Today on Peace Talks Radio, When Digital Addiction Threatens Family Peace.
“I didn't have the tools to deal with the fact that I was extremely stressed out about homework, about life, about, you know, family, about home. And so the internet was an outlet, right? Like it's the dopamine hit that gets your mind off things. It has the doom scroll. It's really easy to sort of lose yourself in it”. (Allie O’Brien)
How do we cope with young people's addiction to social media and find a path to peace in the family?
“I think the onus really are on adults and not to absolve responsibility for kids. What is heart to heart connection look like? And you know, kids are doing the best that they can, but it's a complicated, complex situation. And I think it just requires time and space”. (Asiya Vickers)
Tools for making family peace in the smartphone age. Today on Peace Talks Radio.
Paul: This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm series producer Paul Ingles today with correspondent Julia Joubert. In today's program, we will explore the impacts of digital addiction on the communication between parents and teens as we look for ways to foster healthier and more peaceful relationships within families who are navigating the complexities of digital addiction.
Millennial teens, those born between 1981 and 1995, were the first generation to navigate their teenage years with internet access. But for them, access was limited. As most platforms were accessible only on computers or basic flip phones. But by contrast, Gen Z and Gen Alpha teens have come of age alongside the arrival of the iPhone, the App Store, and high speed Internet, tools that have enabled constant connectivity. According to a Pew study, only 25 percent of teens had a smartphone in 2011. But by 2015, that number had almost tripled to 73%. In 2023, smartphone ownership among teens had surged to 50%.
According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, as of 2024, children ages 8 to 18 spend an average of 44.5 hours per week in front of screens.
With this surge in screen time came higher reports of struggles with concentration, suffering academic performance, antisocial behaviors, and an unprecedented rise in teen depression, anxiety, self-harm, and mental illness. It's no wonder then, that in recent years, the issue of digital addiction among teens has garnered increasing attention, as a generation of children has been swept up in a wave of technology, leaving parents feeling increasingly concerned that compulsive internet usage is not just robbing their children of real world experiences, but significantly impacting their futures.
Therapists, school counselors, and doctors are actively trying to support teens and parents through this, offering solutions such as education about online risks, apps to monitor screen time, device free zones, and banning of devices altogether, et cetera, et cetera. And yet these methods are often viewed as punishment by children, inviting more discord This gap in understanding between a parent's fear and a child's only known reality highlights the urgent need for effective communication and intervention strategies within families to foster peace.
In today's program, we invite a diverse group of guests to help us delve deeper into this topic, addressing whether these issues are solely due to the arrival of the smartphone Or, if it runs deeper, what the key pain points for both parents and teens are, and what strategies we might employ to help bridge this divide.
Joining us are our own supervising producer Jessica Ticktin and her daughter Lola Rubin, mother daughter duo navigating the challenges of smartphone use right now. We also have Allie O'Brien, a Gen Z social media influencer with a strong following on TikTok, and Asiya Vickers, a clinical social worker and psychotherapist with experience in adolescent mental health, leadership development and executive coaching.
Here now, our correspondent, Julia Joubert, with some introductions.
Julia: Ellie and Lola grew up with access to technology and smartphones from an early age. Ellie O'Brien is 23 from Washington, D. C. and graduated from UC Davis in 2024. Allie is a content creator, posting to their nearly 520, 000 TikTok followers, providing political news and commentary on social issues.
From a no smartphones household, Allie had a flip phone at age 10, but around 14 began wanting their own smartphone. Lola Rubin is 18 from Burlington, Vermont, and is currently at university in Montreal. Lola was given her first smartphone at 12. I opened by asking why they each wanted a smartphone specifically with access to social media.
Here is Allie.
Allie: I think were you to ask me in high school, I probably would have said yes, I want social media not to post, but just so that I can feel updated. I remember a few times feeling really hurt in probably my high school years because my friends would all make the assumption that if they posted something on social media, that meant that they had told all of their friends.
And I was one of the only people that did not have social media. And so, my closest friends would have these huge life updates, and I would find out a couple weeks later, and I'd be like, Oh my gosh, you didn't tell me that you, da da da da da, got into this college, that you, you know, had some big event coming up.
And she'd be like, how didn't you know? Like, what do you mean, how didn't I know? You didn't tell me. I posted it on my story. I don't have social media. And I, I definitely felt lack of connectedness.
Julia: And here is Lola sharing the role that her smartphone and its access to social media has played in her life:
Lola: I think it's so important, especially when COVID happened, I think It was always going to be, social media was always going to be a big thing, but COVID really pushed that along where suddenly we couldn't go out and see each other in person. All we could do was text, Snapchat, like see what each other was doing on Instagram or just things like that.
That really was a change that was happening. And I think ever since COVID that has stayed. And so now social media is a way where you can constantly be in contact with like everyone, you know? So for my friends and I, we have different conversations going on different platforms, like on Instagram we'll be talking about one thing, versus Snapchat, versus text.
Julia: They shared what they use their phones for, and the amount of time they spend on them each day.
Lola: It depends, like, obviously during the school year, it's less than in the summertime of how long I spend on my phone. I'd say on average, maybe like three hours a day. Which definitely is more than I would like.
And on my phone I think most of my time is either spent on Snapchat, just talking to people, or on TikTok, just scrolling. Which definitely is a big time suck. I think most of my time on my phone is spent on TikTok.
