Helping your Teen Master their Screen: Self-Control vs Limits.

The amount of time our kids spend on Social Media, or any type of screen time, is concerning to all parents. Not only do parents worry what their kids are watching, or how that time could be better spent, the frequent policing and monitoring of screen time also result in family tension. As kids get older, they want less monitoring and more autonomy. But the paradox is: the parents also want to give it to them. So what exactly is going on here?

The harsh truth is that the current age of Big Tech is pitting our kids against an almost unstoppable foe: the Social Media algorithm. In the past, teenagers needed to battle against TV and games. However TV followed a schedule and games could usually be completed, and also took place in a public place where time limits were perhaps more easily checked. Not only is the new devices of distraction able to fit in our pockets and taken everywhere, the Social Media feed is never-ending.

To make matters worse, it is also custom tailored to keep you scrolling; the world’s brightest minds have created them to keep fully-developed adults scrolling, to what chance do our kids have?

Maybe we just need to give them the right type of help.

Do Screen Limits Help?

There is no doubt that screen time limits are helpful, and there are plenty of products to help us do this. Thankfully the need for these was recognized by the Big Tech companies and they come built-in with mobile devices. But while they are effective for a desired outcome of limiting screen time, they might not be effective for helping teenagers develop their own self-regulation skills.

There are also side-effect that come with strict screen time regulation. Communication with your peer group is still important, and while parents might reminisce about long phone calls and hang-outs in the park, in the modern day that is being replaced with digital forms of ‘hang-outs’ which are still important. Because mobile devices really are universal gadgets that do everything, hard limits on screen time may unknowingly deprive them of this benefit.

Social media on the other hand is one-way consumption, and doesn’t provide the same benefits as communication apps. While video chats, voice calls and maybe even text chats can give kids some kind of social development (although not as good as in-person), scrolling through social media does no such thing, and may even contribute to anxiety, feelings of isolation and FOMO (thanks to people’s natural instincts to only post the best version of themselves).

So parents are stuck - on the one hand, hard limits are clearly a benefit, but on the other they might deprive kids of some things that are actually valuable.

Shift to Self-Control

On top of this, there is the tension of the desire to transition to being an adult. All teenagers grow up seeing their parents and other adults having control over their own lives (and the own devices), and want to achieve the same. As part of their developmental process, we the parents need to help them transition to being adults and with that comes the responsibility to make their own decisions. Screen limits don’t help with this.

Some advice out there involves providing alternative activities: “Let’s make a cake together”, “Let’s go shopping for X”, or “How about I drive you to your friend’s house?”. This is an excellent strategy but it requires the parent to be there. Thankfully, most teenagers also have goals and things they want to achieve: perhaps it’s a fitness goal, or reading for English class, or practicing an instrument for a recital. Kids that are engaged in these goals are already one step ahead in their journey to self-control.

Beyond Limits

This is where Screen Balance comes in. Our goal is to hook into the things teenagers want to achieve and help them develop self-regulation. We do this by generating tailored coaching videos which interrupt the social media feed with 3 key ingredients:

• Addressing the viewer by name: “Hi Laura!”

• Referring to the goal that they have set themselves: “How far are you through The Great Gatsby?”

• Appearing as someone or something with a connection to both: In this case perhaps the message is delivered by a character from the novel that Laura has chosen

With these elements in place, the viewer is snapped out of their scrolling and is given the best opportunity possible to make a good choice: spend some time working towards their goal instead of wasting the time on scrolling. Not only does this aim to help direct their attention to where it is best needed, but it also trains their self-control muscles to get better at making similar decisions.

We want this to sit alongside screen limits, with the goal of slowly replacing them. On the way, we also hope that a healthy family dynamic is restored. If this sounds like something you want to try, you can read more here.

Driven but Distracted: Helping our teens reclaim their focus.

A student sits in her room. She has exams approaching. Her study plan is on the wall and a textbook is in front of her. She had been getting As, but this dropped to Bs at this crucial time. An out-of-tune guitar sits by the desk. She hasn’t played with her friends for over a month. They were learning their favourite Bruno Mars song for the school talent show after the exams.

Meanwhile her focus is on her soft glowing screen, gradually draining her attention away from the things she knows she needs to get done, and wants to get done. She is motivated, but her attention is missing.

It’s not that our kids don’t want to do great things, and engage in the things they love. It’s that the doom-scrolling device in their pockets is getting in the way. Its un-ending feed of videos has been designed to keep adults hooked - what chance to the kids have?

The Attention Economy

Attention has become a scarcity - a valuable commodity fought over by social media companies who want to convert it into advertising dollars. From the insight observed by Nobel prize-winning Economist Herbert Simon in 1971, we don’t consume information - it is the abundance of information that consumes our attention. Thanks to social media companies allowing everybody to create information, this can be considered an infinite resource (over 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube alone every minute). It is our attention that is therefore the scarce resource, and the Big Tech companies fight over it every second of every day, through notifications, gamified rewards and FOMO.

This costs our kids greatly, not only in developing their own power for controlling their attention but also for the lost opportunity of putting it to better use and achieving the things they want to achieve.

Screen Time: Regulate or Support?

