How to live positively in a digital world | Tuesday 28 August 2018

Speakers: Linda Cranley and Genevieve Johnson

Emcee: Jodie Benveniste

Ann-Marie Hayes: Hi everyone. My name is Ann-Marie. I'm just introducing the evening. Apparently, Gene Simmons is on next door from Kiss, and a few people got caught up in the line. There might be some people who were lining up thinking that was the Parent session, and in fact, sorry, we might get some additional people in who find that we're here, Gene Simmons is there.

Welcome. First thing I would just like to do is acknowledge that we meet tonight on the land of the Ghana people, pay my respects to past, present, and future. Well, I'm going to do a bit of a welcome and then I'm going to introduce our Minister. As you know, Parent Engagement Week, some of you were here last year, Parent in Education Week, and I welcome you all back for a great week of information for parents. We have possibly about a hundred people who'll end up here tonight, but there's about 15 schools throughout the state who are live-streaming, I think is the term, and people can just log in from home, so I'm sure some people will log in from home.

This is really exciting. Tonight is really about how to live positively in a digital world. I won't go into too much detail because Jody is going to introduce our two guest speakers tonight. Linda Cranley, and Genevieve Johnson. Tomorrow night, in case you're interested, and you want to log in from home or you want to come down again, I know some people are coming tomorrow night as well, it's Dr. Justin Coulson. He's talking about behaviours for learning and well-being. He'll think about children's behaviour and what specific behaviours may be telling you.

Then our final session on Thursday night is a panel discussion on, "No More Bullying." That's about talking to three panels, the eSafety Commissioner representative, Lesley Harrison, Britt Murray, who's a five-time Australian of the Year nominee, and an anti-bullying campaigner, and clinical psychologist Andrew Fuller from the University of Melbourne, who you've probably heard on the radio many times. They're here to have a bit of a panel to talk about this critical topic for both parents and caregivers and children.

If you're unable to attend, don't worry because you can go online and have a look. Your school, or preschool, or children’s centre will be able to log you in and you can catch up. Then whatever you like, you can go back on our, I think we can go back on our education website and you can pick up later.

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Before we get started, I just wanted to do a little bit of housekeeping. Mobiles on silent so that we don't interrupt our speakers because that's really important. There's conveniences toilets that way, incredibly bright lights which are really terrible, but you don't get to see them so it's all right for you. We do have tea and coffee and we know that you've helped yourself. Now, the emergency exits are located left. I don't think there's one on the right, but you'll run into the Gene Simmons crowd, so I'd go that way. If you should leave the building, you go out and we meet at an assembly point near the Ticketek outlet on point. I can hear myself twitching on the microphone so apologies about that.

It's with great pleasure though I introduce you to the Minister for Education, Minister Gardner. It's very exciting to have him. He's here. He represents the seat of Morialta in Adelaide's north-eastern suburbs. He's been representing that area since 2010. He was appointed Minister for Education after the March state election, and he had previously served as Shadow Minister in this portfolio. In addition to this, we know that the Minister and his wife have recently become parents to their daughter, Emma. Like the rest of us here, we know that the Minister's keen to hear some of the things, but he also has to get home to his baby at some stage as well. We're really glad to welcome Minister Gardner. Thank you.

[applause]

John Gardner: Thank you very much, Ann-Marie. I also would like to add my acknowledgment that the land we meet on today is the lands of the Ghana people, and we respect their spiritual relationship with country. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, everyone who's managed to make it here and those joining us via the magic of the interwebs. For those of you who of course have come here expecting to see Gene Simmons, I'm sure you'll find this session far more interesting.

As Minister for Education, it's my absolute privilege and responsibility to be tasked with leading our government's efforts to make sure all South Australian children get the best possible start in life. We want South Australia's education system to be nothing less than the best in the country and a world-class system. Our ambition is that every child in every classroom in every school in this state be supported to fulfil their potential, to be the best versions of themselves.

If we look around the world at the best education systems, one of the things they have in common is that they're really, really good at engaging with parents. As parents, there is no question that you play a hugely significant role in creating positive social and educational environments for our next generation. We know that where we improve the parental engagement with a school, or caregiver, or guardian, or grandparent, the parental engagement we'll talk about today. When you improve the parental involvement in the school, we very quickly see positive impacts for students in everything from, increased academic achievement, reduced dropout

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rates, and greater participation in higher education or pathways to vocational employment successfully.

It makes sense, because as parents you know your child better than anybody. You understand their individual traits, the skills, and the things that they struggle with as well. It's critical that when a child starts childcare, or is in preschool and school, the people tasked with helping them to learn and thrive in an educational setting are working with you to harness your knowledge and your understanding of your child.

As Ann-Marie said, we've got a three-month-old daughter at home, so in addition to my new role as Minister, I can absolutely assure you that my mind has been acutely focused on these issues. I can tell you there is plenty of research that shows that schools working in partnership with parents create the best environment for success for children. Quite simply, kids with parents who are engaged in their education do better at school. We need to make sure that we create an environment that allows and encourages parents to engage in their child's education, and then help build parents' capacity to support their child's learning. That's what this week is all about.

There are a lot of ways that we're seeking to do this, from strengthening parent-teacher relationships, to making sure that all schools have avenues for parental engagement, to providing professional development opportunities for teachers to keep them abreast of best practice models in terms of effectively engaging with parents. There's a lot of innovative work that's already been happening at schools to improve parental engagement, often making use of all of the new technologies that are available that can help them.

Sharing what is working and what isn't working is a critical task for our education partnerships around the state. Those schools that are earlier in their process of developing parental engagement models will be able to benefit from understanding innovative best practice models that are already working in some schools. We need to make sure we're also providing support and resources to you, to parents as well, so that you can have the support you need to best help your child.

Just like any other role in life, our confidence as parents grows over time, or at least at three months and counting I certainly hope it does. As we learn more about what we can do as we get to know our child and adapt to their changing needs, and as we develop relationships with their childcare, preschool, and their school staff. There are lots of strategies you can use to help your children's learning, and they change as your child moves through preschool through to school.

Being interested and focusing on building confidence is more important than necessarily knowing the answers in any individual task, or helping them, or doing their homework assignment for them. Being interested, knowing what they're learning, making connections to things in daily life, listening to their stories from their

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school, and following their interests, are simple but utterly meaningful ways that you can be involved in your child's education.

Now, Parents in Education Week, or PiE Week, as the notes that always come to me always call it, is an opportunity for parents to get this kind of practical advice about how you can support your child's learning. PiE Week events are based on understanding that the greatest outcomes for children are achieved where there's a holistic and integrated response taken to all aspects of children's development and to assist parents in this most important role.

This year's Week has taken on board feedback from previous years about the particular issues that parents who have been involved have been eager to learn more about. Tonight's presentation will address one of the key topics that comes up time and time again, and parents want knowledge and support around, and that is, of course, children and technology. While technology and screen time offer a lot of benefits in terms of access to information and resources, there's also challenges, and parents are often faced with conflicting information about the benefits and drawbacks of children's technology use.

I understand that some of the themes that tonight's presentation are going to cover include the benefits of digital learning, but how much is too much in a world where children's technology use is increasing? How the increasing technology use affects young children's social and emotional development and their health? How parents can work with educators and professionals to help their child develop positive behaviours around digital media, and how to balance children's use of technology with physical activity and live face-to-face, what we call real-world interactions?

I'm not going to talk much longer now because I know everyone is actually here to hear from our experts, and looking forward to the presentations, as well as, of course, sharing views and, in particular, questions later on in the evening. We're continuing to strengthen this important partnership between families, educators, the Education Department, and children and young people themselves. I want to take a moment to thank all of the people, all the staff and volunteers who've been involved in developing the PiE Week program, with such a high calibre of presenters to talk about matters that relate to all parents across the state, and are of interest to our educators and practitioners as well.

I'd like to introduce you now to your emcee for the night, Jodie Benveniste. Jodie is a psychologist, parenting speaker, and author of four parenting books. They're available, I'm sure. You can google them to find out more. She helps parents to connect more deeply to themselves and their children to create a family life based on love and understanding. I'm going to leave you in Jodie's capable hands to commence the evening's excellent discussion, and I'm looking forward to being here for a little bit longer and then following the remainder of the evening on the YouTube

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channel as many people are at home. Thank you very much, Jodie, and have a wonderful evening.

[applause]

Jodie Benveniste: Welcome, everybody. Thank you, Minister, for the introduction. I'm Jodie Benveniste, a psychologist and parenting author, and really, really pleased to be here this week to be your host for another Parents in Education Week. We have three amazing topics, fantastic speakers planned for the entire week. Tonight we're going to be focusing on how to live positively in a digital world. As the minister has mentioned, this is a really important topic which I know many families struggle with. We understand the benefits of technology but there can be so many battles in our homes around this issue, so we're going to get the lowdown tonight from our two experts.

Now, before we actually get into it, we are allowed to use some technology tonight for our own benefit. I'm going to ask you, if you're in the room, if you're at home, or if you're in one of our venues, you're allowed to pull out your phone now, and to connect to the Wi-Fi here in the room, or if you're at a venue, that your hosts there will be able to tell you about Wi-Fi access. If you're at home, I'm sure you know what to do. We are going to use a little bit of technology called Slido. Once you've got the Wi-Fi up and running, you can go to your browser and type in slido.com. Hopefully we've got the information up there on the screen.

