Speaker 1Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ plus individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org slash LGBTQ. That's redcrossblood.org slash LGBTQ.
Speaker 2Hello. And welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. This episode, Why Is Everyone Concerned About Smartphones? Part 2, I'm continuing with my, hopefully, thorough discussions around the issues about smartphone ownership, why it's been in the media so much, and what can we do. So, in Part 1, I shared the data, and the concerns around smartphone use, and we finished off with a little bit of an audit, a little bit of a questionnaire, which was the free resource at my resource library, which asked you to consider what might be the reasons behind why you're looking at or who have given your child a smartphone. So, today's episode is much more around the what do we do? How might we help? But I want to start with those questions again, because it's good to contextualize what we're about to talk about and how to, sort of, the ways that we might consider taking these next steps. So, at the end of the last episode, I asked you to be really honest about why you have either already given your child a smartphone or are considering it. What are the reasons why you might do that? And so, the first one was about maybe you're looking at doing that because you want to make sure that your child is safe. They've maybe transitioned from a primary school to a secondary school, and they're going to be catching a bus and a train. They're going to be making their own way home. You might not be there when they get back. And it's a really great way of them being able to contact you to let you know that they're safe, and for you to also contact them. So, that might be a reason why you're considering it. It may be, in all honesty, you're considering it because everyone else has a smartphone in their year, and we know that between 90% and 97% of 12-year-olds have a smartphone. So, you may legitimately be thinking, everyone else has got one. And do you know what? I really don't want my child being excluded or ridiculed or to be different because, as we know, being a teen, and an adolescent is hard enough as it is without standing out for not having what everyone else has. So, that might be a reason why. It may be a pragmatic, practical reason that you've just had an upgrade of your phone. You've got a smartphone left over. And so, it just seems sensible for your child or your teen to have that. Why buy another one when you've got one already? And you feel that they're pretty sensible anyway. So, that might be a reason. Another reason. Another reason might be we might genuinely really believe that the features on a smartphone are going to be super helpful for our child or our teen. And we've got an utter unwavering conviction that our child or teen is going to use it appropriately because maybe we've seen evidence of their ability to self-regulate in other areas of their life. So, let's not underestimate this as a particular driver. There'll be people who are listening to this who's, you know, as adults who legitimately give their child a smartphone for this reason. So, those are some of the reasons. There could be a whole host of other reasons why we give a smartphone. But that's the sort of the background. The reason why I've asked you to do that because when we start looking at the solutions and the possibilities of what you can do next, it's easier to make a decision about what you do next when we've been really honest with ourselves and super clear about why we might want to give our child a smartphone in the first place. Now, I am going to be honest. At this stage, I've been very subjective. I've given you, tried to give you all of the facts in terms of helping you make your own decisions. I believe, personally, that no child under the age of 11 should have and use a smartphone unsupervised. So, let me give you some context within this. I believe that smartphones, iPads, all of these devices have their place and can be incredibly helpful for our children. So, I'm not a fan and don't believe that we should be banning smartphones. I just don't think that that's the case. I think it's a societal issue. I think it's something that we need to address collectively. Schools, government, social platforms, parents, community, employers. It's something that we all need to be doing. I think that smartphones and tablets can afford children's so many opportunities to learn and engage in learning in a way that you can't get from a book. However, what I'm not comfortable with, what I don't believe is best for our children's development at a stage where they are really open to curiosity, learning, experience, and resilience that is borne out from real-life experimentation. So, I believe that the use. I believe that the use around these smart devices should be scaffolded up until the age of 11. So, absolutely, young children can use digital devices, but we should be with them to help scaffold the learning that they get from it, but also to begin to build their digital literacy. So, children over the age of 11, I have no issue in them having their own smartphone with the following caveats. I don't believe that there is a specific optimal age for children to have smartphones, but I do believe it's all about stage of development. It's all about digital literacy. It's all about them being able to begin that process of self-regulation, having developed the skills that we help scaffold with their use of these devices with our supervision and our help and our support. So, that is my view. It's my view. And as parents, you then have to make that decision. Do I believe that that's quite a sensible thing? Do I have a child that actually needs to be that bit older, can actually be younger? Those are the choices that you make. We all have our belief systems. We all have our own way of approaching things. I don't form any judgment on anyone, and I've tried to be really objective with the information that I've shared for you, but I think it's really important that I'm honest, about my belief systems because I've been in the press and on television and media a lot talking about this subject and it would be imprudent of me to not be honest with you about my views. So, with that in mind, let's now look at the five things that we could potentially do. So, having listened to episode one, having done your own research, you could make a decision that you are not going to give your child a smartphone. Whatever their age and stage, we're not talking specific ages here, you may say to yourself, having done that little audit, that actually, do you know what? I've got a nine or a 10-year-old that is making their way to school on their own and independently. I am concerned that they're safe, and I believe