93: Screen time for tweens and teens: The latest on what works and what doesn't.

If you're a bit confused about how much you should be wading in on your young adolescent's screen time then you're not alone. The truth is, there's been very little clear data to prove what we should and shouldn't be doing. Jonathan Haidt's book Anxiety Generation has turned the dial up on the whole subject and he's pushing hard for a ban on social media for younger teens because of the impact he says it has on them. Meanwhile, Natasha Devon is more keen on getting us parents to engage positively with our kids and teach them how to be their best selves online.

So who's right? A new study from the University of California, published in the journal Paediatric Research, looked at the behaviour of ten thousand 12-13 year olds, and it's given parents a clearer understanding of what we should be doing.

The most positive impact: is if we parents place limits on our own screen use, especially in front of our kids. 

The most negative thing to do is using screen time as a reward or a punishment - because they found it tends to increase the desire to be on their screens. Which is exactly what Natasha Devon said in my interview about how to help your teens be their best selves online.

NEW STUDY:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-024-03243-y#Sec19

TOOL FOR CREATING A FAMILY MEDIA PLAN:
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/fmp/Pages/MediaPlan.aspx

MY INTERVIEW WITH NATASHA DEVON:
https://www.teenagersuntangled.com/42-social-media-and-how-to-help-your-teens-be-their-best-selves-online-with-natasha-devon-mbe/

Transcript

Rachel Richards: 0:06

Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers. Untangled. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, parenting coach, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. It's summer in the UK, and Suzy is away, but I have some great interviews lined up, and in today's episode, I thought we'd review the topic of screen time. Now, if you've been reading the papers or you're on social media, then you're probably aware of Jonathan Haidt book anxiety generation. It's a really interesting read, and he provides lots of links to the data he uses to come up with the conclusion that we should be limiting early teen access to social media while increasing their time spent connecting in real life. Few of us would argue with his position, but as any parent will know, it's also a lonely, rocky path to travel, if the other parents around you don't agree. Now, I've been doing some coaching, looking at screen time limits for families, and a study by the University of California published in the pediatric research journal, caught my eye because it included 10,012 to 13 year olds and has some clear guidelines for parents. In this episode, I'm going to outline the conclusions they make in the study. Then you can listen to the original chat between Susie and I about screen time. So let's start with the study. They set out to look at the way parents behaved and identify how it impacts on screen time and problematic social media, video game and mobile phone use. You can find a link to the study in the podcast notes, if you'd like to read it yourself. But here are the clear guidelines, the most positive impact is if we parents place limits on our own screen use, especially in front of our kids, the most negative thing to do is using screen time as a reward or a punishment, because they found it tends to increase the desire to be on their screens. And that's exactly what Natasha Devon said in my interview about how to help your teens be their best selves online. Allowing screens in bedrooms and at meal times was linked to increased time on them overall and a greater chance of addictive use. Now this is all obvious, really. I mean, it interrupts the opportunity to connect around the table or for adequate sleep. When we parents keep track of our children's use and set limits, less screen time was reported, and that's it in a nutshell. In all honesty, the study really pleased me because the recommendations are exactly what I've been doing at home. Phones are banned at the table, they're not to be kept in bedrooms at night, and we have buddied up to control each other's screen time. So I have the screen time code for both my daughters and they have mine now that means we all have time controls on both social media and when we can use our phones. My phone now switches off at 930 at night, except for calls, WhatsApp and audible and Spotify. In all honesty, it was irritating to begin with, but I now find it genuinely liberating. I regularly check my teenager screen use and have judgment free discussions about where they feel they might be struggling with too much pointless screen time, and they have the right to do the same with me. Now you may balk at the idea of being accountable to your own kids, but look, I reason that if I tell my kids that my screen time doesn't matter, but theirs does, I'm just reinforcing the idea that when you grow up, it's fine to squander valuable time, and that the mark of being an older teenager is to spend as much time as you want online, which is not what we want. I'm trying to create an environment where we're all held accountable, because screen use is tricky for everyone. As a result, my use of social media has dropped dramatically, and my sleep and my real life productivity and my fun, it's all rocketed. It didn't happen overnight, but I can genuinely recommend this as a system. Now that's all I have to say on the study. Have a listen to our original talk about screen time. All of the research I did for it still stands up. Now. I started out by trying to pin down some reliable facts. There are lots of headlines, but when I dig behind them. They're often small sample studies and what I would consider click bait, because they feed on our fears. But I'll go with one older survey from 2019 by Common Sense Media, a non profit organization which has a wealth of information for parents, they found that for older kids, aged 13 to 17, the number of time on their screens has climbed to seven hours and 22 minutes, but that was even before covid really struck. What happened in covid, according to education technology, is that the majority of time spent on screens shifted from being something to do with learning to being much more social and entertainment driven. Susie, do you have issues with screen time in your home. How do you, as a mindfulness coach, perceive it,

