>> Katie: Hello, and welcome to it's my screen time, too, the podcast where we review the programming the other critics ignore stuff made for kids. Find out what to watch for family movie night, what to avoid altogether, and what you'll want to watch alone, voluntarily. I'm Katie.
>> Deborah: And I'm Deborah.
>> Katie: And I have two kids, ages five and eight.
>> Deborah: And I have three kids who are thirteen, eleven and eleven.
>> Katie: Welcome to a screen time in the news episode for the week of March 6, 2024. Deborah, I have a question for you. Have you ever done a, screen time detox?
>> Deborah: How dare you use the term detox. I haven't done a detox or ever called it that. But I have definitely tried to curate a different information environment for myself by shutting down social media accounts, unfollowing accounts. Currently, I'm just listening to comedy podcasts about the news instead of actual news.
>> Katie: Do you feel as informed or just less stressed?
>> Deborah: Less stressed, for sure. Can I call it a cleanse, or is that bad?
>> Katie: I think that's also bad. I can confidently say I've never thought of screen time in those terms, but I have definitely stepped back at some moments and pruned my consumption of social media and the news after realizing just how anxious it made me. but tell me, what does the concept of a detox, or even a cleanse, have to do with our topic for today?
>> Deborah: Good question. We listened to a February 1 episode of the Burnt Toast podcast. Listeners, if you're unfamiliar with burnt toast, it's a substack newsletter and podcast by Virginia Soul Smith, who's a journalist and author working to dismantle diet culture and fat phobia. And she interviewed a middle school teacher librarian. (Hell yeah.) Named Ash Brandon, who goes by @thegamereducator on Instagram. Now to prep for our podcast about their podcast episode.
>> Katie: Hang on, let me just gaze at my navel some more.
>> Deborah: I did go to the gamer educator website to try and find out more about Ash Brandon's work as a librarian, because we are two former librarians. And in a, hilarious bit of irony, I saw a gross ad that's like a close up of a hand holding, I think, a giant prune with text underneath it that says, one bite of this keeps blood sugar below 100. Even anti diet culture adjacent influencers get ads that perpetuate diet culture. You just can't escape it. You can't escape it.
>> Katie: It is everywhere.
>> Deborah: Anyway, a post that this gamer educator person did about the term screen time detox got Virginia Sole-Smith's attention, and so they had this whole conversation that we listened to, and now we're going to talk about it. We'll link to that episode in the show notes. So basically, Ash Brandon encourages parents to think about screens neutrally. Not good, not bad, but in the middle, not as a negative. And so there's a lot of overlap between Soul Smith's and Brandon's work. They both take a kind of quote unquote fear no food approach to food and screen time. Soul Smith is all about pointing out how terms and concepts like clean eating, detox, cleanse are harmful in terms of body image. First of all, have you listened to burnt toast before? I picked this article because I'm, a regular listener.
>> Katie: Yeah, I like burnt toast a lot. It's a great pod.
>> Deborah: Cool. So what was your take on, this article? Did you find it helpful? Anxiety producing? Tell me your feelings.
>> Katie: I find this neutral take on food and screen time... Despite having been doing this podcast for however many years and thinking about screen time fairly deeply, the concept of incorporating screen time as a true neutral into my life, I can only say it struck panic in my heart. It just seems like so much. And, in the podcast, they go on to break it down in a more manageable way. But my first instinct was, I guess I felt a little judged for doing what I think is a fairly common practice of using screen time as part of a reward system, right? So I had to get past that in order to actually listen to the content.
>> Deborah: I found listening to the whole thing helpful, but I also initially had a very like, now I'm talking about screen time, wrong reaction. But we do use diet culture words to talk about screen time in my family because we will call certain uses of a screen, we'll compare it to junk food. Like watching YouTube is like eating cheetos. You're not getting any nutritional value from it. And whereas using your chromebook to finish an assignment, like, I guess broccoli or something, and then at various times in our podcast recording, I have brought up again and again the screen time pyramid from Wired magazine. That's a riff on the 1990s era, USDA diet guide that led us to believe that we could eat a loaf of bread every day. Fear no food, Katie.
