The Pandemic Predicament: Balance
Trying to find the work, education, and recreation equilibrium
This week’s newsletter follows some of the points of my last effort, but without the “flex” that one reader pointed out. That flex was, of course, talking about closing on a house despite so much misfortune. I agree with the point, and wanted to talk a bit more about a few points and link to one or two stories. The focus today is on the struggle to balance work and education and the consequences for adults and kids.
The Teardown
Tuesday :: July 28th, 2020
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The COVID-19 crisis is one of many faces. Some of us are chained to home offices. Others don't have jobs. Many are split between careers and home duties, especially if they involve anything with kids. When I relocated to the suburbs in mid-March, I gained access to something I subsequently realized was critical to my well-being: outdoor access. It is, for me, essential, and in short supply in New York City in the sort of serene Instagram-worthy way you might desire. There are parks, sure, but you're still swimming in the city tank with everyone else and ingesting polluted air and noise as if it wasn't there.
Yards and fresh air proved one-hundred times more useful for my daughter. The city would have constrained us to smaller parks requiring face protection, frequent sanitizing, and a constant hum of paranoia. No such fear exists thirty minutes away from the city where your two-year-old can run freely and frolic in the terrain of an acre of land. This space freed her from the trappings of indoor-city-life, a fussy affair, and an even more challenging work environment. It allowed me to focus more effectively and relieve stress quicker - on a relative basis, at the very least. How, exactly, does anyone get anything done when they're trapped at home and mostly indoors with their kids?
This question is resonating through the news and our homes. The president is pushing schools to reopen. Parents are caught in a predicament because they want their kids back in school, but they don't want to put them at risk. Teachers are entangled in the pickle because they want their ordinary lives back but prefer not to spend their days with twenty (or more) potential disease spreaders. Anyone with a job among the adults in those groups hopes to return to full productivity.
Deb Perelman summarized the situation in the New York Times with a striking tag (emphasis mine):
Last week, I received an email from my children’s principal, sharing some of the first details about plans to reopen New York City schools this fall. The message explained that the city’s Department of Education, following federal guidelines, will require each student to have 65 square feet of classroom space. Not everyone will be allowed in the building at once. The upshot is that my children will be able to physically attend school one out of every three weeks.
At the same time, many adults — at least the lucky ones that have held onto their jobs — are supposed to be back at work as the economy reopens. What is confusing to me is that these two plans are moving forward apace without any consideration of the working parents who will be ground up in the gears when they collide.
Let me say the quiet part loud: In the Covid-19 economy, you’re allowed only a kid or a job.
This conclusion is troubling at best. Americans are bifurcated into two groups: those with the resources to work and manage their kids, and those lacking the necessary support. But let's put the adults aside for a second and think through the implications for the kids. Remote and virtual learning seem like sub-par solutions because kids need school structure as much as they need social interactions at school - the good and the bad.
Another part of the article discussed some of these dynamics:
Under the best of circumstances, the impact on children will still be significant. Students will lose most of a year of learning as parents — their new untrained teachers — cannot supervise in any meaningful way while Zooming into the office. At best, the kids will be crabby and stir-crazy as they don’t get enough physical activity because they’re now tethered to their parents’ work spaces all day, running around the living room in lieu of fresh air. Without social interactions with other children, they constantly seek parental attention in bad ways, further straining the mood at home. And these are ideal scenarios.
There are many components to unpack in that passage. Still, I'm most interested in the consequences for middle-school and older kids who might be tethered to a vice another kind: an electronic device.
Schools keep kids busier during the day and limit their time to futz on phones, tablets, and video game consoles. Virtual learning breaks that focus. Parents context switch between work and imposing rough order on their kids. Something inevitably breaks.
Phone addictions are rampant among adults, no question. Screen-time for kids is a complicated topic. But I'm sure lots of teens use their phones regularly. My own younger cousins communicated almost exclusively through SnapChat and TikTok during a family wedding. If we can't hold their attention during louder momentous occasions, should we expect them to avoid their phones during less compelling (e.g. boring school) situations? Probably not.
That said, perhaps there is some good in that usage despite its counter intuitive premise. Eugune Wei wrote one of my favorite pieces of 2019 called Status Seeking Monkeys and introduced, near the beginning, two concepts:
Let's begin with two principles:
People are status-seeking monkeys*
People seek out the most efficient path to maximizing social capital
The essay is very long but entirely worth the read. One underlying theory within the piece is the idea that standing in social networks is gained through a series of actions that return value to willing participants. Participants whose efforts are in some shape or form more challenging than others generate more value. Actions like telling the best joke or applying makeup better than anyone else aren't in the early days all that interesting. However, over time, their appeal and increasing adoption make it harder for any individual to do or be something unique and appealing.
These dynamics play out in schools. The best, smartest, and most physically appealing drive a level of appeal and jealously everywhere they step foot. Similar dynamics play out on the internet as Eugene explains further:
Children's status games, once familiar to us, begin to fade from our memory as time passes, and its modern forms have been drastically altered by social media.
Perhaps, if you've spent time around today's youth, you've watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as a teen snaps dozens of selfies before publishing the most flattering one to Instagram, only to pull it down if it doesn't accumulate enough likes within the first hour. It’s another example of proof of work, or at least vigorous market research.
Almost every social network of note had an early signature proof of work hurdle. For Facebook it was posting some witty text-based status update. For Instagram, it was posting an interesting square photo. For Vine, an entertaining 6-second video. For Twitter, it was writing an amusing bit of text of 140 characters or fewer. Pinterest? Pinning a compelling photo. You can likely derive the proof of work for other networks like Quora and Reddit and Twitch and so on. Successful social networks don't pose trick questions at the start, it’s usually clear what they want from you.
The internet is different because the actions that generate appeal in small networks — just one school and the various social networks — are unlocked from their geographic constraints. Anyone anywhere hits a Like, Favorite, or Save button and generates social value for original creator. Various app feeds show us the most valuable content based on user interactions.
This means talented athletes can show lots of folks their greatest highlights. Fashion and glamor-skilled kids can share their tips with everyone. Someone with dashingly fast Rubik's cube times will find a larger network, something that might never have happened within a traditional school setting. Just the nerds like Rubik’s Cube competitions, right?
So, it isn't ideal that kids are stuck at home. However, they'll get a chance to fully explore another way to promote themselves and drive social value from various sources. Parents wary of extreme phone time can at least investigate the possibility that there is something beneficial about spending more time exploring apps such as TikTok, SnapChat, Reddit, and others.
I'm emphasizing the chance that the pandemic will unify some families compared to earlier this year. Sure, we'll all struggle mightily through the experience in good and bad ways. The balancing act will test careers, tempers, and stress, but we might find out more about whatever we really like. For some, the answer will obviously be to do whatever is possible to go back to the way things were. Not for me.
We recently thought about enrolling my daughter in a two-year-old soccer program. The idea seemed both productive (exercise, outdoors) and amusing at the same time. One counterargument went like this: it's a waste — they run around, and don't listen. On the other hand, maybe that's the point. Soccer for toddlers isn't about them scoring goals but getting them to exercise, interact with other kids, and letting their parents chat with each other
Most importantly, it's an opportunity to disconnect from the balancing act of structure and work and enjoy the complete shit-show that is a two-year-old trying to play soccer.