Sick of arguments about phone use

[nellytheelephant1980]

Honestly what do you all do?
14 year old daughter - obsessed with following bands etc on tiktok, Instagram etc. I looked at her screen time counter and she was on her phone 14 hours yesterday. 14 !!! She had a friend round for some of that time

As a family we model healthy phone use. I don't even have social media and nor does her dad (my husband).

I feel like we just argue and argue about it and it gets us nowhere.

Okay so she is currently on her phone her entire waking hours.

We all know how addictive they are - but she is only 14 she is not able to control herself. When you say argue - are there not rules? You need an app like Qustodio and you set limits - sit her down and say - this is bad for you what limits shall we set together?

What is her view - does she see you have a point if she is in a reasonable mood or she thinks she should just use it all day long?

I think at 14 you should be controlling her phone use more. It's addictive.

If it’s an iPhone you can set a password protected limit for the apps. This is what we’ve done with our teenagers. One hour per day only.

Both my teens have time limits, just using Google family link. Devices lock at 9 to encourage good sleep hygiene and we have an overall screen time limit set and individual apps can also be limited although often of course they can use the browser instead eg for YouTube.

It works though.

Family link can be removed for over 13s because for some reason Google thinks they are responsible enough then but I would get notified and the dc know full well that this would result in phone confiscation. Ds having experimented with that one already, and multiple times just to check if it would have the same outcome. He's 15 now and has actually come to the conclusion himself that he is grateful for the limits and it helps him and his mental health to have them. We have an easygoing approach to additional time so for example am evening of online gaming planned with friends? I'll disable the restrictions for the night. A sleepover? Again I'll disable restrictions.