Mick Clifford: Screens corrupt primal connections

Proper regulation, enforcement, and selective bans are all positive developments, but can problems generated by negative online activity be tackled exclusively by governments or transnational bodies?

The damage being done to developing minds will not become clear for years.

This week another warning was issued to technology companies. The new media regulator, Coimisiun na Mean published an online safety code which will bring an “end to the era of social media self-regulation”. Apparently.

The legally binding code will regulate content of those companies whose EU headquarters are in Dublin. These include Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X. All will be obliged to take measures to protect users from harmful content or face fines of up to €20m. If past form is anything to go by, enforcement is likely to be less than robust. But we live in hope.

The latest measures are in addition to plans for a total ban on phones in schools. Last August, the Minister for Education Norma Foley wrote to all schools about the “growing concerns expressed about the impact of the use of mobile phones during the school day, including the potential for distraction during class time, the risk of accessing inappropriate content and cyberbullying, and the potential for decreased social interaction with peers".

To that end, it was announced during the budget speech last month that €9m would be allocated for phone pouches to lock away the phones. The allocation had about it a gimmicky feel, and attracted negative publicity. Still, it’s small beer in the overall scheme of things and anything that might contribute to reeling in the power of technology companies to damage the human condition can’t be bad.

A ban on phones in schools cannot be a bad thing if it reels in the power of technology companies. 

Proper regulation, enforcement, and selective bans are all positive developments, but can the problems generated by negative online activity be tackled exclusively by governments or transnational bodies?

A friend who works in maternity care recently told me that there are now conversations in that sector about introducing guidelines for new parents around phone use. This has stemmed from evidence that the old ways of nurturing infants through the earliest straits of life are now being corrupted.

Any parent will know or recollect the feeding of a baby through either bottle or breast. The milk is all that matters to the infant in that instant and the parent is the provider. Their eyes are on you, the source of this life. They look directly into your eyes with a ferocious intensity.

And today? Possibly, or more likely probably, the parent is not looking back but instead looking at their phone. The screen has corrupted the primal connection. 

The parent is supplying the milk but not the connection that cements a bond in the infant’s tiny mind. And what is the infant taking in from this spectre? That the screen has an elevated role in all aspects of life, including the most primal wants during the earliest years

A study in 2020 by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information in the USA found that that children under two were reported to spend over an hour a day in front of a screen. This now is before they can even walk. By the age of three the screen time had increased to over three hours daily. This activity, according to the centre, has been associated with “poorer language developments and executive functioning”, particularly in very young children. Among infants, increased screen time was one of several factors that predicted behavioural problems.

That’s the start of it. Observe the child in the buggy with her head stuck in a screen, a toy screen full of the kind of toys that her parents would have played with in real life but she enjoys on a screen. These toys can’t be broken, can’t make a mess, can’t be the source of any emotional attachment. From a parenting point of view, the screen is often a break from the constant vigilance demanded of a small child, from the tiredness brought on by a sleep deficit.

Screen time has been associated with 'poorer language developments and executive functioning'.

As the infant grows to be a teenager the screen has an influence on development in a manner previously unseen in human history. Marketing professor Adam Alter examined this kind of thing in his book, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology. He points out that for children “a brain raised on online friendships can never fully adjust to the interactions in the real world”. 

Such problems are beyond the reach of regulators.

This is the culture in which the mythical village is raising its children. And I write here not as some sage observing from the sidelines, or a rarified height. Like so many others, I indulged the kids when they were little. I took plenty of no notice at my own screen use in the role of parent. It’s only later that the damage being done dawns on you.

Today, parents of young children are probably more aware of these matters but the culture we live in makes adjustments or striking out on a safer path all the more difficult. What needs to be acknowledged is that damage is being done to developing minds and the extent of that damage will not become clear for years if not decades. In an ideal world, governments would have been quick out of the blocks to rein in the power of technology companies and to recognise what effect the new dispensation is having on the human conditions. 

That didn’t happen. And, if there had been efforts to curtail the use of technology earlier on, it might well have been met with resistance among the general population. Today, everybody is trying to catch up and efforts to do so are genuine, but to some extent the horse has bolted.

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The singer, Conor O’Brien, who performs under the name Villagers, recently alluded to the kind of world that has evolved in recent years. “It’s absolutely insane what we’re living through,” he said. “The history books will show what harm the internet age did to our intellect and our ability to communicate, but also to our ability to dream and have imaginative worlds within ourselves.”

There can be little argument with that. The frighting thing is that he is correctly referencing the effect on adults, who have fully developed minds and who, to the greatest extent, were insulated from this madness when they were children. If our minds are being negatively impacted by the prevailing culture, think what it must be doing to those who are moving through the various straits of childhood and how their development is being corrupted.