Understand Their Internal Triggers
Richard Ryan and his colleague Edward Deci are two of the most cited researchers in the world on the drivers of human behavior. Their “self-determination theory” is widely regarded as the backbone of psychological well-being, and countless studies have supported their conclusions since they began research in the 1970s.
Just as the human body requires three macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat) to run properly, Ryan and Deci proposed the human psyche needs three things to flourish: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When the body is starved, it elicits hunger pangs; when the psyche is undernourished, it produces anxiety, restlessness, and other symptoms that something is missing.
When kids aren’t getting the psychological nutrients they need, self-determination theory explains why they might overdo unhealthy behaviors, such as spending too much time in front of screens. Ryan believes the cause has less to do with the devices and more to do with why certain kids are susceptible to distraction in the first place.
Without sufficient amounts of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, kids turn to distractions for psychological nourishment.
LESSON 1: KIDS NEED AUTONOMY—VOLITION AND FREEDOM OF CONTROL OVER THEIR CHOICES
Maricela Correa-Chávez and Barbara Rogoff, professors at the University of California, Santa Cruz, conducted an experiment in which two children were brought into a room where an adult taught one of them how to build a toy while the other one waited. The study was designed to observe what the nonparticipating child, the observer, would do while they waited. In America, most of the observer children did what you’d expect them to do: they shuffled in their seats, stared at the floor, and generally showed signs of disinterest. One impatient boy even pretended a toy was a bomb and threw his hands in the air to mimic an explosion, making loud disruptive noises to match the carnage. In contrast, the researchers found that Mayan children from Guatemala concentrated on what the other child was learning and sat still in their chairs as the adult taught the other child.
Overall, the study found that American children could focus for only half as long as Mayan kids. Even more interesting was the finding that the Mayan children with less exposure to formal education “showed more sustained attention and learning than their counterparts from Mayan families with extensive involvement in Western schooling.” In other words, less schooling meant more focus. How could that be?
Psychologist Suzanne Gaskins has studied Mayan villages for decades and told NPR that Mayan parents give their kids a tremendous amount of freedom. “Rather than having the mom set the goal—and then having to offer enticements and rewards to reach that goal—the child is setting the goal. Then the parents support that goal however they can,” Gaskins said. Mayan parents “feel very strongly that every child knows best what they want and that goals can be achieved only when a child wants it.”
Most formal schooling in America and similar industrialized countries, on the other hand, is the antithesis of a place where kids have the autonomy to make their own choices. According to Rogoff, “It may be the case that children give up control of their attention when it’s always managed by an adult.” In other words, kids can become conditioned to lose control of their attention and become highly distractible as a result.
Ryan’s research reveals exactly where we lose kids’ attention. “Whenever children enter middle school, whenever they start leaving home-based classrooms and go into the more police-state style of schools, where bells are ringing, detentions are happening, punishment is occurring, they’re learning right then that this is not an intrinsically motivating environment,” he says. Robert Epstein, the researcher who wrote “The Myth of the Teen Brain” in Scientific American, has a similar conclusion: “Surveys I have conducted show that teens in the U.S. are subjected to more than ten times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons.”
While such a restrictive environment isn’t every American student’s experience, it’s clear why so many struggle to stay motivated in the classroom: their need for autonomy to explore their interests is unfulfilled. “We’re doing a lot of controlling them in their school environments and it’s no surprise that they should then want to turn to an environment where they can feel a lot of agency and a lot of autonomy in what they’re doing,” Ryan says. “We think of [tech use] as kind of an evil in the world, but it’s an evil we have created a gravitational pull around by the alternatives we’ve set up.”
Unlike their offline lives, kids have a tremendous amount of freedom online; they have the autonomy to call the shots and experiment with creative strategies to solve problems. “In internet spaces, there tends to be myriad choices and opportunities, and a lot less adult control and surveillance,” says Ryan. “One can thus feel freedom, competence, and connection online, especially when the teenager’s contrasting environments are overly controlling, restrictive, or understimulating.”
Ironically, when parents grow concerned with how much time their kids spend online, they often impose even more rules—a tactic that tends to backfire. Instead of more ways to limit your kids’ autonomy, Ryan advises seeking to understand the underlying needs and associated internal triggers driving them to digital distraction. “What we’ve found is that parents who address internet use or screen time with kids in an autonomy-supported way have kids who are more self-regulated with respect to it, so less likely to use screen time for excessive hours,” he says.
LESSON 2: CHILDREN STRIVE FOR COMPETENCE—MASTERY, PROGRESSION, ACHIEVEMENT, AND GROWTH
Think about something you’re good at: your ability to present onstage, pull together a delicious meal, or parallel park in the tightest of spaces. Competence feels good, and that feeling grows alongside your ability.
Unfortunately, the joy of progress in the classroom is a waning feeling among kids today. Ryan warns, “We’re giving messages of ‘you’re not competent at what you’re doing at school,’ to so many kids.” He points to the rise of standardized testing as part of the problem. “It’s destroying classroom teaching practices, it’s destroying the self-esteem of so many kids, and it’s killing their learning and motivation.”
“Kids are so different, and their developmental rates are so variable,” Ryan says. However, by design, standardized tests don’t account for those differences. If a child isn’t doing well in school and doesn’t get the necessary individualized support, they start to believe that achieving competence is impossible, so they stop trying. In the absence of competency in the classroom, kids turn to other outlets to experience the feeling of growth and development. Companies making games, apps, and other potential distractions are happy to fill that void by selling ready-made solutions for the “psychological nutrients” kids lack.