We're going to use Slido tonight for you to ask any questions, to make any comments. If you have any brilliant ideas or burning questions as we go through tonight, just type away so that you don't forget it, and we will get to them at the end, as many questions as possible at the end of the evening. We're also going to use Slido to take a couple of polls. We're going to begin just to make sure the technology is working. Once you're onto Slido, you do need to add in our code, event code, and that is #piewkdigital, and that'll give you access to our space to ask questions.

To make sure it's working, we're going to do is do a quick test poll, and the question is, which best describes where you live? You just click one answer based on where you live. We'll just make sure it's working, and then I'm going to introduce you to our speakers. Here we go. We get live answers. North's winning at the moment. Regional, we've got lots of regional people, that's fantastic. Excellent. Okay, so our speakers, our presenters will be giving you a couple of more polls throughout the evening, so look out for those, but also, as I said, if you've got any questions you want to ask, please post them on Slido.

Okay. Let's get into it. I would love to introduce you to our two speakers tonight. They've come from WA and Victoria. We have, first of all, Linda Cranley, who has been lecturing at the University of Notre Dame, and is currently primary degree coordinator, course coordinator for HASS, and a senior lecturer across several

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pedagogical units. She's presented parent information workshops since '93, so for a very long time, and continues to deliver quality programs for parents across a wide range of topics. She's presented at several international, national, and state-wide conferences, and is an engaging presenter. Her trademark is to ensure a hands-on focus with real-life application and strategies, which is perfect for tonight.

We also have Genevieve Johnson, who began teaching at the tertiary level in 2003 at the University of Melbourne in the Faculty of Education. She's currently a lecturer in education at La Trobe University, where she coordinates and delivers primary and also early education subjects. She was nominated for Teacher of the Year several times by parents, and over her career has hosted numerous parent information workshops. Her focus is to deliver real-life takeaway strategies. Again, perfect, we have the perfect two speakers here this evening. Please join me in welcoming Linda and Genevieve.

[applause]

Linda Cranley: Thank you very much, Jodie, for that great introduction. I'd also like to welcome you all here tonight and to the online audience, and just say that you are very welcome and we're very excited to be here tonight, to be in Adelaide. This is my first time in Adelaide. I'm really loving your beautiful city. It does remind me of Perth a lot. We are really happy to be here tonight.

As you've just heard, Genevieve and I are both lecturers, we're researchers, we're primary educators, we've been primary school teachers, but most importantly for tonight's purpose, we are mums. We are mums with kids from ages from 10 to 18. We are living your life, we have lived your life, we've gone through the issues, a lot of the issues that you've faced, we've questioned ourselves in the way that our own children have used technology. What we want to present to you tonight is not a shame-fest, is not something to make you feel guilty about, and think, "Oh no, this is what I've been doing. Oh no, I've done the wrong thing." That's not what it's about.

We're going to try and educate you and inform you about what digital technology can actually do to our children, what it can do to their brain development, but also, the positives that digital technology has brought into our lives and into our children's lives, and give you some strategies to think about, "Well, how can I make this work for me? How can this all work?" This is not a negative feel. This is not to make you feel guilty. We are all parents and we are all doing the best we can, and we just want to help you along in that journey.

Basically, the themes for tonight of the session are these three. I want to give you a little bit of a context, a little bit of a background about what is digital technology. What does it mean? What does screen time look like? What are screens? Just a little bit of information. Talk about how do we deal with this in a balanced approach? What we need to do, we do need technology, we do need to be able to manoeuvre

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through digital life, but how do we balance that? How do we make sure it's not too much? How do we protect our kids from the dangers? How do we balance it up with a good happy relationship in our family and also make sure that all of their physical needs are being met?

It's also, tonight, about relationships. It's about the relationships that children form with their peers through digital technology, but most importantly, I think the relationships that we are forming in our families with our children, and how is that being affected by digital technology. Finally, it's no use telling you all of that and then you walk out of here feeling informed but not empowered, okay? We want to give you some strategies that you can actually implement when the techno tantrum is occurring, what do I do? How do I deal with that? How do I balance this all up? Hopefully we deliver on these themes tonight.

I think sometimes, if you're anything like me, you feel like you've walked into a different country. You're negotiating around a completely different place, and you're kind of right. On this new planet, there are two types of people, there are the immigrants, and there are the natives. Unfortunately, we are the immigrants. If you were born before 1980, you are an immigrant, and I was born just a little bit before that, not too much, not a lot.

Like any immigrant going into a new country, you have those same feelings of trepidation. You're a little bit worried. "I don't know what this is all about. I have a little bit of the language, I have a few of the words, but I don't have a lot of the language." I'm going to approach this like with a little bit, "I need a map, where's the map? Not a Google map. Where's the hard map? How do I move around this new world? "As an immigrant, sometimes we're a little bit like, "Oh, scared, what's going on here." This is where the disconnect is with our beautiful natives, and natives are our children, okay? Our children and our children's children. They are the ones that are born into this. They are very connected with technology. They are able to go full speed ahead. I don't know about you, but if you ever seen a very young child open a new piece of technology, bang, open, in, on, it's happening, I'm on.

What? I can't open the box, like I'm screaming for someone to help me with the box. I don't know about you, but I am constantly calling up to my 18-year-old son. I'm so thrilled that he turned 18 last year, you know why? Because now he's old enough to deal with all the internet companies. We were to change internet providers, great, off you go. He's like, "I'm trying to look for this best speed, I'm trying to look for this." "I don't know what you're talking about mate, you go ahead," right?

I don't know about you, but I can sometimes not even turn the TV on. Why are there so many remotes? Why are there so many of these things? Which one do I push? You got to push that one, that one, that one, oh for goodness sake. For them, it's so easy, they're born into it, it's their language, it's their world. They're not afraid to go into their own world and take risks, we are. This is about kind of moving that

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disconnect a little bit, I've gone the wrong way, sorry. This is about kind of bridging that disconnect that sometimes we feel with our kids. The way that we can bridge that is to make sure that we're sharing it with them, okay? Don't feel like you don't know about what's going on, you don't know this new world. We can learn, we can learn with them, they are always going to feel a little bit more comfortable than we are.

The positive that we have about that is we are aware of the pitfalls of technology, natives, not so much. They're really confident in this country, they're really confident in this world. I can push that, I can do that, I can go there, what does it mean? Whereas as parents, what's our role? Is to guide them, is to avoid the pitfalls. Sure, to understand all of the great things that technology have but also what are some of the pitfalls that you have to be aware of. We have to keep them safe.

I think we all just need to calm down a little bit as well, and understand that change is something that has been happening forever. As humans, it's an innate human quality to want to avoid change, to be a little bit scared of change, to not understand new technology and what is that going to bring.

I don't know about you, but I can remember the microwave, can anyone remember the microwave coming in? Well, it was going to kill us all, wasn't it? "Don't stand so close to the microwave, the radiation is going to get you." My mum, I'm telling you, for about 20 years would not have a microwave, "It's no good, it's going to kill you, it's going to kill you. You wait and see, it'll kill you." It doesn't kill you, she has a microwave, she uses it every day as we all do. Technology, even though at first can be very scary for us because we're apprehensive about what will this new technology do to our lives? How will it affect our lives? Often, it makes our lives so much easier, and it brings to us so many different things.

It's really important to understand that new technology can be a great thing. Think about the internet about 20 years ago, again, we had no idea how that was going to change our life. I remember my son was born 18 years ago, makes sense if he's 18. On the way home from the hospital was the first time my husband and I bought a computer.

Some of you young people are there thinking, are you crazy, what are you talking about, you never had a computer. Right. We never had a computer in the house. Technology has moved really, really fast. 20 years ago was the first time that a computer was brought into my home, and some of you will recall this, you know the krrsh dial-up. The cord that went from the kitchen right back to the study because that was the only way, you couldn't talk on the phone and use the internet, right?

Things have moved forward. Now, you wouldn't be without the internet. You can't really go into many careers without actually attaining the skills of using the Internet. What we have to understand is this is how our children gain their information. This is

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how they learn. They learn through the internet. What I guess is scary for us is that they have more access to information more than ever before. What's our role? To make sure they can deal with the access to this information. That they're not accessing information that is inappropriate for their little and for their emotional intelligence and their social well-being. That is our role. It's a scary thing because they are getting so much information.

Okay. Let's just think about screen time. Because some of us might think, "Oh, screen time, great. Yes, they're on the computer. Yes, my kids are on the computer a bit, but it's pretty good, it's okay." Think about screen time. Screen time is watching television, watching a DVD, think about cars now that have DVD players in the car where they can watch a DVD on the way to and from somewhere. Thinking about using computers and accessing online entertainment, playing games, texting. Now, you think about your day and I am going to actually confess something right now.

