Ann

How many cross words a week would you say you have with your teen over their use of technology? If you said none – congratulations and you are probably the outlier. If your family doesn’t struggle at least a little bit to balance screens and the real world, I would be shocked.

The things parents had to worry about, exponentially increased with the advent of the smart phone – as if computers and gaming consoles weren’t enough. We worry not only about the amount of time they spend with their face in front of a screen, but we worry about the dangers of these online spaces as well.

What are we supposed to do?

Well, my guest today actually has the answer. Emily Cherkin, otherwise known as The Screentime Consultant, wrote the book on the answer, called The Screentime Solutions: A Judgment-Free Guide to Becoming a Tech-Intentional Family.

This book and her advice is priceless. Stay with me, you’ll want to hear this.

This is Speaking of Teens, the podcast that teaches you the science of parenting adolescents so you can be less stressed and more excited about having a teenager. I’m Ann Coleman, I’m an attorney turned parent educator and I’ve spent years studying the science of teen behavior and I want to help you learn how to parent your teens for the best possible outcome.

Emily is actually a former middle school English teacher, who now consults with parents and educators to bring her tech-intentional approach to as many people as possible. You may have seen her on the Today Show or Good Morning America – she’s everywhere.

My first question for Emily was what the heck does it mean to become tech-intentional?

 

Emily Cherkin

Okay, so tech intentional to me means using technology that is in alignment with our values that enhances and nurtures and supports ourselves, our families, our children, and also resisting, limiting or delaying any type of screen use that interferes with healthy development. That's a mouthful. So my TLDR is later is better, less is more, relationships first.

 

And I believe this is applicable to anyone at any age, at any time. So I wrote my book, called it the Screen Time Solution, because there's plenty of books out there about the problem. And what I wanted was to offer a way of thinking about addressing screen time at any point in development. And I talked to parents of young children, but more often I hear from parents of children older than 10. And this is what I say, it's like parents zero to 10 need me and parents 10 and up.

 

find me. And part of that is it's like, I call it the avocado problem. Like it's not ripe, not ripe, not ripe. no. You've like passed the ripeness. So I feel like you could still make great guacamole out of a ripe avocado. So it's never too late.

 

Ann

Exactly. So when parents do like, because I'm going to introduce all the listeners to your book, I love it. I've read nine, I would say 90 % of it. And when you talk about being tech intentional and we say that, okay, well maybe it's not too late for parents of teens and tweens. Where would you advise them to start with being more tech intentional? How do they even go there?

 

Emily Cherkin

Right. It's funny, I just got off a call with a parent of a 15 year old who is just, she's like, I don't know what to do. You know, he takes his phone in his room and he locks the door and he tells me all my friends get their phones in their room and I'm responsible now. And, you know, for those of us who know anything about teenagers, we know that 15 year olds are very confident about their own abilities and independence. And that's often a mismatch between reality. And that's also normal, right? Like that's brain development.

 

 

Emily Cherkin

So, you know, for parents, I mean, actually, I think the starting point, and I don't always open with this because I think it scares parents off, so we have to start with us. Because if we're not willing to sort of talk about it and look at our own screen use, it's a lot harder for us to get our kids on board, especially our teenagers who love to point out any hypocrisy that we might, you know, be susceptible to. So I actually told the same thing to the mom. I just said, well, do you know, does your phone live in your bedroom at night? And she was like, yes. And I go, aha, there's a starting point, right? So again, we get to say to our kids, I'm learning, I'm not perfect. I wanna help you because I'm taking the long view. We have to remember teenagers take the very, very short view, right? Like again, that brain development is just not there. They're like, what's happening in the next six hours? That's their life.

We are thinking what's happening in the next 16 years and freaking out that like if they don't do X, Y, Z now they're gonna end up somewhere that we don't want them. But we have to take the long view. You know, parenting is a marathon, not a sprint, as I have heard many people say. And so sometimes we have to sort of focus on one or two things at once. And so starting with the phones in the bedroom is a great strategy for all family members. Because again, it's, and if you have younger kids and you're not there yet, but your phone is in your room, that is a really great starting point because your kid eventually is going to ask, well, why do you get it in your room and I don't?

 

 

Emily Cherkin

 

get alarm clocks are so cheap. I joke that I like should get kickback from the alarm clock industry because I recommend them so much. They work and honestly like it's there's something really satisfying about a simple tool that does exactly what it's supposed to and doesn't take me down you know rabbit holes.

 

 

Ann

Exactly, and the noisemakers. We used to have a noisemaker when my my son was young. Just the little little thing that you buy, you know, but if people are like me and they need their noise at night, so yeah.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah, I still have one. Yeah, exactly. No, I have a sound machine in my room as well. And like, you know, not having that frees me up to fall asleep without a phone. I mean, I survey this when I do school presentations, I survey the parent community and universally between 90 and 95 % of parents admit having their phones in their room at night. So I wanna normalize this. This is like, you're not alone. But even more shocking to me is that 10 % say they sleep with their phone in their bed with them, like on or in their bed, like next to their, you know, which.

Come on, we can at least baby step it to the nightstand, right? Like.

