Digital Safety Week: 7 Tips in 7 Days—#5 Screen Addiction Signs

We know that teenagers are not very good at making sophisticated decisions. Even there are evidences that can prove so. Around 88% of the teens consider themselves to be safe drivers, where in reality; they have been using their cell phone behind the wheels. This kind of behavior also tells us that teens hardly know what’s really good and what’s not—they lack the connoisseur of adult decision making.

We have been telling them how dangerous it can be to drive and use smartphone at the same time, and if they don’t listen to it, then they are possibly suffering from cell phone addiction.

Look for these signs in your kids and you will have a good chance to know if they have smartphone addiction:

• They would feel extremely uncomfortable without instant access to information.
• They would never let themselves alienate from their smartphones.
• When the battery on their smartphone goes down, they would leave their conservations to plug in their smartphone, so to have uninterrupted access to their phone.
• They will ask for data plans with more volume.
• They can’t navigate to a place without using their cell phone.
• Anxiety struck them if they are not able to find instant access to social media.
• Obsession with checking their messages and apps even without receiving any updates.

Smartphone addiction is not threatening like Drug abuse and addiction, but it does have catastrophic effects on kids’ social behavior, school life and family relationships. Early interventions with addiction are best to prevent future severity of the problems.

The best way to start with the intervention therapy is by reducing your kids’ access to their cell phone but this doesn’t involve a complete cut-off from their devices for days or even weeks. A right way to do it is to limit access by using some parental control software on their smartphones.

The purpose of dealing with smartphone addiction is to let kids expend their time for other more important activities, like studies and outdoor activities and the ultimate goal is to promote that healthy balance between online/offline activities of kids.