I had a small taste of what it's like to be a teen with a cellphone and it ruined my concentration! (An important reminder to parents).
It's more than helping them avoid bad content. If you give your child a phone, it is critical to engage consistently to help them learn good habits. They cant do this alone and there are risks!
As always, all views and opinions expressed are my own and do not represent the viewpoint of any other person or institution, including my employer.
The other day I was proctoring a study hall. Our school has cell phone racks where the kids put their phones upon arrival. In this particular room, the phone rack was on the teacher’s desk.
One of the students had forgotten to turn the phone off before putting it in the rack; the notifications were on vibrate.
Every few seconds the phone vibrated with a new message—note that this was during the school day, so while there were a lot of notifications, I still assume there were proportionally fewer notifications than there would be during the afternoon or evenings when more kids are out of school and totally free to be on devices.
It is hard for me to express the profound distraction this caused for me. I was working on a fairly simple task, one I do routinely, something that requires a degree of concentration, but not too much.
However, with that phone vibrating at frequent, but varying intervals, I found it very difficult to concentrate. Note that this was just because of the noise. I wasn’t invested in what those messages were: I didn’t care who was behind them or what they indicated was being said. Also, I have established work habits and a (mostly/occasionally/theoretically) functional pre-frontal cortex.
Still, I really, really struggled to concentrate. The constant vibrations effectively shrunk my effective attention span, the window of time I could work and focus, from long stretches to tiny intervals, sometimes mere seconds.
So if we add those elements to the mix, all of which kids feel intensely to the noise, plus the addictive way we can come to need that dopamine hit, plus the fact that an adolescent’s brain is still developing, it’s easy to see how difficult it is for an adolescent to resist this very potent cocktail.
No wonder so many kids struggle to pay attention and focus! Even if they don’t have their phone with them, they may be habituated and reduced to focusing in these very small micro-doses of time.
I’m not here to say your child should never have a phone (although I do think far more caution is warranted and far more care and supervision needs to happen than most parents are able/willing to give). The Surgeon General put out an advisory warning last summer that is worth reading regularly. (I unpacked this in some detail here, here, and here)
I am saying that kids—including mine!—need to be taught how to use and manage these devices. We can’t just give them these powerful, brain-changing, world-connecting machines that are available 24/7 and think there will be no repercussions.
Dr. Jonathan Haidt studies teens and mental health and is convinced phones do damage to the well-being of kids. He takes a very dim view of phones.
On the other side, Dr. Devorah Heitner studies teens and the digital world and she advocates for a model where parents teach (and model) their children how to use digital technology in a healthy, productive way.
Those are two very smart, well-intentioned people with different views. I love reading them both because it stretches my thinking and pushes my assumptions and biases. I shared my own opinion about parents, teens, and cell phones here.
Regardless, of where you are on this spectrum, there is one thing that is true and inescapable: an adolescent’s phone use (and that includes any networked device) requires considerable parental input and coaching on a consistent, ongoing basis. This is more than merely checking for inappropriate content—critical though that is.
It means helping your child know when and how to silence their phone, and developing the habits, routines, and discipline that will allow them to do this.
It means making sure that they aren’t trying to study with their phone on. It means making sure they can concentrate and focus for substantial periods of time and that they understand and can observe important limits (e.g. not checking their phone in a conversation). It means making sure they can go for significant periods of time without checking their phone.
The big myth, the thing that is easy to accept, is that teens (and frankly adults) can handle their phones, that it’s no big deal, that they can multi-task in this way and there’s no negative consequences. “I can put my phone down anytime I want!” is sort of the new version of “I can stop drinking anytime I want!”
This myth is something that kids really believe and it’s something I think many of us parents want to believe, or at least is something we don’t want to think about too much because the alternative—constant engagement, comprehensive coaching, positive modeling, ongoing dialogue, consistent supervision, regular follow-up, is really, really hard and daunting.
Daunting as this may be, this also presents a powerful opportunity to truly connect with our child on a regular basis.
As always, there are helpful and unhelpful ways to talk to your teen. Here are some tips and techniques I have found helpful to maximize the chances of successful communication (you may need to scroll down to #4):
But that is the price we pay if we give our kids phones and if we can’t do that, then we really shouldn’t allow our kids to have these devices. Otherwise, we are doing them a grave disservice and we really should not allow them access, any more than we would give them a car without driver’s ed training, insurance, and ongoing supervision.
Happy parenting—despite the frustrations, vexations, and challenges of parenting in the digital age—you’ve got this!
Sincerely,
Braden
Excellent points and a balanced perspective, Braden!
Can i only read the "helpful tips" if I'm a paid subscriber? That's what it looked like when I clicked on the link. Not sure if I'm doing it wrong...