Creation vs Consumption: A Framework For Kids' Tech Use

When I learned Nick uses a creation-consumption construct in teaching and guiding his 8 and 13-year-old kids use of technology I wanted to know more. And no, it’s not the same person introducing the Switch to their four-year-old.

In its simplest form, Nick’s philosophy is that we are consuming when watching a screen and creating when acting with the screen. And, we should consider the balance between the two.

After talking and texting with Nick, I learned things like: the philosophy behind this construct, the biometric safe and access restriction technology needed to support, and the guidance to create more mindful and intentional technology usage.

Here are some lightly-edited excerpts from our discussions, hope you enjoy.

What’s at stake when it comes to our kids’ technology usage? What’s the benefit of paying so much attention?

A friend once reflected, “either our kids are going to choose a career that involves telling the computers what to do, or they’re going to be told what to do”. This dystopian future chilled me – I strive to ensure that our kids have enough understanding and familiarity with how to use technology so that they feel and can embrace an element of control over it.

I can accept the argument that in order to eventually master the tool, one needs to first be comfortable with it. Those horrible learning curves that I bumped over in the 90s and 2000s are flattening every time my kids have to figure out their own Bluetooth pairing issues, draconian password management policies or IP device conflicts – mundane technological hurdles that will present themselves constantly throughout their lives. It is better if they’re learning to do these things now, while their aptitude for learning is still at its peak. 

I often proclaim to my kids that if you want to use any of our family’s kid-friendly and locked down devices as a tool for creation instead of consumption – I have no qualms giving them unfettered access. Sadly, this promise has taken a little while to resonate into any coherent requests for “I have this idea, and I’m needing a computer to do it”. 

But it doesn’t have to be a binary “can or cannot” environment. We’ve found video games like Minecraft to be fantastic learning environments, worth encouraging. During the remote education experiment that was COVID, my wife and I found a Spanish teacher in Venezuela that also ran a YouTube channel for Minecraft. Every week for an hour, the instructor would design and conduct lessons for my son’s avatar, immersing themselves virtually in the Spanish vocabulary for various objects and activities in the game. It was engaging to both student and teacher, and a fantastic way for us to show how an environment that could be traditionally seen as a toy can be wielded as a tool.

We hold a modern Tower of Babel in our pockets. YouTube is the greatest source of human knowledge ever conceived. I find myself increasingly drawn to searching for advice and instruction on household repair tasks and travel advice from an outlet that I would not have considered even five years ago. The vast knowledge potential far outweighs the perils for us not to encourage the adoption of technology as a toy, which will (hopefully) be wielded someday as a tool.

Where did the idea of balancing consumption and creation and doing both more mindfully come from?

I was a latch-key kid, walking the few blocks home every day to occupy my time from 3pm until 6pm, when my mom could get back from working all day in San Francisco. I remember this unstructured time fondly.

My parents had our house’s only television “hidden” in their walk-in closet on a rolling dinner cart. Its intended use was that it would be rolled out on special evenings for us to watch TV together. Shared family consumption of David Attenborough’s (my mother was British) excellent “Life on Earth” series or episodes of “Hee-Haw” (my father was Oklahoman) provided my sister and with I an early insight on their tastes and interests – what they found funny made up much of my perspective on who they were as people.

Yet, certainly not unbeknownst to them, that time after school every day was mine alone to veg out. Each weekday afternoon, I would sneak into the closet after grabbing a sleeve of Saltines and a big glass of milk, settling down to the best programming that our local Fox affiliate had to offer. My daily Hasbro-sponsored back-to-back of G.I. Joe and Transformers episodes were hard to beat. Ninjas! Giant robots with lasers! Sometimes, in special episodes, ninjas fight giant robots with lasers! That closet was my poorly-guarded Shangri-La.

Many of us had some sort of limit on TV as kids. For Nick, it seems like this physical barrier to watching made consumption more mindful and special. I asked him to compare it to his kids’ consumption today.

The speed of consumption has picked up considerably. The pacing of broadcast television shows with their predictable three commercial breaks every half-hour, all of which I gladly absorbed, is now too slow of a media format for my children to consume. Non-Smart TVs and the cumbersome Guide Channels, like those often found in hotels, are met with groans of resignation. Streaming services have mainlined content for children, making every subject matter or episode accessible on-demand at any time, day or night. Delayed gratification for media consumption has reached zero.  

How do you promote good technology usage that’s the kind you’re looking for?

