Me and 13 yr old: The constant, awful battle over screen time

[Bellballbune]

NC for this.

I wrote a long, detailed post and then erased it. There seemed no point in such elaborate detail when the headlines are clear:

• I’m a fairly controlling mum about screen. I think 4/5 hours in the holiday gaming (plus his phone with him most of the day until he must leave it downstairs at 8pm) is fine. Plus, episodes in evening on TV as a family
• He can’t bear being restricted. Wilful, combative, relentless over wanting more - all the time
• Dh who agrees with me but is easier going and enjoys watching sports in evening on TV and likes DS watching with him - so doesn’t care that he’s just come off hours of gaming onto more screen.

i know I need to find a better approach rather than a shrill, stern reproachful way of trying to coax DS off. I know I’m not handling it well. I do try to offer different things - board games, cooking etc - but his interest is minimal. His interest in everything is minimal. He just wants to chill! All the time. It drives me fucking insane.

He does do some sport and he will go to the park with his friends for a bit but that’s it.

I’m worried about the level of screen usage and addiction. I’m worried im failing him as a parent. He used to be so engaged in tons of stuff.

And I actually just hate family life at moment as it revolves around all this and DH and I just end up arguing over my approach and how I’m getting it wrong. It is so boring! And I’m scared DS will just hate me soon enough.

i dream of running away….

Any thoughts?

I think what ruins relationships is constant, nagging, negotiating and debating, ending in frayed tempers.
This isn't the result of firm boundaries, it's the result of woolly vague boundaries.

If the rules are clear and non-negotiable (and preferably to some extent automated in the technology itself) then after a small period of push back they will be accepted and you can be free from the endless aggravation of debating and nagging.
Ideally set the rules together with agreement and consequences as mentioned up thread (e.g. if you moan about it you go to holiday camp, or if you don't switch off within ten minutes of the times up period then time is shorter next day)..

Sue Larkey has just done a podcast on this. It's aimed at ADHD kids but has some good strategies for all families.

We didn’t restrict screen time. Maybe we’re just lucky, all our DC have achieved well including PHD level. Sorry if this sounds patronising.
I remember the boredom at 13. All I wanted to do was to get out with my friends.
Giving a teenager the option of dog walking is not appealing. Teenagers exist to annoy everyone as they find their way in life.
Try & chill out a bit more. These teenage years whizz by. You then have an adult who often leaves home at 18 & a whole new set of worries begins.
Forcing DC into what you think they should be doing doesn’t work. How nice that your DH & DC like watching sport together.

I think it's quite individual. My eldest self regulated brilliantly, never had restrictions or temperament changes when gaming.

Second child I feel is on too much, he seems to be constantly on it to my mind but mock GCSEs have come back all 8+9s and he sees his friends a few times a week, walks the dogs etc, so I leave it as I'm worried I might cause problems where there are none just because my perception is he is on a lot.

Third child has restrictions, when on she is oblivious to anything else, if left she would go on as soon as eyes open, miss meals and her behaviour when asked to come off was sulky and aggressive. She was doing her homework but minimum effort, low marks, absent minded in class and not joining in with family things at home. We set up automatic restrictions, iPad won't turn on until after noon, switches off at 7pm. No use during the week except Wednesday as no homework set on that night. It's so much better than trying to go up and tell her to come off and have the fight. Now she has to come and find us and ask if she can go on a bit longer and she knows if her manner is bad or homework not done it will be a no.

She spends longer on her work as it's not a case of soonest finished, soonest gaming. School reports have improved hugely, and currently she is sat next to me drawing in her sketch book while talking to me. Automatic restrictions are God send!

Is the row

thats enough of phone
no

or is it

hey let’s go bowling / swimming / walk the dog / to the shops
no I want to use my phone.

There are lots of parents who are berating kids for being on their phone but not actually facilitating anything else to do.

Harmful content is a totally separate issue. If you don't address that then it doesn't matter if it's 1 hr a day or 6!
I believe that if you make screens a forbidden fruit then it actually adds to an unhealthy relationship with it. To be clear I'm talking about teenagers not toddlers here. And I'm not saying no boundaries but those boundaries need to be within the context of wider family life not just because. Ultimately we all want to teach our children to self-regulate. You can't control what they do at 18! The journey of how to get there will be different for all children/families but parents surely must keep the end goal in mind as well as trying to manage today.

