How much time do girls REALLY spend online?
Their despairing mums reveal the worrying truth – and an addiction therapist lays bare the consequences . . .
How often have you seen a young girl, headphones in her ears, glazed eyes riveted to the screen of her smartphone or tablet? It’s a sight that’s become all too familiar — on our streets, in bus queues and in family homes. But what these girls — and many parents — don’t realise is the time they spend on social media is damaging other aspects of their lives. As a therapist specialising in addiction, who sees many of these young women in my Harley Street clinic, I know all too well that their desperation for ‘likes’ on internet posts, and the compulsive need to be constantly in touch with friends, is making them anxious, irritable and ultimately unhappy.
what’s more, all this screen time replaces more innocent pleasures they should be enjoying, from playing outside to bonding, face-to-face, with other children.
Then there are the potential developmental problems, from lack of concentration to difficulty with social interaction. Some of
the girls I see struggle to hold a curious, two-way conversation with a grown-up, they are so used to interacting in short, staccato bursts on social media.
Sadly, my patients are getting younger, meaning their tech habit could be doing untold damage to their developing brains.
I now see parents of girls as young as three who are desperate to wean their daughters off screens.
Most of the children who come to see me are spending hours on social media, something I find really worrying, in part because of the seeming ignorance around how to manage this powerful ‘drug’ in the family home.
The very earliest you should give a child their own phone is at 11, and I would try to steer them off social media until 13. Even then, you must limit screen time to small, bite-sized chunks, and make sure you know what the purpose of that screen time is.
Many parents are in the dark about the amount of time their children spend using screens. Five minutes here, five minutes there, can add up to a staggering number of hours a week — and the desire to keep checking social media for updates adds constant mental pressure.
Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield has said children as young as ten are now dependent on social media for their self-worth.
One young teen I met was consumed by social media, and her phone in particular. She had been involved in physical tussles with her worried parents over her phone use. The whole family felt dreadful.
She agreed to come to see me — and admitted she had a problem. I asked her to log how much time she spent on her phone, and she was astonished at the result — it was six to seven hours every day.
With her and both parents, I agreed a timescale to reduce her phone use to an hour-and-ahalf a day.
This helped the family to develop trust and talk about why she felt so hooked on her phone, and she was able to stick to the rules as long as her parents stayed firm and supported her.
That’s why it’s so important parents take a stand, and help children realise how much they are missing out on. The first step is to keep a close eye on the number of hours your child is on social media. Then you can start creating boundaries.
Parents also need to look at their own phone use. For girls, it’s their mothers who are the greater influence on their developing self-worth.
Here, five mothers discover just how dependent their daughters have become on social media.
SADIE’S OBSESSED WITH GETTING ‘LIKES’ FOR HER SELFIES
Fiona Brooks, 44, works in accounts and lives in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. she is married and has three children, Matt, 17, David, 15, and sadie, 13. SADIE’S DEVICES: iPhone, iPad and laptop. AVERAGE TIME PER WEEK: Ten hours.
Fiona says: Sadie and her friends are always posting selfies on Instagram, and they are obsessed with the number of ‘likes’ each photo gets. Sometimes she’ll even get a message from a friend asking why she hasn’t liked their post!
Thankfully, Sadie has a faithful crew of friends she can rely on to ‘like’ her posts — but if the number was reduced dramatically, she wouldn’t be happy.
Sadie has admitted how bad it makes her feel when she doesn’t get many ‘likes’ or responses to a post — she thinks it’s a sign of being unpopular.
My boys aren’t the same — they hate boasting and won’t post pictures of themselves.
Thankfully, all my children are very sensible and I trust them to show me if something’s not quite right.
Once a girl made a nasty comment about a picture of Sadie online while she was asleep. My boys intervened and the comment was gone by the time Sadie woke up.
I try to get Sadie to turn devices off half an hour before bed, but I trust her and she hasn’t let me down so far. MANDY SAYS: This obsession with getting ‘ likes’ is more prevalent with girls, who often use Instagram to post a lot of selfies or pictures of their daily lives.
