Safely and sensibly approaching screen use

NVR Approach to Technology

They are digital natives, we’re told. Technology, social media and screens of various sorts are everywhere and that our children will use them, is a given in most homes. And it also feels a bit like a global experiment with our children as the subjects. Many parents are rightfully unsettled and wish they could avoid it entirely. This too feels impossible. So parents are called upon to navigate this new world.

Our children need to develop a unique set of skills to traverse the digital world in a balanced and safe manner. Skills that, if we are being honest, many of us adults are also struggling with. Managing one’s time with balance, exercising self control and avoiding harmful content/people; is no small undertaking. Ultimately our children need skills to independently self regulate and practice digital safety in a way that is hopefully aligned with your family’s values. We want our children to become skilled and safe on-line users, and we want them to gain that experience with as little risk as possible.

Some teens also have factors (ADHD, autism, anxiety, highly socially motivated are a few) that can elevate these risks. We know that excessively heavy handed and unwarranted ‘helicopter’ parenting may offer us the illusion of more information and protection, but has the side effect of generating defiance and shutting down communication. If we fall into a battle ready pose, their natural reaction to resist, means that kids lose the opportunity to figure out and implement their own values and may instead spend valuable energy on opposing (or working around) parents. Us parents also then risk losing our opportunity for influence on the development of these values.

Lasting influence draws on relationships and is far more powerful than lectures and fear.

And this all is important as the risks are real, the skills are gained gradually and scaffolding to minimize risk along the way is warranted.

Parents are needed

With a subtle shift in their approach, they can lean into their relationship with their teen in a way that reduces risk, increases influence and builds skills/values. Parents do this when we remember that we cannot ‘really’ control our children (and attempts to do so are counterproductive) but we CAN control ourselves. Parental Anchoring is a reliable way to maintain legitimate power using parental presence, self control, structure and support as our tools.

Based on these elements of the Non-violent Resistance and Vigilant Care, Yaara Shimshoni developed an evidence based approach that successfully reduced risk and accidents in new male teen drivers. The method outlined below expands her research from an NVR perspective and addresses screens similarly.

Our overarching goal is to expand Parental Presence with its sharing of information, encouragement of safety and implementation of age and developmentally appropriate structure.

You might imagine this with parents as birds perched on our teen’s shoulder. We want them to carry our voices and values with them out into the world. We are stable in our perch, quietly paying attention with reasonable parameters in place, quiet and unobtrusive but alert should we be needed. Our symbolic presence encourages our teens to think about their choices and values as they interact with technology while their own internal systems of safe judgment and self control are developing.

Parental presence is the active ingredient. It says;

This development of parental presence avoids the pitfalls of helicopter parenting and moves parents toward the important goal of reducing risk while scaffolding the construction of independent self management skills.

Time spent on screens and content accessed during that time and overall negative impact, is a frequent parental complaint/concern. This is a source of tremendous conflict and removal of screens is often a go-to punishment. While setting boundaries is most easily accomplished as or while your children are first gaining access (getting an Xbox or a first Ipad/phone or increasing privileges) household structure and age/development related guidelines can still be implemented; even if the genie is out of the bottle.

Recommendations of graduated privileges and safety parameters that can be implemented depending on the needs of your children, their ages and temperaments, and your family’s values. This list of ideas is designed for parents to talk through and create basic parameters or rules to add an underlying structure to their child’s screen use. A set number of hours that screens can be used is a reasonable starting point. As children get older this often results in problematic interactions with excessive need for parent involvement in overseeing ‘reasonable’ use. A mutual understanding of what balance looks like for the family and markers that indicate its presence or loss with periodic check-ins, tends to lead toward skill development and responsible self regulation.

When children and teens are motivated to get access or increased access to screens, (i.e. they want social media) parents are again in a good position to work with the child to develop parameters that are collaborative in nature and aligned with the family’s goals and values. It can be helpful to create a ‘living document’ that all parties sign as an agreement around use to refer back to.

Side note, countless teens have complained about their parent’s efforts to restrict their screen time while mindlessly scrolling themselves.

The Green Light or Open Attention is the default and preferred baseline stance. This is the position where we aim to spend most of our parenting time and energy. We actively work to maintain a positive, curious and alert stance supporting our child’s relationship with screens. The adults have carefully chosen the structure for screen use in their home and have communicated this to their child in a straightforward manner and maybe drafted a signed agreement.

Clarity about what balance means is also talked about with an eye to draw out (and give credit to) the child’s own values and goals. At the green light level we check in (weekly) about everyone’s screen use. Expected movement toward increased independence and additional privileges are discussed as are their thoughts around their successful self control. Any safety issues or concerns that anyone has encountered can also be shared. It is helpful when parents also share their own challenges in maintaining (or regaining) balance and anything concerning (viruses, trojan horses, etc.)

If balanced time has been a concern, then going over everyone’s weekly screen use report is a planned part of this conversation.

Yellow Light / Focused Attention

Parents switch to the Yellow Light level of oversight when observations of their child’s use (or possibly their friend’s use) begins to feel concerning but has not yet resulted in a safety issue or a functional impairment. This level can be imagined as parents perking their ears up and turning their attention to directly face their child. Functional impairment is defined as a child or teen who is experiencing real negative results of their excessive or dangerous screen use.