Julia: Allie's parents were quite a lot stricter. Banning social media outright, but Ali did have a smartphone and could access the internet so they would iMessage with friends and lose themselves in Buzzfeed articles and listicles.
Allie: I really was an offline kid until the age of, you know, like 15. So I didn't use my phone at school. But coming home from school, yes, buzzfeed. I spent a lot of time on BuzzFeed since I didn't have social media. I would just scroll and scroll and scroll. BuzzFeed was like my doom scroll of high school when I was really stressed.
I would, I would watch, since I didn't have any social media, I would look at like BuzzFeed reviews of like the top videos of the week and I would just go through those for hours and hours and hours. I would actually talk about that in therapy. I was like, I need to get off BuzzFeed. So yes, I think that that is where A lot of my time sunk and I checked my screen time and I think that like there was one day that I had spent three hours on my phone and that was mind boggling to me.
I look back at that now and I'm like, wow, three hours would be an incredible day. Ally's current job as a social media influencer means that they are, in their own words, chronically online. When I was 18, I downloaded Snapchat, and that was really only to talk to my girlfriend at the time because she liked using Snapchat.
And so when we were, like, away from college and not with each other. And then, The next thing I downloaded was TikTok, I guess, a few years later, and then that became my job. And so it was because of TikTok that I downloaded Instagram and YouTube and I now have like a social media portfolio, but it's purely because of work.
Julia: Both Lola and Allie were surprised to see their own screen time, which is actually quite low compared to the national average. In fact, more than half of US teens spend an average of 7 hours and 22 minutes on screens each day. That is almost half of their waking hours. Data indicates that 63 percent of parents believe that online time negatively affects their children's health.
And over half worry that screen time is impacting their children's sleep. And interestingly, about 76 percent of parents consider managing their teen's phone usage to be an important or even top priority. The data is there, but I was curious to hear directly from a parent, Jessica Ticktin is a supervising producer at Peace Talks Radio.
She also happens to be Lola's mom.
Jessica: Yeah, I did have reservations about it, but I also felt like, you know, in sixth grade, The middle school got a grant from Verizon. And before any of us parents really had a chance to, to think about it, we had really kept phones away from our kids as a group, as a community.
And then when it became sanctioned by the school to everybody got iPads, and they didn't put any limits on them. So she came home with, you know, texting text threads with like 23 other kids and constantly dinging and we were like apps of all we were like, It went kind of out of control, but the school had said, Hey, this is okay.
So we were like, Oh my gosh, how do we get our wrap our heads around this? And it was really disconcerting and disorienting and we were worried about it. And also we didn't know what was going on with these texts. It felt like who knows what kids were talking about or what kinds of things were in there that, you know, we couldn't follow every single thread.
It was so many kids constantly texting each other. So it felt like we were losing control as well as. The feeling that our lives were kind of being hijacked by this social media that was now sanctioned by the school.
Julia: Parents are understandably concerned, but I also think it's important to note that so are many teens. In fact, a 2024 Pew study found that 38 percent of US teens admit they spend smartphones and about a quarter say the same regarding their social media use. Both Allie and Lola confirmed this.
Allie: I don't even know if I would say that BuzzFeed got in the way of doing my homework or that I didn't have the tools to deal with the fact that I was extremely stressed out about homework, about life, about, you know, family, about home.
And so, The internet was an outlet, right? Like it's the dopamine hit that gets your mind off things. It has the doom scroll. It's really easy to sort of lose yourself in it. Like what I would talk about with my therapist a lot at the time was that it was a cycle. Like I had access to this thing that would take my mind off of whatever bad was going on.
But then I got so sucked into it that Suddenly I couldn't deal with whatever bad was going on. You know what I mean? And I've been thinking about that a lot recently because I'm making a more specific effort once again to try to get off my phone And I'm wishing that I had What I had back then. I don't know.
I'm wishing that I don't know what I did with my days I guess I went to school but but yes, I I think that I, the thing about a phone is just that there's so much, there's so many things you can click on it on a smartphone. There's so many apps, they're all colorful, they all give you strange notifications that you definitely didn't sign up for, but then they get you to click on something and then you get down a little rabbit hole.
Lola: I think it's definitely an addiction. I think it's hard to spend that much time on a device and not call it an addiction. Because the truth is, like, I, I get so sucked in by it and it's really hard to stop scrolling or anything like that. And I think, me along with all my friends, or just other people I've talked to, we're all getting sick of it.
No one likes being addicted to their phone. No one likes spending like three hours a day on their phone. Cause then you always end up being like, Oh, I'm wasting my day, I could have done so much more. And then there's that guilt, which makes you be like, Whatever, I'll just like, keep scrolling. I'll scroll on my phone some more to kind of distract me from that.
So I think in that way, it definitely is an addiction. And we have started to recognize that, which makes us kind of want to break the addiction, go on our phones less, have more like hobbies and all that. But yeah, it's definitely an addiction.
Julia: There are, of course, many ways that this addiction can manifest, including more severe ways such as sleep problems, lower grades in school, mood swings, poor self image, a lack of exercise, among others.
But for many parents, this addiction is simply creating problems. discomfort in the relationship by eating into traditionally family oriented time and creating discord in the household. Lola's days are pretty busy. And as a high school student, especially by her junior year, she was not home a lot.
