Life Hacks for Smartphones
For parents, the specific choices around smartphones and social media can be overwhelming. Eventually, your teen is probably going to get a smartphone. But that doesn’t have to mean it’s all over. Before you even give your teen the phone, install an app that limits the amount of time he can spend on it. There are several apps that will do this, and the specific ones will probably change by the time you read this book; right now, there are several available, and most cost no more than a few dollars a month. Apps can limit time spent on certain sites, lock the phone after a certain amount of time, or even turn the phone off completely. It’s tempting to give your teen the phone first and see if she is a responsible user, but it’s better to install the controls first before she changes the passcode or becomes addicted to social media. It’s just too easy for that to happen—just ask most adults, who are nearly as addicted to their phones as teens are. Setting limits is a nice solution, because then teens can still find out about events and communicate with their friends, but the phone doesn’t become their central focus.
Another key rule: no one, adults included, should sleep within ten feet of his phone. Many iGen’ers and Millennials told me they almost always keep their phone on at night and are awakened by alerts and dings all night long. Many others told me they put their phones on silent but still end up grabbing it when they can’t sleep, even in the middle of the night. This is not a formula for healthy sleep. It’s not just the stimulation of the phone, but the light it emits: our caveman-evolved brains interpret it as sunlight, reducing our production of the sleep hormone melatonin and making it even harder to sleep.
What if you use your phone as your alarm clock, as every teen and young adult I talked to said they did? Simple: buy an inexpensive alarm clock. Then your phone, with its stimulating material and wake-inducing light, can be across the room from you as you go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning.
Let’s say your teen wants to join a social media site. If you want to limit him to one, which one should he join? According to most experts, Snapchat. First, most teens share snaps with their friends that disappear after a few seconds. They share only with individual friends; they have to select exactly whom they send them to. Thus, what they are sharing isn’t on display for a larger audience to comment on and “like” (or not like), which is the way Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook work. And if someone wants to share something with a larger audience, she can post it to her Snapstory. Even then, the Snapstory lasts only twenty-four hours.
Social media apps change quickly, so this advice might be outdated by the time you read it. But the general advice holds: favor platforms that allow brief and individual posts over those that encourage near-permanent and group posts. Posts meant to be seen by large audiences encourage the careful curating of an image—taking fifty pictures to get just the right selfie, obsessing over how to word something, posting something just for the “likes.” This is problematic enough for adults and can be even worse for teens. Snapchat also doesn’t allow users to search for content, meaning that teens are less likely to stumble upon inappropriate material. The new “live chilling” apps such as Houseparty are also useful—they are basically video chat for three or more and allow teens to see one another and talk. It’s not quite face-to-face, but it’s closer than most social media.
All of us, both teens and adults, can work on putting the phone away when we’re with someone in person. Some friends have come up with a useful rule: when they have lunch or dinner together, everyone puts his phone facedown in the middle of the table, on silent. The first one who picks up his phone pays the bill. I think this might be a nice rule for adults as well.
One 18-year-old interviewed in American Girls had given up social media entirely—and, yes, she still has friends. “Sometimes there will be a 10-minute-long conversation where I can’t participate because I didn’t see that post or I didn’t watch that video, but I’d rather not anyway. If I want to get to know someone, I don’t want to know the version of themselves that they artificially created and posted online . . . . How important is it really to know what Mary posted yesterday on Instagram? If I want to know Mary, I’ll call her up and ask her to hang out.” She says she doesn’t have any universal solutions, but concludes that “Social media . . . doesn’t lead to a fulfilling life. People are not pursuing happiness with this. They are pursuing an attractive picture.”
Our phones let us record our lives—but sometimes they can get in the way of living our lives. Will you remember everything through the lens of your smartphone or how you saw it with your own eyes? “You’re surrounded by it no matter where you go,” Alexandra Lee, a freshman at the University of Georgia, told the campus newspaper. “Nobody can just be present anymore. The second anything remotely fun happens, everyone takes out their phone and starts filming.” The Washington Post recently profiled a family in which the youngest child, 4 years old, regularly discusses whether what they’re doing should go on YouTube. That is not the way to be present in your own life.
Putting down the smartphone is also crucially important for studying or working. The human brain cannot multitask: we can focus our attention on only one cognitive task at a time. If we try to do two things that require our conscious attention at the same time, we have to switch our attention back and forth between them, which takes time and makes everything take longer. Mark, who’s studying information technology at a community college, agrees that “to focus on college material, you can’t multitask.” His technique is to study intently for twenty minutes “and then, no matter what I’m doing I stop, and I take a five-minute break. I check my Facebook, check my Instagram, Twitter. Then my other alarm goes off saying, ‘Hey, look, it’s time to get back to work.’ ” I’d tweak Mark’s plan a little—if you’re on a roll studying or working, don’t stop after twenty minutes. Wait until you feel distracted or fatigued, a maximum of forty-five minutes, and then take a break. But his five-minute rule for distractions is a good one. It should keep you from getting too far into the wilds of social media or clicking on multiple Internet slideshows of “Why Hollywood Won’t Cast Brendan Fraser Anymore.” The key point: if you’re trying to work or study, put the phone away and stay off Google and email as much as possible. If you don’t, you’ll be interrupted by pings and alerts all the time and will constantly be switching your attention back and forth. It’s the easiest way to have the whole day pass and realize you didn’t get anything done.
