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Safer Internet Centre Italia - Generazioni Connesse

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Safer Internet Centre - Italia - Generazioni Connesse - Educare all'uso consapevole della rete e imparare a riconoscere i rischi ad esso legato

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There was a moment recently when I thought I'd mastered the ongoing battle over my children and screen time. All was quiet upstairs (always a bad sign) so I went to investigate, and there were my two cherubs, Louisa, 12, and Josie, 10, playing Scrabble on the iPad in bed.

Ah, screens aren't all bad, I thought. And yet... something felt fishy. I tiptoed back and burst in to find one daughter watching Pretty Little Liars on Netflix, and the other furiously scrolling through Snapchat on her iPhone.

Much hilarity ensued, and they were so pleased with their ingenuity that they hardly minded when I confiscated the screens. But the battle wasn't over. In fact, it's never over... and if I had a pound for every time I've talked to parents about the trials of getting children off screens, I'd be rich and retired in a Wi-Fi-free zone.

Forget alcohol, homework and partying - the most challenging issue for parents now is the smartphone lodged firmly in our offsprings' grubby hands. They are spending more and more time online, and every week a new study emerges warning about the consequences; from social isolation to lack of concentration, to bullying, bad language and exposure to porn.

The most recent is a new report by Anne Longfield, the Children's Commissioner, called Life in Likes, which states that children become increasingly anxious about their online image as they head into their teens. Longfield said social media is exposing children to "significant risks emotionally", with a particular "cliff edge" as they transition from junior into secondary school - and warned that social media firms must take more responsibility for helping children through the challenges of life online, as children are at risk of "growing up chasing likes".

Another note of caution has come from the recently published book, iGen: Why Today's Super-connected Kids are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy by Jean M Twenge, which claimed that the generation born between 1995 and 2012 were, for the first time, more likely to kill themselves than each other. And yet, at the same time as these dark warnings come the tech cheerleaders - those, like Robert Hannigan, the former boss of GCHQ, who say that children should spend more time online to "save the country", or like researcher Dr Andrew Przybylski of the Oxford Internet Institute, who argue that moderate levels of screen time a day allow teens to "relax and decompress".

Credit: Andrew Crowley

It's a minefield of confusion because it is all so new. It's hard to remember the pre-smartphone age, and yet the iPhone celebrated its 10th birthday at the end of 2017. When it first arrived it was too expensive for most, but within the last few years it has become ubiquitous among under-18s, who often inherit their parents' pre-upgrade phones. And as new social media and games have sprung up like sweet shops, young people are more than happy to gobble them up.

Our own use of devices makes it harder to police our children and follow the experts' sometimes draconian and unrealistic advice. Limit screen time to 30 minutes a day? Easier said than done, particularly when their homework is often done online. Don't give them a smartphone? Fine, but then when all their friends are communicating on Snapchat, our child is the one left out.

Screens are here to stay, so what can beleaguered, overworked and stressed-out parents do?

1. How much time should my child really spend online?

How much time a child spends online is a thorny issue, as there are no official guidelines. Anne Longfield, the Children's Commissioner, is at pains to emphasise that her starting point is that technology "doesn't have to be a bad thing". However she does recommend that parents "familiarise themselves with what their children are looking at to check they are happy".

Snooping on your child's search history might reveal they've been watching Love Island or Vampire Diaries, for example, which some might deem acceptable for teenagers, but not for younger children. Try to keep screen use in a public place as far as possible, and watch for more general signs of distress. "If your child is getting socially withdrawn - spending time online when they used to see friends, or showing anxiety at the prospect of no screens, like the kids I knew who didn't want to go on a flight because there was no Wi-Fi, then there's an issue," says Longfield.

Noël Janis-Norton, a parenting coach and author of Calmer, Easier, Happier Screen Time, says parents need to set their own guidelines, and wean their children away from screens gradually. "If a young person is in front of a screen for six hours a day, then getting it down to three hours is a huge achievement. I recommend focusing on times of day; for example no screens before school, no screens at mealtimes, no screens at bedtime."

Social media channels are designed to keep us engaged, to fight for our attention in a crowded media landscape. Dr Richard Graham advises going on to the American Academy of Pediatrics website to determine the length of sleep your child needs for their age, then calculate their bedtime based on the time they have to get up. An hour before that time, parents should remove all screens.

"This sleep calculator is a great tool to use with a young person; it normalises it, rather than them thinking you are the lone puritan parent. Sleep is vital to health and well-being." Watch for the hiding of screens under the duvet. You know you've failed when you catch that telltale blue shaft of light emanating under the bedroom door.

Credit: Getty

Mandy Saligari, addiction expert and founder of the treatment centre Charter Harley Street, says: "The kid kicks off in the moment because they are caught up with a powerful drug. It's important that the parent notices the agitation, and says something like, 'I can see you're really upset'. I hear stories of parents wrestling with kids to get phones, and all that does is make the situation worse."