Susie Asli: 4:45

or it's a minefield? Yes, we have issues. I have two boys and a girl, but my boys are quite into gaming, especially the eldest, he's really is a big gamer. He loves gaming. And, you know, during covid, and I know that I'm absolutely not alone in this. I, you know, was almost thinking. Encouraging them to go and game, because that was how they got their social contact. Obviously, that has changed, and they don't need that anymore, but we've got sort of stuck in probably gaming more than than otherwise would have been. And my daughter is she doesn't game well, she does a bit, but it's different, and maybe her screen time is a bit more passive. She's on her phone a lot, talking to friends, but she'll maybe watch TV more, which is more sort of passive watching, as opposed to engaging and actually being sociable with through her headphones. And I find it confusing, because, you know, we there's a presumption that screen time is bad end of and maybe it is, but we don't know yet. Or maybe it isn't, maybe it isn't, you know, questioning that, that presumption. I do that, and I'm thinking, Well, you know, I can see there are downsides to gaming or to being online, and I can also see there are positives. But the reality is, we don't have long term studies of what this generation will look like from having so much screen time. We just simply don't know. And I don't know whether I'm not saying that's good or bad. It's just it's so seeds of doubt in my mind when I'm trying to navigating, navigate it, you know, we just don't know. And I, you know, I think social media is brilliant, and gaming is so much fun, they love it. I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is getting stuck in it, yes, when we can't get off it and do anything else, myself included, because, you know, it's designed to draw us in, isn't it? And

Rachel Richards: 6:37

that's a really good point, because Common Sense Media says we need to shift from evaluating the quantity of screen time to the quality of the content, and what's actually happening when we're, when we were, when we're looking at our screens, and when you talk about the getting stuck, that's the one area we do know a lot about, because we know that these companies that are trying to attract people to the screens spend a huge amount of money on the best minds in the business, and how you actually keep people, get people there and keep them there. So according to the Harvard education review, social media apps use variable reward schemes, which were introduced by psychologist BF Skinner in the 1930s and in his experiments, he found that mice responded most frequently when they couldn't guess when they were going to get a reward. So humans, apparently are no different. And if we perceive a reward to be delivered at random, and checking for the reward comes at very little cost, then we will check habitually. And programmers know this, and they are working very hard behind the screens to make sure that we keep checking, because eyes on screens means money, yes, and the rewards that they're talking about are oxytocin, which is that love hormone, that molecule of social connection that we we release at any time there's a tweet or a message or it tells us that we're actually interacting properly with someone, even if we're just reading a message on social media. Or, you know, dopamine, any positive social stimuli can result in a reward of dopamine, and those results tend to be short term, so they create an addictive feedback loop, so you get the dopamine hit, and then you need another thing, another hit to get it again. And the apps, most apps, are optimized to encourage you to keep compulsively checking for notifications to get that dopamine hit. And then the cortisol, the fight or flight hormone, comes in, because if you're the type of person who's been doing the checking regularly, like the dopamine hit 15 every 15 minutes or so, if you put the phone away, then after a bit, you're going to end up with a cortisol rush, because you're a bit fearful that maybe you're going to miss something. Oh God. And then, and then, to get rid of the cortisol rush, you'll go back to the phone to check it. So this is what's happening behind the scenes. It's exporting, and Instagram even has notification algorithms that sometimes withhold likes. I spoke to my hairdresser the other day, and she'd been doing these reels, which are really great for people who want to understand how to do their hair. She's lovely. And she said she'd done this real and spent ages creating it, and then when she put it up, she hardly had any views. And she thought, what's going on? And so she kept checking, and then suddenly there was a big amount later on. And she really and when I spoke to her about this, she said, Oh, because Instagram withholds some of the likes and the and the views, so that you keep checking, and then they'll, they'll give you your hit, because you're primed now to feel much more excited about getting Yeah, and then you'll keep coming back to it. It's amazing. It's amazing how these things work. And I think understanding that, yes, helps. It

Susie Asli: 9:34

really helps. And teenagers can understand that. I think I was talking to my son about it yesterday, he gets that. I mean, there's one thing, one thing understanding it in your head, and then there's another thing you know, not following it, that's really, really difficult, especially when they are doing that deliberately. But knowing it, being aware of that, is really helpful.

