Great Topic!! I have struggled with what I identify as phone addiction for awhile now. I have tried multiple strategies from deleting social media accounts and getting a "Dumb" Phone designed for kids and teens, to keeping the phone upstairs out of my reach over the weekend (not exactly helpful in efforts to reach me!). It has been hard. Groups I want to be part of only use certain social media platforms, my work mandates the use of an authentication app to log in. I feel like not having a smart phone is not realistic, though I am happier without it. What I would like is a basic version that allows limited usage, like Audible and Spotify, has a nice camera, and a navigation app like google maps so I can find a gas station, or get to my friends house. All the rest, including the browser can get off my phone! My husband spends way too much time scrolling Reddit. I have talked to him about it but he gets defensive and I don't want to fight, but I HATE how rather than sit in the car with me and talk, he scrolls. We at least agree that our kids will not be getting a smart phone until they are legal adults and buy there own. They can get a dumb phone, hopefully the cameras get better! I was at a swimming class the other day and a mother was sitting there with a boy of maybe three who was watching a video on a tablet AND tapping on a phone, when she went to move the tablet he had a borderline meltdown over it. I don't know how people think this is good, normal, or ok!
While I agree with a lot of what you write here, I will say that if you’re going to withhold screens from your children (as you should), you and your husband are going to have to set the example.
I 100% agree. I feel like at this point I have a balance. I use my phone for its camera, and to listen to audio books and podcasts but I quit social media again. I have accepted there will just have to be groups I cannot participate in. I will continue the conversation with my husband who seems to be more intentional about reading books more to model that to the boys. Next I just need to find some likeminded families to associate with. Since my kids are homeschooled I have more ability to curate those interactions and relationships.
I think we need to stop calling things addictions phones included. We should not be made to feel bad for using our phones as much as we need, to cope and get through life. Now having said that, our life needs to be a balance of structure and novelty. Stability and consistency and chaos.
If your life is always on your phone, you are going to begin to have your world slowly close in around you. But if you are always on the go it becomes a pleasure again and can expand your ideas and connect you with others in a way that can be really good.
Continuing to sound the alarm and point out problems may be an acknowledgment of the problem but it does not solve it. Drastically taking a phone away is cruel and unsettling just like anything that provides comfort. Just like anything , tapering and offering freedom and choice is the answer.
All of my children are on their phones a lot. I am on my phone a lot. I was never on my phone when I was a kid but then again there were no phones.
We got our kids I pods touches when they were 6,4,2, because we were coming back from Germany after being stationed there. The thought of that flight without some form of entertainment was frightening. I was an exhausted parent and my husband has never been the best with kids.
My kids are bright and confident, social and kind human beings and they want to be. At times one of my children has started to show signs that he is forgetting his true core self and begins to show signs of discontent, anger and selfishness. I don’t blame the phone or the internet there is nothing I can or necessarily should do about those. What I do blame is myself.
I am to blame because I allowed myself to disconnect too long from my son. Well this is something I have full power to change. This is what it looks like.
“Hi son, I have been noticing that you have started to become impatient with me and the family lately. Can you tell me what is going on?”
Usually it is about a friend group online or else he is completely unaware that he has been acting this way.
If it is about a friend we talk about communication or taking a break from abusive relationships. I remind him about how much his family loves him and plan something to do together either just the two of us or as a family.
If he does not know why he is behaving this way we go through the basic necessities for living a happy life. Are you sleeping constantly and sufficiently? What have you been eating lately? When was the last time you went outside and talked to people in person? What is the last time you did something physical to get your heart pumping? These are not unfamiliar questions to him and honesty most of us have to be reminded of them from time to time because we function so much in auto pilot.
When we look at the solutions or what we know is good for us it becomes obvious what we need to focus on. We know all these things are good for us because we have experienced them in the past and we have discussed how good they made us feel in the moments we feel them. It is kind of like feeling and acknowledging the good and getting in the habit of doing this. Once we reflect on the good we felt in the past, then not only is my son reengaged and willingly to try something new but sometimes even eager to get planing and going.
