Five Things to Do Instead of Getting into an Argument with Your Teens about Tech
If you’re parenting a teen right now, chances are you are regularly engaging in a battle about screen time – either out loud with your teen or in your head or both. The scene usually goes something like this:
It’s the end of a long day for both you and your teen. You’re tired from work and your teen is tired from school and everything else that comes with growing up. It’s the end of the day, and you look over to your child, who is on the couch, mindlessly scrolling for what feels like the 100th hour of the day.
You start to get upset and think, “Why can’t this child regulate their screen time? Why can’t they do something else, like we used to do when we were kids? Why is this always such a battle?”
You know enough at this point, however, to understand that saying these things out loud to them isn’t going to help. So you go over to where they are sitting and say “Hey, it’s time to put our phones away.” Which is met by a reply of, “In a minute” or “I worked so hard at school today, why can’t I have more time?” or “Why are you always so strict?” etc. etc. etc.
This only serves to make you more frustrated and intensify your own feelings of wanting to get into bed, get on your own phone, and scroll the night away yourself.
What is one to do in these moments?
First, let’s recognize that this is a common challenge, and it’s a hard challenge. While there is longer-term work and ongoing conversations that usually need to happen for all of us around teens and tech, here are a few strategies to try in the moment, when you’re tired and sick of the same old, same old patterns:
1. Regulate yourself first. As parents, and especially as mothers, we feel the urgency of everything. If something is “off”, we feel we must fix it then and there. But often, facing a lack of energy at the end of each day, what we need instead is to fill our own bucket before we engage in power struggles in the moment. Going to lay down for 10 minutes, breathing, going for a walk, taking a shower, calling a friend. These are all things we can do to regulate ourselves and honor that the work we are doing is hard. The parenting challenge will be there when we’re done with our break.
2. Sit down in front of your teen, and ask them, “What is your plan for the rest of the evening?” While this is not a magic fix, often we forget that our teens can and do regulate their own lives for much of the day. We can learn to put the responsibility for ending screen time in their hands instead of coming at them out of anger and frustration. Often, when I do this, my son looks at me and says, “I’ll be off in 15 minutes” And usually (although not always), he is.
3. Talk to them about our own struggles with tech as well. This one is huge. Almost always, in conversations about teens and tech, a key component is missing, which is that most adults are also addicted to their phones! Imagine being a teen, watching your parent check their phone whenever there is a free moment, and then hearing them yell at you, “You are on your phone too much!” This causes our teens to tune us out and often to become angry. What if, instead, we could face the tech struggle together? For instance, we could say to them, “How about, if we are both able to end our phone time by 8 pm every day this week, we can do that thing you’ve been asking to do (concert, day trip, etc.) over the weekend?’ In acknowledging what they already know, which is that we too struggle with screen time, we might gain more of our teens’ respect and attention around the matter.
4. Similarly, we might sit in front of them and ask, “What would it feel like to end your screen time right now?” The world is chaotic and unfortunately, many of us live in fight or flight a good deal of the time. Scrolling is a way of trying to control our nervous system, although many of us don’t realize that it is only a temporary fix which leads to longer-term freeze. How many times have we, ourselves, been scrolling at midnight, knowing we should go to bed, but unable to stop? Having a conversation with our teens about what is happening in their bodies when they are stuck in freeze mode, scrolling endlessly, is a gentle and practical way to teach them – and us – about how technology can both help and harm our nervous system responses and our mental health. This conversation might lead to “step down” strategies to ease the transition at the end of the day.
5. Finally, we can remember that the goal isn’t to control our teens’ tech use, because one day, when they are gone and living their own lives, they will need to navigate tech without us. Tech is a part of life that isn’t going away. And therefore, as teens age, the goal shouldn’t be to have them regulate tech use because we tell them to do so, but rather to learn to regulate it themselves. One of the most important things we can do as parents is wrestle with our own tech use and ask ourselves some of the same questions. As with anything else, modeling healthy behaviors for our teens is so much more effective than demanding such behavior from them ever will be.
And, on those days when none of these things works and all else fails, which is bound to happen on certain evenings when we have nothing left, we can call it a day and grab a snack. After we have snack in hand, we can pass our teen, give them a hug, and remind them that they are loved. Then we can head off to the comfort of our own beds, enjoy our snack, and remember that we are too – and that tomorrow is another day.
Gail Cowan, MSW, is EOI’s Director of Development. A former therapist, she also runs her own coaching business. Find her at gail@gailcowan.com or gail@eyesopeniowa.org.