Jessica: When she was home in the evenings, we would go into her room or I'd go into her room, knock on the door, and I'd see she was lying on her bed and she had her, with her phone and I'd say, how are you doing?
We chat for a few minutes and she, you know, would talk to me and, and then I would leave and let's say maybe an hour or two hours later, I'd come back and she'd be in the same position with the phone still exactly not having moved. And I would say, why don't you get off your phone and, you know, practice your violin or do something else.
And then usually I'd get a very negative response, like, like, no, like, I don't know what you'd say. You'd just kind of be like, can you leave me alone kind of thing. Like I'm, I'm fine or I will or something like that. And that would happen multiple nights a week. And then it would cross over into, you know, she'd finally come upstairs and because I'd often say, why don't you get your phone or please can you walk the dogs or I need you to empty the dishwasher, something like that.
And she'd say, I will, I will. But then she would stay on her phone the whole time and not, or at least I thought she'd be on her phone the whole time. It looked like she was when I checked in again.
And so it would start to cause conflict in our house around our expectations of her following through with her chores, and it felt like she was just sort of stuck in this, I don't know, this kind of, like, the phone was sucking her in and she couldn't get out of it, or we felt like maybe she just wasn't bothering to try to get out of it. And I guess she has a different perspective but from my perspective it was I'd ask her to do something and because it felt to me the phone was the thing preventing her from doing the things I was asking her to do.
It was starting to feel like it was becoming a problem which is why we had suggested maybe we should remove the phone if you're not going to listen to what we're asking you to do and You know, then it felt like every time we were trying to talk with her, it would always be this transactional thing like, well, you haven't done this.
You haven't done that. Why are you on your phone? And then we realized there was so much tension between us because every interaction was becoming something that was about what she wasn't doing. And I think at the heart of it felt like to us that the phone was at the heart of it. The device. And we, we were like, you know, mostly that was your dad who was like, we gotta take her phone away because it really bothers him.
And I said that, but I don't, I don't think we can, you know, it felt like almost insurmountable to take away the phone because at this age we have an electric car. She uses it to drive the car. She uses it for all of her school stuff and for work. And it felt like, how can we take that away? And yet it's sort of the biggest thing that we know how to use to, if we take that away, it really feels like in a way taking away a lifeline.
I don't know. We haven't been able to be successful at doing that.
Julia: Lola, how did that make you feel in that moment where you're you've had your busy day. You're lying on your bed You have your phone your mom comes in come do this do that two hours later. She comes back. How did that feel?
Lola: I got really frustrated Because I feel like that was like the only thing she saw There's so much throughout the day that she didn't see like I went to school all day wasn't on my phone I went to school sports practice for 2 hours, it wasn’t on my phone.
I went to work. I wasn t on my phone, and so then I finally get home. It’s kind of like, it s a night, I’m like trying to unwind after my busy day. I have to do all again tomorrow. And so I felt like that was time for me, and I felt it was unfair of her to ask me. To get off my phone and to do these things.
And I feel like she only saw this one small part of my day where, yeah, I was, I was spending too much time on my phone then I think, but that was. I think what I needed then to unwind and kind of process the day and everything. And so I just, whenever she'd come in and accuse me of spending my whole day on my phone, or I just, that would make me really frustrated cause there was just so much that she didn't see.
I feel like I'd kind of brace myself for whenever. She walked into my room or something. I had no, she's just gonna be mad at me. Like I shouldn't even bother to get off my phone because I know it's just gonna, it's not gonna help and It was both of us, right? Yeah Yeah, it wasn't just you. Yeah, more almost more angry about it , yeah.
But like you had both of us coming in probably doing that separately so it was probably adding to it was that she had both of her parents at different times coming in saying the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Julia: And I'd like to follow up on that comment that you made, Jessica, about this, the feeling that the phone is the problem and you're not the first parent that I've heard say this.
And then upon probing, you find out from, and I'm not saying that this is your relationship, but upon probing, you kind of find out that the phone is actually just a means of escape from whatever interaction is currently happening. Lola, did you ever have any moments like that where you used your phone as a means of not having to engage or have a confrontation with members of your family?
Lola: Yeah, for sure. I feel like, yeah. If my mom or dad had come into my room for like, the second or third time, and I'm like, I know what I have to do, like, I'm gonna get to it, please let me do it on my own time, like, I just, I need to do this, I need to like, lie here, kind of decompress, and then I can do whatever you're asking me.
It's not gonna help if you keep coming in. That like, makes me want to do it less, which I think is just the teenager in me. Whereas if you ask me a bunch of times, the more you ask me, the less I want to do it. And so I think a lot of times, yeah, I just wouldn't look up from my phone, which would in turn make you guys even more frustrated with me, which made me frustrated with you.
It was kind of just like a vicious cycle.
Julia: For Allie's parents, the ban on social media was largely out of a distrust for anything online.
Allie: So at the time, my parents are no longer together, but at the time, they were, and I think that the most pushback came from my dad. He was also the most, I mean, both of my parents are very nervous about the internet in general, which is understandable, but I would say even more so for folks from their generation.
Like, their friends get Facebook, and they think that that is just crazy and a really bad idea, and your identity is going to get stolen the second that you, right, create an account. So. They were both nervous about it, but my dad, I mean, I think he was very afraid that it was going to taint me in, and I understand a concern about, you know, about phone addiction, but I think that he was really concerned that I was going to turn to, like, all of the worst sides of society and become, like, some evil demon living under his roof.
