If you give your teen a phone this Christmas, do this:
The most popular gift for teenagers at Christmas is, evidently, smart phones. Forty percent of parents get them for their kids. And to be clear: I'm not knocking this! Both our teenagers have iPhones; 81% of the world has a smart phone. It's a necessary tool for navigation in today’s world.
Having said all that.
An article came out last week entitled, “Parents of the social media generation are not OK.” (And if ever there was an apt headline, let me tell you, this is one. Teens and parents are both largely not OK, in the social media world.)
The story leads with input from a mom whose daughter overused Snapchat and ended up suicidal. The mom says,
“It became really addictive [for her] -- the sense that you always have to be on, and always have to be responding to someone in order to be seen or to exist,' she said. ‘She would look at her phone and go from calm to storming out of the car, and the rest of the night, just curled up in her bed.’ Polak turned on some of the phone's parental controls, but they were easy for her daughter to circumvent. She took the phone away but worried this move would only drive her daughter to think about taking her own life again. She gave the phone back only to find her daughter 'self-soothing' on another social app, TikTok.”
This illustrates, in stark terms, an experience that many modern parents discover: things can get out of hand very, very quickly when it comes to teen phone use. It's highly interactive, one app leads to another leads to endless checking and scrolling, and few effective guardrails are built in. It’s a “buyer beware” situation.
As I read this article, I thought about the old adage, “Start as you mean to go on.”
The nugget is effective for all manner of activities, and as helpful for adults as it is for kids. But it seems extra relevant to the world of teens and phones, this newfangled and uber-absorbing world with so many unseen rabbit holes leading into dark pits.
When parents give their children a phone, so.much.damage can be avoided if they go in prepared and have firm limits in place. A staged approach to cell phones can moderate usage and help avoid the worst problems (I wrote about this here). The basic idea is to initially give kids brick phones that do talk and text only; Gabb is my recommendation for this level. Then they get a smart phone with no internet browser or social media. Finally they get a smart phone with internet and social media (often recommended to start with only one). We use these ‘levels’ in our house, and I’ve been happy with them.
Beyond this suggestion, some parents might want to consider comprehensive offerings to prepare kids - and themselves - for healthy phone use. Two I like are Family Tech University and Screen Time Clinic; I list more on my resource list here.
Some parents find these set-up steps onerous or overkill. I’ll admit it’s a bit more work up front… but I see it as entirely worth it. It can save kids (and family) from a world of pain.
If you give your kid a smart phone this Christmas, give it plenty of thought beforehand and start as you mean to go on.
“The one who gets wisdom loves life,” as the proverb says…. and who doesn’t want a kid who is both wise and life-loving? Setting them up from the start with healthy phone habits are good for both goals!
Merry Christmas.
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We’re on our phones… but the kids are NOT ok.