The Teenage Brain Woman On: Screens and Social Media
All my best resources and how to life your best online life
What do I know?
I have written and spoken on this subject for many years. I try to keep an open mind and apply my understanding of human brains in real life settings to come up with the best advice about how we can all live healthy lives while enjoying the wonderful benefits of our screens. My book The Teenage Guide to Life Online brings it together and explains the nuances honestly.
I’m also a big user of screens and social media myself and I experience their addictive nature firsthand - but I also understand the neuroscience and psychology behind that.
My core belief - backed up by science and robust argument - is that banning phones or other devices is not generally the answer. (Restricting their use is part of the answer, however.) Learning to self-regulate and use them well is the overall goal. And for that we first have to understand why we should, not by listening to inflammatory media headlines but by properly understanding what's going on.
This article brings together links to the resources I’ve created over the years.
Best shortcuts to my resources
My free Life Online Parent Pack helps you understand the issues, science and strategies.
If you do nothing else, see this A4 sheet of tips: TIPS_SCREENTIME.
A Powerpoint is included in pack. (NB In my talks, I cover the same topics but my talks obviously go into much more detail. This is NOT a duplication of the presentations I do in schools - I created it especially to make sense without my presence!) See my slideshare page here and look for Life Online Parent Pack Powerpoint.
Other things I’ve written
What Blame My Brain’s new chapter has to say about teenage social brains - this helps you understand the power of screens especially for young people and why you’re on a hiding to nothing if you simply ban them or restrict without a system and strategy
Healthy Screen Habits - Intro ~ Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three - a useful set of guidelines to a healthy family life living with screens
Authoritative digital parenting - my take on an article by Parenting for a Digital Future
Why I don’t think banning is the right answer - I have moved slightly on this recently. I do understand that schools might need to ban phones, or at least for some year groups, and I can see the value of it. But I do still think that if you can possibly find a way to create strong and positive screen-free times/places/situations without demonising them by “banning”, and if you can use those screen-free times to highlight the joy of being sometimes phone-free, you’ll have a better result.
It’s all about balance and controlling that balance. Phones and screens are not “bad” any more than chocolate is “bad”. But we do ourselves no favours when we have too much of either. Growing up is about learning to live better and make good choices. Young people need more help with that but they do need to be learn to make choices more than be forced to obey rules.
For those of you who want to take the research even further, there’s a long list of resources by other people on my website here. (Scroll down to BY OTHERS.)
But for now, I recommend you get off your screen and go and do something else! I’ll do the same. I’m off for a long walk as my eyes are going fizzy.
Next post will be on Friday and will be Part 1.2 of my how to be published series.