My daughter's friend is coming to stay. My daughter has just said 'I can see her on Snapmaps. She's at the airport. I don't know why she's riding an armadillo though.😂'
Snapchat is a tricky app, because it's so much a part of being a teenager now, its provides real-time connection, and it can be highly entertaining. I can tell when my teens are on it because they keep holding their phone just away from their face and pulling a stupid look. Apparently, faces are for real friends; you photo the ceiling if you're not interested.
There's an entire etiquette about Snapping; it's fun - my daughters often end up in howls of laughter - and it's a real-time way of keeping in touch. But... the app is designed to keep our teens on it, and some of things it's used for are very worrying.
My experience is that you need explain in detail what’s going on - and to do this often - to help them become aware of how they’re being manipulated. It needs to be done in a no-fault way, in which you explain that they’re up against some of the most brilliant psychologists who hack their weaknesses and use them to steal their time and attention to trade it for advertising revenue.
My two teens are very different. One of them is naturally highly disciplined, and very ambitious. She doesn't want to waste her time on vacuous apps. She has listened to my explanations and controlled her time by deleting apps from her phone when they become to enticing, and giving it to me when she feels she’s been using it too much.
Here’s the problem. A year ago she told me that she’d come to realise that all of her peers were spending most of their social time on apps, and she had become pretty much invisible because of her phone controls. We were going out without our phones and other teens just sat around staring at their screens, so she felt completely alienated. She began to really struggle socially. As a result, we’ve found a middle ground where she checks in once or twice a day, and makes sure she posts, but has also fostered friendships with others who are much more active offline. Even so, she tells me she’s missed occasions when they’ve all been organising things and – because she was offline - she was presumed to be unavailable.
The teen who finds it very difficult to stay off her phone has now asked for a strict time limit, so she needs to come to me to gain longer access. I had explained to her how the cortisol spike works and she noticed it one evening when she’d left her phone upstairs. She’s also noticed how her days fly by with nothing actually happening if she’s on her phone. The strength of our relationship, and the fact that I don’t blame her for her struggles, means that she’s happy to be open with me about her difficulties.
Some people use Bark, or Pinwheel phones. I think they can also be incredibly effective at managing your teen’s phone use, but it’s vital to engage them in understanding what the issues are, whilst you still have some influence over them.
At the end of the day, we are the parents. We set the rules around phone use; you can create a phone contract to support your rules, along with consequences for breaking them, but they need to come from a place of support for what your teen wants out of life, rather than a means of punishing them. Ultimately, as Natasha Devon pointed out in my interview with her, I think what’s important is that our teen feels safe coming to us to talk about the issues they’re experiencing, and getting real support and understanding, rather than judgment. If they think you'll overreact, or immediately take their phone away, if they come to you with a problem then guess what...
Make the app the bad guy, not your teen.
If you haven't already, I recommend you listen to the following episodes using these search terms.
- Screens
- Phones
- Consequences
- Social media
www.teenagersuntangled.com/episodes
