“He was looking at his iPhone and he said, ‘Oh my God. He recalls being out on a fishing boat with his son. Mark Lerner, a clinical psychologist based in New York, says that he believes that many of the mental health issues young people are facing today can be traced to technology. As in the adult world, not answering implies you are ignoring someone or something. But once you have a phone, it is hard to ignore it.
She can even say that she cannot be available after a certain time because her mother confiscates the phone. A ten- or eleven-year-old without a phone can simply tell her friends that she couldn’t talk because she has to use a family computer or family phone in order to communicate. When kids have their own devices, they are tempted to be in touch constantly and maybe even feel obligated to be in touch when they don’t want to. What this means is not just that the content of their conversations is probably going unmonitored. Her friends’ parents do not have the same policy, as Rena often sees her daughter’s phone buzzing with incoming texts at midnight or later.
At nine, Rena takes the phone and plugs it in next to her own bed so there is no chance her daughter can use it at night. Her daughter can text and call, but there is no social media. She was doing extracurricular activities that made pickups and drop-offs more complicated, so the phone seemed convenient. Rena, the mother of two preteen girls in New Jersey, gave her daughter a cell phone when she started middle school. Editor’s Note: The following essay is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of Naomi Schaefer Riley’s new book, Be the Parent, Please: Stop Banning Seesaws and Start Banning Snapchat, released January 8, 2018, by Templeton Press.
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