I'm really not sure what was going on through his head, but when I Turned 13, there was this very like distinct change in the way that he treated me. I think he expected me to become angry and entitled and anyways and so I became a teenager and you know when I got a phone he started making these rules that I needed to have my door open and he'd sort of like barge in and look through my phone and so yes he was very, he was very strange about it but I, I don't think that was as much because of fear of being online.
I think, you know, anything with my mom comes from that. I think in terms of my dad at the time, the fact that he was a problem was just because he was a problem with everything he ever did. I haven't spoken to him in about six years.
Julia: Allie reiterates that their generation is concerned, and their peers often speak about the issues around foreign addiction amongst themselves.
Allie, for example, has taken this issue to TikTok and received millions of positive interactions. But something seems to change when they speak with older generations.
Allie: In my experience, Gen Z is very, is worried about phone addiction. There are conversations that we have frequently amongst ourselves, but I think that we often try to keep those conversations amongst ourselves because they very quickly become unproductive when members of older generations get involved.
I remember in high school, I had this one really good English class basically, where we had a Socratic seminar about addiction. And that's where I heard, you know, teenagers are using their phone for seven to eight hours on average. And I was mind boggled, whatever. And I was very comfortable being like, yeah, this is an addiction.
I'd really like to kick it. And I remember being really surprised that all of my friends were like, no, you know, like, yeah, it may get kind of, it's an addiction, but it's so important for social connectedness. There was clearly just a lot of cognitive dissonance going on, That, to me, felt specifically like they were willing to say it was an addiction if they were talking to their peers, but not if they were talking to adults, because there's usually a lot of shame that comes from adults who are much more likely to say, this is an individual you problem, get off that phone, your stomach hurts, it must be that phone, you, you know, you have depression, it must be that phone.
It's made an individual problem by our older generations.
Julia: Lola too is looking for more assistance and understanding from people who are older than her.
Lola: Yeah, I think it's just important for everyone to understand that it's like any other addiction where it's so hard. for the person, like the one who's addicted, to just break that.
And I think people view like phone addictions differently than other addictions, but like, it's an addiction all the same. And. It's easy to be like, Oh, that person doesn't, that person's so lazy. They don't even want to get off their phone. It's like, I think everyone is getting to a point where we're all a little fed up with our phones, but it's just so hard to break that addiction.
And so I think just. Support and understanding from people who are older is so helpful and making it less critical and more like, yeah, trying to help.
Julia: So if teens are feeling judged by older generations for their phone use, And parents feel helpless about how to intervene in a way that doesn't trigger negative responses.
What are we missing? How can we start to bridge this divide between parents and their children? Jessica shared the view of many other parents, that it felt like the phone was at the heart of it. But is it? I turned to a professional to explore this further. Is it really just a phone? Or is there something deeper?
Asiya Vickers is a clinical social worker and psychotherapist with experience in adolescent mental health. Asiya is also a mother to Gen Z and Gen Alpha children. Unfortunately, Asiya was experiencing issues with her audio at the time of our recording, so some sections of what she said have been paraphrased by me.
When we spoke, Asiya explained that she believes that while the phone, and even addiction to it, is a part of the issue. It's really just a symptom of a larger one. ASEA referenced the U. S. Surgeon General's August 2024 advisory on the mental health and well being of parents, which showed that over the last decade, parents have been consistently more stressed than any other adults.
In that month alone, 33 percent of parents reported high stress levels, compared to just 20 percent of other adults. This stress, combined with a feeling of being at war with technology and being unsupported systemically, often leads parents to place the blame on the phone itself. And these systemic challenges affect teens too.
They're frustrated, feeling a need to connect with friends and family in meaningful ways, but spending a lot more time at home, indoors, and alone with their devices. The COVID 19 pandemic accelerated and normalized being online in this way. Facilitating communication, yes, but not necessarily deepening connection.
This means that teens today are often left with this basic need of connection unmet. In all this, Asiya’s perspective is that there is currently more fear, than understanding around the topic as a whole. And while parental fear is of course understandable, it often leads to power struggles that don't benefit the relationship or help the child.
This tension isn't about the device, it's about how we nurture the parent child relationship in this modern reality.
Asiya: So it's the relationship that I believe is really at the root of the issue and so kids are frustrated and I think Kids are frustrated because they want that connection. There is a, there's a need that that seems to need to be met.
There's a hunger, an attachment hunger. So they're trying to get their needs met in the best way they know how, right? This is often described by thinkers like doctors Gordon Neufeld some of the authors that I happen to love their work. And just really this idea that developing children have these very specific attachment needs.
And they need to get them from their parents. And their parents help to orient them in the world. We call this this orienting reflex, this, this need to look to those in authority for direction. And it's one of our greatest needs. And we currently live in a culture right now where the parent and child bond is often unsupported and even undermined.
And so let's say, you know, you're, you're a child, you're an adult, a young adult, excuse me. And you're looking to get these needs met. You're going to seek to get these needs met. from somewhere, and oftentimes it's from your peers. And so the challenge of the problem with that is that children are looking to other developmentally immature children for instruction, modeling, and guidance instead of from nurturing adults.
