Not going to lie, but the pandemic and years of isolation has hastened my daughter into a cell phone addict. The return to classroom has changed only the attending part; kids are still on the phones doing video research, creating quizlets and, of course, all the usual and newer social media apps. App publishers have gotten more imaginative in getting users to collect likes for dopamine drips. There are streaks, MT’s, half-swipes, and other SMH actions and acronyms that power this tail-end Gen Z. And AFAIK, other ingenious AMA click through TOSs that most kids perform without even realizing.
My daughter’s use of the phone has increased gradually and now it’s becoming a problem. How ironic that while social media has broadened and extended her reach socially and virtually, it’s left the in-person connections frayed. I snapped one day when she couldn’t hear me call her from the kitchen; I called her on her phone instead. She simply couldn’t hear as she was glued to the phone while listening to headphones!
We had a serious talk. This is big for us as I had been a parent that focused more on content vs time and the numerous articles I have written on departures from parental permitted phone use. And we finally settled on a few guidelines.
Every rule that you subject your teenager to, must also be applicable to you as the adult.
We are not banning phones; we are changing our behavior. Going from one extreme of excessive use to zero usage is akin to going on a diet on a birthday or going cold turkey at new year’s. It doesn’t work. Gradually changing the behavior is infinitely better than jumping to the end state in one step.
Phones, like keys and wallets, are left at the door. It’s a new practice we picked up like immediately washing our hands after coming into the house. If the phone rings, we go pick it up, answer it, and put it back—just like in the wired-phone days. My daughter has never known the days of a house phone with extensions where the user must go to where the phone is plugged to the wall. This is normal for me but unusual for her.
We check for alerts and notifications about once an hour. This can be done in as little as 5 seconds to 5 minutes. In the alternative, if we break our focus and attention every time the phone chimes, those 5 aggregated minutes of tweets and DMs can easily fill the hour, every hour. With interruptions every 2 minutes or less, this type of attention seeking notification destroys a young person’s ability to concentrate and disrupts everything from conversations, chores and homework, not to mention the brain’s innate requirement to be still and unplugged.
And above all, every rule that you subject your teenager to, must also be applicable to you as the adult. Like chores and house rules, it must apply to all family members as we adults are also guilty of overuse of mobile technology. Double standards won’t ever work.
And of course, the most important rule is that there has to be exceptions. Vacations, summer holidays and anything that bucks the norm would apply. Use rules as guidelines but they can’t be so strict that they become straitjackets that cannot accommodate reasonable variations of use. Good luck.
