Phone Addiction? |

Phone Addiction? A few helpful hints to reduce your child’s time on their phone

Our High School Counseling department recently hosted a roundtable discussion on the Netflix documentary ‘The Social Dilemma‘, if you haven’t had the chance to watch this with your child, it is well worth taking the time this break to see this together and discuss some of the key themes of the documentary with your child.

Within our parent presentation I demonstrated some steps that parents can take to help students reduce their ‘addiction’ to their iphone. For parents who were there and for those who were unable to attend I have put together a short screencast discussing some of the key features that an iPhone offers to help your child manage their phone screen time. Please see a link to this screencast here.

Some key steps to help your child:

Ask your child to show you their screen time on a weekly basis. This also allows you to set targets with your child and helps you better understand what they are spending their time on.
Check both the notifications and pick up statistics on your child’s phone, if there is a high correlation between notifications and then the subsequent pick up, then it is advisable to adjust notifications.
Turn off as many notifications as possible on your child’s device -This allows them to choose when they engage with their phone instead of the phone controlling them.
Set limits with your child for social media and apps that consume too much time… involve your child in this process to ensure buy-in.

As we enter the break, it is a great challenge to give to your family to do a complete day without tech. As a family this a chance to disconnect to reconnect some more face to face.

Have a wonderful break,
Andy Vaughan