Study: Tweens Need Parents to Establish and Model Screen Rules

A new study determines which parenting behaviours are most effective at curbing adolescents' screen time.

Pexels (public domain)

“One of the biggest predictors of adolescents’ screen use is their parents’ screen use,” says Jason Nagata. He is a pediatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, and the lead author of a new study called “Associations between media parenting practices and early adolescent screen use,” published in Pediatric Research this past June.

The study is huge, looking at screen use habits for over 10,000 12- to 13-year-olds in the United States. This is a significant age group that is often on the cusp of heavier screen use and starting to feel more influenced by peers than parents. Most research on media parenting practices to date has focused on younger children and infants, despite parents of older kids needing guidance, too.

Using questionnaires, researchers determined how much time each day these young adolescents spend using screens for everything but school (“educational” screen time was not evaluated)—gaming, social media, texting, video chatting, watching videos, and scrolling the Internet. Then parents were asked questions about whether they restrict their kids’ screen use, how they use their own devices in front of their kids, and whether they use screens to reward or punish child behaviours.

One major finding was that parental screen use is strongly associated with adolescents having higher screen use themselves, as well as problematic use of video games and social media. As Nagata told the Washington Post, “It’s especially important that parents follow their own rules and practice what they preach, because even if they think their kids aren’t watching them, they really are.”

This underscores the message I repeat in my posts, which is that parents should not throw up their hands and claim helplessness; parental influence is still in fact strong, even if your adolescent child acts like it isn’t, and parents do have a responsibility to push back against the natural tendency toward peer-centrism that occurs as kids grow up.

Another interesting finding relates to the use of screens to reward or punish behaviors. More than three-quarters of parents take screens away when a child misbehaves, and 40 percent offers them as a reward for good behaviour. This practice, however, is not healthy or constructive. From the study: “Greater parental control of adolescent screen use as a reward or punishment was also associated with higher total screen time and problematic screen use of video games.” This finding supports prior research, which found that using screen-based devices as disciplinary tools backfires, increasing children’s overall screen time.

Not all screen time is created equal, as I’ve written before, but the researchers point out that there are two key times of day when screens should definitely be restricted—during meals and bedtime. And of these two, blocking an adolescent’s access to a phone in bed is the most important. In Nagata’s words: “If you only choose one rule to implement, that may be the most effective one for reducing total screen time.”

Watching screens while eating has been linked to overeating, distracted eating, and weight gain or obesity. Screens obviously get in the way of valuable family conversations around the table, too. Screens in bed leads to shorter sleep duration and more disturbance; kids struggle to fall asleep when stimulated by blue light, online content, and ongoing notifications.  

Overall, the study found that when parents make an effort to track and limit their kids’ screen time, often by using Family Media Use plans as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, it makes a big difference. Kids get less screen time and, as a result, exhibit fewer problematic behaviours. From the study’s discussion:

“Setting screen time boundaries is in line with characteristics of authoritative parenting, in which parents impose control and are responsive and supportive of their children, a parenting style that has been associated with positive developmental results such as healthy dietary behavior and improved academic outcomes.”

You Can Do This!

Rather than feel guilty, shameful, or defensive, parents should take heart. This is fundamentally good news. By reminding parents of the influence they have over their increasingly independent adolescents, it should empower and spur parents to act and establish strict rules that limit screen use at a critical point in their children’s lives. Your influence will only wane as a child approaches the age of 18, so it makes sense to help them establish healthy habits while you can.

This should also be a powerful motivator for parents to cut back on their own screen time in the presence of kids, realizing that modeling is the most effective child-raising tool we have at our disposal.

You can read the full study here.

You Might Also Like:

Study: Digital ‘Pacifiers’ Impede Emotional Regulation
Why I’m Skeptical About Warning Labels on Social Media
Ontario Schools Get a Feeble Phone Policy

---

In the News:

Two weeks ago, I sat in a radio studio in Huntsville, Ontario, with two smart, inquisitive women named Karen and Noreen to do an in-depth interview about my book, Childhod Unplugged. Since I grew up in that area, they had lots of questions about my upbringing in the Muskoka forest and how my unconventional childhood shaped my interests and career, as well as a few mentions about my family’s famous wood-fired pizza-and-bagel shop!

From the interview:

“Great tools do not necessarily make great toys, and I try to convey that message to my children and to people that I speak to. So, the idea of digital minimalism is to put technology in its correct place. You need to put it where it belongs, where it is helping you and assisting you in meaningful ways, but it’s not taking over your focus and becoming your main source of entertainment all the time.”

Please have a listen here.

---