 

Ann

Wow. I'm worried about that thing catching on fire in my bed. I don't know about you, but well, so tell me this because I read about values and how you have a really nice long list. I love it. In your book where parents and kids can sit there and kind of circle what jumps out at them and what their values are. And so how...How do we, you know, it's kind of a vague, amorphous, you know, idea that, well, what are our family values? What do we want to use as kind of our core? So how do people figure that out? And then how do they operate to build this sort of, you know, screen time or screen rules, I guess, around their values?

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah! Yeah, that's a great question. And it is one of the, to me, that's a really great starting point for families because we don't often sit down and say, our values are X, Y, and Z. We assume that our children are absorbing our values by how we operate, live, talk to people, you know, exist in the world. But sometimes it helps to be explicit about it. And so one of my favorite, I think I mentioned this in the book is, you know, especially for younger children to say if an alien from outer space landed in your living room and looked around, you know, like what would they say is important to your family? Or, you know, for older kids, like how do we spend time in our free time? Like if our family could do anything we wanted, what would it be? Like what would we choose to do? You know, any sort of hypotheticals. And I think it's fascinating to have the kids do this exercise with you because seeing what your kids say your values are, even may not be in sync with what you think. And that's a really great opportunity for conversation about it, right? Like, I remember my son had to do it for school and it was right after the pandemic, like when they'd gone back to school and he mentioned health was one of his values. And I was so surprised because I was like, I mean, I'm not like anti-health, but I didn't think that that was the top in our family. And then I was like, wait a minute, this kid just lived through a pandemic. Like, of course that's going to be on his list, right? And so,

Sometimes they're shaped by whatever they're in and we have to remember that their own experience may shift how they see our values and that's why it's worth the conversation.

 

Ann

Right. Well, I'm going to jump now to something that I read later in your book when you were talking about, let's see, who was it? There was a, was it genteel or gentle? How do you say his name?

 

Emily Cherkin

Gentile, Dr. Gentile, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah. Displacement yes yes yes yes

 

Ann

Gentile. Okay. So that, that, I love that metaphor that you used with the rocks and the pebbles and the, yes. Talk to us about that because that...that seems to kind of fit in with the values scenario. So talk to us about that a little bit.

 

Emily Cherkin

Right, right. So Doug Gentile is, I think it's Gentile now that I'm saying it out loud. So he is a researcher in this work and one of the things he found and it's sort of this like obvious thing, but he did the research to show that it's true, which is that, you know, we only have a certain number of hours in a day, right? And when we spend it doing school or watching YouTube, you know, that leaves X number of hours in our day, right? So this concept of displacement, that time we're spending on screens is time we're not spending doing something else. I always say I'm not anti -tech, I'm tech intentional, right? I do believe there are ways to live a balanced life with technology. But I think again, back to my TLDR, less is more for young children especially.

And so the rock story, the metaphor is like that. And I didn't come up with this, but it's that idea of like, you know, you take a big jar and you have a pile of rocks, pile of pebbles, and a pile of sand. And you think about what are your big rocks or your big values, the things that are really most important to you, how you wanna fill your day and your life. And all the pebbles are the smaller things and the sand is just everything else. And so how do you fill the jar to its max, to hold as much as possible? And if you start with the sand and then the pebbles, you have hardly any room left for the rock, right? And so...

 

we have to start kind of with like identifying what are our big rocks and put those in the jar first. And you know, I think actually one of the real low -hanging fruit here is sleep, right? I think there's ample research about the benefits of sleep. And we know, especially for teenagers, that the first thing to go when technology overtakes our lives is sleep, which has a negative effect on everything else, right?

So it's this, if we think of a big rock as like sleep or health or whatever, you know, your family would call it, like, are we maximizing our sleep time? And like not even making it about screens, right? I think that's another strategy, especially with teenagers, because they just know that we hate it and that we're judgy about it. So just say, I'm not even talking about your phone. I'm not even talking about your computer. I'm talking purely about sleep right now. And I don't think you're getting the sleep you need to be the best person, the best self, your best version of yourself. Yeah.

 

Ann

Yeah, that's such a, that's a better way of approaching it, especially with teens to say, this is what is important. And if tech is not up there in the important part, then yeah, so we just have to put that aside.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, the reframe, the reframe. And you know, the other thing is just as if you do the values exercise or you ask your teenagers like what the big rocks are, they're very likely to say their phone. And we have to be prepared to not be judgmental about that. And more, I say this a lot, replace judgment with curiosity. You know, why are they saying that's most important to them? What's fascinating to me is, and Jonathan Haidt, I'm sure you've heard about all his recent work.

 

Ann

Yes, I was gonna ask you about that, yes?

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah, yeah, and I've been following him for years. I'm thrilled he's getting all this attention for his new book and he's right. And one of the things he talks about is the need for collective action because it's a collective action problem. And that is what I hear from young people. And what we know is true. Like young people will give up their phone. And there was there was a study that did this, like they will give up their phone if they know other people will give up their phone. Right.

Which is why this then, you know, I don't want to blame parents. I'm very intentional about saying this is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to address it and push back and get mad at big tech for making this so hard. But it is still our responsibility to address it. And that means saying no and delaying access and partnering with other parents so that your kid can be the one who doesn't and not be alone. Does that make sense? Like so important.