And that is a problem. In fact, it's only exacerbating it because you're thinking that it's going, it's kind of like going to a well without water. You're, you're, you're, you're not really meeting the essential primary need first. It's kind of like the best way I can describe it. It's like there's dessert.
Dessert's great. Cookies are great. Chocolate's great. But it's not your main course. And so you want to get the main course of your attachment needs met. That hunger that young people desire. In fact, we all desire. And there's ways to get that met first. Rather than relying on these technologies to meet that need
Part two of our peace talks radio program when digital addiction Threatens family peace after this short break
Tools for making family peace in the smartphone age. Today on Peace Talks Radio.
Lola clip: No one likes being addicted to their phone. No one likes spending like three hours a day on their phone. Cause then you always end up being like, Oh, I'm wasting my day. I could have done so much more. And then there's that guilt, which makes you be like, Whatever, I'll just like keep, I'll scroll on my phone some more to kind of distract me from that.
So I think in that way it definitely is an addiction. And we have started to recognize that, which makes us kind of want to break the addiction, go on our phones less, I have more like hobbies and all that.
Jessica clip: And when I try to get into her world and sort of ask a little bit about what she's interested or what she's watching or what she's learning, then it allows her to open up and talk to me.
And then if I hear what she's interested in, then maybe we can take it off. offline, off screen, you know, and find ways to engage in something she actually is interested in that she's learned on TikTok, or just find a way to communicate at all. And I feel like that's the big thing is asking, talking to your child about how they feel.
And then really, probably the biggest thing is having a strong family culture. Today on Peace Talks Radio, when digital addiction threatens family peace.
Paul: You're listening to Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm series producer Paul Ingles, today with correspondent Julia Joubert. Our topic today, when teen digital addiction threatens family peace. Previously, we heard from Allie O'Brien, Lola Rubin, and Jessica Ticktin, who shared the ways in which digital addiction has affected their home and family dynamics.
They also expressed how both teens and parents feel under supported and misunderstood as they navigate this conflict and are looking for more effective ways of reconnecting with each other. We also heard from Asiya Vickers, a clinical social worker and psychotherapist, who believes that while the phone, and even addiction to it, is a part of the issue, it's really just a symptom, expressing that while parental fear is understandable, the tension isn't about the device, it's about how we nurture the parent child relationship in this modern reality.
As we head into part two of this program, we turn back to Asiya Vickers for ways that parents can begin to rebuild connection with their children and hear from our guests Allie, Lola, and Jessica about how they are successfully communicating with each other in the face of digital addiction. Back into the conversation with Asiya Vickers.
Where Julia Joubert is asking the question many parents struggle with, how do I connect with a child who's frustrated, maybe even resentful and unwilling to talk about my concerns around their phone use?
Asiya: I'd like to first offer a disclaimer. Every parent and child relationship is unique and different. And I think parents should think about how to tailor recommendations according to their relationship and the maturity of their child. And I would simply start as a first step. For parents to focus on the relationship.
Instead of focusing solely on behavior modification, it's about getting intentional about prioritizing your relationship with your child. I don't think rigid rules work. I think this has to be a tailored approach. But generally speaking, I think it's important to put certain structures in place that protect family time.
Put structures, rituals, routines to protect and facilitate that relationship. Protecting time for family games, activities. holiday celebrations, and really creating spaces where you're not necessarily looking to correct your child, but creating spaces where children can be seen and heard, known, understood, and really at the essence where children are free to exist in your presence, which is critical.
And I think it's important because if children are able to rest in your presence, that is the sort of space where children will be able to feel safe enough to share.
Julia: I guess I'm also just reflecting on like my own situation or like myself as a teen. I think I come from a very different household where there wasn't really much room to not do what my parents told me to do.
I didn't really have that liberty, whereas my younger brothers definitely do. But what I was was a teenager who did not want to hang out with her parents sometimes. And I think that if I had a phone in the way that My brothers now have phones. I see myself gravitating towards that phone as rest. And I know that Lola, for example, who we spoke to also said that in moments of conflict arising or stress or a long day at school and at work, she would head home and being on her phone was rest for her.
And I'm, I'm curious about your thoughts on that. And are you saying that. If we are creating space for our kids to rest, do we then also accept that the kid is most likely going to be on their phone, and we need to allow for that?
Asiya: I believe if children get what they need, they will feel less attached to the devices and will learn healthy ways to self regulate and to cope.
I also think this also depends on the stage of the child. So for instance, I mean, if this phenomenon of peer orientation, which I referred to earlier, has a grip on the child, it's going to be difficult to parent. You know, this, this, uh, peer orientation impacts the power to parent because there's a skewed attachment relationship.
Attachment is the context in which parenting happens and is effective. And when that relationship is undermined, when that relationship is compromised, you're going to have a difficult time. And then if you try to enforce rules because of just frustration and an authoritarian perspective, um, it's going to feel like an intrusion to the child and it might provoke a counter will response.
These counter will responses occur on a spectrum where one child might simply retreat. Annoyed but calm. Another might show more severe signs of addiction and respond more aggressively, even sometimes violently. The tension in those scenarios are very different and would require different responses from a parent.
So I wanted to know how should parents engage with a reactive child? I mean, that's tough, right? That's clearly a moment of frustration and. Again, I don't like to give a one size fits all approach. I think it's important for such an example of parent or child in that scenario to meet with a therapist, to meet with, uh, those can help them to tailor a specific approach.