Rachel Richards: 9:54

One of the really positive things is the use of the Internet to hunt. On things we're interested in.

Susie Asli: 10:01

Yes, so I use in I try to my screen, use needs looking at. I try to use social media. I mean, I use it for my work. I use it to quite a lot for work. It's really helpful. But I also try and follow people who I think are interesting. And, I mean, I have learned an awful lot from social media, and I think it's amazing and brilliant. And you meet people in areas that you

Rachel Richards: 10:25

could never possibly you message them, and they message you back. How does that happen? I know. How is little me able to talk to these people? Yeah, it's

Susie Asli: 10:32

fun. It's fun, and it's really, really good. My son was talking to him last night, and he, you know, he knows loads about the particular topics in the news that he's interested people, people who are, you know, doing interesting things and stuff that he's interested about. He will sit and, you know, read and listen and it's on Tiktok, or wherever it is, and he's really, you know, knows what about it. So it's really good. Again, the problem is, when we stuck it, we get stuck in it. And also another problem, I think, is the good old comparisonitis, oh, which is the toxic part, isn't it? It's the bit where we, you know, we see everybody else having a lovely life. And, you know, get FOMO and, you know, teenagers, particularly girls, but I'm sure boys as well. You know, I don't look like that. You know, all the, all the toxic stuff. The problem with

Rachel Richards: 11:17

the social media is it completely amplifies that, because everybody's living their best life online. And so you all you see is a stream of people who are going to amazing holiday destinations and looking their best, which is, you know, 85 to 90% of the time we don't look our best, no, so most of the time nobody looks like but it's even hard to step away from that and get that in your head. And the number of research studies have been pointing out that this, this low self esteem, is correlated to time on social media, because it's linked to increased feelings of loneliness, anxiety, depression, envy, you know, it is a problem, yeah. So certainly having conversations about it can be really helpful, and talking to them about the stuff that you've been saying, where you if you encourage them to hunt down things that genuinely interest them

Susie Asli: 12:07

and also maybe encourage them. And I'm just thinking, you know, thinking aloud, to follow particular people. Because there are, there is a, you know, there is a pushback against some of this. You know, there's now an awareness of all of this, how toxic can be. And there are loads of people on Instagram, or wherever you, you know, wherever you follow, who are against that and who are trying to present normality. You know, whether that's body image or or, you know, being a parent or for the, you know, for the adults, but you know, trying to, trying to show what, what does a normal life look like? And that finding communities,

Rachel Richards: 12:40

finding communities of people who who have interests like you. Yeah, it's a very it's very enabling. And actually, one of the great things about covid, ironically, is that people who were disabled or unable to leave their house, agoraphobics, all sorts of other people found that it was a really great for the first time in their life, they were able to connect with people because it was online, yeah. So this move to online has benefited something, yeah.

Susie Asli: 13:06

I mean, it is, it is. I mean, there is so much, and I think it gets labeled as just being negative because we're frightened, because we don't know what the effects are. And maybe the fear mongers are correct, which, but we just don't know. But there are definitely positive things in it. So if we can pick them out and embrace them, and then maybe, I don't know, set limits as to, I'm talking about myself here,

Rachel Richards: 13:28

my own children will I have some research that will help us set limits

Susie Asli: 13:32

on it so that we're not, you know, we do other things. We're connecting properly, rather than just

Rachel Richards: 13:36

and that's, I think that's another thing that's happened because of covid, is because we've, we've actually got out of the habit of saying, Oh, I'll meet you for a coffee, or organizing parties or going, just going out to go and do other things, because you think, Oh, well, actually, I could just stay at home if it's comfortable. Yes. And so if you're not a massive extrovert, it can just feel much easier not to bother. And I've had to check myself. I've, I've been texting someone, and then thought, for God's sake, pick up the phone and the conversation is so much more enjoyable, funny and fun. And what I did notice with my daughters during half term was that when we would get together, we'd be a big family with another family, and we'd get together and all the kids were on their phones. And my older daughter, who's very disciplined about her phone use and doesn't really she can see the problems, turned to me later, and she said, You know what? Everything's online now I can't, you know, I have to exist online because she wasn't on Instagram, she wasn't on these other things. And she said, I don't exist for this generation if I'm not engaging in those platforms,