that what they call a feature phone is enough for them to be able to make contact with me and let me know that they're safe. And a feature phone, in essence, is really what people, I'll term the old sort of brick phones that really allow people to send messages and make phone calls, but really don't do anything else. We can look at particular features and there are more and more sort of service providers providing these in ways that can be quite interesting for younger children. And there's been sort of lots of sort of in the press about people who've had to swap their smartphones for a feature phone and how they've decorated it, how they've kind of really, you know, learned to love it and have used it as part of a digital detox. So you could make the decision that actually, I only really want to know that my child's got back safely and I want them to have some way of contacting me, so I'm just going to go down the feature phone route. And there are more and more interesting ones coming up. As I said in the first episode, there's even now a Barbie flip phone. So that may well be a decision that you make. That's number one. Another decision that you might make is that you might continue, connect with other parents in your children's school. And I'm hearing and seeing a lot doing this at the primary school age. So at the time that, that desire and perceived need for a smartphone begins because they're transitioning. So you may connect with other parents in your children's school year and agree a pact. We have power collectively and certainly where you look at communities and that smart free phone childhood movement where parents have come together and made this pact that basically none of them are going to buy their children's smartphones, but they're all going to have feature phones. You lose that element of children feeling that they're being left out and everyone else has got it and I haven't because everyone's got exactly the same. And that could work really well. It may not, but you have more opportunity, I believe, to come collectively together when our children are in the primary school, so under 11. Simply because we're more engaged in their day-to-day school life because we are typically to some extent dropping off or picking up. We've got more contact with their peer group. What happens when our children move to their senior and secondary schools is we don't get that collection, that collective, that tribe feeling as much with other parents as we do in the primary school. It doesn't mean that secondary schools and senior schools, some do it, really don't have that connection. It doesn't mean that we don't have that connection. Keep a bit of that community going, but generally speaking, it is more difficult when our children have transitioned to that next stage. So it may well be if you're listening to this and you've got children under 11 and there's already a sense of pressure around smartphone use and you have listened and you've made a decision that they're not yet ready, but you'd like them to have some capability of contacting you, that you've got that power in the collective to then come to together as parents. Even if you get the majority of parents, but there are still a few that aren't and that are going to give smartphones or maybe even give no phones, again, there's a real power in that collective. So you might go down the feature phone route. You may go down a route where you connect to other parents and you make that decision that way. It may be that you make a decision that actually you're going to buy your child a smartphone. That's the decision that you've is if you've made that decision is about agreeing a set of boundaries. And when I talk about boundaries, I'm imagining sort of the easiest analogies to imagine a lane. So basically our children have to operate within that lane. There are some situations where that lane is pretty wide. So it may well be our children need to be in bed by 8pm, lights out at 8pm. But the process of their bath time, their reading, they're getting themselves ready. We're pretty flexible with. So that lane will be quite broad. What I would suggest is if you're making that decision to buy your child a smartphone and you're making that decision for the first time is that initially you want to keep that lane quite narrow. So it's about setting really appropriate boundaries for your family. So for example, those boundaries may well be no smartphones in bedrooms at night, device-free mealtimes, you know, specific smartphone time and location in terms of where it sits for the rest of the day. It's about having honest conversations from the start that you are trying to figure out this whole smartphone ownership thing too. That by regularly communicating with each other, with your child and with you, you're going to find ways for it to work for both them and also for you. It's being honest that you've got concerns around this smartphone overtaking their lives. You're concerned around addiction. You're concerned around social, them having social media before they're ready and what it might do to their self-esteem and their confidence. But you have faith in their ability to learn to self-regulate, but it will be a steep learning curve for both of you. Yeah. Sometimes you'll be at loggerheads, but it's all about communication. And the path that you make with them is a really crucial part as well as a real, being really honest about this. Like, I don't know it any more than you. I'm learning. It's going to be challenging. I know how it's important to you, how it engages and keeps you connected with your friends, but I've got these concerns. And I think when we approach it that way, our children are much more likely to then engage with us as long as we're open and we're honest and we keep that conversation going rather than handing over the smartphone with this long conversation. And then they're sort of two, three, four, five weeks in, a couple of months in, and we find that they're using it excessively and then we're trying to reel it in. So communication is a really important bit and having that packed with them and then following through with that regular contact is so important because it helps mitigate those potential negative effects. Remember in the first episode, there are some concerns around the use of smartphones. We talked about six of these particular concerns, but we know that it's not clear cut. It's all about relationship between smartphone use and mental health and sleep rather than it being definitive. So by having that regular contact, by having those regular communication channels and being honest that we don't have all of the answers, we understand how important it is to them. And we're making sure that we're making these compromises and it's about then having that regular contact.