But I would say generally that I think this is just simply, it's a symptom of, of a deeper issue. It's a symptom of the relationship, the breakdown of the relationship. And I think. You know, what would it look like for trust to be rebuilt, to be able to create this sort of space where perhaps there's some tears beneath the frustration.
And, um, I think it requires a level of vulnerability and trust to be able to even get to that point, which clearly in this example, I obviously think it's questionable. So again, I don't like to give a general one size fits all approach, but I think certainly you, they would need to consult, uh, With somebody specifically to kind of peel back some of the layers to what's really happening here.
Julia: I asked Asiya how parents might begin the process of reconnecting, because I can imagine that many don't know where to even start.
Asiya: These habits are difficult to change once they're entrenched, but there is hope. And I think, again, parents have to begin to woo their children back. And it's going to take time.
It's going to take intention and effort. And I think, also, I would suggest to parents to notice when your children do make bids for your attention. Are you aware of it? Can you notice it? How do you respond? Are you busy? Are you on your phone? You know, and it's so easy to ignore. their pleas and their bids for attention.
And I'd add too, I think there are no easy quick fixes. There's no easy answers to this. And it's so easy to just jump to solutions when really there's a lot more assessment that's required.
Julia: Returning to the 2024 Pew study on how teens and parents approach screen time, I wanted to know how parents feel about their phone use.
And, like teens, parents are far more likely to say they spend too much rather than not enough time on their phone. About 50 percent of U. S. parents believe they spend too much time on their devices. When these same parents were asked if they considered themselves distracted by their phones when talking with their children, they had a more optimistic view.
While nearly 50 percent of U. S. teens say their parent is at least sometimes distracted by their phone when they're trying to talk to them, Only 31 percent of parents say that they believe this happens regularly. It's interesting data when we consider Asiya’s encouragement of starting with parental awareness of not just their children's, but also their own relationships with technology and the internet.
It is vital to initiating improved communication and connectedness at home. So knowing our starting point, I wanted to know what practices Asiya thought parents could bring into the family space. And then also, is there an onus on the children to initiate more constructive communication at this time as well?
Asiya: So I would say putting rituals and routines in place that will kind of protect you from all the distractions, maybe digital free zones, moments before school, after school, during meals. family walks. Those are just certain pastimes that really create space for heart connection. And so then when pure orientation or technology, the kids, their needs are met and you won't see this obsession because they're just trying to get their needs met.
And then I think for children or for adolescents, adults, and teens, you know, just, you know, Again, practicing that self awareness. And I think also, I mean, well, I think the onus really are on adults and not to absolve responsibility for kids, but I think we have some pretty smart kids out there and just start with that awareness and what does heart to heart connection look like?
And, you know, kids are doing the best that they can. It's a complicated, complex situation. And I think it just requires time and space. and some experimentation. And if that doesn't work, we try something else, right? It's, you're not going to have to get it right each time. And that's okay. It's just creating some space to try something different.
Julia: As Asiya points out, by remaining self aware and open to new approaches, adults can support their children compassionately in navigating this complex topic. But it is worth recognizing that it's the doing part that is often difficult. I turn now to our guests Jessica, Lola, and Ali to learn how they have worked on their communication through digital addiction and found new ways to connect.
And you've said that you've both had quite an evolution over the last year. So Lola, from your side, what has changed?
Lola: I think just the communication has really helped us. We both kind of tried to put ourselves in each other's shoes. We talked about it, said, Hey, when you come into my room and say this, and I've been doing all these things all day, this makes me feel And then I feel like you would explain your side and be like, I haven't seen you all day.
You come home, you go on your phone and that's kind of the only time of the day I get to see you and you're not even present. So I think kind of us understanding each other was a big step in that evolution of how the phone will change our relationship. Did your mom say anything in that interaction that surprised you?
About your, your phone use and, and how it was making her feel? Yeah, I mean, I knew that from what it looked like that I was always on my phone. But also hearing you kind of say that and about the time like we had to spend together, especially since I'm leaving so soon, I think that maybe I didn't fully understand.
How like me being on my phone made you feel so I think that was helpful for us to kind of talk about and understand
Julia: And from your side, Jessica, what changed in her in your approach with Lola? And then similarly, was there anything that she said in that conversation that surprised you?
Jessica: Well, I think some of it is maturity.
I think some of it is her. generation coming to terms with how the phone has kind of consumed the past few years of their lives. And I think that I started to, you know, pull back on the, the concept of, criticism of being on the phone, tried to put myself in her position, and I also would instead try to invite her to do something with me.
Do you want to go for a walk with the dogs with me, you know, or do you want to come up and watch a show with me, or do you want to, you know, sometimes engaging her differently and instead of coming in and maybe being critical, maybe saying, hey, in 10 minutes, do you want to do this? I think that those things help and also trying to interact with each other when we're not at our most tired.
So maybe in the evening when we were often having the conflict, recognizing that that's never really a great time to go through anything because she's tired and I'm tired. And so, trying not to do that then, but then also recognizing, I mean, having just said that, I also realized that a teenager, they get, they stay awake much longer and later than, you know, I want to go to bed and she's kind of just coming awake.