A shift to the Yellow Light level is clearly stated and the parents’ concerns are shared. Elements of the conversation are more direct and pointed though anger and lecturing is always best avoided. At this level the teen is asked to generate solutions and the parents maintain the (almost always true) position that the teen also holds similar values around safety and balance. Their solutions are sought and, if remotely reasonable, are given an opportunity to be implemented. The goal remains to return to the Green Light level of oversight.

An example might be a teen who is not consistently turning in their homework. If social media or gaming is occurring when homework would otherwise be completed, it makes reasonable sense to speak with the child about this. Operating from the assumption that the teen also prefers to be completing their homework (the vast majority do) we can support them in generating solutions that they plan to try. If after a week or several attempts, the incomplete assignment situation has not improved, then parents may choose a Red Light approach where perhaps screens are not in bedrooms or are off during prime homework hours.

Our goal as parents is to have our children build these necessary skills around time management and completing non-preferred tasks. We only take over responsibility for overseeing this, assuming this represents a reduction of independence, when there is a problem that has not been solved through collaborative measures. Our goal always remains to restore this independence to the teen as soon as possible.

Our teens will soon be adults and will need these skills well practiced and able to be used independently. If we are still heavily managing their use when they move out of the home, they are risk for challenges finding that balance.

Red Light / Unilateral Action

Red Light is the highest level of oversight. While it is not meant as a punishment, it may be experienced as one. This level of oversight is entered into openly with an announcement given to the child about the shift and what prompted it. Red Light oversight is used when risky behavior or a functional impairment has become apparent.

Please note that if your child is tricked into an unsafe interaction, you may want to act with extra caution in that elevated supervision may be warranted AND you do not want your child to feel punished (such that they would be less likely to share what happened in the future.)

Functional impairment is defined as a child who is on screens instead of sleeping, missing school due to fatigue from excess gaming, unresolved poor grades related to screen use, switched day and night due to gaming, loss of balance such that they are not going to events in public, or using devices to engage in dangerous or damaging activities such as gambling, watching porn, stealing credit cards to make purchases, sneaking out of the house, sharing or asking for nudes, cyberbullying, purchasing or selling drugs, etc.

If the signs of risk are sufficiently elevated, a parent may choose to move directly from green to red.

Parents will want to talk with one another and/or other supporters prior to deciding the parameters of the Red Light shift. Parents will want to give themselves the opportunity to be calm and regulated such that they can clearly define their concern, have thought through what a shift to Red Light level of vigilant care will contain, and are prepared to withstand any negative reactions from the teen. A statement to the teen in the moment such as;

will give parents an opportunity to respond from a place of self control and with sturdy presence. (Strike while the Iron is Cold) The overarching goal is to provide elevated supervision and parental presence so that parents have more opportunity to increase protection of the child. While punishment is not the goal of a shift to a Red Light level of supervision, it may be experienced as one and parents will want to be prepared to weather a big reaction. Depending on what occurred, it may also be reasonable to expect that the teen will make a repair or work through any other consequences of their actions.

Parents and teens are best served when a concern is fully understood and related issues such as learning challenges, anxiety and mental health, are also addressed.

A return to the Yellow and then Green Light position is always the goal and should be achievable as soon as the parents have seen that the risk has abated. This means that the parent avoids making proclamations about how the teen has lost their phone until they are 30, ban all access, or throws the offending devise out the window.

At the Red Level the parent may also choose, if warranted, to change the expectations around privacy such that they might monitor the sites and information exchanged. This would be done only if needed and only to the extent necessary. Parents of teens who take this path should be aware that they are likely to observe exchanges that are not meant for their eyes/ears and refrain from commenting or pearl clutching for anything but actual dangerous behavior.

In other words, please ignore the F-bombs, thirst traps and other typical teen nonsense that is otherwise typical for their age.

A teen who is experiencing a functional impairment will ideally have been given the opportunity to rebalance their use of technology when first shifted to the Yellow level. The Red level means that they were unable to adequately do this independently and therefore parents are warranted in shifting their approach. From an NVR perspective, a core tenant is that parents cannot control their child’s behavior and to try and do so risks escalation, defiance and loss of influence.

A parent CAN control themselves and what they are willing or unwilling to do.

Parents may decide they are unwilling to offer access to screens during the night and therefore may shut off wifi. They may also be unwilling to allow technology to use data. The goal of reducing unsupervised access is to prevent harm not to punish. It is a common parenting impulse to reduce or eliminate access that is unrelated to the problem situation with the goal of, ‘teaching a lesson.’ Parents often make such choices out of habit (hand-me-down parenting) or from a place of fear and helplessness.

Though this may feel like the powerful or strong choice in the moment, it tends to be an illusion of power paid for with relationship and influence. It can make parents appear irrelevant and hapless in the minds of their teens and invites a massive power struggle.

NVR is not a permissive approach to parenting

It is though a significant departure from conventional parenting. While punishment and the idea that it can be used to ‘motivate’ better behavior is set aside; this does not mean that any and all choices are without consequences or impact. Modulating the level of vigilance typically does result in added layers of oversight and/or reduction of independence. The difference is that the shifts a parent may choose are in response to risks that they have perceived. They are designed to add additional parental presence to reduce that risk and the goal remains to return to lower levels of vigilance as soon as the risk has subsided.

Another NVR concept developed by Haim Omer is the Tour of Technology linked here. The goal is to invite your teen to share more about the technology they are using.