This morning I woke up, the first thing I did was I grabbed my iPad to check my emails for work, okay, great, I did that. Then I grabbed my phone to see what was going on at home, if anyone needed me at home. Then I thought, "I'm just going to turn on the TV and watch the news." I caught myself. I thought, "You do not need three screens in the matter of half an hour, you really don't, okay? It's become such a natural part of our life. Screen, to screen, to screen, to screen, to screen. Okay?

Why I want to put this slide up is to make you think, "How many screens does my kid need to go through each day?" If you really start to think about it, you start becoming aware that wow, they're on a lot of screens. Think about texting, think about using the phone, so being aware and setting time limits, and saying, "Oh, hang on a minute, we don't need to go three screens in half an hour."

I think most of you are here today, tonight, it's night, and online, because of this. What is going on? I'm so overwhelmed. I get so much conflicting information. The media is constantly telling me how bad the internet is for my child, how bad screen time is for my children. We're sitting here as parents going, "Well, what's right? I'm so confused, I'm so overwhelmed, I'm scared. Am I endangering my child? Is something going to happen?" Right?

The actual truth of it is, is a lot of research tells us the positives of Technology, but as really busy parents, we don't have time to sift through all the research and do all of the readings, so what do we count on, the media. What's in front of us, what's on the news, what's on the newspaper. We're constantly looking at that, going, "Okay, well, that must be the right thing." Tonight is really hopefully about a little bit of myth-busting for you as well.

Giving you the information about, look, what is it doing to my child and how can I use it positively? It is an absolute truth to say that technology is changing our children, it's changing childhood. If you think back to your childhood, if I asked you now to

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close your eyes and have a think about a childhood memory, what would your memory be? Think about where you are, what are you doing, who are you with? If you think about playing at home, what were you playing with? It changes the way that children play. If I think back, I think back being outside putting my mum through a concert with a tennis racquet, sitting on a stool, thinking I was Frida from ABBA and just belting out, "I do, I do, I do." Okay. If my kids think back to their childhood memories, I think it's going to be very different. I think it's going to involve some kind of technology.

It is changing the way that we bring up our kids. It's changing the way that children are playing, and we know that play is the most important thing that very young children can do. We're going to talk about now the different types of screen time, and how we can use that, and what that is actually doing to our children.

Genevieve Johnson: All right. Actually Linda still does play, I mean, tennis racquet. She still plays for her long-suffering mother, and still loves ABBA. All right. We can divide screen time into two types of screen time. We have passive screen time, and Linda has already described some of those. Things such as TV, watching TV, watching a DVD, watching YouTube, or watching your friend, or your brother, or sister game, looking over their shoulder while they are gaming on a device, playing a game.

Passive screen time has been linked to increased obesity. The hours spent on passive screen time are directly proportionate to children's weight. There is also an increase in eating in passive screen time, when they're just watching something, which obviously leads to an increased caloric intake. When children are passive and they're watching television or watching a screen, everything is sort of shut down, but the weight increases. Passive screen time is particularly detrimental to children zero to two. Early exposure to passive screen time shows by the age of seven children have increased attentional issues, and decreased cognitive development, decreased mathematical proficiency, decreased reading comprehension, and decreased short-term memory skills, less language development, and less opportunities for vocab development. Passive screen time is something that perhaps is best taken in moderation.

Active screen time is divided also into two types, there's cognitively active screen time, and physically active screen time. The physically active screen time, I don't know if people remember the Wii Sports, where you could actually play tennis, or do Just Dance, those sorts of things, or the controllers actually give you sensory information. You're actually physically active with the screen. Some television shows ask children to get up and move as well.

Cognitively, active screen time is things such as games of strategy, problem-solving games, problem-solving activities, children's homework, that sort of thing, looking up information or that sort of thing. There are two different types of screen time.

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Now, active screen time has been shown to advance, or it's shown to enhance academic ability, it decreases absenteeism in school, it decreases negative classroom behaviours, and there is an increased capacity for children to attend visually, and increase problem-solving and strategizing. They're the two different types of screen time.

Up on the screen right now are some potential negative effects of screen time. You can have a look through those. What Linda just mentioned before, the thing we have to remember is that children learn through playing. There are various stages of play, which we won't go into now, but play helps children develop across all of the domains of development. Social-emotionally, physically, cognitively, morally. It helps them engage with themselves, with others, it helps them learn all about their social-emotional development, but screens are actually becoming the way children play and engage.

Interestingly, the other day I said to my son who's 10, "Darling, why don't you just go up to someone's house up the road and just knock on his door and see if he wants to play?" "Mama, I can't do that." "Why?" "You don't just go to someone's house and knock on the door and ask if they want to play." "What?" "No, you can play with them on PlayStation and you get a party together on PlayStation, but going and knocking on someone's door." I thought, "Oh my goodness. I'm so old. I'm so far away from that."

Anyway. It was very funny. I shushed him out the door and said, "When I was a kid, we had one thing to play with and that was called outside, so off you go." It was very interesting to see that that's something that's in children's heads, that they just think that that's playing, and coming around to people's houses is about bringing your iPad and playing with an iPad. Screens are becoming the way that children play and engage, and this is impacting on children's development across those domains. We'll have a look just at the pointer here. We'll talk about the digital drug in a moment. Just to this one over here.

Children don't understand the subtlety behind what's on the screen. They don't understand the psychology behind it. They don't understand the marketing that's going behind what they're seeing. They don't understand the algorithm, the algorithm that brings up another thing that they'll be interested in. "Hey, this computer annoys me. This is magic." My daughter, who's 14, who only seems to get feeds about putting on makeup, and yet thinks, "Wow, this is good. This is great." It's very limiting. It starts to limit. That's something that we need to be aware of, that if we can limit this screen time we're going to expand the opportunities to do other things.

All right. Now, for some science. My children will roll their eyes now because this is how I live at home, telling them about science. This is what I want for you. I actually want you to say, "Well, actually I'm not doing this because I'm mean, I'm not turning

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the screen off because I'm mean. I'm doing this because I know you, I love you, my child, and I want you to understand why I'm not allowing you to have excessive screen time," it'd be good if I stopped hitting that, "excessive screen time, or it's time to turn it off." This is a fun fact which I really love, and that is that the brain named itself. I like that fact, it named itself. The brain continues to find out about itself, and it's creating artificial intelligence which will eventually put itself out of a job.

The brain is the only unfinished organ at birth. At conception, we're really only a single-celled organism, but by birth, there are a hundred billion nerve cells. By birth, the brain is 25% of the adult weight, and that increases to 75% by the time that they are two. By six years old, the brain is 95% of the adult weight. You can see that in those critical few years the brain, it's just optimal time for its development. In middle childhood, brain development is slow and steady. During adolescence, there is intense brain development, which has only recently been discovered, that there's intense brain development, which is a real opportunity to be laying down incredibly rich and complex brain architecture and brain structure. That's brain activity that has not been seen outside of infancy. It's just this incredible opportunity for brain development to occur. The brain is fully developed at 25, and

that continues throughout the lifespan.

There's extensive evidence to show that the early years are the optimum time for brain development. Early brain development impacts on everything. Learning, behaviour, physical and mental development, emotional development. As parents and carers, it's really important for us to understand brain architecture and how the environment impacts on brain development. We're going to look at a clip now which is from Harvard. It is American, but it's very simple and it just explains how the environment that the child is surrounded by or lives in actually impacts brain development, actually creates brain development. Click.

[music]

Narrator: A child's experiences during the earliest years of life have a lasting impact on the architecture of the developing brain. Genes provide the basic blueprint, but experiences shape the process that determines whether a child's brain will provide a strong or weak foundation for all future learning, behaviour, and health. During this important period of brain development, billions of brain cells called neurons send electrical signals to communicate with each other. These connections form circuits that become the basic foundation of brain architecture. Circuits and connections proliferate at a rapid pace and are reinforced through repeated use.

Our experiences and environment dictate which circuits and connections get more use. Connections that are used more grow stronger and more permanent. Meanwhile, connections that are used less fade away through a normal process called pruning. Well-used circuits create lightning-fast pathways for neural signals to

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travel across regions of the brain. Simple circuits form first, providing a foundation for more complex circuits to build on later. Through this process, neurons form strong circuits and connections for emotions, motor skills, behavioural control, logic, language, and memory during the early critical period of development.

With repeated use, these circuits become more efficient and connect to other areas of the brain more rapidly. While they originate in specific areas of the brain, the circuits are interconnected. You can't have one type of skill without the others to support it. Like building a house, everything is connected, and what comes first forms a foundation for all that comes later.

Genevieve: All right. Sorry. I'll just go back. No, I don't want to do that. It's really important for us to remember that the environment that the child is in is creating the brain. It's creating what the child can and does do. Very important for us in terms of this digital world that we're living in. To actually understand brain architecture is quite, and brain development, is a skill that it's actually really useful. I know I use it with my children, they roll their eyes but they do understand.

When your little one was a baby, there was a process that you use called serve and return. When the child actually made contact with a gurgle, with a burp, with a giggle, with a whatever it was, you replay that to them, and there was then they did it back, and so on, and that's how the brain begins to develop at the beginning, and we've all done. The baby goes, "Ooh," and you go, "Ooh," and it's just so beautiful. It's the same, and it just, for that infant, up until they're two, three, four, five, and even now, you're constantly, when your child is older, you're constantly reinforcing and surrounding them with your model, your space, your time. That's creating neural pathways.