So sometimes I felt like she'd need to come home, get on her phone, kind of just, you know. decompress and then at 11 p. m. she's ready to chat and she comes into my room and is like, chat, chat, chat, you know, sits on the bed and wants to talk. And I'm realizing, okay, I need to make myself available available and shift when I want to talk with her.
It might not be the ideal time for her. And maybe when she wants to talk might not be ideal for me, but because I'm the parent, I want to make myself available to her. So I will stay up later and I will find time when she's ready to hang out and talk and make sure she knows that she's always welcome to come in and talk to me.
And so I think those things sort of slowly were, you know, All those things kind of helped us evolve to a new place, and I think we just, we got better at, at trying to figure out, communicate better with each other. It wasn't something I could control, but what I could control was our family culture and what we expected of our kids.
So I felt like if they, you know, we expected them to participate in sports and, and, after school. We expected them to play a musical instrument. We expected them to have their grades to be high. We expected them to engage in family activities on a weekly basis, have dinner without phones. So we had a lot of expectations of the things we wanted from them.
And those take a lot of time and doesn't leave a lot of time for them to just be sitting in their room on their phone, playing a game, or they just literally didn't have enough time in the day to do it. And also we're spending much more of their time face to face activities outside. Engaged in with their bodies moving.
Paul: Today on peace talks radio we're exploring the impacts of digital addiction on the communication between parents and teens as we look for ways to foster healthier relationships within families navigating the complexities of digital addiction the voices you're hearing are our own supervising producer Jessica Ticktin and her daughter Lola who are together navigating the challenges of smartphone use in their own home.
We also have Allie O'Brien, a Gen Z social media influencer, and Asiya Vickers, a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. Here again, our correspondent, Julia Joubert.
Julia: Jessica and Lola have also found ways of incorporating what has become the norm of scrolling through TikTok every day into their shared lives. As Lola works to balance the potentially endless consumption of social media with more offline activities and learnings.
Lola: I'd say there are some things I take off of TikTok or just social media in general.
Like a lot of things, I don't know, senior year related is what's different. Like coming to my brain right now where it's like we saw videos of senior sunrise And so our school we kind of as student government put that together. Hey, let's do a senior sunrise Where everyone comes together and we eat breakfast together or I saw this tick tock where these this friend group they got boxes from Like, Michaels or whatever, and then painted them, and said like, senior boxes, and you put little mementos from the whole year in these boxes.
So my friends and I, before the start of the year, we got together, and we like, put on our music, and we all painted our boxes, and like, just talked about our goals for senior year, and like, what's gonna happen. And so I think sometimes I do take those videos and like, apply them in my real life.
Jessica: I think if we ask Lola, like, what are you looking at? Like, it's easy for me to think what she's just scrolling through or doing is really just sort of like garbage and it's not worth her time. But she has over time given me some good life hacks or told me things that were helpful in the kitchen or helpful with, I don't know, all kinds of family life things that have been kind of fun to learn.
And when I try to get into her world and sort of ask a little bit about what she's interested or what she's watching or what she's learning, then It allows her to open up and talk to me. And then if I hear what she's interested in, then maybe we can take it off, offline, off screen, you know, and find ways to engage in something she actually is interested in that she's learned on TikTok, or just find a way to communicate at all.
And I feel like that's the big thing is asking, talking to your child about how they feel. And then really probably the biggest thing is having a strong family culture.
Julia: For Allie O'Brien, who grew up in a no social media household. But went on to become a social media influencer, navigating communication around the issue was not without struggle. But Allie says that in spite of the altercations that arise between them and their mother, things are improving.
Allie: I definitely think that it's getting better. I think It usually arises because I post something on the internet. I'm proud of it. She has a negative reaction. I go, hey, that was disrespectful. I just did something that I think is worth, you know, being proud of as a mother and she goes, okay, you know, my fear of the internet is getting the best of me here.
Let's talk through, you know, what both of our perspectives are. And I talk through why I'm proud of it and why I'm willing to sacrifice my You know, some of my anonymity and my potential safety in order to do something that I care about. And she talks through, you know, how much she has this intense fear for my safety and we're typically able to get to the, on the same page about it, but not without hurt, you know what I mean?
Like, I definitely think that she can be, can feel hurt that I don't. value her concerns about safety as much as she would like and I can feel hurt that she doesn't immediately see the things that I do on the internet as accomplishments rather than, you know, like liabilities and concerns.
Julia: Do you both feel okay walking away from that conversation?
Allie: No, I don't think so. I think that at least when we have the initial conversations there's a lot of hurt on both of our ends because she is genuinely very scared and I am genuinely very insulted. And so. I think that, over time, we've been able to, like, make peace with it and understand where we're coming from, but I think that, when those initial conversations happen, they're never fun, and we definitely are not particularly happy with each other after the fact.
Julia: When I asked if they regretted joining social media, Allie said no, with the caveat that a lot of the work of managing the addiction has come from within, and they could have used more support from the adults around them.
Allie: I regret getting onto them without having a system in place for reducing my doomscrolling.
I don't regret getting onto them in general because it has made a positive career for me. I always wanted to, I wanted to be a teacher and I specifically wanted to teach about social issues and that's like exactly what I do now, just online, which is really cool, but I, I regret that I downloaded them before having a good sense of what they would do to my attention span because now I'm working backwards to try to solve the problem after the fact when I wish that I could have prevented it.