>> Katie: I don't fear it. I embrace it. Bring on that loaf of bread.
>> Deborah: So I wonder if thinking about it in terms of that pyramid is bad.
>> Katie: I know it's kind of making you question everything you've done. So I actually wrote down a quote. I wrote down a lot of quotes, so forgive me. So at one point ash says, quote, screen time detox enters us into a restrict and binge cycle with our devices. And I have to say that really struck me in the solar plexus because as an adult who has been on a diet her entire life, it rang such alarm bells. I do not want to encourage these kinds of unhealthy patterns in my kids.
>> Deborah: Like cheat day.
>> Deborah: Yeah, I don't either. I don't either in terms of food or screens. Yeah, but it's really hard to unlearn the very behavior that you were raised in, whether your parents intended to damage you or not. It's just like the time in which we grew up, there was a lot of negative, messaging around foods and body image. Yeah.
>> Katie: And it feels so daunting to think about unlearning all those things for yourself and being super conscious of your language in front of your children because you also have to be on the computer at 12:00 on the dot to sign your kids up for summer camp. We have a lot to do and this seems like a huge thing to add in there. A huge and unwieldy thing.
>> Deborah: Were there any good tips for you and your family in their conversation?
>> Katie: Why don't you tell me a, good tip you learned first?
>> Deborah: Okay. Well, one thing that made me feel good is that the gamer educator suggests that you should make screen time predictable and treat it sort of like picky eater. Picky eaters are supposed to be dealt with at the dinner table. Like, the parent gets to determine when and how much in terms of screen time and the kid gets to decide what to play or watch. But then they did go through a whole rigamarole about how they limit YouTube content for their child, who I think is younger than mine. So that is kind of the approach that we take in my house to screen time is like, it's very predictable. The kids can choose what they watch, except when I mandate family movie nights every once in a while.
>> Katie: Can I just ask you something about that? Because I've heard this argument before for the predictability of both screen time and quote unquote junk food, and I'm not NOT susceptible to it. But again, if we can't present screen time or sugary treats as something that we get in order to celebrate getting hard work done, how on earth does one motivate children to get this work done? Because I have not successfully found a way to foster internal motivation in my five and eight year olds, I don't want to reward them with more stuff like disposable stuff in the home.
>> Deborah: Oh, I guess when I say screen time is predictable, like, the homework has to be finished, the musical instruments practiced, the bodies bathed. We're not doing screen time unless all those things are completed.
>> Katie: So you would still feel comfortable taking it away if someone took a strong stance on not doing homework?
>> Deborah: For sure.
>> Katie: Because that's where I trip up. How is this supposed to work if we can't? I guess I don't understand how to operate outside of like a reward mentality, which is probably bad. This podcast episode would suggest that's bad.
>> Deborah: I mean, the reward mentality works for us in our house as a carrot, which is another food metaphor. It's really hard to stop. and now that it's been pointed out via this podcast conversation, like, wow, I really do talk about screens with food metaphors a lot. Yeah, I do like her anti capitalist embrace of leisure time because she's like, we do feel as parents in a capitalist society that even the time that we spend relaxing in front of a screen has to be quote unquote good. Like we should be learning something. But Brandon pushes back by saying it's okay to watch junkie reality tv shows or whatever, influencer videos on YouTube, that kind of thing. It doesn't have to be all ted ed all the time.
>> Katie: Yeah, I liked and really responded to that permission as well, because I think it's also really hard to raise young kids as a person who likes tv and movies because we're supposed to, or quote unquote supposed to, be restricting it so much and acting like it's not a significant part of our lives that we enjoy. I love consuming tv and movies and thinking about them and talking about them, but I have to force myself to be enthusiastic about teaching my kid to play soccer. I just think there are a lot of shoulds associated with leisure time as a parent. Leisure time for your kids.
>> Deborah: Right.
>> Katie: And I wrote down another quote here because I loved it. So Ash said, there is validity in leisure for the sake of leisure, of doing something you like purely because you like it, and not because of a skill or a productivity or a contribution that you or your kids might be getting out of it. I like that a lot.
