Screen Fiends Course for Parents: Manage Child’s Social Media and Screen Time
Feb 6, 2024
In our course, Screen Fiends: Helping Your Child Navigate Social Media, parents and guardians will learn valuable skills and strategies to help their children manage the challenges they face with social media and screen time. Excessive screen time can negatively impact children’s mental health, well-being, and executive functioning skills. By fostering emotional regulation, managing impulsivity, and building executive functioning skills, you can help your child develop a healthy and balanced relationship with screens and social media.
Focusing on Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation, an essential component of executive functioning, is a key focus of our course. Children and teens can experience emotional dysregulation due to social media, leading to feelings of inadequacy or loss of self-confidence. We will provide guidance on how to support your child in managing their emotions while navigating social media. Time spent on social media can be emotionally deregulating for children and teens, as they may see people hanging out without them, feel excluded, or encounter upsetting content.
For example, if a child or teen posts something on social media and receives no likes or views, they may feel unpopular or not liked, which can negatively impact their mood. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy or a loss of self-confidence, especially for girls who may compare themselves to others on social media.
Alarming Screen Time Statistics and the Need for Intervention
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and World Health Organization (WHO), children in middle school and older should spend no more than 2 hours per day on social media and other digital media. However, research by Common Sense Media (2019) shows that 8- to 12-year-olds spend an average of 4 hours and 44 minutes per day on screens, while teens spend about 7 hours and 22 minutes per day, excluding time for school or homework. These alarming numbers emphasize the importance of helping children navigate social media and screen time in a healthy manner.
Addressing Social Media and Smartphone Addiction
Social media and smartphone addiction can be considered an executive dysfunction. Executive functioning skills include attention, planning, flexible thinking, emotional regulation, and impulsivity. Twenge and Campbell (2019) found that heavy users of digital media were 48% to 171% more likely to experience unhappiness, low well-being, or suicide risk factors such as depression, suicidal ideation, or past suicide attempts.
The Impact of Social Media on Adolescent Mental Health
Conflict over screens is a common issue in families, and in many cases, this conflict may be more harmful to adolescents’ mental health than screen time itself (Commonsense Media 2020). A study by Kelly et al. (2019) revealed that greater social media use is related to online harassment, poor sleep, low self-esteem, and poor body image, which in turn are related to higher depressive symptom scores. The study also found that the association between social media use and depressive symptoms was larger for girls than for boys.
Managing Impulsivity in the Digital World
Impulsivity, another crucial aspect of executive functioning, can be affected by social media use. Our course will teach you effective ways to help your child manage their impulsivity, such as using self-talk as a tool for self-regulation. As a parent or guardian, your role is to encourage your child to use self-talk to avoid control battles and escalating conflicts within the family.
Building Executive Functioning Skills
Throughout the course, we will explore how building executive functioning skills can help children and teens control their social media use while excessive social media use can be disruptive to their executive functioning. We will discuss real-life examples, such as how receiving no likes or views on a social media post can negatively impact a child’s executive functioning.
Building Executive Functioning Skills: The Six Super Skills Approach
To help you support your child in building executive functioning skills, we will focus on six super skills: finding strengths, setting goals, chunking, boosting motivation, managing mood, and finding focus. Additionally, we will review standard recommendations such as establishing clear boundaries for screen time and social media use, including setting specific times for use, prohibiting screens in bedrooms, and implementing technology to monitor and limit usage.
Standard Recommendations for Screen Time
To help children and adolescents manage their screen time and social media use, parents and guardians can encourage behavioral activation. This involves engaging in activities such as walking, running, drawing, collecting leaves or pinecones, skateboarding, cooking, organizing, listening to music, dancing, bike riding, weightlifting, and spending time with friends. By encouraging these activities, parents can help their children replace screen time with healthier alternatives.
Teaching kids about screen time control
Teaching children self-talk solutions is another approach to managing screen time. Encouraging positive self-talk, such as “I can always check my phone later, I will wait 15 minutes,” “STOP – Stop, Think, Observe, Plan,” “How can I use my creativity, sense of humor, and energy to re-direct myself,” and “I am smart enough and strong enough to figure this out” can help children gain control over their screen time and improve their executive functioning skills.
Leading by Example in Social Media Use
Leading by example is another critical aspect of guiding children and teens in their social media use. We understand that this can be challenging; however, modeling healthy screen time habits and maintaining open communication about the benefits and risks of social media can be invaluable in teaching your child how to navigate this digital landscape responsibly.
Preparing Parents with the Screen Fiends Course
Our course, Screen Fiends course aims to equip parents and guardians with the necessary tools and strategies to help their children navigate social media and screen time. By fostering emotional regulation, managing impulsivity, and building executive functioning skills, you can support your child in developing a healthy and balanced relationship with screens and social media. Through setting clear boundaries, leading by example, and encouraging open communication, you will be well-prepared to guide your child through the digital world.
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