Looking at problems and giving more names to problems is not the solution. Causing more trauma and distrust among parents and children by ripping phones away, especially if the parent is not willing to completely give up theirs causes, more harm. It is through communication and offering reflection and love along with collaboration and one on one time that solves these types of problems.
If families have issues with phones the phones are not the issue. The real issue is a lack of listening, empathy, communication, energy and creativity. These are all skills that can be taught and as a society and families we must learn or relearn them.
We can start with schools and require a "leave your phone at home" policy. Schools simply caved to their own initial policies of no phones in class because it was too hard to patrol. There was also the pressure of parents who insisted upon buying kids phones (some at an obscenely early age) and allowed their kids to bring them to school for fear of "not being able to reach them" at a moment's notice in part thanks to our culture of fear and the often to real school shootings and stranger danger phenomenon but also a rise in anxiety and depression. School offices have phones and emergency contingencies. No need for individual kids to have personal phones to be safe.
Never before have we lived in environments with such easy and quick access to things that aren't good for us. We have to live in a pretty intense state of vigilance to be mentally and physically healthy in our current society, and definitely moreso than the generations before us.
I hear kids getting labeled with ADHD, depression, anxiety, social anxiety disorder, the list goes on and on. Would these kids have these issues if they didn't own a smartphone? How would their behavior changed if the smartphone was taken away or all social media was deleted? Rather than giving them a therapist to chat with every week and potentially mind altering drugs, we should look at what's causing the issue in the first place.
I never managed to get addicted to my phones (and I have two), but I definitely go through withdrawal for the internet in general when I go camping. 30 years of almost-daily use…
I saw a video yesterday where this gut points out several broken things - like a squeaky door - and he puts on WD40 and goes - FIX IT. His message, instead of complaining or living with it - FIX IT/SOLVE THE PROBLEM.
Great Topic!! I have struggled with what I identify as phone addiction for awhile now. I have tried multiple strategies from deleting social media accounts and getting a "Dumb" Phone designed for kids and teens, to keeping the phone upstairs out of my reach over the weekend (not exactly helpful in efforts to reach me!). It has been hard. Groups I want to be part of only use certain social media platforms, my work mandates the use of an authentication app to log in. I feel like not having a smart phone is not realistic, though I am happier without it. What I would like is a basic version that allows limited usage, like Audible and Spotify, has a nice camera, and a navigation app like google maps so I can find a gas station, or get to my friends house. All the rest, including the browser can get off my phone! My husband spends way too much time scrolling Reddit. I have talked to him about it but he gets defensive and I don't want to fight, but I HATE how rather than sit in the car with me and talk, he scrolls. We at least agree that our kids will not be getting a smart phone until they are legal adults and buy there own. They can get a dumb phone, hopefully the cameras get better! I was at a swimming class the other day and a mother was sitting there with a boy of maybe three who was watching a video on a tablet AND tapping on a phone, when she went to move the tablet he had a borderline meltdown over it. I don't know how people think this is good, normal, or ok!
While I agree with a lot of what you write here, I will say that if you’re going to withhold screens from your children (as you should), you and your husband are going to have to set the example.
I 100% agree. I feel like at this point I have a balance. I use my phone for its camera, and to listen to audio books and podcasts but I quit social media again. I have accepted there will just have to be groups I cannot participate in. I will continue the conversation with my husband who seems to be more intentional about reading books more to model that to the boys. Next I just need to find some likeminded families to associate with. Since my kids are homeschooled I have more ability to curate those interactions and relationships.
I think we need to stop calling things addictions phones included. We should not be made to feel bad for using our phones as much as we need, to cope and get through life. Now having said that, our life needs to be a balance of structure and novelty. Stability and consistency and chaos.
If your life is always on your phone, you are going to begin to have your world slowly close in around you. But if you are always on the go it becomes a pleasure again and can expand your ideas and connect you with others in a way that can be really good.
Continuing to sound the alarm and point out problems may be an acknowledgment of the problem but it does not solve it. Drastically taking a phone away is cruel and unsettling just like anything that provides comfort. Just like anything , tapering and offering freedom and choice is the answer.
