😫When your kid says their favorite thing is a screen or an app, it’s easy to feel guilty or worried that they’ll never like anything else again. But this is where a simple reframe can help us regroup.
🤔If my child was showing this interest or behavior for another hobby besides screens, would I be concerned?
🧠it’s easy to blame dopamine for a child’s interest in games or screens, but dopamine is released whenever we do anything we enjoy; not all screens will trigger a release of dopamine because not all screens are appealing to every brain. Is the dopamine we get from a screen “easier” to get than dopamine from playing baseball? Probably. But dopamine from playing Minecraft might be more complex than dopamine from watching baseball on TV and yet we still tend to view the latter as a better use of time. It’s not really about the dopamine, it’s about our view of gaming and screens.
👀Also, if I pair a dopamine rich activity like screens with something that can provide other input like physical movement, then a potentially deregulating activity like screens can become more sustainable.
For more on this, see episode 273 of the “voices of your village” podcast that I participated in with @seed.and.sew