 

Ann

Yes, yes, I have said that for so long because my kid is 23 now. So when phones came out, the new iPhone and all of that stuff came out, it was so new and they were right at that age where they wanted it. I can't remember. I think it was like sixth, seventh grade, something like that. But it was, from then on, there was no going back.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yes!

 

Ann

It was just wide open. None of us knew how to control it. None of us knew how to regulate it. None of us knew even what was on it. It was just the wild, wild west. But the hardest part is that yes, if everyone else has one in the fifth grade or the fourth grade or whatever it is, it does make it so hard for a parent to single your child out, which is actually going to, without a doubt, make that kid less social because they aren't going to be in on the things that the kids are doing or talking about. And what do you think about that? Can parents actually get together? Because I've suggested it, get together with the other moms and dads, but there's always a holdout. There's always a holdout.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah. Yeah. I know, but it's the greater volume, right? It doesn't mean everybody. There's gonna be people who will always do what's trendy or be given to their kids pressure or whatever, but like, it's just, I talk about this in the epilogue, so if you haven't gotten there, that's actually one of my favorite parts of the book, but it's this first fish concept, right? So I was speaking with Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, who's an educational psychologist, and he gave me this metaphor, so it's his, but he was talking about how when a school of fish is, you know, swimming through the ocean and how do they know when to change direction? Well, it takes one fish to sort of veer towards wherever they wanna go, but it's not just one fish. It's a second and a third fish before the rest of the group follows. And so I talk about how we need first fish parents, but we need second and third fish parents too, because it's not one of us doing it alone. And I am the capital T that parent, right? Like I have held out.

But I also joke that if I were a dentist, my kids would floss more. And it's like, I'm the screen time consultant, so we talk about it all the time. But that doesn't mean that I have a 13 year old daughter who does not have a smartphone. She just got a light phone, which is like a minimalist phone. But prior to that, for the last two years, we've shared my phone, which is, I didn't even have this in the book, I don't think, because I started it right after I had to send it to the editor. And I say, save a phone.

Ann

Exactly.

 

Emily Cherkin

Save a tween, share a phone.

 

Ann

Yeah, exactly.

 

Ann

Well, you know, you mentioned Jonathan Haight. So he, you know, he talks about what is it? Don't get smartphones before high school. Don't let them on social media before they're 16. No cell phones in schools. What's your opinion about those things?

 

Emily Cherkin

So I agree with all of them. He's right. That should be the norm. I think it's gonna take, again, lots of parents making some different choices to make that happen. I also think, and I'm realistic about the fact that you can say no to social media, you can say no to accessing things at home. That doesn't mean the kids aren't gonna do it. And so I don't think letting perfect be the enemy of good enough is right either. I do think there should be norms. And again, he's talking, cultural norms. He's not saying just individual families, but I am going to add in the other part that makes this, and this is where I am building a lot right now in my sort of activism work is around the screen and school piece, because I am a former teacher. I spent 12 years teaching middle school. I am absolutely furious about how much technology is in the classroom. And so even a parent who is

 

Ann

Right, right, exactly.

 

Ann (16:37.123)

Yes! Absolutely.

 

Emily Cherkin

No phones for their kids. I mean, this is my situation currently. My daughter has a laptop for school. She can watch YouTube and listen to Spotify at school. So even if I say no, even if we have a great relationship and we talk about it, I cannot control, I mean, I am having a meeting with the school next week, but like I could not, yeah. And I'm gonna be that parent because it is not, I didn't opt in, right? I want this to have to be something we understand. And there's so many pieces of this parents aren't aware of. I mean, on average, for example, schools use 125 unique EdTech platforms per school. Per school.

 

Ann

Holy moly. For the kids in teaching.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah, yep, across the board. So some of it might be learning management, some might be learning apps, some might be grading platforms, some might be attendance stuff, like, but 125. And each one of those is a unique company. Each one of them collects data about each user. They sell that data to ad tech companies who make massive amounts of money. Then they package that data and sell it back to schools. It is such a racket and schools are closing. I mean, we're having massive issues with education, teachers are leaving. So I, really as much as I think about phones and social media and families, this is a, at least a two -prong problem. Student devices and social media and personal smartphones and tech for school because it's like you can ban and I'm and John Height talks about this, get smartphones out of school a hundred percent in agreement. But then like schools are posting on social media accounts. Schools are using Facebook. Like it's mind boggling to me. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Ann (

Right, right. True, I never thought about that. Well, let me ask you this too, because this is what blew my mind. Because like I said, when my son, it was back in, I guess 2015 or so, and I'm like, my mind is blown because he's like, yeah, mom, we can take our phones to school. It's no big deal. They let us take our phones to school. And I'm like, are you kidding me? We couldn't chew chewing gum in school and you're allowed to take a smartphone?

 

Emily Cherkin

I know. That's exactly right.

 

Ann

It just makes no sense. Emily, what happened? Were schools just taken off guard or what? Was there a decision? Did somebody say, yeah, it's no big deal? What happened there?

