TRAPPED IN THE NET
Kiwi children are so consumed by their online lives that a third of them are going without food and sleep, a quarter are neglecting their studies, and nearly half are warring with friends and family over their internet habits.
Athird of Kiwi teenagers are going without eating or sleeping in order to spend more time online, according to new research from Netsafe.
And nearly half have experienced conflict with wha¯ nau and friends over their internet use.
Experts warn the figures are a wake up call for parents and caregivers to be vigilant when it comes to teenagers’ use of digital devices and the negative effects it can have on family relationships.
Netsafe chief executive Martin Cocker said it was important to recognise that not all internet use was created equal.
‘‘Ultimately parents and caregivers can help set boundaries, guidelines and limitations to mitigate the effects of the internet and devices on school work,’’ Cocker said.
The New Zealand Children’s Experiences of Online Risks and their Perceptions of Harm research surveyed the internet habits of more than 2000 teens aged between 13 and 17.
Just less than half reported coming into conflict with family over the amount of time spent on their devices, while 46 per cent have tried unsuccessfully to spend less time on them.
Thirty-two per cent had gone without eating or sleeping while online and 24 per cent had lower academic results due to excessive use. Overall, 27 per cent of respondents reported ‘‘often’’ or ‘‘very often’’ experiencing at least one of the above impacts of excessive internet use.
Twenty-four per cent of research respondents had found their academic results had suffered because of their time spent on digital devices.
There was no notable difference between the different genders’ results in the research other than 15 per cent of girls had failed at attempts to reduce their online time compared to 11 per cent of boys.
Frame sisters Rebekah, 16, and Maddy, 15, are busy most evenings and weekends with singing, drama, dance and kapa haka, but like many teenagers they still pushed against the family online rules: no devices at the table for dinner and never after 10pm weeknights.
Mum Sasha Frame said they were pretty good at selfregulation but lapses would result in loss of their devices.
Both Rebekah and Maddy are big on Snapchat Streak which involves sending direct ‘‘snaps’’, or short videos, between friends.
The goal is to keep it going for as long as possible. Maddy is proud that she and a friend continued the chain each day for 558 days.
Such was the desire to keep the chain unbroken she organised another friend to be her proxy and continue sending the pictures from her phone while on a school camp.
Both teens were allowed to get cellphones for emergencies when they were 11. They were not allowed on social media until they were 13 though Rebekah had been wanting to use Snapchat since she was in primary school.
An example of the anxiety teens feel when they are denied access to social media was obvious when mum Sasha and Rebekah were discussing the longest time her phone had been taken off her for. Rebekah insisted it was two or three weeks her mother claimed it was less than a week.
For Jan Prattley, conflict arose over different parenting styles a few years ago.
She did not want her daughter Rachel Poulsen, 13, to have a device but her ex-husband did and he bought her a tablet for Christmas at the age of 11.
‘‘I didn’t think she was ready for one,’’ Prattley says.
Prattley now sees the value in the internet for learning and entertainment. Rachel also Instagrams a few close friends.
Prattley will not let her daughter go on Facebook until she is older, though she had not made a decision when that may be. All devices are banned at meal times and taken off her for punishment.
‘‘I always keep an eye out on what she’s watching. If she’s worried she can always talk about it,’’ Prattley says.
Like most parents Prattley cannot see what is happening all the time so though her daughter must put her devices away by 8pm during school nights, she knows that does not always happen.
Rachel admits sometimes she will sneak a peek on YouTube at night because she does not want to miss anything on her favourite shows Spy Ninjas and Ace Family.
The hour or more does have a negative impact on tiredness the next day and make school work harder, Rachel says.
The teenager had tried to decrease her internet consumption by going swimming and spending more time with friends but since her only sibling Catherine died from an asthma attack in 2017 she tended to spend more time entertaining herself online at home.
Jess Diamond, 19, says that when she was still at high school she would be on social media ‘‘until the wee hours’’ and then spend all the next day tired and unable to concentrate.
She is more self disciplined now but a quick glance at how much time she had been online over three days showed one hour on one day, three hours 41 minutes another and, the longest day, a spike of 6 hours 59 minutes with time more or less evenly split between social networking, Netflix and creativity.
When looking at the app showing the day with the most hours her comments were tinged with a little regret.