All of my children are on their phones a lot. I am on my phone a lot. I was never on my phone when I was a kid but then again there were no phones.
We got our kids I pods touches when they were 6,4,2, because we were coming back from Germany after being stationed there. The thought of that flight without some form of entertainment was frightening. I was an exhausted parent and my husband has never been the best with kids.
My kids are bright and confident, social and kind human beings and they want to be. At times one of my children has started to show signs that he is forgetting his true core self and begins to show signs of discontent, anger and selfishness. I don’t blame the phone or the internet there is nothing I can or necessarily should do about those. What I do blame is myself.
I am to blame because I allowed myself to disconnect too long from my son. Well this is something I have full power to change. This is what it looks like.
“Hi son, I have been noticing that you have started to become impatient with me and the family lately. Can you tell me what is going on?”
Usually it is about a friend group online or else he is completely unaware that he has been acting this way.
If it is about a friend we talk about communication or taking a break from abusive relationships. I remind him about how much his family loves him and plan something to do together either just the two of us or as a family.
If he does not know why he is behaving this way we go through the basic necessities for living a happy life. Are you sleeping constantly and sufficiently? What have you been eating lately? When was the last time you went outside and talked to people in person? What is the last time you did something physical to get your heart pumping? These are not unfamiliar questions to him and honesty most of us have to be reminded of them from time to time because we function so much in auto pilot.
When we look at the solutions or what we know is good for us it becomes obvious what we need to focus on. We know all these things are good for us because we have experienced them in the past and we have discussed how good they made us feel in the moments we feel them. It is kind of like feeling and acknowledging the good and getting in the habit of doing this. Once we reflect on the good we felt in the past, then not only is my son reengaged and willingly to try something new but sometimes even eager to get planing and going.
Looking at problems and giving more names to problems is not the solution. Causing more trauma and distrust among parents and children by ripping phones away, especially if the parent is not willing to completely give up theirs causes, more harm. It is through communication and offering reflection and love along with collaboration and one on one time that solves these types of problems.
If families have issues with phones the phones are not the issue. The real issue is a lack of listening, empathy, communication, energy and creativity. These are all skills that can be taught and as a society and families we must learn or relearn them.
We can start with schools and require a "leave your phone at home" policy. Schools simply caved to their own initial policies of no phones in class because it was too hard to patrol. There was also the pressure of parents who insisted upon buying kids phones (some at an obscenely early age) and allowed their kids to bring them to school for fear of "not being able to reach them" at a moment's notice in part thanks to our culture of fear and the often to real school shootings and stranger danger phenomenon but also a rise in anxiety and depression. School offices have phones and emergency contingencies. No need for individual kids to have personal phones to be safe.
This recent article is a nice complement to this piece!
https://open.substack.com/pub/screenstrong/p/can-you-raise-a-teen-today-without?r=h886f&utm_medium=ios
Read both. They are good. But when did we become so powerless as humans than we no longer have aelf-control?
Never before have we lived in environments with such easy and quick access to things that aren't good for us. We have to live in a pretty intense state of vigilance to be mentally and physically healthy in our current society, and definitely moreso than the generations before us.
It's a terrifying path that society is moving down. And TikTok is the absolute worst of it:
https://unorthodoxwisdom.substack.com/p/your-brain-on-tiktok
I hear kids getting labeled with ADHD, depression, anxiety, social anxiety disorder, the list goes on and on. Would these kids have these issues if they didn't own a smartphone? How would their behavior changed if the smartphone was taken away or all social media was deleted? Rather than giving them a therapist to chat with every week and potentially mind altering drugs, we should look at what's causing the issue in the first place.
I never managed to get addicted to my phones (and I have two), but I definitely go through withdrawal for the internet in general when I go camping. 30 years of almost-daily use…
I saw a video yesterday where this gut points out several broken things - like a squeaky door - and he puts on WD40 and goes - FIX IT. His message, instead of complaining or living with it - FIX IT/SOLVE THE PROBLEM.