Put Down Your Phone, Parents

By Hayley Sherwood, Columnist

In the past twenty-five years as a mental health professional, I have helped many parents navigate concerns and set boundaries around their children’s cell phone use. Parents often ask me when it is an appropriate time to give their child a phone, how much time each day on a phone is acceptable, how much oversight is needed over their child’s phone use, and when it is okay (and for how long) to take away a child’s phone. Ever since Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness” was released in 2024, and I have heard his and other experts’ interviews on the subject, I have revised my guidance to parents in some ways.

It is apparent that children’s social and emotional well-being suffers significantly after they are given phones and access to social media, particularly for children born in 2010 and thereafter when smartphones became widely available.

I have also paid much closer attention to my own and others’ phone use in my everyday life. Far too often, I witness parents sitting next to their child, while both of them are laser-focused on their phones literally everywhere I go--in doctors’ offices, restaurants, sporting events, performances, parks and grocery stores.

How many of us remember sitting in waiting rooms as children, talking to or reading with a parent, or playing with an abacus or wooden blocks, before meeting with a physician or dentist? Or eating dinner with family or friends and actually talking with one another? Or interacting with our friends and their parents at birthday parties or social gatherings? Or calling someone on a rotary phone and talking at length?

Our cell phones are ever-present, so much so that we are masters at being in the same room or on the same couch with someone we care about and checking our phones simultaneously. I am guilty of it myself. I have said “I just need to check my phone for a minute” more times than I am proud of.

Parents play a major role in shaping children’s phone use. If we expect our children to limit their phone use, we have to start by modeling the behavior ourselves. Children mirror our actions. Ideally, when our children are babies, we need to talk to them as much as we can.

Parents of children and teens, it is not too late to start right now. Talk with your child every moment you possibly can and demonstrate that you can watch a movie, hang out, and do all of your chores and errands without checking your phone. When your teenager or adult child wants to talk with you, do not miss the opportunity. Unless we have a loved one with a serious medical condition that requires us to be at the ready to receive a phone call or text, we do not “need” to respond immediately. Bosses and other people can wait. Yes, it is hard to be on the receiving end when someone does not reply to our communication promptly, but, again, what example are we setting for our children? We have choices every minute to keep our phones elsewhere and turn our notifications off. We think we have to check our phones frequently, but we actually do not. Most communication is not urgent.

In addition to establishing phone use guidelines with our children that include discussing how to stay safe and setting “phone-free” times of the day, we need to set the example that having “in real life” human interactions is the priority. We as parents are the ones to set our children up for success.

Psych’d to see you next month!

Dr. S.