Overall, the key to phones is moderation—for both teens and adults. Use your phone for all of the cool stuff it can do, but put it down and be present for the moment as much as possible. Use an app that cuts you off from social media if you have to. Carve out blocks of time to study or work when it doesn’t intrude. Do not sleep with it or give it nude pictures of yourself. It is not your lover. Do not continuously turn your attention to it when you are talking with someone in person. It is not your best friend.
Noodz and Porn
For girls in particular, social media sites often exacerbate teens’ already heightened emphasis on physical appearance—particularly a sexualized appearance. Many parents have no idea what their kids are posting online, so keeping an eye on their Instagram feed is a place to start. Parents need to have honest conversations with girls about the downsides of posting revealing pictures. They should never send nude photos, even on Snapchat. Although the app alerts users if someone else takes a screenshot, there’s nothing to prevent it from happening. When someone receives a nude, whether through social media or texting, he can share it with whomever he likes. There are websites with galleries of nude teen girls, and those pictures often make their way around middle schools and high schools like wildfire. Parents need to make it very clear to teens, even younger teens, that it is never a good idea to send a nude picture of yourself. (Teens refer to this as “nudes” or use oh-so-creative misspellings such as “noodz.”)
Thirteen-year-old Athena educated me about this. “Why don
’t you want them to take a screenshot?” I asked when she was telling me about Snapchat. “If it’s a bad picture,” she said. “Like a bad expression?” I ask. “No,” she said quietly. “Nudes.” If you send nudes, she says, “mean people” will show the photo to others and “they don’t get caught” because they delete it from their phone. Nudes can spread through a middle school in a matter of minutes. Athena told me that two kids in her 7th-grade class were suspended for a week for sending nude pictures. And those were just the ones who got caught. So this is another piece of advice to convey to our teens: if someone asks for nudes, just say no. Or you can mimic the response of 16-year-old Reese Hebert. When she texted a boy that she was about to take a shower, he texted back, “Ooh I wanna see.” So she sent him a picture of herself in the shower—from the neck up and wearing a multicolored umbrella hat.
Parents also need to prevent children and teens from seeing pornography. Due to its ubiquity online and the proliferation of electronic devices, kids are exposed to porn at younger and younger ages these days. Child filters on phones and tablets are far from foolproof—for elementary school–age kids, it’s best to stick with devices such as Kindles that can be configured to not even include a web browser (they include ways to view videos and books, but within what some call a “walled garden”). Older teens also need restrictions, or at the very least an honest conversation about pornography. Like social media companies, pornography companies are in it to make money, and what makes them money is often degrading, aggressive sex. These are not videos of two people who love each other having hot sex—they are actors who participate in sex that is often brutal and almost always emotionally distant. Pornography does not portray normal adult sexuality. As a result, a generation of teens is getting a warped view of what sex is about; according to most pornography, it’s about the man’s pleasure only, often at the woman’s expense.
The In-Person Deficit
Teens who spend more time with their friends in person are happier, less lonely, and less depressed, while those who spend more time on social media are less happy, lonelier, and more depressed. At the very least, online time does not protect against loneliness and depression, while in-person time does.
Given the benefits of in-person social interaction, parents might need to stop thinking that teens hanging out together are wasting their time. Teens are hanging out with their friends less, but they are not replacing that time with homework, extracurriculars, paid work, or housework; they are replacing it with screen time. Unfortunately, the time they spend communicating electronically is a poor substitute for the emotional connection and social skills gained in face-to-face communication—and it may be contributing to the alarming rise in teen depression and suicide.
Many parents see teens’ in-person social activities as potentially unsafe. We all want to protect our kids, and we all need to have rules limiting what teens can do. The problem is that many parents have restricted an activity that has numerous benefits (in-person social interaction) while putting few limits on an activity devoid of most of those benefits (electronic communication). Teens may be physically safer with electronic communication, but that choice may come at the expense of their mental health. Parents are worried about the wrong thing.
A few studies have already shown that teens who communicate face-to-face, without electronic devices, have better social skills, such as reading emotion on others’ faces. I suspect there will be more such studies in the future. iGen’ers are growing up in a world where more and more communication has moved online, but in-person social skills are always going to be useful. People still have to meet in person for dates, for job interviews, and for conversations. iGen’ers who hole up with their devices more and see their friends in person less will have more trouble with those social skills. As with everything, practice makes perfect. So parents: your teen going out with her friends is not a waste of time—it’s an investment in her future.