They’re building their whole sense of self-esteem on something that is open to judgment and criticism by their peer group. As a result, if they’re teased or disliked, they can feel as if they’ve been torn apart.
The best way for a parent to fight this and build a child’s fragile selfesteem is to help them find something they’re good at, and praise and support them in it.
Although you may hate Instagram and be tempted to ban it, excluding them from their social network is not the way forward. You have to keep a close eye on it.
EDEN IS MONOSYLLABIC AT THE DINNER TABLE
avril Davis, 43, is a secretary from stanmore, Middlesex. she lives with her husband and daughters, kyla, 13 and Eden, ten. EDEN’S DEVICES: iPhone, iPad, home PC. AVERAGE TIME PER WEEK: 16 hours. avril says: Eden’s phone is like a drug — she can’t live without it. If I take it away as a punishment, she shouts: ‘I need it, I need it.’
She doesn’t have time in the morning but after school, after completing her homework, she can go on it for as long as she likes, posting on a YouTube channel she set up with friends. I work part-time, so it keeps her busy while I make dinner, put a wash on and help her sister with homework. I do read the comments on her YouTube channel.
We eat dinner together — but her phone will still be on, often with headphones, too, and the conversation is monosyllabic. It’s like we have nothing to say to each other.
I know in my heart of hearts I need to cut her phone use back.
Eden has lots of friends, does tap dancing and loves playing outdoors — but at times it is hard to reach her because she gets so engrossed in what she’s doing.
At weekends, she can be online for five-hour stretches. She falls asleep listening to stories on her phone before bed. I am so embarrassed and I’m scared to talk to other mums about it.
ManDy says: A big concern is if children are distracted when eating, there won’t be a proper regulation of their appetite so they might over or under- eat. The dinner table should present a great opportunity to have phone-free conversations when everyone can talk about their day and for some parents, it could be the only opportunity to chat to their children. If phones are present, this opportunity is lost.
My advice would be to explain to your child that you miss talking to her and you’d like to have a week’s trial when you drop the device use to every other mealtime. You will get defiance, but you have to have the energy and the time to police it.
After the week, you can say it’s been so lovely to have the time to talk and you’re going to try a month without devices at the table. Make sure you are there and ready to talk at every meal.
IT PUTS ZARIA IN A FILTHY TEMPER
LOUISE WATERS, 51, runs Pr consultancy, louiseWatersPr, and lives in Hove. she is married with three children — twins tabitha and Zaria, 13, and Felix, 12. ZARIA’S DEVICES: iPad and Samsung Galaxy phone.
AVERAGE TIME PER WEEK: 20 hours. LOUISE says: I think Zaria’s using screens far too much — she’s on the iPad for four to five hours a day during the week as they also use it in lessons at school. I asked her to feed our cat the other day and she was doing everything onehanded, tablet in the other hand, spilling food everywhere as she just couldn’t let go.
My husband Andrew and I try to monitor her, but with three kids it’s really hard to keep up. I did see some silly swearing on her Twitter profile once and I asked her: ‘Is that going to impress a future employer?’ She wasn’t pleased, but she did change it.
But if she’s been using a screen for a while — particularly watching something on her tablet — she has become quite unreasonable. There have been many occasions when she’s been rude to me, stormed off and slammed doors.
There’s a lot of eye-rolling and shouting, too. She’s rarely like that if I interrupt her when she’s reading or doing anything else.
MANDY says: ‘I see this so often. When children are on screens, they have busy, adrenalised minds and thumbs but their bodies are still — and so when they come off the device, the disconnect between the two states ends up in an explosion
of energy and temper. Also, the games and videos are highly addictive; they are tailored this way, giving teasers of what’s to come and lots of little rewards, so they’re hard to put down.
If you try to interrupt, you’re as good as interrupting them using their drug of choice.
