What can families do to prevent becoming screen-obsessed?

Jonathan McKee writes in Crosswalk Five Ways to Free Your TeenWhole Family from the Bondage of Phone Addiction.

56% of teens associate the absence of their cellphone with at least one of these three emotions: loneliness, being upset or feeling anxious.

Why is this? Maybe it’s because they don’t remember life without it.

Let’s review:

· 89% of 12-17-year-olds have a smartphone and they check their devices an average of 86 times per day.

· 97% are on social media. 45% say they are online almost constantly.

· Teens spend almost 9 hours a day on entertainment media, over 6 hours of that (6:40) is screen media (the rest is music, magazines, etc.)

But before we all start saying, “Kids these days…” consider this:

· Parents spend more than 9 hours a day (9:22) with screen media, the vast majority of that (7:43) with personal media .

So that means parents actually average more screen time than our kids. Consider what this looks like in your typical American home: Dad’s watching the big flatscreen, Mom is scrolling through Facebook, teen daughter is up in her bedroom checking her Insta-feed, brother is playing Fortnite…. and the Golden Retriever is on the treadmill because no one will walk him!

So what can families do to prevent becoming screen-obsessed?

...A recent study of teenagers revealed that the majority of them actually felt worried about the time they interacted with their smartphones:

· 52% experience times where they are sitting with a bunch of their friends and no one is talking because they are all staring at their phones.

· 60% claimed their friends were addicted to their phones.

· 65% wished they were better able to limit the amount of time they spend on their phones.

· 69% would like to spend more time “socializing face to face” than online.

Let that sink in for a moment. Almost two-thirds of kids wished they were better able to limit their own screen time, and even more of them would like more “face time.”

Go here to read details of the five practices he recommends.