The Winter of our Disconnect -- How One Mom Unplugged her Teens and Survived

Many parents have lamented how much time their kids spend attached to their electronics. Some have even made an effort to cut back on gadget use, by declaring an occasional recess or even a weekly break from phones, computers, TV and video games.

Author Susan Maushart went a step further. In 2008, through the use of bribes and cajoling, she convinced her three teenagers to go without any devices whatsoever (at home or in the family car, at least) for six whole months. And to make the break complete, the single mom started their self-imposed electronic fast with two weeks spent off the grid entirely — she turned off all power to her suburban Western Australian home and got by with candles and ice-filled coolers. By the end of what she dubbed “The Experiment,” Maushart and her teens had learned a lot about themselves and the people around them, and found inner resources they might not have discovered otherwise.

Maushart’s book The Winter of Our Disconnect: How Three Totally Wired Teenagers (and a Mother Who Slept with Her iPhone) Pulled the Plug on Their Technology and Lived to Tell the Tale is a  look at her family’s adventure into retro living, told with a delightfully honest voice that will make any mother of teens nod in agreement. I couldn’t help but love it — not only is  Maushart’s writing funny and smart, she’s also (like me) a member of the Romper Room generation who (unlike me) has managed to make a graceful transition to the digital era.  Here’s how she describes her kids’ total immersion in the world that technology has created and her reaction to it:

When my children laugh, they don’t say “ha ha.” They say “LOL.” In fact, they conjugate it. (“LOL at this picture before I Photoshopped your nose, Mom!”) They download movies and TV shows as casually as you or I might switch on the radio. And when I remind them piracy is a crime, they look at one another and go “LOL.” (“Arargh, me hearty!” someone adds, as if to an imaginary parrot, and they LOL again, louder this time.) These are kids who shrug when they lose their iPods, with all five thousand tunes and Lord-knows-what in the way of video clips, feature films, and “TV” shows (like, who watches TV on a television anymore?). “There’s plenty more where that came from,” their attitude says. And the most infuriating thing of all? They’re right. The digital content that powers their world, like matter itself, can never truly be destroyed. Like the Magic Pudding of Australian legend, it’s a dessert bar that never runs of cheesecake.

There’s so much that’s wonderful, and at the same time nauseating, about that.

I recently talked to Maushart about what it’s like to be an immigrant to the land of Digital Natives (as she describes today’s teens) and how her family has fared post-Experiment. Since the events in the book, the former New Yorker has moved back to the States with her youngest daughter and now lives on the tip of Long Island. Still as attached to the Internet as she was before going on her digital hiatus, she keeps in touch with the rest of her family and friends — including her two older children back in Australia — on the other side of the world via Skype and Facebook.

“There are days I look around and say, ‘Why did I bother?’ But The Experiment got me to New York. It was an opportunity to clear my head and make some decisions. Sometimes I backslide. I check my email if I get up in the night to go to the bathroom.”

The Experiment probably had its biggest effect on Maushart’s son. After his game console, known as The Beast, was hidden away for the duration, he dug his old saxophone out of the closet and began to practice again. He later sold the Beast to buy a new instrument, and today he’s at college studying jazz composition.

But Maushart still struggles with her younger daughter Sussy, who had the biggest digital addiction going into The Experiment and who is now attending high school on Long Island.

“I feel at the moment to be honest quite ambivalent about restricting access. Peer group is all. [At the time] she wasn’t going to self-regulate; she wasn’t the right age. Now given the situation we’re in, we’re trying to maintain ties to Australia, so I’m trying to figure out how to restrict her win a way that’s humane.”

As a long-time journalist focusing on parenting who holds a doctorate from NYU in media ecology, Maushart may have been uniquely qualified to examine the role today’s communication and entertainment play in family life. While describing her observations of her own family, she also brings in research and thinking on the topics her Experiment brought up that confirmed or challenged her own assumptions.

“The impact of symbols on my life was always part of my consciousness,” she said. “I kind of came home again with this book. I had an unusual array of weapons to unleash.”

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As Maushart repeatedly points out, it was never her aim to completely remove technology from her family’s life. Instead, she wanted to find a way to head off the bad effects (lack of connection between herself and her kids, and between her kids themselves) by giving them enough distance from the digital environment to see the layer of “real life” underneath. But undertaking The Experiment brought mixed reactions from those around her. On the one hand, there is what Maushart believes is an “unexamined, facile” assumption that books are morally good and screens are morally bad which the even the most digitally-absorbed kids have bought into.

“I once said, ‘If you really wanted to give up media, you would give up reading.’ My 16-year-old daughter said, “Mommy, that’s stupid. Reading is good for you. She didn’t even see the printed word as analogous.”

On the other hand, those around them wondered how they would pull it off, and whether it was wise to try it.  The parents of her children’s friends and school officials worried about being able to get in touch with her (even though she added a hard-wired phone to the house so she could receive calls.)

“My agent in New York said, ‘Do you want to do this to your kids?’ I said, ‘Doing this experiment is its own reward.’ … I did get ‘I could never do that. Obviously you have some specific gift that I lack.’ I pointed out, even though it’s hard at first, it’s self-promoting. Like quitting smoking, you get addicted to being healthy. It looked like a nightmare at the outset, but we got so many rewards out of it.”

Despite the doubters, Maushart so far hasn’t gotten a lot of negative reaction — at least, nothing approaching the level of hostility aimed at “Chinese Mother” Amy Chua, who not only banned social media but forbid her daughters to partake in any kind of  non-academic activities, even play dates. But Maushart can still relate, up to a point.

“I’m not this woman, but I resonated with what she had to say,” she said. “Of course, she’s a psycho bitch from hell. But we do fetishize giving kids a choice. Give your kid a choice, they’ll choose Facebook. They’re probably going to make uninformed, short term stupid choices. I kind of came to that conclusion in my own lame-ass way. And I decided that for once, I’m not going to let them set the agenda. However, it’s not something I’ve been able to sustain. Clearly she’s an extreme case.”

All in all, though, Maushart believes the effects of The Experiment will remain with her family for a long time.

“Six months is a long time. You can never really go back again, to the unconscious state where you never think about these things and use them indiscriminately.”