There are other reasons they might act out, too. First, they might be ashamed about how long they’ve spent on their phone. Therefore, they will try to make you react angrily, so they can blame you for how they feel and absolve themselves of responsibility.
Second, they often display an emotion they know you can’t handle — whether that’s crying, yelling or slamming doors — in the hope it will enable them to get their own way (and get back on the screen).
The key here is to get the child to see the consequences of their prolonged screentime. Reflect their own behaviour back to them calmly and don’t let yourself be bullied by their temper. For example, say, ‘You seem very agitated and aggressive when you come off your phone. Did you notice that?’
Eventually, they will take responsibility. Work with them to manage their time and set allocated screen periods, after which they agree to come off it calmly.
CHARLotte PARNeLL, 34, is a foster carer and lives in bracknell, berkshire. She is divorced and has a son, terry, 14, and a daughter, Leyla, six. LEYLA’S DEVICE: iPad. AVERAGE TIME PER WEEK: Eight hours.
CHARLotte SAYS: Leyla is addicted to her iPad. She’s on it first thing in the morning then straight after school, mostly watching YouTube stars such as Tiana, who reviews toys.
She gets up at 6am, so the iPad gives me time to get up slowly.
Most of the time she’s watching it in her room, so I’m not aware of what she’s watching, but I do monitor it and use age settings.
While she loves the iPad, she is fine when I take it away and I do insist there are no devices over dinner. I also make sure we have plenty of quality time and do arts and crafts and play games.
A lot of her friends her age have an iPad. I haven’t given her a mobile phone — at six, she simply doesn’t need one.
MANDY SAYS: If young children are given a screen to keep them quiet or occupied, you are teaching them to disassociate from themselves and their emotions.
It’s a situation that is creating a timebomb, as their lack of emotional intelligence will implode when they’re teenagers and they don’t know how to manage feelings such as anger or boredom.
If screens are filling the gap when they’re as young as six, when they’re older that gap could easily be filled by worse things such as drugs or alcohol. That’s why I make seven my limit for independent use of technology.
It’s also vital to ensure they are stretching, moving, communicating and shaking themselves out of their virtual world from time to time, as habits learned early will last a lifetime and be incredibly hard to counteract.
Sometimes I hear parents boast that their children know more about their phones or iPads than they do, but this should not be a boast — how can you teach a child to manage something if you, the parent, are not ahead of it?
It’s irresponsible. Debbie RoSe, 44, advertising sales director, lives in bushey Heath, Hertfordshire. She is married and has two daughters, Lauren, 15 and Rebecca, 11. REBECCA’S DEVICE: iPhone.
AVERAGE TIME PER WEEK: 21 hours. Debbie SAYS: Rebecca uses social media for everything. I wake her up 15 minutes earlier than I need to — 6.45am — just so she can spend that sacred time checking her phone or she’d be late.
She’ll eat breakfast with her phone next to her and use it in the car to message her friends about where they should meet outside school.
She gets home at 4.45pm and she’s on her phone for an hour, often speaking to three or four friends at the same time on a video app.
The phone is a babysitter for me between 7pm and 9.30pm. She’s safe, I know where she is and it’s a very easy trap to fall into.
I fear Rebecca’s not getting enough human interaction.
When speaking to my mum, instead of a long conversation, Rebecca cuts to the chase, saying: ‘Hi Grandma, can you babysit on Thursday?’ instead of, ‘ How are you? What’s new with you?’
The older generation appreciates more love and warmth.
MANDY SAYS: Children will struggle to have long conversations and they will lose empathy the more they interact with screens instead of people.
As parents, we have to teach them self-regulation and give them allocated time on the phone, after which they have to hand it in. If they don’t, the consequences must be swift — such as they don’t get their phone the following day.
But you need to replace the time they would have spent online with other things, such as a conversation, a walk, going for a coffee.
We can’t ignore technology — deep relationships can form via social media — but you as the parent have to get the real conversation going, too.