 

Emily Cherkin

You know, that is an excellent question. I think, well, a couple of things. I mean, I think we hit a tipping point around 2012, 2013, right? With this, and Jonathan Hyatt and Jean Twenge talk about all this, like the like button and, you know, the way in which the algorithm works shifted. We went from a minority to a majority of kids having access. So a lot of things happened around that time, but with the school piece, you know, as a teacher, I was pushed a lot of the professional development was around STEM and tech is the future of education. And in hindsight, it was really cool. There were really neat things that we were thinking about and doing. And yet what I noticed in the classroom was my students stopped coming to talk to me about their grades or their missing assignments, because they'd be like, I'll just look it up online. Well, to me, it wasn't about the grade at all. It was about the skill of coming and asking and advocating for yourself, of planning, all that executive function that is so important to future adulthood. The other problem, and I'm a huge fan of Lenore Skenazy’s work as well. She's the founder of Let Grow Movement with Jonathan Haidt actually. And she's the free-range parent, free range kids or free range parenting, I think is her book. But she talks about this culture of safetyism that around, I mean, and I think I was on the beginning and as a teenager, I was receiving the beginning end of this beginning of this wave of parenting approach, which was to protect our children at all costs. And so what I see is there is this fear in the parenting community for the last decade or so that is like, we have to provide these devices to quote unquote, keep our children safe. And if I can, this is the way I like to illustrate this example.

Pew Research found the top three parenting fears in America right now. Number one is youth mental health. Number two is bullying. And number three, is kidnapping. What is fascinating. Yeah. And I can see you're like, wait, what? I hear all the time, I had to get my kid a phone or a smartwatch, which we can also talk about those in a moment, but because I want to keep them safe. Because if something happens, I can track them. I can reach them. They can reach me. Do you know how statistically rare kidnapping is? Like literally someone did the math. If you want to be, yeah - if you would like your kid to be kidnapped, and of course who does, but like you would have to have your kid stand outside every day for 750 ,000 years, years. And that is the number three parenting fear in America. So to me,

 

Ann

And I thought you were going to say guns at school. I thought you were going to say shootings. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

 

Emily Cherkin

That's the next part. So that's part two of this because I think part of our fear as parents, the reason we dive into safetyism is because our own consumption of clickbait news, social media stories, we hear the worst because they are the sensational ones that get attention and that's how media works now. And so this requires a huge element of deep breath, right? Now, to your point, because this is a real horrific,

 

devastatingly terrible thing in our country is that gun violence has led to these atrocities in schools. That being said, it is still statistically very rare that that's going to happen. And what parents will say is, I want to be able to reach my kid because you, because God forbid, right? Like that, no parent wants to think about this.

And yet law enforcement will say kids are safer when they are listening to first responders - when they're not jamming up Wi -Fi signals that could be used to communicate between law enforcement and first responders, when they are distracted and highly anxious because their parents are trying to reach them, or they're making sounds that alert somebody to where they are. So again, this is where I think the hardest part of all of this is our own parental anxiety that requires us to do some very difficult work about...how we have to address what is scary versus what is dangerous. And that's what I write about in the book is this dichotomy, right? So gun violence is, now actually let me be clear, school shootings are scary. Gun violence is dangerous, right? When we talk about domestic violence or handguns, like those are, that's the kind of gun violence that actually is dangerous. And again, you understand my metaphor here. I'm not saying that those things are not dangerous, but they're rare.

 

And so we have to go back to worrying about the right things. If we're giving our kid a phone because we're worried about them getting kidnapped, let me tell you that the predators in Snapchat and TikTok and Roblox are far more dangerous threat to your child than a stranger kidnapping them on the street, right? But that's hard.

 

Ann (23:48.035)

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's what somebody just said that reason. Was it Jonathan Haidt that said that? Somebody said that. Yeah, you're worried about all these external outside the home dangers and the danger is right in their pocket, in their bedroom, lying next to them. So yeah. Well, so speaking of that, well, I think we can kind of roll into, I want to ask you about the issue of parental controls because I did,

I did an episode way back where I did some research and I read this really interesting study that talked about parental controls, external controls versus the, and I can't remember what they called it now, some kind of mediation, but explaining to children and working with your kid personally about what they're seeing and that kind of thing. So tell me what you think about controls and how that works for people.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's funny you say that because I think my scheduled social media today is about why I don't recommend parental controls. They're not the solution we think they are. And so I, you know, I've actually got the most negative messages I've ever received are people who are mad because I discourage the reliance on parental controls. And to me, that's the fear, right? That's like, you're not enough of a parent. You're a bad parent if you don't protect them this way. But I don't believe that's actually protective. I think, to your point, the protective part is in the relationship, in the way we talk about it, in what we are teaching our children about what to do when they see something that's scary or inappropriate or violent, not if. And so the...the problem and I always, the one, the caveat here is, look, if you have parental controls that work for you and your family, great. I am not gonna tell you to stop that. But if you wanna hear my 10 reasons why I don't think they're a great thing to rely on, I've got it on my blog and in my book and I write and talk about it a lot.

Because too often parents, that's the first question they ask me, which ones do I recommend? If they worked, I wouldn't get asked that all the time, right? Like, that wouldn't be the number one question. The other problem is it's using tech to solve a problem tech created. I cannot tell you how many parents will say, I've spent hours and hours trying to set these things up and my kids find the work around, or that the software needs an update and I have to do it all over again. I would much rather you take that time and energy that you are spending in setting those up and put them right back into your relationship with your kid because the best antidote to mental health later, is in the relationships you have with them when they're younger or even when they're teenagers, right? So it is hard. I know I understand the desire to have a solution that feels right, but again, if it worked, I wouldn't get asked this all the time. So.