Now, the more times a neural pathway is visited, the stronger it becomes, it's a bit like a track in the bush. The more times that you visit it, the easier the track becomes. Those tracks that you don't use anymore, those neural pathways you don't need anymore, for example, during middle childhood, there's a lot of pruning of the brain, literally pruning of the brain, and that just falls away. We'll have a look here now at what happens when we engage in screen time. If we go back to think about passive screen time and active screen time.

Information is input, we get the input, and the subconscious doesn't really understand that this isn't real, so it automatically triggers the body's stress response, it's time to flee or time to fight. That activates the endocrine system and the limbic systems which turn on this fight-or-flight response, and everything is on high alert. If you look here at the, here we go, the thalamus here.

The thalamus is located in the brain stem and that receives and relays incoming information, and then it sends it to the various parts of the brain. It's really fired up in interactive play or active screen time. It's really fired up there. The hippocampus is

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part of the limbic system, and that regulates emotion and behaviour. You can see here that that is on, again, really fired up, it's all of this emotion, all of the feelings and everything that these games are, or whatever they're seeing on the screen is activating in them.

The caudate at the top there is the reward centre, and that's been possibly what people have heard about, that's the reward system that releases dopamine, and that's the digital drug, that's the reward system, that's the part where you start to crave, you want that hit, you want that dopamine hit, dopamine is fantastic. You feel really great, that, yes, it's getting the win in Fortnight, it's beating Donkey Kong at Mario Kart, it's all those things. It's about that reward system and getting it.

You can see in passive screen time that those states are less heightened. However, they are still being triggered. It's really important that we understand this distress response. What happens when the endocrine system is activated? The body goes, all sorts of things happen. The breathing becomes shallower, so that more oxygen can get to the body. The liver creates glucose so that there's more energy. The heart pumps faster so the blood pressure goes up. There's all sorts of physical and physiological things happening to the little body.

It's really important. You might think, well, before you might be thinking, "Well, I'll just put my child on active screens. That'll be good for them." While in actual fact it's not, because you don't want this heightened stress response all the time, you can't live in that way, you have to give the body time for all those systems to close down to relax and to just, for the child just to be without this worry, and without these.

The stress response is-- so it's not healthy to have that all the time, and studies have shown us about dopamine dependency, and that anger and withdrawal when the children are denied that game, denied it. They want that hit. That's that anger, that's that tantrum that should not be happening in children who are in their early teens, or teenage years, or wherever don't have tantrums, after two usually, but it's happening because they want that dopamine hit.

All right, let's think about what excessive on-screen time can do. Even the word excessive, we know it's excessive, it's too much. Anything is excessive, it's too much. Too much screen time, what does it do? Well, it affects the structure and the function of the brain. These effects occur over time, and this has been described as screen addiction, screen compulsion, screen habit. Psychologist, Dr. Dunkley, described it calling it electronic screen syndrome. These effects relate to emotional processing, cognitive control, and attention and decision-making. The most affected area is in the frontal lobe, and this largely determines success in every area of life, so it's very important that we know about this.

Now, studies on excessive screen time have mostly been done on young teens, but these show these various effects that are on the screen here now. Cravings and the

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dopamine, we've already talked about that. The impaired cognitive functioning, impaired information processing. They're just not actually being, they're not actually able to understand and cope with and comprehend everything that's going on around them, because their cognitive functioning is being impaired by spending too much time on the screen. The cortical is the outer layer of the brain, and excessive screen time reduces cognitive task ability.

Damaged white matter. Neuroscience has shown that, so white matter allows communication between different parts of the brain and different areas of the brain, but what's happening is that, research is showing, that there are spots, and lesions, and gaps in that as the children play too much, and that causes misfiring of information. The message just can't get through because it's damaged, the wires are damaged if you like. There's misfiring between the cognitive and the survival or emotions that we need for functioning.

Gray matter atrophy. If something atrophies, it means it's just either shrinking, and that's what's happening to the brains of children who use screens excessively. The grey matter, that's what helps us get stuff done. That's what we need. That's what the grey matter does. Too much screen time affects brain development and impacts overall volume of the brain, it affects the capacity for empathy and compassion, and it lowers the suppression of socially acceptable responses and reactions. Linda is going to talk a bit much-- I've just bamboozled you then with all sorts of things about how bad it is, but Linda is going to talk about, well, you know what? How much is too much?

Linda: Okay. After looking at excessive screen time, a question you're probably asking yourself, what is excessive screen time? How much is too much? I think that's a question that we all ask within our families. Just looking at the guidelines from the National Physical Activity Guidelines, this is what they suggest, this is an Australian suggestion. That from zero to two, as Gen has already said, that's when most of the brain development is happening. 85% of the brain is developing during that time. What we really want is no screen time, okay?

We know that digital and electronic games are actually affecting the way that children learn language, and that makes sense because the way that they're hearing it is the way that they're learning it. I can see a few faces out there thinking, "Oh my God." Do not freak out, it's okay, we are all human and we are all normal. If you have been using screen time with your zero to two, if you absolutely insist that you think you have to, at least do it in co-viewing so that you are talking through what is going on on the screen with your child. Really very, very little to no screen time is what we really suggest to allow their brains to develop correctly. Two to five-year-olds, we suggest one hour a day.

What we want to think about in there is the techno tantrums. They're caused by the withdrawal of that dopamine, so not getting that hit. We want to reduce the amount

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of time that they're actually getting that hit, so you've got to set time limits. You want to avoid using technology as the digital pacifier. Now, we've all been there, and we all know that to shut a two-year-old up, or shut a child up who's tantruming in the supermarket you can give them a phone, you can give them a screen and they will instantly be quiet, but we also know the effects of that is not always great. Trying not to use technology as a digital pacifier to always reduce the situation.

Also, think about the way you've got the TV on all the time. I don't know. I used to live in an open planned house, and it used to actually drive me crazy because the TV was on and everyone's living their lives, and the TV is always on, and there's often inappropriate information coming out of the TV. Nothing that you've let anyone's actually chosen to watch, but it's kind of on in the background. That's a really good little strategy. Turn off the TV. Turn off that noise, and let kids listen to speech, listen to speaking, listen to you and your family speaking to each other. It's really important. It's so easy just to have that background white noise all of the time.

No screen times in the bedroom. I'm going to talk about that a little bit more, but really do not put a screen in the bedroom, particularly for children of that age. We must monitor. We have to know what they're doing, we have to be able to see where they're going, where they think in their world that they think they know so well where are they going? No screens in the bedroom. We definitely need to monitor that.

Five to eight, the suggested is less than two hours per day, or five to 17. Think about, if they're using that, to use the technology really well. When you are actually choosing the apps and choosing the technology that children of this age group actually are downloading, make sure that you're looking at them carefully. Make sure that they're apps that you praise sparingly. As Gen said, that's the digital drug. That is where they get the hit. Because constantly they're been taught, oh, you're so clever, you got to the next bit. Oh, you're so amazing, you get to the next bit.

They're constantly looking for that extrinsic motivation, that extrinsic praise. It's really important to choose your apps very carefully. Don't allow children just to download apps, and we'll talk about them. Don't give passwords, don't do those kinds of things. You have to be in control of what they're using. Eight to 12-year-olds, I'm just breaking up the last one because I think that there's different parameters between five and eight, and eight to 12-year-olds. I think you have to be really careful at this age group of not rushing into social media.

Now, I know that us immigrants would like me to stand up here and say to you all, get rid of all the social media, get rid of Facebook, get rid of Instagram, get rid of Snapchat, get rid of it all, but to say that to natives is like cutting off their social being. It's like cutting off their arms and saying, "Well, don't actually engage with your peers anymore. Don't find out what's going on in life." What we have to do is we have to teach them how to use it correctly. We have to put some parameters in place.

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Something that I've read about in doing the research for this presentation is quite a new social media, and it's called Kuddle with a K. It was actually designed by a parent in Norway, they got together and they thought, "Well, how can do this? We can't just say to kids, no Instagram, no Facebook, no nothing, that's it." Because they're going to use it, and they need to use it. Kuddle is Instagram that is monitored by parents. You do the signing up to it, you actually get emails and notifications every time your child posts something, you know who they are friending, those kind of things. I think it's a really good system in order for you to monitor what's happening. Some of the kids in here are looking at me and want to stab me, I think.

I think it's really important that as parents we know what's going on. In my own personal situation, my kids aren't massively into Facebook, but when he was about 16 or 17, he wanted to have Facebook, and I said, "You can have Facebook, but these are the parameters. I'm a friend. I have to be your friend. You have to accept my friend request, and you also have to have your Auntie, your cousin, you have these people." Then you know what's going on. I tell this to my students, and they go, "He's just got another Facebook page." I do have spies. I do have my niece who's nearly his age who's also friends him everywhere. You really need to put these parameters. We need to know what's going on with social media.

