High-tech parents. Low-tech kids

Children as young as two are tapping on a television to change channel, scrolling on the cover of a book to turn the page and getting lost in their parents’ tablets or smartphones. But if some parents overindulge their children with too much screen time – after all, a Saturday brunch can be more enjoyable for parents with the help of an iPad – one perhaps surprising group of people tends to take a stricter view.

Those at the forefront of technology are often the most careful when it comes to introducing their offspring to it. The late Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple, limited the amount of time his children could spend on technology. But what parenting approach do senior technologists in Ireland take?

"Being familiar with technology means that I know the dangers that are out there quite well," says John Warburton, the chief executive of DoneDeal.ie.

Bill Liao, European venture partner with SOS Ventures and father of three teenagers, aged 19, 17 and 15, is not a fan of toddlers in their buggies with iPads, for example. "It's pretty scary when you hand a kid an iPad and let them go for it. I'd be wary of that. We don't have any data to see how that's impacting on how those kids are growing up. But we do have data to say that kids who are spending more time interacting and engaging with their parents are healthier," he says.

With his children still very young, Stephen McIntyre, managing director of Twitter Ireland, says his priority for them now is "reading books and playing outdoors".

“The worst thing to do is put your head in the sand. The second-worst thing is to ban it. The best is to engage,” says Liao. “Banning it doesn’t work. Even if you scrub all the technology out of the house they’ll see it on a friend’s cellphone.”

Grace O'Rourke Veitch, the country manager for the technology firm Citrix Ireland, concedes that her family are pretty big users of technology. She has two children, a 12-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl, and they got their first iPods about two years ago, for playing music or using Facetime and Skype.

But it isn't a technology free-for-all in her house. "I have controls on our systems," she says, but notes that "you can only protect them so much. You can't protect them 100 per cent." Education is key, she says, to make children aware of what they're doing, so they don't give out personal information, talk online with strangers or share photographs with strangers on Instagram.

She is also strict about ages for games. “I won’t let my daughter on Facebook yet. As parents we have to be educated on what’s happening in the tech world and what are they getting access to.”

Homework

Warburton, who daughters are eight and six, adopts a similar approach. “We do have devices in the home, but any device that the children are allowed to use is absolutely locked down,” he says. His elder daughter has an iPhone but doesn’t have access to iTunes or messaging systems, even though she has asked for it because her friends are using them.

Krishna De, a social-media and content-marketing consultant, is going through a transition with two of her three daughters. Her twins, aged 12, have just started at a secondary school that uses iPads instead of books.

“This is bringing about some other challenges for us now,” she says, noting that Viber is the communication method of choice among the girls’ classmates. The messaging service can serve up some conversation points, such as whether the girls should share answers to their homework with their classmates by using the service to forward photographs of their work.

Careful monitoring is also part of letting children use technology. “We monitor what they do, but it wouldn’t be obvious, as we don’t want to seem like we’re snooping,” says O’Rourke Veitch. De says, “I don’t personally check them everyday. I’ve built up a relationship with them, and they come and tell us if something is said inappropriately.”

De’s major concerns are around cyberbullying and access to inappropriate content, “which could be everything from being not age-appropriate to other content we wouldn’t want our kids to see”.

The content of some games can also cause concern. Warburton says his six-year-old used to get quite aggressive when asked to stop playing a particular shoot-’em-up game. “That game is gone now,” he says.

The social aspect, or lack of one, may also be an issue. O’Rourke Veitch says a friend told her that one evening she realised that all the family – two parents, two kids – were sitting together watching something on television. Devices in hand, they were putting up comments on Instagram or Twitter about the programme, but they weren’t discussing it with each other.

It’s a question most parents will consider: given the addictive nature of some types of technology, should they limit screen time?

Liao says that “if you limit it, it makes it more attractive”, although he tends to “nudge them to do other stuff” if it gets to be too much. For Warburton, TV-style rules apply. “When I was growing up the restrictions were around television. It’s the same thing [with technology]. It used to be, ‘You can’t watch TV until you’ve done your homework.’ Now it’s, ‘You can’t go on your tablet until you’ve done your homework.’ ”

Two places technology is most definitely not welcome, however, are in children’s bedrooms and at the dinner table. “It’s totally off limits. When food comes out there are no devices,” says Warburton.

But if tech gurus are potentially more aware of the problems technology can pose, they may also be more familiar with its benefits. Liao, as a founder of the CoderDojo movement, which now has about 120 clubs around the country, is keen to differentiate between children consuming technology and creating it, which is what they do when they learn to code. "It's hugely empowering for them," he says.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that parents have control over their children’s engagement with technology, even if it doesn’t always feel like that. “Parents need to get over themselves and actually start playing the games with the kids,” says Liao. “Don’t just say, ‘But the kids know better than I do.’ Make it a family participatory thing. It’s a cop-out to say, ‘I’m not into it.’ ”