Tech makers know how much consumers enjoy leveling up, gaining more followers, or getting likes—those accomplishments provide the fast feedback of achievement that feels good. According to Ryan, when children spend their time in school doing something they don’t enjoy, don’t value, and don’t see potential for improvement, “it should be no surprise to us that at nighttime [they] would rather turn to an activity where they can feel a lot of competence.”
LESSON 3: THEY SEEK RELATEDNESS—FEELING IMPORTANT TO OTHERS AND THAT OTHERS ARE IMPORTANT TO THEM
Spending time with peers has always been a formative part of growing up. For kids, much of the opportunity to develop social skills centers around chances to play with others. In today’s world, however, teens increasingly experience social interactions in virtual environments because doing so in the real world is inconvenient or off limits.
The very nature of play is rapidly changing. Remember playing pickup games at the basketball court, hanging out at the mall on weekends, or simply roaming around the neighborhood until you found a friend? Sadly, spontaneous socializing simply isn’t happening as much as it used to.
As Peter Gray, who has studied the decline of play in America, wrote in the American Journal of Play, “It is hard to find groups of children outdoors at all, and, if you do find them, they are likely to be wearing uniforms and following the directions of coaches.”
Whereas previous generations were allowed to simply play after school and form close social bonds, many children today are raised by parents who restrict outdoor play because of “child predators, road traffic, and bullies,” according to a survey of parents in an Atlantic article. These concerns were mentioned even though kids today are statistically the safest generation in American history. Unfortunately, this is a downward spiral that leaves many kids with no choice but to stay indoors, attend structured programs, or rely on technology to find and connect with others.
In many ways, connections in digital environments can be very positive. A child who is bullied at school can reach out for help from supportive online friends; a teenager struggling with their sexuality can find support from someone on the other side of the country; and a kid who feels shy at school can be a hero among their gaming friends from all corners of the world. “What the data show,” says Ryan, “is that kids who aren’t feeling relatedness, who are feeling isolated or excluded in school are going to be more drawn to media where they can get connections with other people and find subgroups they can identify with. So that’s both a plus and a minus.”
The loss of in-person play has real costs according to Gray, given that “learning to get along and cooperate with others as equals may be the most crucial evolutionary function of human social play.” He sees it as “both a consequence and a cause of the increased social isolation and loneliness in the culture.” Long before studies correlated screen time with rising rates of depression, Gray identified a much bigger trend that dated back over sixty years:
Since about 1955 . . . children’s free play has been continually declining, at least partly because adults have exerted ever-increasing control over children’s activities . . .
Somehow, as a society, we have come to the conclusion that to protect children from danger and to educate them, we must deprive them of the very activity that makes them happiest and place them for ever more hours in settings where they are more or less continually directed and evaluated by adults, settings almost designed to produce anxiety and depression.
When considering the state of modern childhood, Ryan believes many kids aren’t getting enough of the three essential psychological nutrients—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—in their offline lives. Not surprisingly, our kids go looking for substitutes online. “We call this the ‘need density hypothesis,’” says Ryan. “The more you’re not getting needs satisfied in life, reciprocally, the more you’re going to get them satisfied in virtual realities.”
Ryan’s research leads him to believe that “overuse [of technology] is a symptom, one indicative of some emptiness in other areas of life, like school and home.” When these three needs are met, people are more motivated, perform better, persist longer, and exhibit greater creativity.
Ryan isn’t against setting limits on tech use but thinks such limits should be set with the child, and not arbitrarily enforced because you think you know best. “Part of what you want your kid to get from that is not just less screen time, but an understanding of why,” he says. The more you talk with your kids about the costs of too much tech use and the more you make decisions with them, as opposed to for them, the more willing they will be to listen to your guidance.
We can start by sharing some of the coping and reimagining tactics we learned in part one. Let your children know what you’re doing differently in your own life to manage distraction; being vulnerable and showing kids that we understand their struggle and face similar challenges helps build trust. Just as we saw in the previous section how good bosses model disconnecting from distraction, parents should model how to be indistractable.
We may also want to consider providing real-world opportunities for children to find the autonomy, competence, and relatedness they need. Easing up on structured academic or athletic activities and giving them more time for free play may help them find the connections they otherwise look for online.
We can’t solve all our kids’ troubles—nor should we attempt to—but we can try to better understand their struggles through the lens of their psychological needs. Knowing what’s really driving their overuse of technology is the first step to helping kids build resilience instead of escaping discomfort through distraction. Once our kids feel understood, they can begin planning how best to spend their time.
REMEMBER THIS
• Internal triggers drive behavior. To understand how to help kids manage distraction, we need to start by understanding the source of the problem.
• Our kids need psychological nutrients. According to a widely accepted theory of human motivation, all people need three things to thrive: a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• Distractions satisfy deficiencies. When our kids’ psychological needs are not met in the real world, they go looking for satisfaction—often in virtual environments.
• Kids need alternatives. Parents and guardians can take steps to help kids find balance between their online and offline worlds by providing more offline opportunities to find autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• The four-part Indistractable Model is valuable for kids as well. Teach them methods for handling distraction, and, most important, model being indistractable yourself.