Basswood Elementary School families gather to discuss “Screenagers”

On the evening of April 15, families from Basswood Elementary School and other elementary schools across the district gathered to discuss the impact of technology and digital device use on students during an event put on by the Basswood PTO.

To begin, families watched the film “Screenagers: Elementary Age Edition,” which addresses issues that elementary school aged kids, parents/caregivers and educators are facing, including smartwatches in class, unhooking from and monitoring video gaming, social media pressures, exposure to screens at a young age and what research shows is a healthy amount of screen time. During the film, parents shared how their children have dealt with many hours a day looking at screens, and authors, psychologists, and brain scientists revealed how technology time impacts kids’ development and offered solutions for empowering kids to navigate the digital world and find balance.

Following the film, families broke up into small groups, based on the ages of their children, to discuss what issues they have in their family with technology. Topics discussed included video games, the effect teachers are seeing in schools, kids losing their ability to have in-person social interactions, the importance of modeling at home and kids seeing their parents not on devices all day, how to measure the level of exposure to screens kids are actually getting, what ages to allow students to have phones and social media accounts and the impact of peer pressure.