This made a few parents laugh at our coffee morning. Usually I’m the only one laughing at my jokes.

The point

Data can be presented in many different forms and shaped to tell the narrative you want. Data is important. Analysing it, and looking for nuance, bias and contradiction, is probably more important still.

When we present to groups of parents, we look at what our data shows, what local, regional and international data show, and we try to draw conclusions as best we can. We find plenty of correlations. Causation is much harder to find.

Where I stand

Anyone who knows me knows I’m all about healthy digital habits. Shock! It’s why Reconnected.ae came about. But I also love technology and I know the incredible opportunities it creates. What matters is how it’s integrated into our lives: knowing that we are in control of it, and that it serves us when we need it.

The ugly side of technology is when it takes over and we end up serving it. It’s a superpower that can take hold of us and dictate which video we watch next, or which unnecessary item we’ll buy off Amazon. How we adults deal with that matters, because we have to get it right before we can support our children with theirs. The standards we hold them to should be the standards we hold ourselves to. At the very least.

I’m a big fan of the work of Johann Hari, Jonathan Haidt, Erin Loechner etc. I also appreciate the angle each of them takes, the bias in some of the data presented, and the call to action, which can be quite. Well. Radical.

And maybe it should be. If you’re worried about what screens are doing to your children, that worry is legitimate, and these writers have given a lot of parents language for it.

But before we bin the devices

Before we revert to slate and chalk, let’s be rational and pragmatic and ask how technology is actually serving us. Is it that we’ve lost track of our own use, and now see our children’s use heading the same way? The PISA score decline, the article we read last week, the podcast on the importance of nature: each one is worth taking seriously, and each one tells only part of the story. It’s easy to jump on whichever wave is loudest.

So before we do, let’s just stop for a minute and audit how we use technology: how it looks in our lives, and then in our children’s lives. Then act accordingly.

A few questions to start with:

• When did I last pick up my phone without a purpose, and what was I avoiding?
• Where is technology genuinely serving me (connecting, learning, saving time), and where am I serving it?
• Would I be comfortable if my child used their devices the way I use mine? Why?
• Is my child’s use adding something to their life, whether that’s learning, connection or creativity, or just filling time?

Your answers are data that matter. From them, you can decide what technology should look like in your own home, based on what you see in your own family rather than the loudest voice on your feed.

Acknowledge data.

Question data.

Make decisions that are healthy for your family.

And be the one dwarf who is ‘Happy’.