Ann

Well, and this study actually said that having just external controls and forgoing a lot of this discussion actually puts your kid in more danger online than not having any parental controls at all. So, yeah.

 

Emily Cherkin

Right. Right. Right, right. And you know, there was a recent report the ACLU did called digital dystopia. And it was a lot, it included parental controls, but it was also looking at sort of EdTech and surveillance and you know, sort of the like dark side of technology. And the thing that just struck me was the sentence that was surveillance erodes trust. So again, if you are going to, and I hear this in the context of like tracking via GPS. And I get it, because you just want to, like, where are they? Are they home from school? Are they walking to their friends? I get it. But unless they know that you're doing it and it's an occasional thing, not a regular thing, that's not great. That's that safetyism, that culture of safetyism. And there, I have a friend who's a therapist who was saying, you know, kids will come into the clinic and talk about how they don't feel safe because their parents are tracking them all the time. They feel spied on. They feel like no one trusts them, that they can't do anything independently.

 

So again, we just have to think about this from the bigger picture, right? Like, again, we are gonna, and I'm guilty of this, like I will check occasionally, where is he? Is he walking home from school yet, right? But I want him to know that I'm doing it. And I think that's the part where there's that fine distinction of like, you need to talk with your kids about it, but then it goes right back to the relationships, right? Like then it's all about relationships anyway. So whatever tool you use.

 

Ann

Yes. Yeah, well, and that I love the way you pointed it out because I just started the book Beyond Addiction. So I just started reading, you know, and so connection is the antidote to addiction, right? So connection is the antidote to having to for your kids being screen addicted or, you know, unsafe online. And that's, you know, talking about monitoring just in general, monitoring your children and not allowing them the autonomy and the privacy that they need at this age, it does build disconnection. And especially if you're not discussing it in advance, they don't know that you have these controls in place, or they don't know you're spying on them, or they don't know you're digging through things. And so it's talk, talk, talk, discuss, get close, yeah, connection first.

 

Ann

I know you had some of these warning signs in your book actually. So I would love to talk about that. Because some parents will ask me, when should I worry? They do fuss about me trying to get them to stop playing video games, is that?

 

Ann

You know, a bad thing, is this a warning sign? So let's talk about that a little bit.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah. Yeah, and I think one of the things that makes this so complex for adults, especially around teenage years, is that it is so hard to disentangle what's a normal teen and normal teen behavior from what's exacerbated by digital tech. And so honestly, one of the first most valuable things I think we can do as parents is better understand brain development, especially around the teen years, so that we can at least start to tease out, this attitude is actually really normal, right? Like that part. And so I think one of the things I hear a lot from parents is this, they freak out about all of it, right? They think that the attitude, the eye rolling, all of this is related to the screen. And I mean, I'm not gonna defend screen time. Like you know where I stand on this, but like, I actually don't think that's accurate. I think we have to take a step back and be like, okay, what part of this is made worse by the tech?

And what part of this is just being an adolescent, right? And the age 15 is really interesting to me because as a parent myself, my son is now 16. I feel like 15 was a huge transition point for us as parents. And it actually took a bit of a aha moment with a, he was a parent educator therapist who I've known for years. And he said, Emily, you're done.

You have raised him with the values, everything you've taught him now, it's all how he's gonna apply it and work it out in his life. And you just have to keep holding space for him to figure things out. And that was so powerful because I still wanted to control, to set limits. And I'm not saying we don't set limits. This is not about not having boundaries. It's about realizing that this dance has changed, right? Now it's a...partner dance rather than I'm leading the dance. And so that freed me as a parent to say, okay, so now I can think about what are the skills. So it's a reframe, right? It's all of us is about reframing. What are the things that I need and want him to learn in life? Like what are the skills that are going to set them up for adulthood? And does he have extracurriculars? And does he contribute to the family? And does he get sleep, right?

 

Ann

Right. Right.

 

Emily Cherkin

Then, and back to the big rocks, those are my big rocks, right? Then am I okay with him playing video games every night? And maybe it's not even I'm okay with, it's can I let that go? Can I let that couple of hours be what he just needs to do on his own time if the other parts are in place?

 

Ann

parents, we have this inner, I just think we all have this thing about the tech is bad, just period, the tech is bad.

 

Emily Cherkin

yes, yes.

 

Ann

get them off screens, get them off social, get them off everything because tech is bad. But then going back to the analogy about the pebbles and the rocks and the sand, your point then is as long as we are in alignment with our values, they're doing the big things, they're getting their sleep, they're getting their homework done, they're getting the outside time, if that's our value or whatever, then...

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah.

 

 

Ann

It's not a bad thing. Is that kind of where you are with that?

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah, yes. And I also think the part of this that we have to consider is our own use of screens as adults. So we talked about it in the bedroom, like where we keep our phones, but I also think we're guilty of over scrolling and over consuming ourselves. And so it, you know, again, thinking about the teenage brain and, you know, the argument that I can figure this out, I can manage my own life.

