It’s a familiar struggle in many households: trying to pry kids’ phones away before bedtime. But for parents and guardians, it can be near impossible to win this battle. The end of the day when school, extracurricular activities, and homework are finally done is the window that many kids have for downtime. They often won’t give up their phones without a fight.
Thankfully, phone use before bed might not be as bad for kids’ sleep as previously feared, a study published September 3 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics found. However, the research indicates that kids using their phones once they are under the covers is a bad idea. The small study of children in New Zealand ages 11 to 14 found that using phones in the two hours before they went to bed didn’t interfere with how much sleep they got and they simply went to bed later and got up later.
However, being on their phones once they were in bed was detrimental to their sleep. Using phones in interactive ways under the covers for things such as gaming and multitasking was worse for kids’ sleep than using them more passively, for things such as watching movies.
Streaming or dreaming
The effects of using phones before bed could be different in younger children or older teens.
The importance of sleep.
Sleep is critical to children’s health. Not getting enough shut-eye increases a child’s risk of accidents and injuries as well as health problems, including depression and obesity. Sleep deprivation is also associated with having problems learning, paying attention, and behaving. Parents should insist that kids not use their phones in bed and yet it’s often not realistic to ask children not to look at their phones.
Social apps are designed to keep people hooked, with features such as regular notifications and feeds that never stop showing more content. Instead, parents might consider taking kids’ phones away before bed and returning them in the morning.
It’s also important for parents to remember that lost sleep isn’t the only risk phone use poses to young people. In that hour or two before bed, teens could still be cyberbullied, fall for scams or unknowingly connect with predators online.
Setting the rules for smartphone use
Just as it’s important to make sure phones don’t interfere with sleep, parents also need to ensure they don’t interfere with kids’ education, extracurricular activities, and face-to-face time with family and friends. One policy is having kids leave their phones at home when they go to school. Children might also be required to put their phones away while they are doing their homework and at the dinner table.
It’s generally a bad idea to let kids use phones while they are doing homework and our brains can’t multitask, so all that checking of social apps is a distraction and there are times when they might need internet access to do research for schoolwork. Or they might need to contact a friend with questions about an assignment. It’s also important for parents to talk to kids about the dangers they could face online.
Sextorted
I suggest discussing why they should never share intimate images. These could later be “sextorted” by someone who threatens to put the pictures online unless the child pays money or engages in sex acts. Parents should also remind kids that many online profiles are fake: A friendly-appearing individual or follow request they receive could be from a child predator impersonating someone else.
Help kids find healthy communities online
One way to do that is to search together on social apps for content that aligns with their hobbies and interests. Then, even when parents are not around, children are likely to be shown similar content, because algorithms are programmed to show people what they think they like.
Fitness inspiration content
Another important discussion concerns how people post the glamorized versions of their bodies and lives online often with heavily filtered photos. Otherwise, kids can be left feeling as if they don’t measure up to what they see on social media. It’s also essential to talk about avoiding dangerous content, such as the so-called fitness inspiration content that caused her to develop an eating disorder as a teenager.
The most important message
The most important thing to convey to kids is that if they get into trouble online, they can turn to their parents for help, according to Carrie Goldberg, a victims’ rights attorney based in New York City. Goldberg often handles cases of children who’ve been abused online.
She said she has seen children in dangerous situations for example, being sextorted in which they have been afraid to tell their parents what was going on because they worried about their phones being taken away. There are commonsense ways to help kids avoid the major dangers of using their phones.
Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.
