Please be kind - feel like I'm failing my DD 14. She got a phone when she went to secondary school and is addicted to it. She would have it in her hand all day if she could and I'm worried about how that constant access to the instant gratification of social media/the internet is affecting her young brain.
She has Snapchat, private Insta account & WhatsApp. I'm not so worried about who/what she's doing on social media, as she is fairly sensible and the type of kid to tell me if anything on SM has worried her (although I know I can never really know). We used to check her phone when she was younger but it started to feel weird to be looking through her messages, a bit like an invasion of privacy. There was never anything on there to concern me. I do check her browsing history and that's fine.
She's not allowed it in her room overnight. But when she's home, she would mindlessly scroll for hours if she could.
I want to set time limits and I don't really want her to be able to have it in her room - but it's so hard when her homework is set digitally. Similarly, I'm happy for her to have calls with her friends in her room - but she normally has video calls and looks online at the same time while she's doing that so that's hard to manage.
I'm thinking of asking her to help me come up with ways we can all reduce our phone use (her dad and me included). Something like:
- Continue with no phone in room overnight
- Allow calls in her room but not just sitting there scrolling
- Impose a time limit for how long she can use internet after school
- We all leave our phones in the kitchen when we're doing something else like watching TV etc and don't just carry them around the house with us
Problem is it's hard to take away freedoms you've already given them, isn't it?
What rules do you have for your kids? And have you had success in limiting access to phones when you've previously been more permissive?