Susie Asli: 14:41

yeah, but we still don't know what that means, you know, because every generation has the, you know, the adults go, Oh, you didn't do much. You mustn't do that, because you'll end up, you know, where will this end? And each generation goes, Yeah, but it's fine. Just chill out and there. I don't know. I'm just, you know. I there is the very

Rachel Richards: 15:01

good point. What I see when I see this happening is I see us shifting to what Mark Zuckerberg wants, which is this Metaverse, where we're all living online. And I think the point about humans is that we have something that computers don't have, and that we need to teach our children to channel that and get in contact with that, because that's what will define us and make us different. And when it comes to the work environment that they're going to be in, that's the thing that will trump the computer Absolutely.

Susie Asli: 15:30

I mean, I totally agree with that. I just think maybe that would be a phase, absolutely, and then they'll find their own way in it, possibly to know. But there's a there's an uncertainty in it, isn't there? We don't know what we don't

Rachel Richards: 15:42

know we don't know. So rather than panicking to just find ways of channeling things so what to do, Psychology Today had an article on it that I thought was one of the better ones, and they said, Look, teens need practical guidance on how to disengage. We need to parent them. I love these talks because they make me go back into Okay, where am I with this? Not doing very well when we first set up their devices, we're like, oh, well, I'm going to do this, and I'm limiting their screen time. And my children were brought up in a very offline environment, and and suddenly I realized looking at them now that the older one has done all the pushing, and she's got very healthy habits, because I was very careful, and the younger one has just snuck in, yeah, massive usage. And I suddenly looked I thought, Oh, my God, she's online all the time. And so I've realized I have to go back to her and think, Okay, let's go back to what's happening. And I said to her, so, so let's have a look at how much time you've spent on Tiktok. She was horrified, because she knows that her use of Tiktok isn't really giving her a huge amount, and it's not actually. It doesn't feel good, no. So for her, you know that those 10 minutes you thought you spent on Tiktok that turned into three hours. It's not, it's not making her feel good, no. So we need to somehow interrupt, yes, that process, because it

Susie Asli: 17:10

can feel good for a bit. I mean, I did try and teach my younger two, my younger boy, particularly, who really gets stuck in it, what does it feel like when you're in it, there's a sort of, from a mindfulness where, you know, noticing you're on it. And it's actually really fun for a bit. And I'm the same, it's lovely for a bit. And then you reach a point

Rachel Richards: 17:30

where you see seven pictures of otters, yeah.

Susie Asli: 17:34

And it you start to numb out, and it feels a bit and at that point, or he was gaming and and he was, you know, getting really raged by that particular game at that point. You know, when can you can you notice just before that kicks in, you know, tune into what's going on in your body or your thoughts, whatever, and then take a break. Unfortunately, the draw of I found with him, anyway, the draw of the social media is because they are as you were explaining. You know, they're deliberately trying to get you to stay on. It was, it was too much to fight again. I

Rachel Richards: 18:09

think that's a discussion to have when they're not online and when you're having a sort of, okay, let's have a think about what's going on here. What do you want? Because, rather than imposing upon a teenager a regime, we need to have a sit down and a discussion about what they're trying to get out of their lives when they feel at their happiest, you know? And if that is spending a lot of time online, rather than saying, Well, you're wrong looking at why it is yes that they get so much out of that. And one of my friends said that she'd actually had a conversation with all the other mothers and said, Okay, so the gaming time is between this window and this window. And she could then say to her son, well, you're not missing out because your mates aren't online.

