and turning a page. I have OTs and PTs who tell me they

Alisa Minkin

Same.

Emily Cherkin

with children on turning book pages'cause they don't know how to do it. Like you don't even.

Alisa Minkin

Or to sit in their seat, right, or to sit in their seat.

Emily Cherkin

seat. Exactly. Kids are falling out of their chairs'cause they lack that core strength. There's so many things that are like ripple effect impacts of all this excessive tech. So again, even if it was safe, even if it was effective, even if it was legal, it's still not better than a teacher. It's still not better than the human relationship.

Alisa Minkin

It's really worth, by the way, I'm gonna say to read Jared Cooney Hoves book, digital Delusion. He goes into a lot of things that, that were not here and it's really, really worth reading. No AI use in K to 12. None.

Emily Cherkin

None. None. And I also would add that this is true for parents and. Children like, or sorry, teachers and children that there has, there should not be any a EI use by children. I don't know why I have to say that. It's not safe. It's untested. It's unproven. But I'm hearing reports that teachers are using these tools to assess student work. And in fact, I heard that personally in my child's own class, that the district's response to a seventh grade English teacher who said, I have 39 kids in each of my classes. Which is just mind boggling to me. 39 students times five, and I have all this work to grade, and the district's response was use AI to assess it. As a parent, I flipped out. I don't, there's so many problems with that. So again, I think there should be an absolute immediate moratorium on AI in schools because again, AI is making all of the existing problems with EdTech worse, it's, this isn't a new problem, it's just exacerbating an existing one.

Alisa Minkin

I just wanna give a hug to teachers everywhere though, because I always think of the Barbie movie. There should be a Barbie movie monologue about how impossible it is to be a teacher, a parent, which I did already. I did that in my little social media dorky way, but whatever.

Emily Cherkin

Love it.

Alisa Minkin

But I didn't do one for teachers, and they need one. I mean, big hugs, guys. This is really, really hard. We're not trying to trash you or make your life harder. You shouldn't have to have 39 kids in a class.

Emily Cherkin

Exactly. But this is the problem is you get tech companies who say, oh gosh, these poor teachers, they're overworked, they have huge class sizes, we can help. We'll personalize learning by giving them this app that lets the kids, work at more advanced levels. And then the teacher can be freed up to do other things. I'm sorry, I was a classroom teacher for 12 years. You don't have extra time and if you do have extra time, it's gonna go right back into the student stuff. And I reject that is the solution. Yes. Teachers need support in reducing class sizes. But the solution isn't to give them more technology.

Alisa Minkin

And that's one of the problems with AI is the expectation is you'll just work harder. You'll have to produce more,

Emily Cherkin

yeah,

Alisa Minkin

you'll be a better widget.

Emily Cherkin

and that's not how learning works. Like you

Alisa Minkin

Right.

Emily Cherkin

x learning, like that's ridiculous. You don't go to the gym and just lift a weight that's twice as heavy the next day because you wanna get stronger faster. But that's like what we're trying to do with education. That's not how it works.

Alisa Minkin

Right. A hundred percent. So I wanna go a little bit into what parents can do to fight back. You talked about how you are fighting back and go, you, you are my hero for what you are doing, you know, between testifying in front of the Senate between that the, the case that you're working on, which we're not gonna talk about, but people can go to EdTech Law if they wanna learn more about it. Although actually it hasn't been updated since April 25, so whatever looked it up.

Emily Cherkin

there are other active cases that are worth reading

Alisa Minkin

Right, right. It's, it's the fact that there's, EdTech law tells you how much is going on. There's a lot of cases, there's, especially over the privacy issue. So I, I wanna just go through a few things that parents can do. I must link to unplug EdTech toolkits. You don't have to go into all of that. So that's one thing is you can look that up. But what are some, just a few quick things that parents can do before you run outta time.