We need more importantly to teach our kids how to use social media. What the effects of that world are. How you are engaging with people that you don't really know. I think as a parent, that's terrifying, isn't it? Put parameters in place so you can see what's going on. I think the idea of really looking at how much screen time is too much screen time happens when you feel like screen time is interfering with your life, or interfering with your child's life, interfering with your family's life, that's when you need to sit down and put time limits and parameters together and decide what is the right thing to do.

I'm going to show you some strategies actually to be able to do that and get a third party involved so you're not always the big bad wolf. Something that the minister said in his opening speech has really resonated, I hope, throughout this presentation, and it's this, trust yourself. You've got this. Approach this with confidence. Nobody knows your child better than you do. You have known your child before they were born. You innately know what they need. You love them more than anything in the world. You want the best for them. You want them to succeed. You want them to be happy, and you want them to have an amazing life. Trust yourself, you really have got this. Your gut is right.

If you think they've been on that screen too long, they've been on that screen too long. It's really about trusting your judgment and knowing that-- I often say to my students that I lecture to, I am a different educator from being a parent. I sometimes think about the advice as a 20-year-old that I told parents about how to deal with children, and now I just freak out. Because, of course, having your own children, it's

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very different. The things that I used to tell parents that used to come to me for advice, I wouldn't say now because now as a parent it's very different.

As a teacher, sometimes, and as a young teacher, sometimes you feel like you know that child better than the parent. "Oh, they're just whinging about their parent. Oh, here they come again complaining." I always say to my pre-service teachers who are becoming teachers. You do not know that child better than the parent. Nobody knows that child better than the parent. Nobody wants better for that child than the parent, so listen. I'm saying to you, listen to yourself. Think about it like this. Did you feed your child today? Did you pack a lunch for tomorrow? Did you pack-- Some of you are thinking, "No, actually I just walked out to get here, so I don't know what they've eaten. I think they're having fish and chips or a packet of chips."

We have been feeding and raising our children for a long time. You get it. What do you put on their plate? What do you think about when you're feeding them? You think, "Well, hang on, I need loads of really good things. I need vegetables. I need whole meal stuff. I need fruit. They need all of these great things in order." Look on that balanced healthy diet, there are a couple of M&M's there, and no one's going to die. No one is going to go off the edge or get diabetes because they've eaten three M&M's with a very healthy lunch. Think about that.

Your life, your digital life with your children as a digital plate. What do we need on this digital plate? What do we need? We need some outside time, we need a lot of outside time. We need some exercise because we know obesity is becoming an epidemic in our country, so we need outside time. We need some writing and academic time. Physically writing. One of the things I love about my daughter so much is that she loves to write with a pencil and a pad. I don't know why, but she loves it. She feels like she can express herself better. My son just finished his A term at HSC, I'm not sure the equivalent, and he did all of his notes in colour with a pen and paper, because we know that the brain works differently when we do that. It's really important to encourage them to actually get some colours and write, and do some physical writing.

We need to read. We need to listen to stories. I'm going to push that at the end big time. It's really important that we're still engaging with literature, and that we're allowing kids to read. Kids don't like to read anymore. Why don't they like to read? Why would you, when you can have a screen hitting you in the face, entertaining you at a great fast pace, read a book, ugh. We have to encourage the love of reading again, it's really important.

We need some musical instrument time. Some music time. We need sleep. Hence no screens in the bedroom. These kids here I'm telling you they're giving me the daggers. No screens in the bedroom because we don't know what's going on. We turn it off. We're going to talk about how do we turn it off at night. We need to eat healthily. We need to get in touch with nature. We need to play with our animals. We

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need to connect with our families. We need to connect with our friends, and we don't always need to connect with our friends digitally. We need to talk to our friends. I think sometimes if you think about a really easy way of doing that, and it's something, I don't know if it's a lost art, is dinner time at the dinner table. Sit down and have dinner at the dinner table every night. I can see all of you going-- Okay. "I get it. I'm a working mum, I work full time, I've got teenagers, it's fast, it's furious, I don't know who's home," but make time to sit at the dinner table, not in front of the TV.

Gen and I love it sometimes we say it, "T's on these tonight." Yes, that's a treat, t's on these, we can watch TV and eat your dinner, but most of the time sit at the table and face off. Now, I'll tell you what will happen, there'll be silence for a while because guess what, we've forgotten how to look at each other and talk and eat at the same time. It's a really easy way to get that on your digital plate, sit at a table and eat together, and have a conversation, not with your phone, not with everyone with their phone.

You got out for dinner, I don't know about you, the first thing my husband will say is, "Put the phones away." Because we sit down at a restaurant, bang, everything comes out, "Put it away, look at me." Looking at each other is really important. What I'm trying to say to you is don't panic. You really have got this. Your gut, your innate feeling, your love, and your care for your child is the most important, and when you think of it like that, you can do this. You can do this. You know how to feed them, you know how to give them the right amounts of digital technology.

Gen talked about all of the negative elements that happens with our brain and some of the negative parts, but guess what, it's not all bad, because digital technologies can do some positive things. I'm the bright, I'm a happy optimist, optimistic one. She's the negative. She's the one who's gonna give you all the bad news. I give you the good news.

Some of the things that using technology can do is it can create a sense of belonging, so it can support a child's development by encouraging inclusivity and promote parent engagement. Do it, use technology with the children. If you do that, you're breaking down those barriers, and you're actually [unintelligible 01:16:00] at having conversations. I often will talk to my kids about what they're doing, what is the game, what's happening, who's that, what's that character, what does he do? They play some stupid game about cooking, it's a whole thing about cooking and I go, "What's going on?" Have those conversations, talk about TV, things on TV. Try every now and then to watch a documentary and tell it to them, "They will not die by watching a documentary."

Better encourages better eye-hand coordination because when they're looking on a screen, they're following objectives. I told you, kids, I'm in your corner now, so this is where you should be with me. I'm telling the good stuff. They can actually follow the

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screen so it's really good hand-eye coordination. EBooks, stories online they can promote school readiness and make improve language skills. Now, when Flynn was very little and the internet just came out, and computers just came in, I would allow him to use-- Do you remember, anyone, CDs, CD-ROMs that you put into the computer, anyone with me? That's all we had. We didn't have access to the Internet.

I would choose the games that he could play or the educational, being a teacher, they were all very educational, and he would sit there happily and play them and go on his merry way. What I didn't realize, I'm a teacher, been a teacher 15 years, for 30 years now, but at the time for about 15 years, I didn't realize that he was teaching himself to read, and I promise you it was through the CD-ROMs. How did I find out? One day, my sister picked him up from kindies, he would have been about four, and he said he was sitting in the back, all strapped up, and he said, "Auntie Grace, we've got a Pupil Free Day this week." She said, "Have you, Flynn? How do you know that? Did your teacher tell you?" He said, "No, I just read it in the newsletter."

Honestly, that was the biggest surprise to me. All of those CD-ROMs, the digital games had actually taught himself to read well enough to read a newsletter and be able to see what was in it. Do you see what I'm saying? You've got to choose your technology right. If you choose the technology right, it can have great benefits, it can help language skills, and it can do all of these great things. It can allow you to connect with family and friends that live overseas, so making connections through Skype, through FaceTime, seeing people and keeping those relationships really great. It's amazing.

Last year, it always has to be a story about me somewhere in it, but last year we went to Italy. I went to Italy with my whole entire family because my niece, for some reason, decided she was going to get married in Italy. She does not live in Italy, she's never been to Italy, but for some reason, she was going to get married in Italy. Off we all went to Italy with my mum and dad back to their town. There was the whole family. It was amazing, reconnecting with family.

Why I'm telling you this story? It's because since we've come back, now my dad is 85 and has no idea-- He has a phone and he never uses it. He doesn't know to use it. He has no texting on it, nothing. I picked it up the other day and it had 425 texts from my dad. I don't know. I don't know what they are. I don't know. He's not dealing with it, but since we've come back, he's managed to keep in contact with his family every time we've had a birthday, every time we've had a family arrangement. We've had WhatsApp. He's Facetiming people. He's, "Hello, I can see. I can see you." It's really been amazing even at that end thinking about children keeping in touch. My parents are able to keep in touch with their brothers and their family in another country, so that's a real positive, isn't it?

Digital technology can be great. It can encourage creativity through blogs, animations, videos, photos. Photos assist really well with self-identity, so having lots

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of photos. The problem, of course, with digital photos, I don't know about you, but who prints them? Now they're on my phone about 3,400 photos on my phone, but I haven't quite managed to print many of them. Printing them out and telling stories through photos is fantastic.

Digital technology really allows kids to problem-solve. They're thinking about the next level, trying to get to the next level, they're trying to solve the problem. It actually really develops that kind of idea of solving a problem. It can, also, develop skills and talents. Sometimes they can find things that they didn't even know. For example, my daughter plays the guitar, the electric guitar with a massive amp, so it's really, really great. What she does do, through digital technology, she started to write her own songs. She's able to mix things and it's given her a passion for it and she's thinking, "Yes, this might be something that I might be interested in doing." It can really do that.

It can expand horizon. You can visit any other place in the world. There's a great thing called Google Hangouts, and I don't know if any of you know it, but through Google Hangouts, you can visit anyone. You can visit the Atlanta zoo and find out that they're getting pandas next week. You can engage with people in Asian countries because Asia is really easy to engage with because we have similar time frames. You can visit NASA and see what's going on there. It does expand our horizons.