Susie Asli: 18:47

That's brilliant way of doing it. I think for younger, younger teens, I think old, 1917, year old would be like, Why? Why are you talking to my friends? You don't even know them. Just that's weird. The younger ones, that's a brilliant idea. And I did have a conversation with him. I remember saying, you know, tell me about the gaming what, what do you what? What do you get out of it? And he was really adamant, you know, he he got a lot out of it in a really positive way. It was sociable, it was exciting. He felt he was learning, you know, he ramped it up massively to try and win me over. But you know that his his, you know, for him, there were loads of positives in it. And that was quite interesting, actually, because it's

Rachel Richards: 19:28

just reminded me off the top of my head of a study by Dr Eric Sigmund, when you're gaming, the levels of cortisol go up, and your body has a release of the sugars so that you can run, which because it's a fight or flight hormone, and yet you're, all you're doing is staying sedentary, and that that's actually not very good for us. So the interesting question is, should we be, you know, breaking it up, you know, they're gaming, then going out and doing something that involves some exercises? Is how sedentary are we? As a result, one lady I saw her. Son, who was on his Xbox and YouTube all the time, and then behaving appallingly, getting into rage as treating his family badly. And she said, I don't know what to do. And everyone said, take them away from him. And he was transformed. And then she was saying, I don't know, should I give it back to him? Well, we need to have some real discussions in that situation, because you've then got somebody who's got a problem managing it. Yeah, if your teenager is performing well at school and they're otherwise well adjusted, you know, we can it's more about just managing it, isn't it? It's hard, though very hard. Now, setting screen time. Android and Apple devices have screen time features that indicate how long one has been using the device, you can actually go onto these phones and Set screen times for the younger ones. You can actually put a pin in that you put in so that they can't override it. And I know one of my daughters has a friend whose parents has put these in place, and she marches around going and she's furious, but the point is, if her parents hadn't done that, she would then have been spending all that time. All right, now she's marching up in town corridors, furious, but the point is that she would then simply not come away. She would be spending huge amounts of time. The question with that is, rather than imposing the time, it's sitting down with your teenager and saying, okay, so what do you think is a reasonable amount of time and negotiating it and then saying, Okay, let's set that and we can come back and review it in a week or so time. I

Susie Asli: 21:31

think that's a great idea. I've tried doing that because I do want mine to be less on. I think particularly one of them is on way too much. It doesn't hasn't worked for us. I don't know whether we haven't followed through or they can, you know, the idea of, yeah, that sounds like a really good amount of time, doesn't really work in reality for us. I mean, that could work because then they're suddenly in that game, or they're suddenly doing that and, oh well, we'll, let's do it tomorrow, or start tomorrow, right? There's hard. I don't know. There's one thing having a great idea, good theory, and they can even go, yeah, that's brilliant. I don't want to be so much on my phone or whatever they're doing, but when they're actually stuck in it, then it's really, really hard to pull them

Rachel Richards: 22:11

well, it's very interesting, because I have tried that with myself, and it works very effectively. You're

Susie Asli: 22:17

just my discipline. Because

Rachel Richards: 22:19

what happens is the phone switches off. I can't I can't. It will stop you from accessing things, and I have the pin, so of course, I can change it, but what it does is it concentrates my time effectively. So I then think, if I'm going to be on social media for this time, then I need to be effective during that time. So I'll have my social interactions. I'll check this, check that, check, and I'm off, yeah, and, and it actually then concentrates me on doing things that are really enjoyable, rather than school.

Susie Asli: 22:51

Yes. And then I guess one when you're doing it for yourself, you have buy in, don't you? You're doing it for a reason. You want to be less on social media genuinely. Otherwise you wouldn't be doing it. Whereas maybe it's different when we're discussing it with the teens, they maybe know in their heads they ought to not be on it so much, but actually, they really want to be on it,

Rachel Richards: 23:09

so they I think it's it needs to be not, and it doesn't happen just once. It's now going, Okay, let's

Susie Asli: 23:13

try this.

Rachel Richards: 23:14

How do you feel about it? And actually, there's studies have found that FOMO and feelings of anxiety associated with constant connectivity drop off. Yeah, do limit the time, because then they just know that it's not. Yes, they've had that limit. And now and then

Susie Asli: 23:29

they have to find something else to do, which I find has been the difficult thing for my kids, because when you're gaming or doing things, you know, on social media, it's really the you know, the reward is immediate, and it's really big deliberately, as you've explained. So trying to find some another activity that matches that is almost impossible. So there's like a drop in interest, drop in excitement. Nothing matches to the excitement of, you know,

Rachel Richards: 23:56

blitzing, yes, yes, and cortisol isn't

Susie Asli: 23:59

quite as fun.

