- Scott Collins is a clinical psychologist who studies families and children.
- His son had a technology addiction and needed limited computer access.
- Collins said his son’s individualized education program made it easier to adjust to using technology.
This said essay is based on a conversation with Scott Collins, chief medical officer at Aura. It has been edited for length and clarity.
By the time my son was in seventh grade, he was struggling with a technology addiction. As a psychologist, I have questioned in the past whether phones and computers can really be addictive. But when I saw my son experiencing withdrawal symptoms and lying to get more screen time, I knew they could be—and it was happening right in my house.
Once I realized my son had a serious challenge, my wife and I made a plan to limit his technology use, which included turning off all appliances in the house at night. But we faced another challenge: school.
At my son’s school, like most these days, all the students had laptops. There are many benefits to using technology in the classroombut for some kids, like my son, having a computer isn’t an advantage.
We started with an open conversation with the school
I knew I wanted my son to have less access technology in school. But I also realized that by removing the thing that was challenging (the computer), I was creating a whole new set of challenges. Since I’m not in the classroom, I probably didn’t know what some of those unintended consequences were.
My wife and I didn’t know what the right answer was and we didn’t pretend, so we asked for a meeting with the school. My son has autism and ADHDso he has an individualized education program (IEP). This gave us a big advantage because the school had to listen to our concerns. Plus, we already had an established means of communicating with them and trust with my son’s educational team.
We realized that we needed a fluid approach
At home, we could just turn off the computers and phones when our son had reached his screen time limit. For school, we knew it wouldn’t necessarily be that simple.
Instead, we came to his teachers with a statement: We want to limit his access to his computer as much as possible while still supporting his learning. We asked what other kinds of systems we could implement within this framework. The details varied from class to class.
We went back to paper and pencil
Whenever possible, my son did his homework with paper and pencil. For math problems or essay writing, this was fine. However, we soon discovered that there were tasks that he simply could not do do without a computer — how to watch a certain video and write a response.
In those situations, my son had access to his computer, with monitoring. For most of the day, his computer stayed in the resource teacher’s room and he only got it when he absolutely needed to.
Implementing this was difficult, but worth it
I knew that reducing the school’s reliance on technology would not be easy, yet I was surprised at how difficult it was. We had a huge advantage: because of my son’s IEP, we had a resource teacher we could always contact. Even so, computer time limit it required a great deal of communication with teachers, as well as adapting quickly based on the type of assignments my son had and how he was managing his technology addiction at a given time.
Today, my son is doing much better with his technology addiction recovery. He is now in ninth grade and has shown that he can be trusted to use computers responsibly. Because of this, we haven’t had to talk to his high school teachers limiting technology. However, we may need it in the future.
As a professional, it is a little disconcerting to me how difficult it was to facilitate the use of technology in the school. There is a growing number of children who are addicted to technology, like my son. At the same time, we are making these same devices a key component of learning. It is a very complex problem and it will take us some time as a society to figure out how to solve it. Meanwhile, much falls on parents and teachers to find the right answer for individual children.