It helps to give a warning. Tell the child they have half an hour of screen time left, then you will be taking the phone away. Or allow screen time as a reward for homework.

Says Janis-Norton: "When parents are firm and consistent, young people respond well. They will be upset, but they get over it, and start to read, spend more time with their friends, write stories, walk the dog..."

The more you talk to your children about your reasons for limiting their phone and computer use, the easier it will be. And try to do it early; the older they are, the harder it is to enforce limits. Claire Katzenellenbogen, director of Parent Gym, which runs parenting courses, emphasises the importance of developing critical thinking: "The biggest gift we can give our children is to help them think critically about what it all means. That the beautiful photos they see on Instagram might look real, but have often been doctored."

This is useful when dealing with anxiety provoked by images of beautiful celebrities, or the fear of missing out engendered by say, seeing your friends having fun and realising you haven't been invited. Explain that nobody posts a sad, lonely or unflattering picture, and that one picture never tells the whole story.

Credit: Christopher Pledger

In the playground those sorts of comments might be laughed off, or sorted out at the time, but post them on giant messaging groups, facilitated by social media platforms like WhatsApp, and the taunts feel far more humiliating because they reach so many so quickly and are written down in black and white. "We had to explain that if he was part of that group he had a responsibility to either change the behaviour, or get out of the group. We confiscated his phone for a month, and I noticed he was suddenly more engaged in football and board games."

Schools are doing a good job of educating children about online safety, but as yet there seems to be little advice given on how to behave as a good digital citizen. If you can, try to avoid giving your child a phone until secondary school. I've learnt my lesson and my younger daughter Josie is having to wait until secondary school. The cries of "unfair!" are gradually diminishing.

5. My children worship at the altar of social media. Have I lost them?

One of my daughter's friends sets her alarm 10 minutes before she has to get up for school in order to respond to her friends' Snapchat streaks. Streaks are the darkly ingenious way the platform keeps your teen engaged. You gain streaks by interacting with friends, and you lose them when you don't respond.

Snapchat (like all social media channels) is addictive. Many studies have proved the link between a "like" on a post and a dopamine hit to our brains. "I think parents should consider banning Snapchat in the house," says Anne Longfield. "It is just so pervasive into the child's psyche. It's really geared to making children worry about maintaining friendships, about being seen to maintain friendships and then about isolating them if they drop off. Being a teenager is difficult enough without worrying about your social standing." Snapchat can also reveal where your child actually is in the real world, unless it is switched to "ghost" mode, and on the home page kids automatically see news updates from The Sun, E! News, MailOnline and more without subscribing, which might explain the skew in interest towards the Kardashians rather than, say, North Korea.

"We felt he was exhausted, that he had no time to do his homework, so we went to see his school. But they told us it was normal, so after our meeting we thought we were maybe overreacting. We tried to understand what he was getting out of it. Well, he was rather good at it, it was giving him street cred with his friends, and playground recognition."

7. How can I use technology itself to help limit screen time?

Innovations are popping up all the time to help parents control screen time. I use OurPact - an app which allows you to switch off the apps on your child's phone on a schedule. This worked for a while, until my computer-savvy daughter worked out how to hack it. Threats ensued, and now if she hacks she loses the phone. A gadget has recently launched called Circle With Disney. This claims to allow you to manage all the devices in the house, turning off individual apps and setting time limits for online usage. Commonsense Media is an American website that offers detailed reviews of the violence, sex and language in most films and TV programmes, so you can see what is appropriate viewing.

The charity Minded.org.uk has decent advice on dealing with specific social networks. And apps like Forest are popping up to help young people control screen time themselves. You plant a seed and a forest grows in the app and it's shareable - the more time you spend on your phone the fewer trees grow. This is proving popular with teens looking to focus during exams.

8. But there are still positive effects of screen time, right?

Recently my daughter and two friends were invited to see an experimental version of Hamlet with just three actors. Since they are 12, and hadn't read the play, I suggested they familiarise themselves with the plot. In true iGen style they found a "Bitesize" video from the BBC on YouTube in which Hamlet is set to rap, and the characters are animated. I was unsure, but it was brilliant and soon we were all rapping along in the kitchen. After the play they were delighted. "We were really glad we had watched the video beforehand, particularly as there were only three actors playing all the roles, so it was doubly confusing."

Social media can help shy kids connect, has opened up a world of exciting information, aids research and school work, gives a sense of achievement, can allow them to decompress and express themselves, and allows us to check they are safe. Used positively, it's a miracle.

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Screens and teens: survival tips for parents on the technology battlefield

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There was a moment recently when I thought I'd mastered the ongoing battle over my children and screen time. All was quiet upstairs (always a bad sign) so I went to investigate, and there were my two cherubs, Louisa, 12, and Josie, 10, ­playing Scrabble on the iPad in bed.

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Read the poster and do the exercises to learn how to stay safe online and to practise your reading skills.