Consumptive behavior increases in dependency when done in isolation. By sharing our experiences, we can help one another guide collective decisions on usage and frequency. Phones or tablets held inches from our faces physically obscure that reality, blocking even pre-cursory eye contact. Intended time spent consuming increases with isolation, as the convenience of twenty minutes slipping into forty and then sixty comes easier and easier. As a kid, the TV cart in the closet was the closest I could get to that desired “vidiot” happy state. 

As kids become teenagers, they’ll want to occupy virtual worlds together as a supplement to their real-life interactions. As we’re seeing avatars are extensions of ourselves – the social aspect and costs of these extensions are real, as we’re seeing with some of the dangers of youth and social media usage.

How has your approach changed over time?

I was the best parent in the world, before I actually had kids. Many of my initial aspirations have fallen by the wayside of having to negotiate the day-to-day reality of a family of four, strong-willed individuals. My brother-in-law once joked on the futility of raising complacent children. Meaning, that through these constant give-and-takes on devices and screen time, we’re training them early to be strong, independent and forceful in their opinions as children – who wouldn’t want those same qualities in an adult? 

We all need a break from parenting sometimes. Those storybook cherished moments of family togetherness are rarely scripted. More likely, they’re encapsulated by screaming car rides about where to pull over and eat or what we all have to listen to. Parenting is a lot easier when you can lock a kid into the tractor beam of a glowing screen, giving yourself that precious time to prepare dinner or pick up around the house. Every afternoon, every evening, every vacation shouldn’t have to be a battle, and we all deserve a pause. There should be no judgements on those who decide to parent differently. There’s no historical reference for any of these recommendations, and any assumption of benefit in these taking approaches is just that – an assumption. Your mileage will no doubt vary. 

Mitigation of technology in our household is never done, and never will be perfect. Our actions as parents around restrictions may be seen as occasionally frustrating to our kids, but are not yet seen as heavy-handed. Although they don't always agree, they comprehend the reason behind the effort, and have often helped write the rules with me when it comes to our network and usage of devices. My hope is that, as they become more articulate on why they want their devices, what they intend to do with it, and for how long – that they’ll start to self-enforce these rules themselves. 

I asked Nick how he puts limits in place and creates better discussions. His most important tips:

• Suggest a Social Alternative – It feels duplicitous when I answer my kids requests for a personal device with instructions to just go and watch TV. Doesn’t seem like much of a compromise, but it is. I can come and go into the room when they’re watching an episode, checking in on them and making sure they’re OK. At times, they like watching The Simpsons or other shows that I know, creating shared references and dialog between us.

• Pull Back the Curtain – point out and verbalize the Behavioral Science exploits that technology and media companies are using to capture and extend your engagement. Expiring offers, loot boxes, push notifications, upgrades, or FOMO verbiage are all techniques that should be criticized and met with trepidation.  

• Start Archaic – introduce technology that is hopelessly out of date. Human beings awkwardly texted one another for nearly a decade before smartphones and swipe gestures. Brickphones and offline, cartridge-based gaming devices can offer measured detachment by not using all of the attention-grabbing techniques their modern incarnations employ.    

• Do it Together – When setting rules and boundaries, negotiate. Maybe trading off Netflix or Discovery Channel on a projector is a worthwhile compromise to not having TikTok or YouTube on a phone. Itemizing one type of content over the other will help your kids understand the reasoning behind your blocking certain devices or activities. 

• Model Desired Behavior – I learned it from watching you, dad! We often allow ourselves to slip into these bad habits during times of stress, of which our parenting contains multitudes of. Device drawers, keeping electronics out of bedrooms. Replacing audio (or physical!) books with personal devices on long car or airplane rides have all become commonplace in our household. 

• Network Management – Our household is using a network device called Firewalla that has lived as an extension of our router for years now. It is administered by a phone, and makes up for the lack of controls offered by the hardware manufacturers of consumer network devices. The Firewalla allows for a domain, location or genre-specific blocking of traffic to individual devices. It gives one-click “Emergency” access to open up the network for specified durations. In addition, it can sequester times when traffic is shut off to the entire network. Our internet shuts down entirely around bed time, only to resume at 7am. 

• Device Lockers – An entry-level biometric safe allows for multiple parents to be able to use their fingerprint to unlock this device locker. Using a passcode for this safe is a similar foil to that on a phone – your kids will figure it out pretty easily. I’ve found that this dance of seeing how long it takes to outsmart dad is one that the kids are wanting to play. Even after buying a biometric safe for our household devices to find themselves in each night, my kids found and stole the backup keys. Unable to keep a secret, they giddily went to open it until I simply asked for the key back. You’ll start seeing these in some form at California public schools starting next year.