I would decide on a max per dat and then programme the device so it's off after that time. This takes you out of the decision to turn it off and thus reduces friction.

I haven't read all the other responses yet, but I will as I also feel the same and could do with some advice! My son is 11 so only slightly younger, he is autistic and has ADHD, so the huge hit of dopamine that he gets from gaming or watching YouTube is VERY difficult for him to break away from. As I say, I struggle with this daily myself but I will just share my thoughts incase it offers anything different to what others have said so far.

There are different types of screen time. Gaming can actually help them learn and develop certain skills, even if we don't see or believe it as their parents! For example as an autistic child who really struggles with social skills and team games in real life, playing in a team on Fortnite with other kids his age is actually teaching him those skills of working together for a goal, communicating with the rest of the team, coping with losing etc. However TikTok, YouTube etc really don't bring much and they just suck you in and keep you there. He doesn't currently have TikTok and I don't plan to allow him to anytime soon, I do share with him my reasons for that though. YouTube has a very short limit on his devices before he's timed out for the day.

I try and think of the future, I want him to learn the skill of regulating his screen time himself, not just being forced away from it. I try and set a daily limit of time, usually lower than the maximum I am happy with so that there is room for negotiation and I'm not always saying a flat no! But I tell him, it's up to him how he uses that time, be it all in one go or taking breaks and coming back to it later. This seems to work well as he has to actually think about it for himself.

I sometimes join him in games and he actually enjoys that and likes to explain it all to me or show me what he can do. My husband (his stepdad) and his dad also game and at a much better level than me so that is something they can share with him rather than it always being something he does alone and us adults are on the outside trying to get him away from it.

Despite having tried to change my mindset of screentime in this way, I still do catch myself despairing or worrying that he doesn't do enough other stuff!

I'm a Teacher.

Do tell me how you know who has unlimited screen time, who has limits on time v limits on content and who is not allowed it all.

Then tell me how you measure their vocabulary and linguistic fluency.

Then tell me how this research controls for parental linguistic skills, home environment and all the other things that influence language and communication before the child gets near a screen.

Or is this annecdata based entirely on assumptions and the odd comment in class?

You Have to parent to suit the child a bit which some may disagree with. My eldest is ND so needs his screen time. He’s older now and about to be an adult so I wouldn’t dream of controlling anyway. The rule is as long as he manages to attend college/whatever we are doing that involves him/ meet appointments/have friends etc. then we don’t fight over screen time. He does a lot of flight and auto simulation which is great and sociable. So not the games that younger kids play or the GTA type games although he has played them in past. He prefers this. Younger is similar age to yours and he does scouts/park/friends and screen time. In holidays not restricted but told to have a mix of activities in his day. That’s all we say. That works. During school time he gets to screen after school and then hands it over an hour before bed. He also does other stuff in that time but again we don’t enforce just say have a mix of things you are doing. He manages that himself. But we have always trusted our children to do that and it wouldn’t feel like a kid in a sweet shop type response that you might get now.

While lots of parents who say they don't have restrictions are saying "my kids fine", well, a lot aren't. And I bet your children are looking at all sorts of stuff online. Porn, self harm and suicidal ideation, violence. At best they're seeing and experiencing things they're not equipped for. At worst, it's harmful.

That is completely different. Letting children self regulate with time on screens is not the same as letting them do whatever on the screens. You'd be a terrible parent if you didn't have parental filters, locks and a way of seeing everything that they are doing/watching/looking at and enter open dialogue about it all.

Some people I know are clueless about tech and are a bit scared of it. They only allow their children to have an hour or so because they think it's the devils work but have no ability themselves to understand what their child is doing online - that is far more harmful.

Set aside 1 bonus hour of screen time a day - if he behaves well all day he gets the bonus hour. Any bad behaviour and he loses the hour. It took my kids about a week and then they understood I meant business.

We have no gaming Monday to Thursday. About 3 hours of it over the weekend. Anything more than that starts to show in their personalities, and in their interest levels in healthier pursuits.

As long as school work os done, pick you battles. Do you really want to fall out about this?

Exactly this! It's about raising well balanced kids who have lots of interests. Not just "gaming".

I teach in a state secondary school and my Y11 tutor group from last year had so many unbelievably dull kids whose only interest was gaming, or influencers, or TikTok. They just don't have any hobbies or other interests at all. And lots don't even meet up - they just snapchat each other from home! Phones that they have access to all night and they're often so tired because they don't want to miss out on these group chats.

