Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Your son is glued to video games; it’s hard to pull him away, whether you’re calling him for dinner or his sister’s birthday party. Your daughter spends hours on her phone, scrolling through social media. Are these normal behaviors or signs of screen addiction in our new screen-driven world? How do you know if your child is suffering from screen addiction? What is screen addiction in the first place?
Let’s think about addiction. Addiction is a powerful craving to do something that feels good in the moment but is harmful long term. Things like drug addiction, alcohol addiction, and screen addiction come to mind. Those with screen addiction overuse technology and become overly dependent on screens in everyday life. They experience serious, negative health consequences as a result.
Melanie Hempe, BSN and founder of ScreenStrong, answers the question “What is screen addiction?” like this: “Instead of a simple healthy increase in dopamine, screen activities can cause dopamine to flood the reward pathway more than natural rewards do.
Problems start when children neglect school, hobbies, and relationships because they spend too much time on screens. Additional signs of screen addiction include physical and emotional imbalances and the inability to stop even after many attempts.”
Social media, video games, and pornography are among the most addictive screen activities. They are designed to foster screen addiction in users, including kids. You don’t have to worry about your kids getting addicted to things like online cooking recipes, math tutorials, guitar lessons, or tours of Ancient Rome.
Content matters.
Addictive tech does a great job of serving up sensational, entertaining, and violent content to our kids. This content is often catastrophic, anxiety-inducing, and anger-inducing to keep them engaged.
Around 2012, there was a sudden and very large upturn in major depressive episodes for teens ages 12-17. Mental illness, anxiety, emergency room visits for self-harm, and suicide rates for adolescents spiked upward also.
What happened during this time?
The iPhone 4 was introduced in June 2010 and it was the first iPhone with a front-facing camera. Instagram was bought by Facebook and grew from 10 million users near the end of 2011.
By early 2013, it had a whopping 90 million users. Teen girls found themselves immersed in the comparison games of social media. They forsook healthy face-to-face connections for a counterfeit social ecosystem, leading to loneliness. Boys got lost in immersive online multiplayer video games, trading exercises in real life to running and shooting others on screens.
According to Pew Research, the share of teens who say they are online “almost constantly” has roughly doubled since 2014-2015. Now nearly half of teens say they use the internet “almost constantly” with YouTube being the most widely used platform. Seven in ten teens say they visit YouTube daily with 16 percent reporting being on the site almost constantly.
Your child might be addicted to screens if you notice warning signs like extended playtime, failed attempts to stop, interference with family time, sneaking around and lying, loss of interest in hobbies and sports, declining grades, or frequent arguments about screen time.
Kids addicted to screens often suffer from insomnia, back pain, fluctuating weight, vision problems, headaches, anxiety, feelings of guilt, and isolation. Their brains, particularly the prefrontal cortex responsible for decision-making, impulse control, and emotional regulation, are underdeveloped.
Screen addiction isn’t just a child problem; it’s a widespread issue affecting parents too. The average adult user spends about two-and-a-half hours on social media per day. The kids aren’t the only ones scrolling through posts, reels, and videos.
As I write in my book Calm, Cool, and Connected: 5 Digital Habits for a More Balanced Life, “Our phone may connect us to others via text and FaceTime, but it cannot replace a hug or bread broken together. You and I are not designed to be plugged into a device 24/7. There are times to power on and times to power off.”
When adults become addicted to screens, some consequences are similar (sleep deprivation, weight problems, headaches, anxiety, etc). As adults, we have the advantage of a fully developed brain, if they grew up in a play-based childhood instead of a screen-based childhood. Recognize that you and your child may need to make changes together to curb harmful screen time habits. Doing a digital detox together may be the perfect next step.
If you’ve concluded that someone in your home has a problem with screen addiction, it’s time to take the next step toward recovery and freedom. There’s no better time than right now.
The longer screen addiction goes unchecked, the harder it is to break. Just like a coach changes a play when given new information, you can change the family game plan mid-course. Sometimes the way to progress is going backward. Go back to life before the video game, before the social media account, before the smartphone.
Explain to your child that you have learned and observed the current digital course is going to be catastrophic for your child and that you cannot just let it go. You care enough to be unpopular with your child to protect him or her.
You wouldn’t give a smoking addict one cigarette a day instead of a box. A digital detox from video games, social media, and pornography will be much more effective than limiting access. To achieve this detox, you can swap out your child’s smartphone for a basic phone without Internet access.
You can fast from social media during this time also to support your child and show him or her that you are on the same team. Fill the newly created free time with family activities and help your child reconnect with friends in real life, hobbies, sports, and personal interests.
When your child experiences more in real life that is satisfying and life-giving, the pull of the digital world will lose its strength. Just as we would rearrange our schedules, finances, and lives to treat a child’s substance abuse, we can make changes to put our children on a different track with screen time that leads to life, not addiction.
The post Signs of Screen Addiction in Children and How to Help appeared first on Focus on the Family.
Continue reading...
