This afternoon we had an impromptu family meeting about screens and technology. This is an ongoing conversation in our house, an area of our shared and individual lives that we’re always observing, tweaking, and learning how to manage. In our kids’ younger years, my husband and I were really punitive and judgmental about screens. We’d realize our kids were watching far too much television and instead of examining our role in the state of affairs, we’d blame them, as if two toddlers were supposed to understand how to manage a highly addictive activity without adult input. As a young mom, I was always waiting for the day when my kids, offered the opportunity to watch TV, would shake their heads and say, “No mom, I think I’ll just head out to the backyard to look for bugs instead.” Spoiler alert: it never happened. Naturally, they’d sit in front of the screen for as long as I’d allow it, zoned out on Paw Patrol to near comatose levels, and then cry and rage when I turned the TV off.
Then when my younger son Sam was two or three, he shattered our TV by stabbing it with the metal striker for the triangle that went with his musical instrument set. At the time, we knew our kids were watching too much TV, so my husband and I saw this incident as divine intervention. Thou shalt not have television. We hung up a mirror in its place and high-fived ourselves for being so wholesome and progressive. Problem solved.
Fast forward ten months to when we purchased a new TV. By that point, I figured my kids would have an entirely different relationship with screens. They’d had all that time to develop other skills and areas of interest; their brains were wholly changed. There was no way we were going to end up back where we started. But within a month or two, that’s exactly where we found ourselves. The problem, looking back, is that there was no communication around any of it, no intention behind how we engaged with it. We went cold turkey, almost as a punishment to ourselves and our kids for not doing it “right.” And then we started up full throttle without any kind of discussion or reflection—a beautiful, shiny reward for all those months of austerity.
Upon further examination, this lines up with how I approach almost everything in my life. I have always told myself that I have no ability to moderate my addictive personality, so either I go absolutely freaking nuts or practice total abstinence. There is no middle ground. I immediately stop engaging in an activity, eating a certain group of foods, having a relationship with a particular person and I expect that these drastic, scorched earth methods will solve the problem with no further engagement needed from me.
But then, because I am human, those prohibitive measures do not work in the neat and tidy way I expect. I decide I want to engage in that forbidden activity again. I am presented with an opportunity to eat the food I’ve said I was giving up forever. I see the person I swore I’d never speak to again. And then the house of cards comes tumbling down, and all my addictions come out to play. Once I’m in that anything goes headspace, forget it. I’m unreachable. I’m off somewhere eating a shitload of sugar-laced gluten, using social media for three hours a day, and letting all my personal boundaries be crossed. You’re better off catching me in three months when I decide to go back to my cold turkey ways.
But the older I get, the more I realize that this inability to explore the gray areas of being human is what’s causing me the most problems in life. Because, honestly, I don’t think we’re meant to live in those harsh extremes. When I first returned to organized religion, I was weirdly attracted to the extremist quality of the whole affair. It seemed to line up perfectly with my worldview. Here’s a strict set of rules for how to live a good life. Now all you have to do is follow them without exception. For a while, I was totally on board. Anyone can thrive in the black and white spaces temporarily.
But then the gray came seeping in. I realized I didn’t want to shut off my intuition the way the Bible told me to do. I didn’t understand why certain groups of people were OK in God’s book, but not others. I didn’t want to give up all my worldly pleasures because we’re only supposed to live for the next life. The whole thing fell apart pretty spectacularly. What had most attracted me—that particularly inflexible brand of black and white thinking—was also what most repelled me in the end.
Now when my husband and I talk to our kids about screens and technology, we approach it in an entirely different way; extremism is not on the table. We’re not in it to point fingers, to punish each other or ourselves, or go nuts with zero boundaries. (Trust me, we’ve tried all those ways and none of them worked for our family.) Our goal now is to figure out how to engage with technology healthfully.
Lately, we haven't been doing that in our house. I’ve been on my phone way too much since I got back on social media. My kids have been playing video games more than is working for our lives. So we’ve been talking openly and making necessary tweaks, all opinions and potential plans of action up for debate. For today, we settled on some measures and boundaries that might work better than what we’ve been doing lately. But honestly, we have no idea what will work best; my husband and I struggle with moderation just as much as our kids. It’s not an exact science and it’s more important to me that all of us are learning how to live healthfully in the gray areas than make rigid rules we’re unlikely to stick with.
The reality is that all the stuff that is pleasurable and fun and creative and engaging also has the power to be harmful and destructive and corrosive and unenjoyable if taken to the extreme. And, as humans, we’re probably always going to struggle with striking the right balance. There are some things (like alcohol for me personally) that could be fun and pleasurable but for which the potential rewards do not outweigh the risks. I think everyone has a few things like that where it’s just not worth it to try to find a middle ground.
But the rest of it we get to play around with, get curious about. What if I engage with it this way? That didn’t work, but how about this? What if we took shame and guilt off the table and just experimented? That’s where I find myself these days: tinkering and tweaking, in an endless state of curiosity about what makes a sustainable, enjoyable life. I haven’t cracked the code yet and I doubt I ever will. But I’m finding the gray areas to be a hell of a lot more interesting than the black and white spaces ever seem to be.