Rachel Richards: 24:01

We do need to find things that do give those hits somewhere else, those rewards

Susie Asli: 24:07

they get used to, that it's just a different way of being

Rachel Richards: 24:10

Yes, absolutely and and understanding the benefit of it. So in other words, with my kids, what I have done is, when they have been online for long periods of time, I then say to them, so, so tell me what, what fantastic stuff have you been doing? You know, it perfectly. I'm not being facetious. Just yeah, give me some stuff. It's been I'm really interested. And most of the time they can't tell me what, what has happened, what conversations they've had, they've there's nothing. It's blank. And I personally, this is cool. Literally no research about this at all. Is, I feel like when people are scrolling, what's happening is their brain needs some downtime, so they started scrolling to give themselves that brain downtime, which is the same thing you'll get from going for a walk or just doing something repetitive, those mindless activities. But their mind isn't switching off because they're constantly being stimulated, so it's mimicking. Like that, but it's not doing any of that at all, so it's actually makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. It just doesn't feel good. Yeah, so I have had conversations with them about that, and I am getting a lot of buy in now because, because they understand, because I talk all the time about it, but I also think, as a parent, we need to buy into Yes, so if you're at the table and it's supper time and you've got your phone out, then this is the big and my father, Christmas one year, gave my husband a phone cage, which was marvelous. I looked at it and said, Oh, darling, that's a really great idea. And that went in the middle of the table, and every time his phone went out, it went in the cage. And the kids thought that was hilarious, and it's it sort of interrupted that mindless. And the worst thing is, what he's doing is reading the newspaper most of the time, his stuff on his phone. Occasionally, he's playing, you know, a game, but we know if he's playing a game because it's turned horizontally. So that's an easy one, heyday. It's always heyday. And then the other the other one is basically going through all the newspapers. Rather than allowing that to happen, we are now buying newspapers so that he can sit and read a newspaper in front of my children, because otherwise they don't know that that's what he's doing. They

Susie Asli: 26:13

just presume that he's doing what they do on their phones, exactly. And then I said to

Rachel Richards: 26:17

my daughter, when we'd had a bit of a brow, and she wanted to make it up to me. I said, Okay, you can make it up to me by reading the broadsheet downstairs and telling me about a story you find that's really interesting. And she did, and the story was fantastic. And at the end of it, she said, God, I found that really interesting. And I haven't really understood why people do that, and sometimes you've just got to interrupt the flow of where they are and just correct it so that they are, so that then if they go back online, they may now be looking for information sources rather than looking for what the makeup is that's fashionable at

Susie Asli: 26:55

the moment. Yeah, no. And which can be fun for a while, can't you? But I love the idea of having actual newspapers, because they're, yeah, they don't, and the idea that they they presume what we're doing on our phones is what they're doing, because, of course, because that's what they're doing. And we're probably not, half the time we're doing work and well,

Rachel Richards: 27:12

and that's the other one I saw, which I thought was fantastic, which is narrating what you're doing, and the point of irritating people. So the thing is that they see you on Instagram and they think, Oh, she's on Instagram, I'm on Instagram. But what you're doing is something completely different, because you can say, right? So now what I'm doing is I'm answering somebody's question here. Now I'm posting a thing about the research that I've done. And now, you know, and then you can pull out your phone, you say, so now what I'm doing is I've got the calendar up, because you've got a dental appointment in two weeks time, and I need to, I need to put in some notes in my diary for you to and so that they can see that what we're actually doing is not scrolling. You've basically got a very, very busy life managing a million people's diaries. Yeah, and

Susie Asli: 27:56

that tell you to be quiet. Well, they can try,

Rachel Richards: 27:59

but I can say, okay, fine, you do it. Because the point is that then they start to understand that life, what you're doing, is not chilling, that in a way, it also creates compassion, because they can see that you're not actually having a fun time necessarily. What you're doing is you're actually trying to run your life. Because there was a book I read called it the me machine. You know that we're all walking around with our phones, but yours isn't a me machine. If you're actually using it for work, it's a basically a management machine, yeah? And so as long as they can start to see that that's what adults are doing, yes, then it starts to shift the debate and the discussion. Yeah,

Susie Asli: 28:37

no, definitely, definitely, how we use our phones is super important. I'm going to take that up to review.