 

They're especially resistant if they see you doing things that you're telling them not to do. Now, again, it doesn't mean that as an adult, you have different rules and responsibilities. Of course you do, but we can do better. We can own that it is addictive for us as well. And actually I read about this in the book as well, but like my favorite strategy is the living your life out loud, right? This idea that if we want to change how we use screens in the house, it starts with all of us. So we have to,

 

And I like to do it through living your life out loud, which just means narrating what you do as you do it. So, you know, I'm reaching for my phone, I'm gonna check and see what time school gets out. And then if I need to take you to the dentist, I'm gonna check the map and see how far the drive is and what the traffic's gonna be. And then I might look at my email, like literally a play by play. And I always say to parents, you know, it's working when your kids are rolling their eyes at you, which is PS developmentally normal, especially for those tweens and teens. And the idea is not that you're even trying to, tell them to do this. It is we do this to show them how we're using digital tech. That our phone is not a switchblade, it's a Swiss army knife, right? It's a multi -tool. And if they know that, then they can start to learn some of those things. I think we forget how much we have to teach. You know, that parenting is teaching. And, you know, if we go way back to the beginning of childhood, you know, I'm hearing from OTs who are telling me they used to work with children on handwriting.

 

And now they're teaching children how to turn the pages of a book because these children don't know how to do that. And part of me is like, how do they not know how to do that? Because it's a skill. It's a fine motor skill they have to learn. And if they're just tapping and swiping, they're not learning how to physically turn pages of a book, which is mind boggling to me. But we have to remember that our teenagers sometimes need to be taught these explicit things.

And so, in addition to living our life out loud, the other thing I love for teens is the phrase, I forgot to teach you. And so what we do is we go to a restaurant, we're with our teenagers and we say, hey, I forgot to teach you that when we're in a restaurant, it's so rude to look at your phone when the waiter's talking to you. So I forgot to teach you that, let's all put our phones away. This is so disarming, right? It takes it away from like, you're being bad or rude or how dare you to - this is my job to teach you and I forgot and I'm human too, right? Like I think that is such a valuable, I forgot to teach you is one of my favorite strategies for parents.

 

Ann

I love that. Can we do that with other other adults? Like I forgot to teach you that when I'm speaking to you, you don't look at your phone. Thank you very much. Lord.

 

Emily Cherkin

Exactly. Or we just live our life out loud, you know, and you're talking about fubbing, right? This phone plus snubbing. And like what I do now, when I notice people doing that, I just stop talking and I wait, you know? Yeah. Yep.

 

 

Ann

Yes, I've done the same thing to my husband. Yeah, I'll wait until you're finished looking at that phone to talk to you about what I was going to talk about.

 

Emily Cherkin

And you know, that's okay too, because I mean, with my 13 year old, you know, she uses an iPad to text with her friends. And so there are times where I'm trying to have a conversation with her and I can tell she's not listening. So rather than me fighting with her about it, I just say, I can see you're finishing something, I'll wait, right? So I give her the message, but I don't try to keep bombarding her with information, right? Like, I'm not gonna get anywhere. We're both gonna get annoyed and frustrated. Now there are times where I'm like, it's...you need to listen now, right? And I might be more direct about it. But I think that's an important thing to do is just like, it's okay for us to acknowledge that they might be in the middle of something too, even if we don't like it, you know?

 

Ann

Right, right, that's true. I mean, yeah, because we kind of have the attitude that when I decide that it's time for you to listen to me and for me to talk, you just have to stop everything and listen. Well, and that's one thing I know. I know you have to get questions a lot and, you know, parents want to know, okay, well, how much time...

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah!

 

Yeah.

 

Ann

should I let them have doing this particular thing or this particular thing? And when should they turn it off? And, you know, what should I do about that? So what do you tell people when they ask you that?

 

 

Emily Cherkin

Right. Yeah, this is a great question. And there are two questions that I get asked all the time. How much screen time is too much and what parental controls do you recommend? So we talked about parental controls. The thing about how much, and it's interesting when we talk about letting them, right? Like up until age, I don't know, 10, 12, 14, it is a little bit more in our control, right? Like we do want the kids to be in the habit of asking, hey, can I go play on the iPad? Or, hey, can I watch a show? Or, hey, can I go scroll on my phone. We do want to build that in.

At some point though, there is going to become a point where we want them to realize that there's a balance to their life. That's going to look really different. I mean, we all know how different teenagers are and some are going to come to this much quicker than others. And so that's why, again, this one size fits all doesn't work. It's you know your kid best and your kid might be so different from their sibling. You might have worked with the older sibling and is not working with the younger one. Normal, normal family dynamic, right? And so what I would rather ask, what questions I would rather parents ask instead of how much is too much and what parental controls are these two questions. Do I know what my child is doing online? And do I have a strong relationship with my child?

And actually there's research to back up that those are the questions that matter. And if we talk about those briefly, when I say, do I know what my child is doing online? People might say, well, yeah, that's why I have parental controls. That does not tell you what they're watching or why they're watching it, right? It doesn't tell you who they're chatting with. I mean, again, one of the other problems of parental controls is it often doesn't monitor in -app content, right? We think it does, but it doesn't. And so that's gonna come out of the second question, which is your relationship. It's your conversations with them about it. It's non -judgmental question asking of, hey, I see that you're on this YouTube channel a lot. Tell me what you like about this content creator. Like what kind of stuff are they creating?