Also, Google Maps. Google Maps is an incredibly fantastic geographical digital app that, of course, all of us can find our way around, but it, also, can help us around the world. When we got dropped off, we got dropped in Florence, in the middle of Florence, and the guy, the taxi driver said, "Off you go. Go and find your hotel." We just looked in a circle. Luckily, I had looked on Google Maps before we left and I found the Sephora. You got it girls? Sephora, the makeup shop? As soon as I turned around and I saw Sephora, I knew that the hotel was on top of that Sephora, so it's kind of, "That's a great thing," isn't it?

It has visual training because it allows children to pay attention to detail and multi-task. Something that I've noticed recently that my daughter has downloaded, is a walking app. She's constantly trying to get to the 10,000 steps. You can get food apps that count your calories and tell you, "You know, this is good. That's not great. That's worth these many calories." It actually can encourage a really healthy lifestyle in a digital way. Mind you, she keeps me on my steps as well and tries to tell me.

I think, Jodie, you were talking about poll questions before some of the questions that we posed, and this was one of them that we did pose. Are we polling here or what? No? Yes? Yes. This was one of them. How happy are you with the strategies you've implemented to manage your use of technology? I think that's now you, guys, can have a go and tell us how happy you are. Do you think you've got them-- Oh, well, all right then. Okay. Around about a three. We're okay with it.

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Gen's going to talk about, now, some of the strategies that you can actually implement in order to combat some of the negative elements of technology. Oh, here she goes again, sorry, on the negative. [laughs]

Genevieve: How I ended up being the negative. It's not generally me. All right. You've already said that you've got some really good strategies in place. Sorry, it's that whole. The hole that I'm standing it's-- It doesn't seem to affect you. You don't seem to stand in it.

That poll just showed us that you're quite confident, I would say, that you're quite confident in your strategy, and here's just a few, there are obviously lots more. We talked about passive screen time. We talked about the fact that it just slows everything down. We need to avoid television viewing for children under the age of two. Just avoid that at all, not just televisions, but screens. Clearly talking to someone on a face time, keeping in contact, that's great, but screens, handing the phone to a very young child, handing an iPad to a very young child, just best avoided.

Always having a device in an area where you can see it. Now, we can't always be monitoring. We can't always be ahead of the game constantly, but if you can just keep an eye on what they're watching, what they're viewing, what's on the screen right now. That means having the computer turned in such a way that when you're doing what you're doing, you actually can see what's going on. Quite simple, very simple way.

Resist using technology as a digital babysitter. Inappropriate content, it's not their fault, they don't mean to click on things, things just pop up, to avoid just handing children that are allowing them as soon as I walk in the house for the downtime or whatever. Avoiding it just before bedtime is very important, and that's for everyone because Melatonin is a hormone that we need to put ourselves to sleep and have a good night's sleep.

It's really important that for around about an hour prior to bed, we just don't need any of that light so that we can actually release the Melatonin, because what it does is it max up your circadian rhythms, and they are our response to light and dark, and they make all of our physiology work properly. Bed dreams need to be media-free, as Linda has said, they really do need to be media-free, we need to have safe areas. Are you going to talk more about that in a moment? Yes. They need to be very deciphers, places where children and adults and everyone can just go and relax, go and just bay, go and just hide away and just snuggle up and have a lovely time in their bedroom.

Linda will talk in a little while about installing parental controls and putting time limits on screens. Now, if you're playing a game, you can actually put your own timer on, and when it beeps, there's two minutes to go, and that means you can finish up your

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game, and then another time it will go off when it's time to put it down. You can train your children just the same as you've trained them to do all other things you can encourage them, really give them praise when they get off on their own, before the timer has gone off as well.

In terms of not having to be over-vigilant, you're never going to really be able to-- You run yourself ragged if you're racing around and constantly trying to be ahead of the game, and ahead of what are they're seeing, and what are they on, what do they do? You just but-- What we do, have to do is communicate. Communicate with our children, tell them that you love them so much, and this is what you want for them, and since they've been a tiny jelly bean, you have wanted this for them. All you want is good, positive outcomes for them. Now, I know I went to a parent's conference, and I know what it does to your brain darling, and I'm telling you that this is what it's doing and we need to make strong pathways. We communicate. We communicate about ways of being online. We communicate about kindness. We communicate about, would you say that to someone's face? No, you probably wouldn't. That's again a negative effect with cyberbullying, with people saying all sorts of things online that they wouldn't. Communication is a really, really, it's probably your best strategy to avoid negative effects. Keeping that conversation going with your children, explaining that where this is coming from is your heart, and this is what you want for them.

We have another question here, and are we pulling that? Yes. The question is, "Do you feel that your child's use of technology is impacting relationships?" Linda's going to talk about that.

[silence]

Linda: Well, I think they're really interesting results. What I'm actually going to speak about is maybe something that you're not expecting from that question, because when I was thinking about this, and when I was doing a lot of research, I think there's something else we need to talk about rather than just the children's use of technology. I want to talk about our use of technology, your use of technology, because as immigrants, we've come in to this new country, and we actually quite like it. We quite like this new country, and we like exploring it and finding out about it. Now, we can think about our own use of technology.

Dr. Kristie, a good one, she actually coined this phrase called brexting. Brexting is when mums are breastfeeding their babies and texting at the same time. What we know is that that is not a great thing for newborn babies. Newborn babies must look at your face. Their brain development requires them to stare into your eyes, to stare into your face. They hold your little finger, whether you're breastfeeding them or whether you're bottle feeding them. You can see mums, and they're texting. Brexting is something that is really detrimental to our little tiny babies. It's something that we're really discouraging.

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We get it. We get how tired you are. I still remember it like not sleeping six months straight, and how you just want to break, and I just wanted to look at Facebook for a minute, and I just wanted to, but you've got to really understand that that time is such a special time between you.

Techno-glect. An Australian study has actually revealed that Australian children think that their parents spend as much time with them as they do on their devices. What happens sometimes is we go, "Okay, everyone off their screen." Great. You get everyone to the park, you're out, they're playing on their equipment. What do you see mum's doing? On their phones, flicking through their phones. That techno-glect is actually something real. Think about how were you using your device in front of your child.

FOMM. I love this, Fear Of Missing Memories. Now, we're all guilty of this. You go finally, you get to your child's assembly, okay? You made it, fantastic. Your child is up. What are you going to do? What do you see? 100,000 camera phones, right? You see everyone with their mobile phones trying to take a photo, trying to keep the memory, trying to get a video. What is your child's seeing? Your child is seeing a camera in front of your face. Is your child seeing that tear running down your eye because you are just so overwhelmed and so proud of them? Is your child seeing that glint in eyes? Is your child seeing that smile, that proudness? Is your child seeing you jump up and give that standing innovation as their only parent?

No, they're just seeing the camera, because what do you want to focus? You wanted to show other people, you want to put it on Instagram, you want to-- It's the idea of living in the moment, and not having that fear of missing memories. The self-regulation is a really important one. Research shows us that we check our phones something like 300 times a day. We're constantly picking up our phone and checking it, checking messages, checking this, checking emails, checking out. Really that self-regulation is a really important part.

Cyberbullying, we've touched on a few times throughout the presentation. This is a really important part in dealing with relationships with your child. We know that kids are using technology, we know they're on social media, but what is the scariest thing for all of us? Is cyberbullying, right? That is one of the reasons why you have no technology in the bedroom. The really horrible thing about cyberbullying, it's relentless. It doesn't go away.

In the old days, when I was at school, if you had a fight with a friend, it was a pretty bad day, you might've said a few ugly words to each other. You went home. You had a Milo. Everyone remember Milo with the crunchy bits on the top? Had a Milo, you went outside for a bit, mum made you tea, you had a bath, and you moved on. The next day started again. Cyberbullies they don't let it up, you can't get away from it. You go to your room. You go to bed. They're hitting you again. It's really important to

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keep abreast of cyberbullying. The best advice I can give you about that is open communication.

I remember I was probably-- Flynn was probably about 12, messaging had just started, and it's something that they, him and his friends were using and I was really vigilant about watching what the messages were.

I listened to a psychologist on one of the talk shows and he said, "What you've got to do is you never take the social media or the computer off them because if you do that it's like breaking the--" I remembered that advice, and I said to Flynn, "Listen, I get you on this messaging thing, I get it's a social thing, I get it scripts. If anything goes wrong or anyone bullies you, I want you to tell me. I promise you, I make this promise to you, I will not take your computer away," because, yes, you will, it's the first thing you're going to do, you're going to take the computer away. I said, "I promise you, I won't."

About two weeks ago, he came he said, "Mum," so-and-so, "Is bullying someone." They're bullying on the SMSs. I said, "What did you do about that?" He said, "I said stop it or I'm going to tell. Stop bullying. Stop saying bad things." I said, "Flynn, you did two great things, you told me and you tried to do something about it. You didn't stand by." That was the biggest lesson that I learned as a parent, open communication. Making sure that kids feel comfortable in saying to me, and I didn't take that computer away. I did go and talk to the teacher, and I did put things in place that I never told him I did, but of course, I wanted to keep all the kids safe, but we've got to be able to have that open communication. Your kids have to trust you.

