Dr. Katheryn Hudon: Families can help children by prioritizing real world interactions

A print of my favorite Lemony Snicket quote hangs a little crookedly on the wall of my pediatric hospitalist call room: “But the children knew that the worst surroundings in the world can be tolerated if the people in them are interesting and kind.” It’s a fitting reminder of the resilience of children in the face of illnesses requiring hospitalization, but also concern when we consider the digital world is often anything but interesting and kind.

We are all alert to the immense harms that our kids experience using digital technologies, especially social media. But the words “anxiety,” “mental health epidemic” and “isolation” don’t confer the vivid pictures painted for me and my colleagues every day within our offices, ERs and pediatric hospital units. Our children are consumed by a desperation, a loneliness, a despair that leaves them broken. They lay in a hospital bed covered in physical and emotional scars, recovering from a nearly lethal overdose of medication or self-inflicted gunshot wound or near hanging. They are in a depth of existential pain that feels inescapable, and these children and families are left adrift with such a scarcity of resources that even the savviest of parents don’t know how to navigate toward recovery.

This state of emergency is not a simple, single-answer problem. It is complicated and nuanced and highly individual. There is, however, a unifying commonality within a modifiable risk factor: use of a smartphone. Just like we learned smoking cigarettes increases the risk of lung cancer, so we now understand the use of social media dramatically increases the risks of anxiety, depression and death from suicide. We can start with a warning label and grow from there.

The measures taken by Spokane Public Schools are an excellent start: phone-free schools, a focus on activities “in real life” and a partnership with Active4Youth help direct our kids away from the blue-luminescent draw of a screen, and back into the world of humanity and connection. An antidote to the ills of social media and screen time, opportunities to disconnect from the digital world and reinhabit our physical space are becoming more and more rarified, and I’m so glad our schools stepped up to make the hard call to provide a respite from the digital weight we carry in our pockets and in our minds.

It was just 2007 that the late Steve Jobs debuted the iPhone – a truly revolutionary moment. And the amount of good found within the wealth of information and technology that we now carry in the palm of our hand is a testament to our collective ingenuity as human beings. But our basic mammalian biology does not have a shred of hope to contend with the more sinister side of these otherwise magnificent tools. Social media hacks into our dopamine loops within the nucleus accumbens and other reward areas of the brain, hits the vulnerable and underdeveloped prefrontal cortices of our teenagers, assaults our amygdala with emotional volatility, creating a potent mix of reward-seeking behavior, reduced impulse control, and emotional dependence that underpin the addictive nature of this technology.

So how else can parents and caregivers safeguard the mental health and well-being of their children? As a pediatrician and a parent, I recognize there is no one-size-fits-all answer – every family has its own path to navigate and values to live by. But as a start, here are three suggestions to consider incorporating:

• Model healthy habits around technology. I am a constant work-in-progress where this is concerned but will continue to work on maintaining boundaries with technology, taking breaks from screens, and prioritizing face-to-face interactions.

• Teach critical thinking and media literacy. It is difficult to critically evaluate the content we consume online. Work with your kids to discern fact from fiction, recognize manipulation, and question social media’s portrayals of “perfect” lives.

• Encourage healthy hobbies and offline activities. This could be sports, art, music or volunteering. It can be a family tradition of no screens after 7 p.m. and Friday night board game night. The point is building skills and self-esteem that help children develop a sense of identity outside of the online world to serve as an emotional outlet and buffer against the need for validation through social media.

Some of these ideas may work for you, some may not. But starting with awareness of the problem and working together as families and as a community to find a solution is a good start.

Dr. Katheryn Hudon is a pediatric hospitalist, chief of pediatrics and associate professor for the medical school at Pacific Northwest University, business owner, Spokane resident, and mom of three young children.