Teens Screens and Social Media: Time to come off devices

Screens and social media dominate a teenager’s life and this is one of the most important and pressing issues for parents of teenagers. It certainly feels like that parenting teenagers is much harder now than ever before because of the disruptive influence of technology in family life. And it often doesn’t make a lot of sense why they want to speed so much time consuming endless youtube videos, playing games for hours at a time, messaging on social media, and can never be without their phones. In this lesson we explain: (1) why teenagers spend so much time in front of a screen and on social media; (2) what is going on inside their brain to drive their obsession with screens and social media; and (3) unpack the immediate and long-term effects of gaming on a teenage brain We finish with some practical strategies to help you manage your teenager’s online behaviour and time in front of screens and on different devices.