Your son is glued to video games; it’s hard to pull him away, whether you’re calling him for dinner or his sister’s birthday party. Your daughter spends hours on her phone, scrolling through social media. Are these normal behaviors or signs of screen addiction in our new screen-driven world? How do you know if your child is suffering from screen addiction? What is screen addiction in the first place?
Let’s think about addiction. Addiction is a powerful craving to do something that feels good in the moment but is harmful long term. Things like drug addiction, alcohol addiction, and screen addiction come to mind. Those with screen addiction overuse technology and become overly dependent on screens in everyday life. They experience serious, negative health consequences as a result.
Melanie Hempe, BSN and founder of ScreenStrong, answers the question “What is screen addiction?” like this: “Instead of a simple healthy increase in dopamine, screen activities can cause dopamine to flood the reward pathway more than natural rewards do.
Problems start when children neglect school, hobbies, and relationships because they spend too much time on screens. Additional signs of screen addiction include physical and emotional imbalances and the inability to stop even after many attempts.”
Social media, video games, and pornography are among the most addictive screen activities. They are designed to foster screen addiction in users, including kids. You don’t have to worry about your kids getting addicted to things like online cooking recipes, math tutorials, guitar lessons, or tours of Ancient Rome.
Content matters.
Addictive tech does a great job of serving up sensational, entertaining, and violent content to our kids. This content is often catastrophic, anxiety-inducing, and anger-inducing to keep them engaged.
Identifying Screen Addiction in Youth
Around 2012, there was a sudden and very large upturn in major depressive episodes for teens ages 12-17. Mental illness, anxiety, emergency room visits for self-harm, and suicide rates for adolescents spiked upward also.
What happened during this time?
The iPhone 4 was introduced in June 2010 and it was the first iPhone with a front-facing camera. Instagram was bought by Facebook and grew from 10 million users near the end of 2011.
By early 2013, it had a whopping 90 million users. Teen girls found themselves immersed in the comparison games of social media. They forsook healthy face-to-face connections for a counterfeit social ecosystem, leading to loneliness. Boys got lost in immersive online multiplayer video games, trading exercises in real life to running and shooting others on screens.
According to Pew Research, the share of teens who say they are online “almost constantly” has roughly doubled since 2014-2015. Now nearly half of teens say they use the internet “almost constantly” with YouTube being the most widely used platform. Seven in ten teens say they visit YouTube daily with 16 percent reporting being on the site almost constantly.
Your child might be addicted to screens if you notice warning signs like extended playtime, failed attempts to stop, interference with family time, sneaking around and lying, loss of interest in hobbies and sports, declining grades, or frequent arguments about screen time.
Kids addicted to screens often suffer from insomnia, back pain, fluctuating weight, vision problems, headaches, anxiety, feelings of guilt, and isolation. Their brains, particularly the prefrontal cortex responsible for decision-making, impulse control, and emotional regulation, are underdeveloped.
Understanding Screen Addiction in Adults
Screen addiction isn’t just a child problem; it’s a widespread issue affecting parents too. The average adult user spends about two-and-a-half hours on social media per day. The kids aren’t the only ones scrolling through posts, reels, and videos.
As I write in my book Calm, Cool, and Connected: 5 Digital Habits for a More Balanced Life, “Our phone may connect us to others via text and FaceTime, but it cannot replace a hug or bread broken together. You and I are not designed to be plugged into a device 24/7. There are times to power on and times to power off.”
When adults become addicted to screens, some consequences are similar (sleep deprivation, weight problems, headaches, anxiety, etc). As adults, we have the advantage of a fully developed brain, if they grew up in a play-based childhood instead of a screen-based childhood. Recognize that you and your child may need to make changes together to curb harmful screen time habits. Doing a digital detox together may be the perfect next step.
Addiction Recovery
If you’ve concluded that someone in your home has a problem with screen addiction, it’s time to take the next step toward recovery and freedom. There’s no better time than right now.
The longer screen addiction goes unchecked, the harder it is to break. Just like a coach changes a play when given new information, you can change the family game plan mid-course. Sometimes the way to progress is going backward. Go back to life before the video game, before the social media account, before the smartphone.
Explain to your child that you have learned and observed the current digital course is going to be catastrophic for your child and that you cannot just let it go. You care enough to be unpopular with your child to protect him or her.
Time Limits Are Not the Answer
You wouldn’t give a smoking addict one cigarette a day instead of a box. A digital detox from video games, social media, and pornography will be much more effective than limiting access. To achieve this detox, you can swap out your child’s smartphone for a basic phone without Internet access.
You can fast from social media during this time also to support your child and show him or her that you are on the same team. Fill the newly created free time with family activities and help your child reconnect with friends in real life, hobbies, sports, and personal interests.
When your child experiences more in real life that is satisfying and life-giving, the pull of the digital world will lose its strength. Just as we would rearrange our schedules, finances, and lives to treat a child’s substance abuse, we can make changes to put our children on a different track with screen time that leads to life, not addiction.
The post Signs of Screen Addiction in Children and How to Help appeared first on Focus on the Family.
Continue reading...