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From Luke’s Journal Nov 2024 | Vol.29 No.3 | Mental Health II

Being a father of four young kids and a child clinical psychologist is a difficult assignment some days. I am grateful to be married to a very understanding wife who arguably has the harder assignment of taking care of the children when I’m not there!

Working in child psychology tends to make people curious about the work we do. It’s not uncommon for me to get asked, ‘How do you deal with it?’ usually based on an assumption that the rigours of hearing of physical abuse, sexual abuse and neglect must get too much. I get it. It’s probably what someone expects we do all day: talk about the heavy stuff and carry the baggage home. Conversations and help in that space for kids is important but often less frequent than many realise. In psychology, we call these the ‘Big T’ traumas, usually one-off events that are highly distressing and disruptive.

In reality, I find my day-to-day job is mostly helping young people with what we call ‘little t’ trauma. ‘Little t’ traumas are things like a breakup, parental separation, conflict with parents, getting bullied, being rejected by friends, etc.. They are typically ongoing or chronic issues that cause distress. ‘Little t’ traumas can cause more emotional harm than the ‘big T’ traumas like physical or sexual abuse if not well managed.

What is striking is that while we are aware of ‘little t’ traumas, it can be so very easy to miss what I believe is the number one coping mechanism young people and adults use today for ‘little t’ trauma – recreational screen time. We know little about the full impact of screen use, but what we do know is very unsettling. We now know that the average teenager spends about 7 hours of leisure time per day on screens, (excluding educational time on screens). Since the smartphone was introduced, the average teenager is receiving 192 notifications per day. Honestly, this is one of my biggest concerns as a clinician and as a father. What is this doing to their faith, their brains, relationships and health? On a personal level, what is this doing to me?

The gospel speaks to the whole of life, and I certainly think it speaks volumes in giving us principles on how to approach such a weighty topic.

I can think of two mistakes we can easily make, where we need gospel-based principles to help us approach this issue:

1. Turning good things into the ultimate thing

1 Corinthians 6:12 speaks to the importance of not being mastered by anything. It goes on in verse 20 to say that because we were bought at a price, we are to glorify God with our bodies. In other words, it implies we can be mastered by ‘things’ and this can either be to the glory of God, or for our own personal desires that can become idols. Tim Keller talks about how it can be very easy for the ‘good’ things we enjoy to become the ‘ultimate’ things because our hearts are idol factories.

It is no surprise that screens are extremely addictive, now more so than ever before. Of course, it’s not the screen itself that is addictive but the content behind it which can become the idol. Are we making an idol of influence? Easily achieved online; we’ve all heard of ‘influencers.’ Or what about power? It’s not difficult to try and project an image of strength or security through statements on career progress or acquired assets. How about acceptance? Many try to find that in comments and likes on a post.

Romans 12:2 tells us to “not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Mastering our mind means submitting to the will of God and worshipping Him as the King, not our whims or desires.

2.  Disconnecting from the world rather than learning to live in the world

In the book Parenting, Paul Tripp gives the example of how monasteries believed that by separating from the world they could become more ‘pure’. However, this eventually became their Achilles heel because they ultimately forgot that sin is ‘in us’ not just ‘out there’ So, when approaching management of screen use we need to be wise and not write off all technology, thinking we are sacrificially protecting ourselves and our children. It is a parenting trap, as Tripp points out, for us to believe our calling is to enforce the law when in fact God has chosen for us to restore awe.

We want to see obedience and good choices made by our children from a genuine heart change to love others. Of course, we need to consider their age and capacity to make wise decisions. The younger the child, the more limited their capacity to make good decisions, so this may mean setting limits to what they can see for their own protection. Limits or correction should always be paired with teaching on ‘why’ we make that choice. As children become teenagers, more open dialogue is required and trust needs to be given so they can learn to make both wise decisions and mistakes while we still hold influence as parents.    

Games and social media aren’t a completely new invention, which begs the question – Why is this such a prolific problem now?

Social media and gaming platforms have seen some massive shifts in development over the past two decades. Social media came in around 1999 via MSN Messenger and in the early 2000’s with Myspace and Facebook. It wasn’t really until 2009 and 2010 that some brand-new innovations began to increase uptake of online products. This included:

• Facebook’s launch of the ‘like’ button and Twitter’s launch of the ‘retweet’ button
• Push notifications
• Infinite scroll
• Invention of the front facing camera
• Social element became far more integrated; ability to communicate with distant friends and coordinate leadership of teams of players to advance a game
• Emphasis on skill and online ranking through short fast paced rounds
• Many games stopped creating a definitive end point to the game but allowed continual character development

These developments have all been designed or invented to capture a child or adult’s attention for as long as possible. It simply works. It is now estimated that with access to the smartphone, children and teenagers are spending an additional 2-3 hours per day on screen-based activities than before life with a smartphone. Pew Research from 2022 found that one third of teens say they are on social media sites ‘almost constantly.’ The rate of social media ‘super users’ (meaning more than 40+ hours per week) grew substantially between 2013 and 2015 in particular.