Rachel Richards: 28:43

And you know, you did bring up the very, very pertinent point, which is, what are we supposed to do when we're not on our phones? And there's a really fantastic link that I found, which was on parentingteensin, tweens.com which was 50 screen free activities. And I actually thought they were really good. Sometimes you think, Oh, God, they're just filling space. Yeah, they're lame. Actually, no, really good one. So I'll put that in the in the podcast link. But they had game nights. They had Nerf gun war, organizing and rearranging your room, geocaching, reading, having a massive clear out. It doesn't always have to be about a dopamine hit. It actually could be about, look, you know, you actually need to live in this environment. Should we clear out all the stuff and when you were young? Yes, give you an image, a new image. Yes, I've had an evening where my girls went into my wardrobe and tried on all my clothes. We did a whole what's the image you'd like to have this time? It's fun. I get my boys to do that. I think this is a huge idea. It could be hilarious. You know, when they were younger, we used to actually put the music on really loudly and dance around to it. Now that may seem really lame when you're a teenager, but you could say, Okay, what's your best hit I want we want to listen to it for this amount of time, and suddenly they're off their phones and all talking. About music moved that's

Susie Asli: 30:01

really lovely. That's a really good way of doing it. Because I think sometimes we kind of get we fall into our comfort zones, don't we? It's really comfortable just to sit and be on a screen because you're not actually doing and it's really passive, and to step out of that takes a bit of effort to do something else. So often they're like, I can't

Unknown: 30:19

be asked because we're all tired, yeah, it's just easier to sit here. But

Susie Asli: 30:23

we know, you know, if you put a bit of effort in, then actually, you know, you get energy out of it as well. But it's getting into, you know, putting that little bit of effort and stuff, and then

Rachel Richards: 30:31

reinforcing it afterwards by like, how are you feeling right now? I feel a bit sweaty. And far, it was great. And my kids, when I do things like that, they love it, yeah, to finish this off, the things that are suggested are setting down times for device use and up times. So you can say so these are good times to use your device. Yeah. So here are the down times during meals, hour before bedtime, meeting people restricted use in the morning. Don't use your phone as an alarm clock. Don't look at it first thing. Treat yourself to something much more interesting, like a coffee or walk around the garden, or whatever you do, look out of the window and just breathe the air something different, rather than frantically reaching for your face, because I stress hormones, right? Constantly taking a proper lunch break, which we will come to in our next section, and avoiding screens before bed. So really selecting times when you can have a downtime and and saying, right, we all agree that that's going to be and you can either have, you know, selective downtime, or a complete detox. If, if you're if you've got a point where there's somebody in the house who really can't manage who is exhibiting distressing behavior. There are people can support this, but really they need to be away from the screen. Yeah.

Susie Asli: 31:48

And one thing we can do, and I love it, is it's a mindfulness thing. It's called urge surfing, and you can use it with anything, but it's really good for digital. And it's when you feel the urge to pick up your phone or whatever it is used or wine, or wine or a massive bag of sweets. Then you notice the urge, and then you don't act on it. And you give yourself, like 1015 minutes, you time it, and you say, right in, in that amount of time, 15 minutes time I am allowed to do. I'm going to allow myself to do the urge I'm I'm feeling right now, but I'm going to make myself Wait so I can do it, but I don't have to. So you're not saying I'm not going to do it, because that we then we resist it and we fight and that's a whole different way of doing it. So you do, go do something else, and then after the 15 minutes, quite often that urge has passed, or it hasn't, or you have, you consciously choose? No, actually, there is something I really need to check on my phone, so I am going to consciously pick it up do that. But it's just a very different way of approaching it all.

Rachel Richards: 32:48

It's a speed bump in the road. It's

Susie Asli: 32:49

a speed bump. You're tuning in. You're no, you're noticing the urge. Firstly, then you're putting it away and giving yourself permission to do it. You're not, you know, restricting yourself massively, but you're allowing that urge, which is often a reaction to something else, some discomfort from something else, something else has happened. Oh, I need to check. Oh, I need a glass of wine, because it's been, I've just had a horrible conversation. You're reacting to something. So if you can allow that reaction just to pass, and then decide what you're going to do

Rachel Richards: 33:16

is a good way of doing absolutely and then finding the other rewards, you know, things you could be spending your time doing, like planting seeds for the garden. Anything, anything, absolutely, that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening. If you found it useful, please send it on to somebody else who might benefit. If you want to send me an email, use teenagers untangled@gmail.com or you can come to my main website, which is www teenagersuntangled com. You can find reviews. You can find old episodes. There my occasional blogs. You can sign up to get the newsletter from me, which I tend to send out more regularly than I write the vlogs and and that's it. So thank you for listening. Bye, bye For now. You