Julia: Mm hmm. Is this something that. You think that, for example, schools could be doing better, having, providing you with this framework, with a strategy? Do you think that this is something that kind of education is maybe missing?
Allie: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the approach of, hey, just put your phone in this box. Nobody's going to go home and put their phone in a box because you can't, you can't do that.
You're going to get in trouble with everyone who's trying to contact you. But if schools had a, you know, a lesson about how leaders of these huge technology corporations don't let their kids have smartphones because they know that every technology in there is meant to get you addicted and they have lessons about meditation or, you know, you can get a meditation app that can help you use your phone more mindfully.
You can, you know, get the apps that help you grow a tree every time that you don't use your phone. If they had positive incentives, right? Hey, if you don't use your phone, we're gonna have a pizza party. I don't know. They could really rework the way that they're doing things to be working with students instead of against them.
And I think that would make all the difference.
Julia: As a parent, Jessica also believes in the importance of working with rather than against. Explaining that she feels like she is actively working against some of the addictive qualities of these devices. Something that is very hard to compete with, when that is what they have been designed to do.
Jessica: I don't want to compete against them. I feel like I don't want to see it as a war between myself and my children's digital, um, life. I want to see it as I want to make peace with it. And I felt to some extent, I have to say, I make peace with the fact that these devices are in our lives. They're going to take a big chunk of our lives, but there's so much I can do with the other part of that time.
And there's so much still I can, I can sort of, you know, find a way to, to engage my kids and show them all the wonderful things about the natural world and engage them in these other ways that I feel like instead of pitting it against. That it's more like, and we can also do these things.
Julia: And do you think that you model a responsible technology use for your children?
Jessica: You're smiling. I see you smiling. You know, I don't think I'm where I want to be. I think I'm on my, I think I text too much and I used to say to the kids, well, I'm just texting your friend to get a play date set up. I'm just doing this, you know, and it was always like, I'm just doing that. So I do feel like my youngest daughter is nine and I think she sees me on my phone way too much.
She doesn't have a phone herself and I, I'm aware of that. When she comes into my room in the morning, she sees me on my phone checking the news when at night I'm checking the news again and other things doing on my phone reading and I think, Oh, I can see that like, I am just setting up this expectation.
This is normal. This is what adults do. You just spend time and her sisters are on their phone. Everyone's kind of on their phone. And I, me. I hate that. And at the same time, it feels like everything is on the phone that I need access to. I have to check, you know, that you can check quickly through your emails.
You can quickly check the news. You can text, you know, text my mom. I can, you know, like we have an app I can check where Lola is driving and, you know, there's so many things on the phone that I do feel. That I'm, I need to set some better boundaries. I'm not really happy with where I'm at right now. I think I used to model a lot better.
And then probably as, as time has gone by, I feel like I, I've probably been slipping in some of that.
Julia: What do you think, Lola? And was, was this something that your mom admitted to, you know, a year ago when you guys were maybe butting heads a bit more about your technology use?
Lola: Yeah. Yeah, well, I think. It was, let's see, um, I think it's easy for anyone to think they're not spending too much time on their phone when you can justify it and be like, I'm doing this for work, I'm doing, I'm on, I'm not on here just to like, scroll on TikTok, or you know, it's like I'm actually sending an email right now.
And so it's easy for anyone to justify why they're spending as much time as they are, and from an outside perspective, it just looks like someone's always on their phone. And I think that we, as a family, have definitely all talked about how we all can spend less time on our phones, and you and my dad have admitted that you guys could do a better job as well.
And so I think that helped within our dynamic, kind of putting yourself on the same level being like, maybe I'm on my phone because of work, texting, whatever, but still we all need to like limit what And reduce our use of it.
Jessica: I think there's times that Lola has done that and sort of let me know what I could do better and I appreciate that feedback when we have open lines of communication and they recognize I'm just trying to figure this out as well. And you know, when they see me on that more human level, I think that we both then feel it can feel like we can be a bit more vulnerable with each other and that helps a lot.
Paul: Well, as our guests have laid out in these programs, communication in the face of digital addiction is a journey that requires time, patience, and flexibility. As the landscape of technology and social media constantly evolves, it can be easy to blame the device. But our guests are saying we need to find ways to work with each other within these systems, not against them.
Jessica, Lola, Allie, and Asiya have shown us that in spite of the challenges, there is always hope. As Asiya said, we have some pretty smart kids out there, and rebuilding that heart to heart connection is the first step to finding peace. You can hear all the interviews in both parts of this program at our website, Peacetalksradio.com. That's Peacetalksradio. com, where you can also go to hear all the programs in our series dating back to 2002. You can see photos of our guests there, read and share transcripts, sign up for our podcast, and make a donation to keep this program going into the future. Your direct support is crucial.
Find out how you can be part of the team at peacetalksradio. com. Support does come from listeners like you making that choice to fund a program that you really care about. Also, from the Albuquerque Community Foundation Ties Fund, KUNM at the University of New Mexico and many other stations that broadcast our program.
Nola Daves Moses is our executive director. Ali Adleman composed and performs our theme music. For supervising producer Jessica Ticktin, for our co founder Suzanne Kryder, and for our correspondent Julia Joubert, I'm Paul Ingles. Thanks so much for listening to, and for making the choice to support, Peace Talks Radio.