Gen will talk about this in a minute, but I'm just going to jump on your limelight. I have also found using technology to build relationships with my teenagers. Texting, you might think, "What are you doing?" I will often text my kids. My kids will tell me things through text. I have an 18-year-old son and those of you who have sons, they go very quiet around 15. They suddenly just go under. "What's going on? This kid's very quiet. It gets very scary," but he will talk to me through text.

He recently is trying to make a decision about what he wants to do in a career, and he started the university course and he hated it, but he didn't know how to tell me, so he texts me. He texts me. It went on for half an hour. "Mum, I feel sick in the stomach all the time. I'm really feeling sick and I'm--" "Why are you feeling sick?" "I don't think I want to do this. I don't know how to tell you, but I want to pull out of uni. It's not what I want to do. I've realized this isn't--"

We had these this really amazing discussion that we wouldn't have had and I wouldn't have been able to help him. I said, "That's okay, mate. We will sit, and we will look, and we will find something that you're passionate about," but he felt more comfortable because he is a native and he's always been very comfortable with technology in communicating that to me through texting or through an email.

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I do have a communication book, I've written one that I've always had with my kids, where I've left little notes by their bedside, and why it started was this. I'm going off topic a bit, but sorry. This, in building communications is, I used to put a little note in his lunch when he was really little. Anyone else do that? Little, "Love you, have a great day," whatever. What I found one day, is that he had kept them all. Here's his little stack of notes that I had written and I realized he wanted the communication, so I started a book and I just wrote, "Dear Flynn," blah, blah, blah and then he'd write back, and then I'd leave it in the bed.

It was also a way of communicating when sometimes he wanted to tell me something. Sometimes I just go in there and go, "You were the best boy ever today, and I just love you so much," blah, blah, blah, and that would be it. It might be, "Things didn't go well today, we know this happened, but you know what, tomorrow's a new day," so communication, in any way, in building relationships with kids, and you can use technology to build good relationships.

These are serve and return that Gen was talking about a while ago. The interaction is really important, so using them through Skype and photos and talking to babies. I constantly talked to my kids as babies. It's lonely, isn't it, sometimes being a mum, you and the baby? I would drive Flynn and Mia, both of them crazy by talking to me, "Now, I'm going to change your nappy. Now, I'm going to put you in the pram. Now, we're going for a walk. Now, I'm going to feed you," but it's really important to have that communication. Yes, I must look like an absolute crazy nut, but you can do it through interactive technologies. You can do it through Skype. You can do it through photos and having those conversations.

Watch TV, play video games, break down the barriers, go into their world, go into their country every now and then, and say, "What's this all about? Why don't we talk about this? Tell me about it. Let's play the game together. You teach me something. Go and teach granddad something." You tell me something because then it gives them confidence and go, "Great, mum, listen to this. I can tell you about this." Open the lines of communication.

The most important thing, I think with everything as being a parent, is role modelling. Talking before about how much we're using our phone and giving those kinds of messages to our kids like, "Get off the phone. Get off the phone. Get off there. Get off your iPad," and what are we doing? While we're on the iPad, "Get off your iPads. Get off the phone." Think about what you're saying and give your kids alternatives. That's something I really learnt over the years. It's one thing to say, "Get off the iPad. Get off. You've been on there for two hours. I'm sick of this--"

What you've got to say, like Gen just said, a timer. "You've got 10 minutes, iPads going off and then we're going to go get an ice cream, and then you're going to have a shower, and we're going to have dinner. Then we're going on this. Then--" You know what I mean? Give them an alternative. "After that, we're going to do some

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colouring in together." We get them off the iPad and then they drive you crazy because they're coming up, "I'm bored. I'm bored," and then you're going around that circle again. "Okay, get back on that bloody iPad. I can't handle it anymore." Think of alternatives and think about what you're going to do next.

The last few slides, we are nearly at the end, you might be glad to hear, it's just really living positively in a digital world and then I'm going to give you some tips for keeping your kids safe, so we're nearly there.

Genevieve: I get to do something positive, I get to say some positive stuff now. That's cool. Role modelling, just thinking about that I try to get into my children's world and I tried to go on Fortnite. I don't know if any of you have played that or seen that game, Fortnite. I can't cope with this movement of it. I just end up getting vertiginous and sick and carsick, motion sickness, so it didn't quite work. It didn't work for me.

Look, here are just a few ways to mitigate the effects of screen time and co-exist happily in this digital world. Think about the digital place, think about the balance, think about the play, making sure that there's enough of everything in the day, just the same as you do with your children's diet. If we look here, we've got play games with your child, a family challenge. I know some families, they do play the game Fortnite together. They actually do play it together. Even though it can be considered a violent sort of game, they do play it together. The ways to play Mario Kart together and things like that. You can split the screen. You can have a challenge, woohoo. You can put it on the fridge, who are the winners, where is the poll at the moment.

You, also, can-- This one's very important. Discuss feelings with your child. Remember that there's a pause button. Remember you actually can push pause, and you actually can have some really positive conversations when you're engaging in digital technologies together. If you're watching a movie, you're watching a game, you're playing an app, you can stop and say, "Well, how does that making you feel? Were you feeling that in your body?" You can start to have those conversations, which is really lovely. That's a very important thing.

Texting with your teens, and we just talked about that. Blogging and vlogging, so giving children the camera and getting their perspective of the day. You can say, "All right, well, just make a video for us about this morning and we'll send it off to Grandma," or we'll send it to nowhere. It's just we're just going to have it. It's their perspective. It's quite fun. Making PowerPoints. Children can make PowerPoints. You can make PowerPoints with them. "What's happened in our life? Let's drag some photos in. What are you interested in? Well, let's teach you how to research and insert photos." My children used to love it, how many littlest petshop PowerPoints we've got at home. Incredible.

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Writing stories with your children on the computer, teaching them to type. It's really important. Coding games, I don't know if any of the young people listening or here tonight do coding. Do you play Scratch? Do you do Scratch at all? Do you know Scratch? Yes, they're nodding their heads. Coding is great. Children actually get to create their own game. They can teach you how to create a game, and of course, the game might just be that a bird flies out of a birdcage and flies to a nest, and that's the game, but they made it. It's awesome, so that's a fun thing too. Remember that the brain is working overtime, the brain's on high-alert. Physiologically, things are happening so we just need to remember how to limit, how to get a balance, communicate, and teach them to be kind.

This next slide is-- These are actually posters are up in my house. You're actually getting to see the decor of my house. Though these are only two of them, we have lots, and it's a little embarrassing. The back one, the white one there with the black writing, it just says, it's our technology manifesto, and we came up with that together just by communicating, and it just says, "In our house, the Wi-Fi password is a privilege. Apps need to be parent approved. We value paper more than devices." These are our thing. They're up in the house.

You can't say these things were meant to click out, but that's okay. The thing about that is it's just not for my family, it's when people visit. Because when kids come to visit now, they bring their iPad, and I remember about four or five years ago, a little one came to me and said, "Gen, what's the Wi-Fi password?" I nearly passed out. I thought what am I meant to do here. I text the mum, "Text the mum." I text the mum and say, "Are we allowed to do this? Is this what to do?" I don't know what to do. It's just [unintelligible 01:44:15] I didn't understand the language, I didn't understand the country I was in. Anyway, "Ah, yes," says the mum. I said, "Okay." It's really good.

This other one says, "Is the game the boss of me or am I the boss of my reactions?" It's just to remind my children that they get off the screen with dignity every time. We've had the conversation about the dopamine and how that's affecting them, and how they feel and how it makes them feel. You're going to go on that for 15 minutes, a timer would ring that'll give you two minutes to finish what you're doing, and then we're off it, and that gives you time to step away and then re-shake, go and have a drink of water. Give them some chewing gum to chew while they're playing these games, because if you're chewing, you don't release so much of the stress hormone.

Commonsense Media here. Do people know Commonsense Media at all? It is a dot-com, but it is actually really good. My children know not to come to me asking for any apps, any games, anything, movies or even books without having looked at Commonsense Media. It just gives you a good review of age-appropriateness, what's in there, what sex references, what drug references, what violence, that sort

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of thing. Commercialism those sorts of things, and the parent and children review. It's okay.

Obviously not giving passwords and credit cards. I didn't realize that at the beginning when we first got an iPad, and this is about five or six years ago, and my son racked up a $700 bill buying Smurfberries because there was a great big, "Do you want to buy Smurfberries?" and there's a big green tick or a big red X, and he just kept pressing. It was $9.90 and it said, "This costs real money," but my son couldn't read. "Oh, I want more Smurfberries." $700 people. It was a lot of money. Anyway, I've since learned that you don't actually link anything to it.

What else have we got here? I put on my children's devices and in my phone, I have put them into a file and they have to ask mama first, so they have to actually ask me if they're going to go on those, so it's Instagram, a few various games, and that's an easy strategy as well. I have another poster in my house that says, before asking for screen time, "Have you?" That is have you exercised? Have you rubbed with the dog? Have you done your jobs? Have you been utterly gorgeous? Have you played your instrument? Those sorts of things. It's just for yourself to remind, as when to sit, alternatives, give them alternatives before they go on.

Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, these are things that children are-- they're using them. Digital natives are using these. We need to use safe eyes everyone else following and friending as well.

The final word for me here is that the Internet is a venue and a destination. We would not allow our children to get on a bus, drive to the airport, hop off, hop on a plane, go to another country and wander around there, but that's what we let them do with the Internet. Not only do you have to know about the brain development stuff, but actually you also have to know that you wouldn't do that anyway. You wouldn't let them do that.

Don't think of the Internet as anything else other than a venue, just go there with them and experience their world and share it with them, and therefore their stress release is going to be lessened because you're there and also you're going to actually understand you're going to have shared language. Lin's going to talk a little bit more now about online presence.

Linda: Okay. Just the last couple of slides. This was one of the blog questions. I might just go to go straight into it, if that's all right. "Does your child having an online presence make you nervous?" These are some of the ways that we can actually keep our children safe on the Internet. Doing things like limiting access to the sites. You can have website filters that actually don't allow kids to get on those sites. You can have ad blockers, because sometimes, kids are not actually looking for inappropriate information, but it's coming up through the advertisements. You can set up ad blockers.

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You can have lots of ground rules for social media which are already discussed. Especially for the younger children, use the airplane mode. If you put the airplane mode on, they can't use it, right. You are driving this parent bus. You are actually in-charge of it. You may be the immigrant and you may be going into the new world, but you are the one that's driving it, so you've got to put things in place.

There is a system called Family Zane, you do have to pay for it. I am not getting a kickback or anything like that, but it is actually a really great strategy to implement because what it does it becomes that third party in your family, so you can sit on that managing screen time, keeping content child-friendly, restricting social media, protect devices at home and on the go and access free cyber support, but the other thing about it is that you can put timers on it. It will automatically cut out. They'll be playing a game and that'll be the end of it.

You'll say, "It's not up to me, it's up to Family Zone," and that's the end of it. "No screaming. Nothing I can do about it." Love this. "Nothing I can do about it. Family Zone's taken over." Putting in those kind of things really helps you to establish good relationships and not have those temper tantrums and not have kind of that horrible time every time you want to get your child off a screen.

There are lots of websites and I can see some of you taking photos, feel free, and actually there's a lot of government instigated ones. There's some really good information through government websites to set up little quizzes that you can do to make sure your kids know what safety is, how to be safe online. There's a lot of great little strategies there that you can also use to keep your kids safe.

Now, I can't leave without doing this, because as ultimately a teacher and a lover of literature and knowing in my heart and soul the best thing that we can do for kids is expose them to real children's literature. We've talked about relationships. Reading a book with children cuddling up on your lap, talking about a book and sharing a book. There is no better memory. There is no better childhood memory. There is nothing better for child development.

I would love to do a whole PD one day on children's literature for you, but I really wanted to talk about children's literature as a great alternative for screens. These are just some of Gen's and mine favourite books. Some of them will break your heart, they're just most incredible stories. I am just going to plug one of them. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. I bought that for Gen's daughter quite a few years ago, and Gen just rang me balling her eyes out and saying, "We are sobbing." It is a story that you give your mother, your brother, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your son, your daughter. It's a story about love and finding love through the eyes of that little pretend rabbit. It's a really amazing story.

I want to leave you reading you a story. The boys at the back won't make me move around, because I wanted to come to the front and show you the pictures,

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apparently I've got to stay here. This is a book called Love You forever, and I want to leave you with this story because this is really epitomizing what we are as parents. It is tricky sometimes, it is difficult going through the stages and manoeuvring, but what it's all about is really the circle of love and how much we love our children and how we want the best for them. It's called Love You Forever.

"A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. While she held him, she sang, 'I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always. As long as I am living, my baby you'll be.'''

Can I still show the pictures up here or am I going to freak everyone out at the back?

"That baby grew, he grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was two years old and ran all around the house. He pulled all the books off the shelves. He pulled all the food out of the fridge, and he took his mother's watch and flushed it down the toilet. Sometimes the mother would yell. 'This child is driving me crazy.' At night time, when that two-year-old was quiet, she opened the door to his room, tip-toed across the floor and looked down at his bed. If he was really asleep, she picked him up, and rocked him back and forth, and back and forth and sang, 'I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always. As long as I am living, my baby you'll be.'

That little boy, he grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was eight years old and he never wanted to come in for dinner and he never wanted to take a bath, and when Grandma visited, he sometimes said bad words at the dinner table. Sometimes, the mother wanted to sell him to the zoo, but at night time, when he was asleep, the mother quietly opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor and looked up over the side of the bed. If he was really asleep, she picked up that eight-year-old boy and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth while she rocked him, she sang, "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as you're living, my baby, you'll be.

That boy grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was a teenager. He wore strange clothes. He had strange friends. He listened to strange music. Sometimes his mother felt like she was in the zoo. At night time, his mother opened the door to his room. Crept across the floor and looked down at the bed. If that teenager was really asleep, she kissed him on the cheek and she sang, "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby, you'll be."

Well, that teenager grew. He grew and he grew and he grew until he was a grown-up man. He left home and got a flat on the other side of the town."

Now, this story gets a little bit creepy.

"Sometimes on dark nights, the mother took a bus across town."

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[laughter]

Linda: Yes. You got it.

"If all the lights in her son's house were out, she let herself in, tiptoed upstairs and looked at the bed."

Then he got her a restraining order. No.

[laughter]

Linda: "If that great big man was really asleep, she kissed him on the cheek and whispered, "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby, you'll be." Well, that mother, she got older. She got older and older and older. One day she called up her son and said, "You better come and see me because I'm really old and sick." The son went to see his mother. When he came in the door, she tried to sing the song, "I'll love you forever. I'll like you," but she was too old and sick to finish the song.

The son went to his mother, hugged her and rocked her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth and sang, "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my mother, you'll be." When the son came home that night, he stood for a long time at the top of the stairs. Then he went into the room where his very new baby daughter was sleeping. He picked her up and rocked her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth and sang, "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby, you'll be."

It's just about how much we love our kids. How the parenting we do now will affect their lives forever. Thank you so much for listening to us. I hoped we've been of some helped to you in the manoeuvring this incredibly difficult digital technology life. I think now, we're going to have a few questions that we're going to cross our fingers we can answer.

[applause]

Jodie: Thank you, Linda and Genevieve. I'm just going to ask our team, do we have any time for any questions? We're actually over time, but what I did want to say because you shared so much amazing information. In fact, a lot of the questions that were coming through, you actually answered as you went through your presentation. Maybe I can just wrap up with maybe a little bit of commentary about what I heard.

Finishing with that story, Linda, just put it all into perspective, didn't it? Because there are so many benefits of screen time. That's why they use it in schools. That's why there's so many education benefits, but there's also dangers. That's why we do need those limits. What you guys highlighted tonight was, how if we focused on our

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relationship with our children, if we focused on being involved and not just them on technology there and us on technology over here, and if we see it as one part of our family life, but not the whole of our family life, and we also encourage so many other things like getting outside, doing other activities, then technology becomes less of a problem and more of a way to enrich our lives.

I just wanted to finish with an awesome quote from one of our Slido participants who said, "Let's be parents. Set boundaries for screen time. Stick to them, even if our kids tantrum," that's me. I've just put that in brackets. "Do things with our children. Play a board game. Read a book. Go for a walk. Plant something in the garden. Talk with rich language. Have conversations. No one else can do this for us. We need to engage with our children and take responsibility."

We're all here because we do want to take responsibility. I wanted to thank, Linda and Genevieve for not only talking about some of the ways that we can limit our kid's screens and technologies, but also ways that we can actually make that a really positive part of our family. Please join me once again in thanking Linda and Genevieve.

[applause]

Jodie: I'm going to quickly, quickly, quickly wrap up. We just wanted to double check with you about how you found the Slido technologies. I've got two very quick pulse. The first one is, did you find that Slido helped tonight discussion for you to be more engaged? Agree? Disagree? [pulse answer] Agree. Wonderful. Then the other quick one is, from tonight's session, do you feel like you've got an increased understanding of your role in supporting your children to be successful learners? Are there some things that you can implement at home? [pulse answer] Wonderful. That's fantastic.

That's really hard as parents to get to events like this or to even attend online. Thank you all for coming tonight for being a part of our audience, for being at home, for being in our venues. We have two other amazing events on this week. Tomorrow night we have Dr. Justin Colson. He's going to be talking about behaviours for learning and well-being. On Thursday night, we have our No more bullying topic. We've got three great speakers, Lesley Harrison, Britt Mari, and Andrew Fuller.

I'm going to be here for the next two nights. I hope you can join me again. We will be sending out an evaluation, which will link to some more resources, particularly around the questions that had been asked tonight that we didn't quite get to. We also want your feedback about tonight's event and what are the topics you're interested in.

Thank you all for coming. We hope to see you again over the rest of the week. Thank you.

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[applause]

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[02:01:12] [END OF AUDIO]

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