>> Deborah: Yeah, there was a lot to think about, which is how I feel about every episode that I've ever listened to of burnt toast. I don't always agree with her stance on stuff, like she's kind of freewheeling with the ultra processed foods, which for me, I'm not going to agree with that approach to feeding kids necessarily, but it does make me reconsider how hard lined I am on things like ultraprocessed foods. And same with this conversation. I'm not just going to give unfettered access to screens all the time, but I am going to be more mindful of how I'm framing it. In my words,
>> Katie: They did have a
>> Katie: conversation about boundaries and talk a bit about how it's acceptable to set boundaries around screen time. And that is not the same as screen time being a, non neutral thing.
>> Deborah: Right?
>> Katie: Again, I almost wish they had gone into more detail here, because the comparison that Ash kept making was you put boundaries around bath time and you wouldn't let your kids stay in the bath for 3 hours. And that's perfectly acceptable for you to say it's time to get out of the bath.
>> Deborah: But it's not a great analogy.
>> Katie: Yeah, it didn't work for me as an analogy because I still feel like any boundaries I set on screen time is going to be because this is not good for you. I don't know. I did also like Ash's warning against educational apps and games for kids. What did you think of that?
>> Deborah: That was really interesting and definitely what I have observed from all the time that we spent at home in distance learning and all the. I can't think of the app like the number munchers version of vocabulary grammar that my kids were mandated to do, and they hated it so much, but it was like how their school was kind of keeping attendance.
>> Katie: Right?
>> Deborah: Yeah.
>> Katie: Well, just the idea that a lot of the things that we're hoping they'll get out of, quote unquote, educational games and apps are things that they'll pretty much get out of the games and apps that they actually like. They talk a lot about Animal Crossing and how there's good stuff to be gained in Animal Crossing. That's not been on my kids radar. So I don't know much about that one.
>> Deborah: Yeah. An analogy for this situation that does work is like books. I just had a conversation with a librarian who was very helpful because I was looking for recommendations of more text based novels instead of graphic novels. And she was like, graphic novels are fine, which I know, but still, I want my kids to choose carrots instead of Reese's. Whatever. but she pointed out this shelf of award winning books on a display at the library, and she said to my kids, these are books that adults have deemed award winning, so adults like them. That doesn't necessarily mean that you will like to read them, which was so great.
>> Katie: Did kids pick any of those books or did they just go back to the graphic novels?
>> Deborah: And so that's something to keep in mind. You can't just force that educational stuff because then it's not enjoyable.
>> Katie: Yeah, I mean, parenting is a constant process of learning that I was just accidentally a super nerd growing up, and that does not mean that my children will be. Right? I also really need to go through, Ash's recommendations on, how to do YouTube with kids and how to.
>> Deborah: Limit what they can.
>> Katie: Yeah.
>> Deborah: Yes. Lock it down. It's too late for me, but you can still do it. I think that those are really good.
>> Katie: I'll check it out and report back.
>> Deborah: So does this feel like a productive discussion to you? Should we feel bad for how we talk about screen time when we already kind of feel bad about screen time? Just like a low level guilt about screen time all the time?
>> Katie: Yeah. I mean, again, I think it's fascinating that we've still come to this point when you and I, perhaps more than many people, spend so much time thinking about screen time and what its role in our kids lives should be. It does feel slightly unfair to have to take on this added burden.
>> Katie: I just find this kind of value neutral language to require so much brain space to implement. And I pretty much have to be thinking about it constantly to do it, or I'll slip up and fall back into old habits and then I'll berate myself, which is not helpful. So I really liked this whole conversation. I don't know if this kind of careful language is something that I am equipped to take on right now.
>> Deborah: Yeah, totally. I think it was a good episode to listen to. I like talking about with you. I don't think it's really going to change anything I'm doing at home. and it mostly made me angry that we have to parse these semantics about - well, we don't have to - we're choosing not to parse the semantics. And this reminds me very much of the mommy wars of the early aughts. We have to spend so much time talking about the language that we're using or who's going to work and who's staying home. When we could just collectively organize and make our world leaders realize that the post war dual income nuclear family experiment has failed. Technology was promised to us in a way that was going to make our lives easier, and it has not. It has made our lives harder and arguably worse. So it hasn't gotten us more leisure time or more work productivity or anything. And now we have to worry about our kids spending too much time in front of screens.