 

Ann (08:42.89)

Right.

 

Emily Cherkin

you might be cringing and dying inside because you hate it so much. I don't care. You have to have that conversation because it's something they're interested in. It is not new that a teenager likes something their parent doesn't. That is not unique to this parenting generation. And we have to remember that. And it's okay that they have different interests. They're not gonna stay that way forever, right? Like that's the other thing we have to remember when we look back at our teen years, like, my God, did we think X was so cool, right?

 

Ann

Exactly. Exactly. Right.

 

 

Emily Cherkin

We have to let them have their cringe moments or whatever, and just be curious. The other part of that, that is absolutely, and this, we go back to scary versus dangerous, your kid needs to know that if, not if, when they encounter things that they can come to you and you won't get mad. This is so important. We need to be able to say, I am a person you can talk to, I will never get mad, I will not yell, I will not punish.

 

I need to know because this is a safety thing, right? This is truly important. And that I think is where the relationships absolutely takes precedent over the time limit and the parental control. Yeah.

 

Ann

Right. So, back up and think about this in a more holistic way about, yeah, the long view. Yeah, that makes so much sense. So, what do you recommend when parents, because I know this happens all the time, it happened with me, when they are at that point, they've discussed the values, they've decided that they're going to have to get the kid agreed to get off the phone or put the phone away at like nine or 10 o 'clock.

 

Emily Cherkin

Long view. Yeah.

 

 

Ann

or they've agreed that they have to stop gaming at nine or 10 o 'clock and when the time comes, it's blow up time and they don't wanna do it and they're begging for more time or they're just blowing up at you. What would you recommend a parent do at that moment?

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So hard. Well, first of all, again, we have to remember that the blow up is A, developmentally on par and B, that is made worse by the persuasive design elements of gaming and social media. That is something everyone in the family has to understand because what typically happens, right, is you start yelling at your kid, I told you it was time to turn it off. I can't believe you're fighting me on this. Why are you asking me for more?

 

And probably what would be a more useful transitional question is, do you remember how your brain is going to want to tell you that you need to stay on, that it is hard to turn off? I can see that you're finishing up around. I'm going to stand here until you're done, and then I'm going to ask you to hand over the whatever, right? And so building in a little bit of grace period for that transition, but also making sure kids understand this is not your fault but you are being hijacked, you are being tricked into staying on. So we also have to have boundaries as parents. There has to be clear definition around what's okay and what's not okay. Obviously being physical or violent or aggressive at the parent, unacceptable. If we're crossing into that territory, we need external help.

And again, like I think about parenting teens as pretend your teenager is giving you two gestures simultaneously. One is the middle finger. The other is a bid to connect. Because that is the part that makes us so hard. Too often we're distracted by the middle finger. We're like, how rude, he's so offensive and disrespectful. That's normal, teens are rude and disrespectful. They also need us more than ever. And so that again comes back to us as parents taking those really deep breaths, ignoring the middle finger, focusing on the bid for connection. And that's hard. I mean, I...I promise, and sure you know this very well, there are many parents who would find that unacceptable that you can't ignore the middle finger. But again, take the long view. In the short term, addressing the middle finger drives your kid further underground, drives your kid further into secrecy and sneaky behavior. We don't want that. So sometimes it means reshifting how we think about parenting. And that's hard. I mean, again, I'm not saying this is easy.

Well, so the other thing we briefly mentioned I said we could talk about in a second was the smart watches, because I feel like this is one of those things where parents are like, well, I'll just get a smart watch. Right. It's different than a phone. I actually think they're worse. And part of that is because they're on their body. There is I mean, and again, I get it from a parent perspective, like they can't lose it as easily. Right. But talk about distraction, right? Are there kids who can handle that? Sure. But when my daughter was in fifth grade and her principal sent an email home that said, hey parents, just to remind her that all those smartwatches and phones need to be off and away during the day because it's disruptive to learning in a K -5 school, I'm going, what are we doing?

So every parent, and this is again, a bitter pill to swallow, we all have this feeling like, well, but my kid has a special reason why or my child needs this because. There are very few exceptions for when that's true. And like, I can think of like, say your child has diabetes and that is a medical device, no brainer, of course they need it. That does not ring true for most other things. A lot of parents will say, well, it's for anxiety. That makes anxiety worse, right? And so, and I'm gonna push back on medical professionals who argue otherwise, right? Again, I get really uncomfortable with how much it is disruptive and how much it takes away, from the experience of discomfort, which goes back to the safetyism that like somehow we wanna prevent our kids from feeling uncomfortable because it's not good for them. That's the opposite of the truth. Children need to have moments in safe environments, right? In a school, in a home, at a play date where they're forced out of their bubble a little bit because that is the resilience that they will need later for success and mental health in teen years. Really, there is a through line between that.

 

Emily Cherkin

And I feel that the smartwatches rob children of opportunities to build those independent skills first. So maybe as a high schooler, honestly, I could get behind a smartwatch as opposed to a phone, but not an eight -year -old. I mean, and we know elementary kids are getting them.

