Rhea Seymour’s daughter is addicted to Minecraft.

“We got her a laptop for her 11th birthday last fall and that set off the YouTube video addiction, and soon after she discovered Minecraft,” Seymour says. “That’s when we really noticed her being more connected to the screen and wanting to play non-stop. If she had her way she’d do it 12 hours a day.”

This summer, the situation has come to a head as — like many kids — the preteen has swaths of unstructured time to fill, having outgrown the day camps that once filled her vacation while being still too young for work and even most volunteer jobs. Seymour, who works from her family’s home in Oakville, assumed her daughter would fill the time with play dates like she did last year. “But this summer none of them seem as interested in getting together. As a parent you wonder, ‘Are they turning into robots? Are they going to have any social skills?’”

Those are questions Vancouver psychologist and researcher Mari Swingle set out to answer in her new book, iMinds: How Cell Phones, Computers, Gaming and Social Media are Changing Our Brains, Our Behaviour and the Evolution of our Species.

Swingle is a neurotherapist, which means she uses EEG technology to study brain patterns. While doing her PhD research, Swingle gathered a group of people who were officially diagnosed with Internet addiction and looked at their brains. She found that a staggering 100 per cent of them had brainwaves associated with an inability to quiet one’s own mind, as well as with addiction, insomnia and anxiety; 89 per cent had patterns consistent with ADHD. “It was absolutely black and white that this group was being very negatively affected.”

But Swingle is quick to point out that technology has done plenty of good for families too. FaceTime and Skype chats have allowed kids to stay in touch with a mom or dad who may not live in the same household, or with grandparents in distant cities. “Those have really opened up some positive connectivity when face-to-face is not an option.”

Where technology is concerned, parents have to be careful of three things, says Swingle: too early, too much and no alternative. “If two 9-year-old boys game for an hour together, there’s nothing wrong with that as long as they also go out and ride their bicycles and swing on swings, bug their sisters and do other things together. But two boys who are on games on opposite sides of the country or even the same block who are just in front of their devices all the time and don’t have any person-to-person friends, and are in conflict with their families when they’re asked to get off of the games, that’s a very negative relationship married with learning disabilities and mental illness in children.”

She advises parents to inform themselves about the tech kids use, decide explicitly which devices, programs and apps are permitted, and then enforce limitations.

That’s been a challenge in Seymour’s house this summer without homework and impromptu after-school friend time to fill the hours. She and her husband take some comfort in the creativity that goes into building imaginary worlds within Minecraft. “But you don’t want your kid to be a hermit. When everything else is less appealing to begin with because she’s getting a little older, it’s harder to coax her away from it. We spend a lot of time saying ‘Time’s up! Put it away right now. Go play with your guinea pig.’ I don’t think parents were doing that with Lego.”

Swingle says parents shouldn’t take all the blame for this on themselves, particularly given that the gaming industry works very hard to hook users for one to two years by affecting the brain in exactly the same way that gambling does. Plus she points out that parents are “overworked, overtired and overstressed” from losing both social support and time resources. “Childcare is outrageously expensive now. Something had to fill the parenting gap and it’s information technology,” says Swingle, who says she’d love to see more groups of parents band together to help each other, as well as better public funding for child care. “There’s a reason why technology is filling this niche and quite frankly it’s the exhaustion of parents.”

iPads in the cradle

Swingle, who stresses the importance of delaying the introduction of technology, says she’s saddened to see such wide use of tablets to keep babies and toddlers occupied everywhere from restaurants to grocery stories and even on walks to the park.

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As she explains in iMinds, this squashes babies’ natural instinct to observe and connect to people and their environment, and directs it narrowly to the iPad and its content. This will wire the brain accordingly, teaching children to regulate themselves by seeking comfort in technology, not people.

Accordingly, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero screen time in the first two years of life.