Phone Wars

Cellphones are here to stay, so how can parents set healthy boundaries for their screen-obsessed children?

- Lindsay De Freitas

IT’S a perennial problem for parents of teens: navigating the eye rolls, sighs, grunts and groans should you have the nerve to interrupt them when they’re on their cellphone. Whether their fingers are a blur on WhatsApp or they’re zoned out watching back-to-back YouTube videos, woe betide the parent trying to pull them away from their device to do chores, wash their hands for dinner or switch off their light.

These are anxious times for well meaning moms and dads: are these devices frying our kids’ brains? Is their social development being stunted? Are they encountering undesirable elements online?

WHAT’S A PARENT TO DO?

Marion Read, a concerned British mom, was so desperate to resolve the constant fights she and her daughter were having that she recently turned to online parenting forum Mumsnet for advice.

The mom shared the fact that she confiscates her 17-year-old daughter’s phone every night and turns off the Wi-Fi at 9.30pm, even on weekends and during holidays. After conceding her approach was leading to “constant arguments” and increasingly unruly behaviour from her daughter, she asked fellow parents if they thought she was being too strict. 

Responses to the post flooded in, with one parent branding her methods “draconian” and others berating her for not trusting her daughter.

While many parents slated Marion’s heavy-handed approach, others commended her for it, with one adding that hopefully she’s teaching her daughter good habits.

It seems science is on Marion’s side, judging by a recent study conducted at the University of San Diego in the USA. Researchers used an online survey to question more than a million kids aged 13-18 on how much time they spent on their phone, tablet and computer and how much time they spent seeing friends face to face. They also analysed their happiness levels.