Even though she’s only 13, Athena already sees the consequences of the technology she has known all of her life. “We don’t know how to communicate normally. We don’t know how to communicate like normal people anymore,” she says. “Do you think the way your generation is communicating will eventually become normal?” I ask. “Yep,” she says. “And then there will be no reason to get off the couch.”
iGen and everyone else: Let’s get off the couch.
Beating Anxiety and Depression
“Sitting in a lecture hall that afternoon, I was focusing all of my energy on trying to slow my racing mind and calm myself . . . . All I could think about was the enormous amount of tasks I had to get done. Dozens of other minuscule thoughts took the opportunity to try and turn themselves into huge problems and blare inside my head. This is what anxiety is like, and when it begins it can be difficult to escape,” wrote Kate Leddy in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian. “. . . I realized in the midst of all my internal debating about needing to just focus I’d hardly heard any of the lecture. So, I packed up and left. I went to the Recreation Center and ran for half an hour, and it was as though my body granted me an extra dose of endorphins that day when I finished. Almost immediately, I felt a wave of renewed energy, clarity and calm.”
Kate discovered something that day that research confirms: exercise is a natural antidepressant. Stephen Ilardi, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Kansas, gave a TED talk titled “Depression Is a Disease of Civilization.” He and others have found that mimicking the lifestyle of our caveman ancestors is one of the best ways to prevent and reduce anxiety and depression. The six-part program includes sunlight exposure, exercise, a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids, avoiding rumination, getting enough sleep, and engaging in in-person social interaction. His book The Depression Cure has specific suggestions for incorporating these lifestyle changes. Most of these techniques are free or low cost, though they do take time.
Where to get that time? Probably from that phone again. Look back at the graphs in chapter 3 showing the links between time use and psychological well-being. If an activity involves a screen, it’s linked to less happiness and more depression. If it doesn’t—particularly if it involves in-person social interaction or exercise—it’s linked to more happiness and less depression. Try an experiment on yourself (or on your teen, if you can): for a week, cut your phone, Internet, and social media time in half, and use that time to see friends and family in person and/or to exercise. More than likely, you’ll end that week feeling happier.
Of course, lifestyle changes are not going to fix every case of anxiety and depression, especially if they are severe. The good news is that therapy works; a definitive study showed that depressed people who get therapy do get better faster than those who don’t. Antidepressant medications can be very effective, especially for moderate to severe depression. Therapy and medication can allieviate suffering and save lives. The problem is that strapped budgets often make it difficult to find the resources for more mental health services. On college campuses, a few concrete steps seem logical, such as doing away with limits on the number of on-campus therapy sessions. Setting limits on therapy sessions is like telling students they can’t go to the doctor if they feel sick too often. If campuses are going to stem the tide of mental health issues, students need to be able to get regular therapy throughout the school year. At residential colleges in particular, this needs to take place on campus. Resources also need to be available after hours: on many campuses, the counseling center closes at five, and there are few sources of help during the evening hours, which are often the most difficult for those with mental health issues.
Middle and high school students need more help as well, but the system of mental health care in the country is outstripped by the needs of young people and their families. With the rapidly rising rates of depression among 12- to 17-year-olds, this problem is only going to get worse. Parents should be aware that even very young teens (and children) can suffer from anxiety and depression, and take it seriously. Most w
ill have to wade through the health care bureaucracy and wait overly long to get an appointment, perhaps one of the reasons why teen suicide remains unacceptably high. In general, getting help sooner rather than later is best. Therapists don’t just help kids during sessions; they can give children and teens coping skills that will be useful for the rest of their lives.
At the very least, I hope that the data in chapter 4 help convince those who believe that there has not been any real change in mental health issues. The data presented there compare young people now to those in the past using random sampling and anonymous reporting, a design that sidesteps criticisms of previous reports. The trends are also remarkably consistent: loneliness, depressive symptoms, major depressive episodes, anxiety, self-injury, and suicide are all on the rise, mostly since 2011. iGen is crying out for help, and we need to listen.
Growing Up Slowly
More and more teens are leaving high school never having had a paying job, driven a car by themselves, gone out on a date, had sex, or tried alcohol. These trends are an adaptation to the current cultural context; in other words, they are not inherently good or bad. They just are.
However, the implications are profound. Young people are entering college and the working world without as much experience with adult independence. For parents, this means more calls home about how to navigate adult responsibilities and more worries that young people are not prepared for college and the workplace. For student affairs professionals at colleges and universities, this means advising more students who don’t know how to manage their lives by themselves. More students will have their first drink of alcohol on campus, and more will have their first sexual experience or adult relationship during college. So, compared to previous generations, they will be chronologically older when they have these adult experiences—in many ways a positive development. However, they may also be away from home and the support of their parents and longtime friends. This presents challenges for those who shepherd students’ mental health and their lives on campus.
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