‘‘I probably could have been outside. When you’re on social media you don’t do much, you just stay inside because you can’t see the screen properly outside.’’
She has tried to limit her time by using an app which turns the screen off between 11.30pm and 8.30am but due to her waitressing work she had to change it and was back being a little undisciplined.
Diamond did not understand why anyone would miss out on eating because of being on social media.
‘‘That baffles me. Why don’t they just sit in the kitchen.’’
She thinks the all-too easy access to binge-able content was contributing to overuse as it was hard to stop watching episodes of a favourite series.
Her family has always had rules around mobile phone use,
‘‘The time online drags them into the world of their peers, which is a very complex and often unhealthy world that they create for themselves.’’ Adrienne Wood
with no phones allowed when they went out for dinner as they were considered anti-social.
At home they were a bit more relaxed as evening meals were usually eaten in the lounge watching the news on TV.
She is grateful her parents protected her when she was younger by putting boundaries in place to ensure she was only Facebook friends with family members until she was 15.
Then she was only allowed friends that were ‘‘real people’’.
Her mother Sharleyne did not think being online interfered with her daughter getting her chores completed.
‘‘Jess has never done her chores, so the internet had nothing to do with it.’’
Jess’ older brother Jordan, now 24, spent a lot of time on his devices as a teenager, especially gaming. So it was no surprise he became a web developer though he has since moved onto a different career, Sharleyne said.
Excess online use was becoming the leading negative effect on a teenager’s relationship with their parents, Auckland based parent consultant specialising in complex behaviour Adrienne Wood says.
‘‘The time online drags them into the world of their peers, which is a very complex and often unhealthy world that they create for themselves,’’ says Wood.
‘‘There’s a little bit of The Lord of the Flies happening without the older and wiser and mature voices to guide them.’’
Subsequently when a teenager had an issue such as discovering an unwanted pregnancy they would turn to a friend instead of a parent, aunty or school counsellor, and may not get the best advice or support they need.
Wood’s research on resilience in teens showed that the different outcomes between two teenagers who were abused was down to who they turned to. The one who only had peers had a disastrous outcome, while the one who could speak to family members had a more positive result.
Peers did not always offer unconditional love whereas a parent or other significant adult usually did.
Conflict often arose in families when during periods of heightened tension such as around exams, and parents may belatedly lay down the law on device use.
It was about having a relationship for rules to have an effect.
‘‘When a parent does the hard work to turn the relationship around then the teenager will feel cared for and very loved and it can be reversed.’’
Parents and caregivers need to set an example, NetSafe director of education and engagement, Sean Lyons says.
He suggests getting the entire family to commit to no technology at set times with parents and caregivers purposefully switching their own devices off. ‘‘There is such a thing as excessive use which is to the detriment of other things in life.’’
Parents could help young people gauge and self-regulate their online time, he says. ‘‘They need to help them measure it, and face it head on.’’
If discussions were held in the heat of the moment or bans were unrealistic bans, there was the danger of covert online use.
As far as missing meals went, suggesting they eat before they go online was a solution, Lyons says.
He said being safe online was not just about avoiding predators and pornography. ‘‘It’s also about the impact on their own sense of wellbeing and mental health.’’
With self-regulation teenagers were less likely to experience the negative effects including conflict.
One parent who did not want to be named, to protect her children, said it was really tough being a working parent as she had no idea how much time her teenagers – aged 14 and 16 – were spending on their devices when she was not at home.
Her daughter favoured Facebook while her son was into Snapchat and Instagram. He also watched sport online.
She said she got really angry when they were on their phones all the time, especially when she came home from work and they hadn’t brought in the washing or unpacked the dishwasher.
Her daughter’s eyesight had suffered from too much screen time and she has had to update her glasses after a two year prescription.
Setting an example as an adult was not always easy. ‘‘The terrible thing is I’m on the phone a lot with work, checking up on friends out of town. We’re so busy all the time it’s the only way to keep in contact with friends.’’
Even her ‘‘non-technological’’ husband had started using his phone a lot over the last few months to keep up to date with the news and check prices of products for his work.
The remainder of research from the New Zealand Children’s Experiences of Online Risks and Perceptions of Harm will be released on February 11 to coincide with Safer Internet Day.
Netsafe’s Online Safety Parent Toolkit is available at netsafe.org. nz