By Dr. Lisa Damour
It’s not always easy for kids to manage how much time they’re spending on screens, especially when they’re engaged with social media or video games, as these are engineered to make it very hard for teens to pull away.
Here are three things adults can do to help teens find a healthy balance on how much time they spend on digital devices.
1. Be curious about how your teen feels about technology
Teens rely on screens for all sorts of things, from watching documentaries to learning from how-to videos, to interacting with their friends. Conversations with teens about how they use their devices are almost always more successful when we start from a place of curiosity. Find out what your teen enjoys about using tech and what they don’t like so much. Ask them to reflect on how different digital activities make them feel. Doing so will bring you and your teen closer and help you talk together about setting limits that will help your teen to have the best possible experience.
2. Don’t let time spent on screens replace other activities
Rather than being against your teen using screens be for your teen engaging in activities that support healthy development. Teens who are spending plenty of time focused on their schoolwork, enjoying in-person interactions, helping out around the house or the community and being physically active tend to have the healthiest, most balanced relationships with screens.
3. Model healthy screen use
Teens pay attention to what adults do at least as much as they listen to what we say. Adopting healthy screen use habits for yourself will help your teen to do the same, and it will make it easier for you to enforce your screen time rules. For example, you can say to your teen, “I don’t keep technology in my room overnight because it gets in the way of sleep, which is important for my physical health and my mental health. Having the same rule for you as I do for myself is an important part of how I take care of you.”
Here’s to you, your teenager and a healthy screen use.