Emily Cherkin

Yes, know what's in your kids' backpack. If anything I've said today is surprising to you, chances are your kids probably can tell you that's already happened in their class. Whether it's their device or peers. Device, I would sit with them, show them, go through typing club, show me how this works. Are there ads popping up? Can they access YouTube? A lot of parents don't access these portals'cause it's just one more thing that we have to do. And I totally understand that. But you we need to know. I also really believe in non-judgmental question asking, like just say, Hey, could I have a list of all the apps that my kid has access to? Districts should be posting lists of all of the apps children have access to, but most of them do not. And on average internet safety labs found that districts are po using a hundred to 150 apps per school. That's a lot. That is a lot of different tech products and parents don't know that. And also the privacy policies of each of those should be linked because you should know what kind of data is being collected about your kids. I also, again, like right now my strategy is to encourage parents to opt out. not always possible. And, again, I recognize that the burden of this falls on teachers unfairly. And I get a lot of resentment from teachers for that, and I really feel for them. I, this is hard. But it's wrong. And, I think parent, a lot of teachers don't like this, but don't know what to do and they need parents to speak up. And so that's what I'm encouraging parents to do and opting out. And I did a webinar last night and I have a lot of resources about how opting out can look, but it might be just standardized testing as an opt. Out. Some states don't allow this, but one of the biggest problems is that laptops were given to children because standardized testing went digital. So even 12 years ago, the first day of kindergarten, my son came home with a piece of paper that said we had to teach him control, alt, delete, to learn how to log into the com computer for standardized testing. I was like, he's five. He doesn't even read or write, like, why would I teach him Control al delete. This doesn't make any sense. And just, that's one pathway. We over test kids right now to, an extreme that's completely developmentally wrong. I do think some assessments important, but opting out of some of those can be one step towards dismantling this. And then, opting out of the device itself. I think in K five. There should be no argument about that. And there is but there shouldn't be. And so I think there's a very good case for opting out in that K five window. And I, my daughter's going into high school next year and I've refused the school computer. I just said she's not using it and it means accommodating in a different way. And I, again, I feel for teachers, but we'll be using the computer at home if she needs it. And occasionally at school there's a loaner that, that she's borrowed. That is not the ideal situation. And that's not what I want long term, but. Last year I was the only one who opted out, and this year there's a few more parents in my district. So things are changing and that

Alisa Minkin

You were the first fish.

Emily Cherkin

I was the first fish. That's, that is my why I call my Substack First Fish Chronicles.'cause somebody's

Alisa Minkin

I love that. I love that. And so for people who are thinking this is too much for me, you know, if you're brave enough to be the first fish, but, but, but maybe other people will be that fish and you can follow. It doesn't have to just be you. And I really have to link that webinar, which I do have the link to already. I didn't listen to it yet, but I have it. I'm gonna link it to the show notes so people can go further into that.'cause we have to go. I know you have to go. Just please, before you leave, tell me where we can find you.

Emily Cherkin

First phish.substack.com is my substack. My website's the screen time consultant.com. And of course, ironically I'm on social media, so I post mostly on LinkedIn and Instagram. I have a few people helping me with that, so I don't spend all of my time there and I'm working on book two, but so stay tuned on that. But I really appreciate most of my resources are free. My goal is really to just help educate and inform and empower parents and educators who wanna make things different. So I, thank you for. The opportunity to share about this.

Alisa Minkin

Thank you. Like I said, you're one of my heroes. I, I really admire you and I thank you so much for this amazing opportunity.

Emily Cherkin

thank you very much for having me. Apologies for the tech glitches, but you

Alisa Minkin

No worries.

Thank you for listening to Kids Matter. Raising Healthy, happy Children Takes a village, and I'm grateful you are part of ours. If today's conversation resonated with you, please share this episode with another parent, grandparent, teacher, or anyone who cares about kids. Together we can build a supportive community our children deserve. I'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or suggestions for future topics at Kids Matter podcast@gmail.com. With no explanation for your voice truly matters. Until next time, keep advocating for the children in your life because kids really do matter. They are our future. I'm Dr. Elisa Minkin and this has been Kids Matter. Please note that while I am a pediatrician, I am not your child's ped. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical. For any medical concerns or decisions. Reach out to your child's healthcare professional.