 

Ann

Yeah. Yeah, well, and real quick, tell us about the phones. Like, I'm trying to think, well, there's the bark phone, there's all these phones. Yeah, the alternative phones. Yes, tell me about those and your opinion about getting those instead.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yes, the alternative phones. Yeah. Yeah. Well, unlike many of my colleagues, I do not endorse or offer affiliate links for any of those in part because I just don't accept the premise that young children need devices. So for the very reason I just said that they need the independent building opportunities first. Then what I believe is possible.

 

Flip phone, old school flip phone, those things still exist and they serve a purpose. There is no reason you go from zero phone to smartphone, right? If you're truly, your argument is it is a communication tool, and I can see that argument, then they only need a phone that can call or text. That's it.

They don't need GPS, they don't need the internet, they don't need apps. And what I'm sadly seeing is a lot of these alternative phones are looking more and more like simplified smartphones or not even simplified that they come with their own apps. They also build into that the fear, the parenting fear of like, you need this to track your child. You need to know where they are. You should be able to reach them. Or I am gonna alert you when there's a keyword that pops up in our text message. I don't want an app telling me that my kid has said, hey, let's go shoot hoops after school. And the app flags the word shoots. I wanna know that my kid calls me and says, mom, I'm gonna go play basketball after school. And I say, great.

 

Ann

Yeah.

 

Emily Cherkin

Thanks for letting me know, right? We're triangulating that relationship. We're letting tech be involved in our parenting. I mean, you can tell I have a negative opinion about these. So yeah. Yeah.

 

Ann

Well, I get it. I mean, and it makes sense. It makes total sense. And I think, you know, to your point about anxiety and it not having kids with anxiety. I mean, I have, I have seen people say, parents say, well, I need to be able, you know, I text them all day at school. I need to be able to reach them or they need to be able to reach me. And I'm like, you what? All day at school?

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah. don't do that. I know. No, no. And that is, that is a huge parenting no -no. And this is, again, I'm talking to parents here with all the love in my heart. That is something we have to stop. It is easy. It's convenient. It makes our lives easier. But for whom are we doing this? It's not for our kids. We are not equipping them with the skills they need by texting them at school. Every school still has a front office. They will get messages to your child. And again, if you care about your child's performance in school, texting them disrupts it. Yeah.

 

Ann

Can you think of anything, Emily, that we need to end on, that parents need to know that you haven't mentioned or, and I do want you to go ahead and tell everybody where they can find you and what you do and all of that good stuff. But can you think of anything else?

 

Emily Cherkin

Just to end on a note of hope and optimism, I think it's so easy to feel overwhelmed like David and Goliath, but as someone has pointed out many times, David won. So, don't give up and see this as a fight worth having. And by fight, I mean fighting for their future mental, cognitive, emotional, and physical health. And in setting limits and having conversations, in focusing on your relationship to them, because that is the antidote. And, small incremental change matters to take the long view. It is not going to change overnight, but small incremental change matters.

 

Ann

Absolutely, and I hope that maybe cell phones, smartphones will go the way of like now they have the, you know, they brought back phonographs and turntables and maybe kids will start thinking, those flip phones are kind of cool. That's, that's, what do they got? Retro, let's use the flip phone.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yes! It's, and there, I just printed an article off that the fastest growing segment of the population buying flip phones is Gen Z.

 

Ann

How about that? my God, that's a good, now we just got to get Alpha on board and then we'll be okay. That's wonderful.

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah, see. I know. I know. I know. Well, and parents. We got to get parents on board to do that. Yep.

 

Ann

Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, Emily, tell us about your book and where people can find you and what you do.

 

 

Emily Cherkin

Yeah. Yeah, so I'm the screen time consultant. My book's available anywhere books are sold. I always like to put a plug in for independent bookstores, but yes, you can get it on the big ones too. It's meant to be a non -judgmental supportive tool for parents with lots of strategies to sort of pick and choose from that work best for your family. I do offer some free resources. I do free monthly webinars. The recordings live on my website as well, which is the screen time consultant.

 

And I do school presentations. So if you have a school that's interested in bringing me in as a speaker, I do highly customized surveys of the community before I come in. And then I use that data and I fold it back into the talk. So it's very personal to the school. It's so cool. I love it. I feel like it gets parents and students and teachers on board in a way that like, this is about our school, right? Like this is about what we're saying. So that's fun.

 

I do some one -on -one coaching for parents who want to get real into the nitty -gritty and the deep work. But yeah, and ironically, I'm on social media. I know I have an assistant, so I get support with that, but it is a place you can find me and I try to post a lot of content across the, mostly Instagram and LinkedIn probably is where I am, but yeah. yes, thank you, yes.

 

 

Ann

I could have talked to Emily for hours. Her book is filled with wonderful suggestions and ideas like to how to align your family values with screens, how to be more aware of your own screen use, how parent-child connection is the antidote to excessive screen use and of course, how to become more tech intentional. I just can’t say enough about how much I love this book.

I’ll have all Emily’s links in the episode description where you’re listening. Grab that book.

Alright, that’s it today for Speaking of Teens, I’m so glad you were here with us and I hope you got something out of the episode and if you did, that you’ll share it with a few friends.

If you’d like to continue the conversation you come join us in the Facebook group and if you need more of a direct path to decrease the conflict with your teen while strengthening your relationship and improving their behavior check out Parent Camp – the links for both are at the very bottom of the show description right where you’re listening.

And until next time, remember a little change goes a long way.