This comprehensive parent’s guide, adapted from Catherine Price’s work, provides evidence-based suggestions for managing kids’ relationships with technology. It emphasizes informed decision-making and collective action to reclaim childhood in the real world.
As a health and science journalist and the author of How to Break Up With Your Phone, Catherine Price has spent years developing evidence-backed suggestions for how adults and teens can manage their relationships with their devices. Now that her daughter is about to become a fourth grader, she’s realized that she needs to do the same for kids.
Kids, Smartphones and Social Media: The Risks and The Solutions
As you can see, the ultimate goal is optimism and empowerment, with concrete suggestions and a proposed plan, including an invitation for families to take collective action.
Informed Decisions: What We Already Know
The debate around kids and screens can be contentious. However, parents can make informed decisions based on what we already know, instead of getting bogged down in every study.
Consider these points:
- Your Values: Do the effects of smartphones and social media align with your values, such as kindness, empathy, and self-confidence?
- Mental and Physical Health: How do screens interfere with essential factors like sleep, relationships, physical activity, and free play?
- Opportunity Cost: What are children not doing when they spend excessive time on screens, such as developing hobbies, reading, and socializing? Teens report spending more than seven hours a day on screen-based leisure activities, not including school work or homework.
- Brain Development: Early adolescence is a critical period for brain development. Exposure to algorithmically selected content on social media can be detrimental.
- What Tech Companies Know: Tech CEOs often restrict their own children’s use of social media and video games.
- Online Risks and Threats: Be aware of dangers like sexual predators, bullying, addictive content, and access to illegal drugs.
- Youth Mental Health Crisis: Recognize the link between social media and the decline in youth mental health.
10 Practical Tips for Managing Devices and Screens
These guidelines apply to any internet-enabled device and can benefit people of all ages.
1. Open Family Conversations
Educate your kids about the potential negative effects of screen time. Acknowledge your own screen habits and seek input from your children.
2. Choose Basic Devices
Opt for devices with minimal features to reduce distractions.
3. Public Place Use Only
Allow device use only in public areas of the house. This enables monitoring and improves sleep by keeping devices out of bedrooms. Also, remember: the bigger the screen, the better. It is highly unlikely that you will find your teenager watching pornography on your living room television set.
4. No-Phone Zones
Create device-free areas in the house, such as bedrooms and the dining room table.
5. Central Charging Station
Establish a designated charging area for everyone’s devices, away from bedrooms.
6. Device Bedtime
Set a “bedtime” for devices at least one hour before human bedtime to promote better sleep. Use a standalone alarm clock to avoid interacting with phones first thing in the morning.
7. Schedules for Internet Access
Limit distractions during homework by designating homework areas as no-phone zones or using parental controls to set schedules for website and app access.
8. Establish Family Policies
Communicate your family’s screen time rules to other families. Encourage phone and video calls over texting.
9. Activate Parental Controls
Learn about and use parental controls on every device and app your child uses, particularly those allowing contact from strangers.
This may take you many hours, but if your kid has access to the internet on any device, you need to invest time into understanding and activating the built-in parental controls available, especially for apps and sites that allow contact from strangers, such as social media and multi-player video games (including innocent-seeming ones, like Roblox).
10. Consider a 3rd Party Family Protection Plan
Invest in a third-party protection plan to block websites, apps, and control internet access across devices.
Conclusion: Taking Action Together
It can be challenging to establish healthy boundaries with technology. Start small, take it step by step, and you may be surprised by the positive impact on your children’s relationships with screens – and your own. Collective action is key to freeing the anxious generation. The more people who are aware of these issues (and solutions), the better.
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