What is also concerning is that the level of clinical depression reported amongst teenage boys and girls significantly elevates the longer they spend on social media sites. In fact, close to 40% of girls who use social media more than 5 hours a day reported they were clinically depressed. Compare this with girls who only use social media 1 hour per day where the rate of depression is around 15%. Correlation between poor mental health and social media use has existed for some time, but causal factors have more recently become clearer. I don’t have time to explain that here but the author of The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt, goes further and explains, please see the link https://www.afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic.

So, what makes social media and gaming so addictive? On top of rapid technological developments, behavioural engineers that work at some of these cashed up and powerful companies have worked out ways to get us ‘hooked’ without us even realising it’s happening. These short term, dopamine-driven feedback loops target us in our weakest moments. Using artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced algorithms, social media applications input a set of instructions that predict exactly what you want to look at and manufacture it to keep you on as long as possible, using past information about your usage and what gets you ‘hooked’. AI is so savvy now that it can also detect when someone is losing interest in a game, then adjust the response of the program to incentivise them to stay longer.

One way the feedback loop is created in games and social media is using the ‘hook model.’ It is essentially based on classic behaviourism principles to shape behaviour. It begins with a trigger, is followed by an action that gets a ‘variable reward’ and finally rewarded by an investment by the user. Once the cycle is established, it is easy for the process to be repeated again and again.

For example, consider a 12-year-old girl struggling to work out a difficult concept for a maths exam. She has access to a smartphone and Instagram account and decides to put a post up as a distraction. Then, she receives a notification about her post;

Step 1: It interrupts her study and effectively acts as the trigger or ‘on ramp’ back to her Instagram account.

Step 2: She then moves to the action phase and brings up her post on Instagram. This then leads to her anticipating the reward of a like or positive comment about her post. She checks the post.

Step 3: This leads to a variable reward, that is, sometimes she gets a reward (such as best friend liking the post) or perhaps she doesn’t. She doesn’t realise that not getting the reward she wants each time only increases her anticipation of wanting the reward next time she checks the app or post.

Step 4: Because she has invested so much time in her profile with photos and stories there is no longer a need for a trigger with a notification; she only needs to be distracted, finding study difficult, and her own thoughts prompt her to get her phone out again to check the latest change on her account.

So, when choosing how to engage wisely with social media and gaming, here are some suggestions:

• Makes screens an ‘invited guest’ not a ‘permanent resident.’ Don’t let technology be the Kramer from Seinfield, the intruder who doesn’t know when to leave! If you can’t master it then learn to manage it; set some rules, change the way you can access it, find a better hobby and be accountable to someone.
• Stop and think – Are you using screens out of habit or with a purpose in mind?
• Keep screens away from mealtimes. Food, friendship and family go together, not screens and food. Stuck for ideas with what to talk about at dinner? How about asking about someone to pray for, something to be thankful for or something you want to say sorry for.
• Avoid screen use in the bedroom where possible. This is particularly important for children. Habits built like screen use in their bedrooms can lead to kids and teens disappearing and engaging with the online world rather than being present in the real world.
• Role model well. If you are a parent and you are home with the kids, minimise how much time you spend on screens around them. Spend time outside or find other activities inside that promote social interaction, enjoyment and learning together.
• When you do use screens, use them with others where possible. Parents that enjoy using screens with kids can help model positive behaviours, like how to manage emotions when something doesn’t go your way in a game, or learning limits in how long to spend playing or watching something.
• Don’t be afraid to speak to a ministry worker or seek professional help if it’s a problem you don’t think you can manage alone.

It becomes all too easy for us to be mastered, being enticed by our own desires for control, acceptance and influence. It’s as old as Adam and Eve that we can believe the lie that the good life is found in going our own way, controlling what we choose and how we want to live. Gaming and social media addiction wires us to believe we can have what we want but it is an illusion. As Christians, Paul calls us to action in Philippians 4:8 saying, “Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything, worth of praise, dwell on these things.” We can choose to submit to this honourable calling by enjoying gaming and social media, but choosing to make sure it is not where we gain our worth, identity or ultimate enjoyment. That was only made to be found in our Creator.

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