>> Katie: I'd be interested to hear from our listeners if they listen to this episode of Burnt Toast, if they find this kind of value neutral approach to screen time to be freeing at all, because I think that it can have that effect. It just happens to have not resonated with us in that way. True. So we'd like to hear, if you had that reaction to it. Anything else on this episode?
>> Deborah: I think I'm done talking about how we talk about screens.
>> Katie: Isn't it just kind of making you feel bad because it does make you feel like everything you've done is wrong. It's not a gentle way to think about it.
>> Deborah: Right.
>> Katie: All right, let's do some fun catch up. Can you tell me what your kids are watching and what you're watching with them? Anything new?
>> Deborah: Oh, my gosh. This is not for kids at all. But we've been watching Hazbin Hotel.
>> Katie: What is that?
>> Deborah: It's so bad. It's on, like, cartoon, network or Comedy central or one of those places that has adult cartoons. But one of my eleven year olds came home and all their friends were watching it and talking about it, and so we watched it. It just has a ton of profanity and it's very irreverent look at, the afterlife. So those would be the problems with it. But they have, like, really catchy songs and a lot of funny, physical gags.
>> Katie: So you would say tweens and up and only if your kids are comfortable hearing and not repeating profanity.
>> Deborah: I'm pretty loose with the age on this one because it's, like, for mature 16 and up viewers. So it's like Lucifer's daughter is trying to rehabilitate people who live in hell.
>> Katie: Okay.
>> Deborah: It's funny.
>> Katie: I love it. I love that you're trying something new with your kids.
>> Deborah: How about you?
>> Katie: We were out of town for the past weekend and I didn't even realize that there was a new season of the floor as lava. So we've gotten some enjoyment out of that.
>> Deborah: Oh, nice.
>> Katie: How about your grownup screen time watch list?
>> Deborah: Oh, we are really enjoying John Stewart's return to Comedy Central on Monday nights. There's been just been two so far, but it makes me feel like I'm, young.
>> Katie: Oh, we all need that in our lives. It was a really bad week for grownup screen time for me. So we're pretty much exactly where we were last time we talked. In fact, I'm still behind on True Detective Night Country and we're still in the middle of Masters of the Air. I mean, we have managed a couple episodes of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, which has been really fun, if you haven't checked that out.
>> Deborah: We have watched a couple episodes. I really like it.
>> Katie: yeah, that's a good one.
>> Deborah: And then one that's on my watch list is The Swans.
>> Katie: Oh, the Truman Capote.
>> Deborah: Molly Ringwald. Yes. All about Truman Capote. So I haven't watched that yet, but that looks really good.
>> Katie: Where do you fall on the Murphy verse? Like, because I don't have a really high Ryan Murphy tolerance.
>> Deborah: So he did Glee.
>> Katie: Yeah.
>> Deborah: But then he did, like, the American Horror Story, which that's way too scary for me. Way too scary. So I'm hoping this is more like Glee.
>> Katie: Did you watch... because this is his second season of Feud. Like, he did a season of Feud that was about, two feuding actresses from golden age Hollywood. And I'm sorry, I'm not remembering their names. I feel very ignorant.
>> Deborah: Oh, is this an anthology?
>> Katie: Yes. Yes.
>> Deborah: I didn't realize that. okay.
>> Katie: But not to the extent that American Horror Story is, because it's been a long time. I feel like it was maybe five years ago now that that first season came out.
>> Deborah: Got it. Okay.
>> Katie: So if you like this, there's another season of a similar tone for you to check out.
>> Deborah: Okay.
>> Katie: Thanks for listening to this screen time in the news episode of it's my screen time, too. Next week, we will be back with another review. If you enjoyed our show today, please recommend the show to one friend you think would enjoy it, too. We love growing our community of parents for sanity and screen time. Would you like some more words about screen time? Subscribe to our newsletter at myscreentimetoo.com. Tune in next time for more real talk about the movies and tv we watch with our kids because we have to and sometimes because we like to. Bye.
>> Deborah: Bye