The traditional method has been restriction and regulation, whether that be parents policing their kids screen usage or using screen-time-limiting tools. But is this sustainable? As kids get older they don’t want to be policed and monitored and this approach can cause a lot of friction. This approach also doesn’t allow them to develop their own self-control which they will need as they grow into adults.

We know that taking regular breaks from screens can benefit your mental health. Encouraging and empowering teenagers to manage this themselves will also allow them to develop this as a skill which will benefit them in their adult life. These ‘Self-Regulated Learning’ strategies may well help students to decrease their exposure to digital distractions.

Create a Healthy Balance

A healthy mix of habits is a key to success. From keeping phones out of bedrooms at night-time, to disabling notifications to regular screen breaks, our kids can learn the value of their attention and how to use it elsewhere. Screen Balance Online aims to be part of this formula. AI-generated videos inserted into a social media feed are designed to interrupt scrolling with highly personalised motivational messages. Using goals that the users have committed to themselves and familiar or inspirational figures, the viewer is snapped out of scrolling and encouraged to make better use of their attention. Rather that enforce limits, we want to encourage good decision-making.

Connect with us to find out more.

Beyond Limits: Can Motivation Trump Monitoring for Teen Productivity?

We’ve all been there. To survive in the modern world, our children will inevitably get a smartphone, and with this comes unfettered access to the internet and the myriad of apps and games. It is then up to the parent to manage this access and thus begin the tightrope walk of keeping our kids safe and keeping their attention balanced with things like homework and family time. But the internet is addictive, and this balancing act becomes more and more formidable until we eventually become the ‘screen police’, a role which both parents and children resent.

Why do we do this? Safety is one reason. We know that children are not ready for the tricks and traps on the internet, as well as the people behind them. But the other reason is less recognized; the internet and social media is part of the ‘attention economy’, an unrelenting machine whose purpose is to grab our attention away from us, and that attention could be used for so many better things.

This is often referred to as ‘Time Displacement”; the fact that attention consumed by excessive screen time can displace crucial and beneficial activities, such as studying, personal connection with friends and exercise. In this article, we will look primarily at this aspect of helping our children with screen management.

Parental Controls: The Promise Of Peace Of Mind

The first port-of-call for parents is to install screen controls on the offending devices. They are usually an easy-to-configure set-and-forget solution that are often included with any modern smartphone and often recommended by policymakers. They offer:

• Overall limits to the device usage

• Time-of-day limits to device usage

• Content filters: Limits to specific apps and websites, as well as blocking

• Time, search and purchase tracking

Content filters are primarily targeted at safety, while when it comes to attention management, the relevant features are the device and app limits. But is this the best solution? This is still a tactic of the ‘screen police’, just one that is administered at a distance. While this approach certainly has its benefits, our children’s needs and abilities change over time, and what may be effective for younger children may not be the best choice for older adolescents.

Is It The Best for Teen Screens?

While this approach is generally considered the best for child safety, some studies suggest that, especially while progressing through the teenage years, automated screen regulation could result in “adverse or harmful outcomes”, leading to higher family conflict or distrust; while the parent is simply trying their best to manage their child’s attention, this strategy may cause teens to become resentful or disengaged, and not have any benefits on their productivity or achievements.

Teens are also more and more tech-savvy. They frequently find loopholes leading to a cat-and-mouse game of finding and patching these ‘leaks’ in the control software. This also causes resentment, as the parent and child are engaged in a negative battle-of-wits.

Cultivating Self-Regulation

Is there a better way? At Screen Balance Online, we think that there is. As children progress through their teenage years, they are more likely to want to achieve more things, have positive outcomes and achieve goals for themselves. Part of this is learning how to make good choices and regulate their actions; cultivating the understanding and adoption of these good habits is a crucial part of the journey to adulthood.

Instead of continuing with a regime of enforced regulation, perhaps it is time to teach and encourage teenagers to regulate themselves and gradually empower them to do this themselves. The greatest motivation often comes from within - making the internal choice to spend your attention on something important to you will typically trump having an adult tell you to do so.

Screen Balance: A Complementary Solution

Here is where Screen Balance comes in - we believe that the following things can be a significant motivator in learning to make better choices:

• A goal you have set yourself

• Direct engagement

• A familiar, trusted or inspiring message source

Screen Balance combines these into short videos which encourage the viewer to take some positive action (the pre-agreed goal), and does so by showing a supportive character addressing and appealing to the viewer directly. Say you have a son called “Tim” who loves football and has a goal to get into the senior team this year. His favorite football team is Juventus. Imagine his surprise while scrolling through social media when a Juventus player faces the camera and says with a smile “Hey Tim! How is your soccer practice going? Have you worked on your dribbling today?”

Is this an alternative to screen time limit apps? We believe that targeted engagement like this can be effectively combined with, and gradually replace, the traditional parental control philosophy, to encourage healthy digital habits in kids on their way to adulthood. Habit formation is an important step toward self-regulation, and Screen Balance provides a way of exercising and improving this positive digital habit. By supporting our kids in a new way, we want to restore healthy family relationships and re-build the trust that is being eroded by constant digital battle over traditional screen time regulations.