A generation of screen zombies!

It's not just the lack of hobbies though - it's the inability to think for themselves. We watch a video in the class - fine. I show them how to answer a question - (mostly) fine. They have to have a go at a question on their own - not fine! It's this addiction to needing a screen to be entertaining them - requiring a constant input from another source.

What amazing hobbies did you all have as teens?

At 16 and in yr11, my hobbies were reading, playing music loudly enough to annoy my parents and getting pissed at a local nightclub every Saturday.

At 14 my hobbies were reading, bit of sega gaming and drifting around the town centre.

At 18 my hobby was my boyfriend.

My personal statement was an amazing work of fiction.

Thinking about it, gamer son actually has 2 proper activities, which is more than I did.

At 40 something I finally have proper hobbies.

@TimeGrabsYouByTheWrist Agree completely. I've seen too many 10 year olds unable to interact because of the bloody phone in hand. When they do, it's in a "look at this on my phone because I don't know how to talk to you otherwise" sort of a way. It's not that phones are bad, or even that time spent on them is bad, it's what is stolen from a childhood as a result. There are only so many hours in a day after all. There's nothing terribly wrong with pizza, but if you have it at every meal, there's just no time left in the day for broccoli!

If you go to 25 minutes into today's This Morning programme on the ITVX app, there's an interesting discussion with a school principal in Ireland who managed to get the whole town to sign up to no phones for primary school age children. I appreciate this wouldn't be applicable to the OP's 13 year old son, but relevant to the topic in general!

Op the hugest hugs, we had two absolutely hooked teenagers- as in they’d play games/ watch at night, get up early in the morning etc. they were the worst level of addicted, I was working, dh was wfh and on meetings. They didn’t do homework, turned cranky, tired, blinky overnight. Red eyes. Always trying to get back to screens.

I cut my hours back in work (not totally for this but it fed into it) and basically turned them back into kids- board game nights, asking them to help/ do stuff, baking, walks, going over to their grannies. Tried to shove them back to reading with manga and comics and books. Then they’d just be left with screens nagging free, although sometimes I’d sit and chat with them when they watched YouTube. We’re definitely in a better place but if we fully left them they’d sink down again- unfortunately nothing truly trumps gaming. And I love them gaming when they are all in and chatting and then leave to do something else, it’s the one minute more when they’ve somewhere to be that has sunk in their priorities or if they’re meant to be meeting friends because it is an addiction and at that age friends should be the most important thing to them. We also take phones /tablets at night. Not always easy and we’ve told them we as adults need regulation too and find it hard but it can be a fight. Has to be done though.

I have never restricted screen time and chose to pick my battles. I’d be a bit pissed off if someone put a restriction on how much time I can spend on my phone!

My kids did do a lot of sport and activities out of school so I never felt guilty.

They are both high achieving and non the worse for it!

Did your kids have TikTok, Snapchat on their phones and did they play Fortnite daily?

I would move anything with internet access to a communal area so you can see what he's doing for safety purposes. Then, as long as homework and chores and complete, let him use his free time how he wants. Having said that, he'll get bored of the games he has quite quickly and you have no obligation to buy him more.

The thing is the activities you list all sound relaxing to the brain. Reading is so relaxing to the brain. Singing to loud music is an emotional and physical release. It's not about gaming versus "amazing hobbies". The issue is that children's brains aren't getting any downtime anymore - resulting in a huge increase in anxiety in children/teens. Certain apps are literally designed to keep us watching in a hyper-stimulated state. I appreciate that many kids are super chilled out, and come off a Fortnite session exactly how they went in. But I, and many others from what I hear, have not been blessed with such characters in my own home. They are more hyper and on-edge for a good 30 minutes to an hour after coming off - hence it's restricted to weekends and 1 hour slots.

Yes yes and yes they play other games on the PS even now. They kept their homework up to date and now have part time jobs during the uni holidays to help fund their time there.

I'm surprised at how many people have suggested that op needs to offer alternatives and that it's unfair to expect dc to get off screens without providing other entertainment.

I can't be the only person who grew up able to entertain myself surely?

He can't find alternatives because he's never had to, and now he doesn't know how.

It's why kids at school say they're bored at playtime, can't think of ideas for stories, say the thing they're most looking forward to in the holidays is 'gaming all day.'

Switch it off and he'll find something else to do. Not straight away, but it's a skill he will gradually learn.