Speaker 1So we've talked
Speaker 2about future phones. We've talked about the power of the collective by connecting with other parents. We've talked about the power of the community. We've talked about if we make this decision to buy, how we then communicate that and create this pact. The fourth one, as you would expect from me, is about regularly auditing and modeling good device use. Children and teens are much more likely to do what they see than what we say. So it's so important that we regularly reflect on our own smartphone use. Now, I think part of the challenge is that we have to be able to do what we see. We have to be able to do what we want to do. So I think part of the challenge with our own device use is the rabbit hole that is social platforms and or online shopping. But I also think part of the challenge is a very legitimate and genuine as more and more people are working from home. More and more of us are accessing devices regularly to check communication channels with work. And that can really blur the lines between when we're using our devices socially and when we're using our devices individually and personally, and when we're using it in terms of work. So we may want to sit and reflect for a piece about how can I find ways of making sure that the device use that I have that is specific to my employment and my work is ring-fenced in such a way that my children can see that that is specific to work. And then my device and digital use that is related to my personal side and my social side is what I'm then being sort of communicating with them and regularly also modeling the patterns of behavior. Because that can be a really important piece. So let's say your work emails are connected to your personal device. Our children aren't going to be discriminatory. They're not going to be thinking, oh, my parents might be on their phone because they're checking a work email. And if those emails are going to be discriminatory, they're going to be coming through throughout the day and you're working from home quite a bit and you're still working from home when they're back from school. And maybe you go to make a cup of tea and you're checking and you're doing things just generally as we progress into the evening, which so often happens when we're working from home. We've got that flexibility during our day. It's really important to remember that when we're talking about modeling, our children aren't going to be discerning and discriminating around, I'm aware that my parents must be checking their work emails. They're just simply going to see it literally for what it is, is that we are constantly on our phones. So it's about making sure that we then become much more intentional around, I am working and trying to confine that email checking and that device use to specific areas at specific times. Now, you might be listening to this and saying, well, actually, Mary Hunt, if I just say, well, I'm making a cup of tea, I've got to check some work emails. I think what I would just say back to that is that what often happens that I hear from parents saying is that the children are then saying that they're on their phones because they're having to check about homework from a friend or they're on the school portal because they're doing X, Y, and Z. I think it's just a very difficult thing. So I'm simply trying to say that we need to give some real thought to how we manage that modelling. So if you are someone who doesn't have devices that are connected to work things and it's super easy to demarcate, that's when I'm sat at my desk working from home and this is when I'm using my personal device, then your audit is simply what am I doing around modelling digital use. It's where it becomes much more blurred, where you are checking and your emails are across your personal devices that I think we need to be really honest with ourselves around doing a bit of an audit. And most devices now will tell you how often you're on your phone, how often you pick it up or touch it. And it's quite scary when we look at those numbers. But if we are really trying to model and to demonstrate good self-regulation for our children, then we have to be really honest with ourselves. Otherwise, our children are simply seeing us operating one way and trying to lecture or tell them to respond in a different way. So we've looked at feature phones as an option. We've looked at connecting with other parents as an option. We've talked about optimal ways if we choose to buy that smartphone, how we keep those lines of communication and make that pact and those boundaries. We've talked about us regularly auditing ourselves. And the fifth one is I would say is consider no-go times and regular digital days. Now, this is particularly helpful if your children and teens already have smartphones and they are overtaking your life. Remember, there is a whole separate episode coming soon, which addresses it in more detail. But it's always good to flex that muscle of being able to cope, manage and enjoy time with no smartphones at all. So start with small no-go zones and times, particularly if you are someone whose children and teens have already got a smartphone and it feels like it's spiraling out of hand. If you are only just handing over a smartphone, then obviously flex that muscle more broadly, have more of that. Then what you can do is, so for example, the no-zone times that I would personally recommend would be around mealtimes, homework and bedtimes to start with. If you've already entrenched in the smartphone use, then you can add in a family movie, a family show that you watch, whether that's streamed or live, a board game or an activity. Now, yes, teens can do and get a huge amount of enjoyment out of games, even if they might say how utterly annoying and boring it is. Persist, try different games, try different activities. So it's about creating time and space to experience life with all its rich colours and tapestry without being glued to a device or a smartphone. And then what you could do to take it the next level is you could then consider a family detox day alongside a family day trip, for example. So you might not do a family detox day and everyone's just at home milling around, but if you couple it with a family trip or an activity, that again flexes that muscle. It's all about helping our children. It's creating that space for our children and teens to experience real life in-person things and opportunities to try different things where they don't have that smartphone as the go-to reliance. I'm bored, I'll just pick up my smartphone because that's the easiest thing. Rather than I'm bored, I'm on a digital detox day, family detox day. And actually, I've just realised I really love colouring in or I really love cooking or I really love going out on my bike or jumping on a trampoline and learning new skills. We're just trying to create that space so that they can then try and consider different things. And so it's considering it slowly, slowly. We're adding smartphone-free experiences. So let's just finally just recap. We've talked about one option we may go down is the feature phone. We could connect with other parents and use the power of the collective. We could buy our child a smartphone and create these boundaries and parameters within which to operate this kind of pact. It's important that we regularly audit and model good device use regardless of what options that we take. And particularly even when we say no to smartphones because we're worried about the impact that it has on them and then we're glued to our own. And then this notion of considering some digital no-go times and regular detox days. Now, what I give this week is going to be those five options in a checklist so that you can kind of give it some thought about what you might do and your best next steps for you and your family. So you can grab your free copy by heading over to my free resource library, drmaryhand.com forward slash library, where you'll find the link to download the resource. All you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access, not only to the checklist from this episode, but also the questions that I asked you to reflect on from part one, as well as all the other free resources across all my other podcast episodes. As ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could follow, rate and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So, until next time. TQ
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