My nephew smashed up his parents’ bedroom because they turned off the internet
A story that’ll terrify every parent, by DAISY GOODWIN
ACOUPLE of weekends ago, my sister rang me in tears. My nephew, a bright, sweetnatured boy in his early teens, had been playing an online computer game all day and kept ignoring her requests to come downstairs for dinner.
Eventually, fed up with being completely ignored, she unplugged and hid the internet router — the little box that connects all the computers in your home to the internet.
He retaliated by going into his parents’ bedroom and smashing it up — throwing a lamp across the room and hurling books and photographs on to the floor.
She was distraught, and so was I, to think that this kind, thoughtful boy, who writes brilliant stories about talking dogs and gives me the warmest hugs in the world, could turn into a violent, bedroom-busting thug. This was not the boy I knew.
But was I surprised? No. As any mother of a teenager knows — and unlike my sister whose children are only just getting to that age, I’ve been around this particular block twice — coming between teens and their digital device of choice is a dangerous business.
Only last week, a mother in Colorado in the U.S. was admitted to hospital because her 12-yearold daughter had allegedly tried to poison her for the second time by putting bleach in her water carafe because the mother had taken away her mobile phone.
The first time the mum tasted bleach she thought her daughter had just been too enthusiastic with the cleaning fluid. The second time she realised what was happening and shopped her to the police.
The truth — and as mother to a 14year-old girl, I can testify to this — is that digital devices, computer games and social media are as addictive to the teenage mind as drugs.
They warp their behaviour and turn them into antisocial monsters. No responsible parent would give their child a gram of cocaine for Christmas, but I would argue that giving them an iPhone with unlimited internet access could be just as dangerous. LIKE
a drug, a phone or computer gives instant access to excitement. It might be the high of getting to the next level on a video game or getting a record number of ‘likes’ on Instagram. Or, far more sinister, the disturbing thrill of watching porn — or even uploading your own pornograpnic images for others to gawp at.
Of course, all these dangers apply to adults, too, but the digital high is so much more powerful when you’re a teenager.
Can’t we all remember that pull? That almost visceral ache to speak to your friends, to dissect gossip, to be at the centre of things. At that age, I’d spend hours on the phone talking to my friends, and had to be dragged away from the receiver for dinner.
But there’s a huge difference between talking in semi-public (the phone was in the hall) and viewing provocative pictures in private on a mobile.
Last week, actors Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory became the latest in a long line of celebrities to congratulate themselves about how strict they are with their children over screen time. Their nine-year- old daughter and eight- year- old son are supposedly allowed only ten minutes a day during the week, and nothing at all at weekends. I applaud their resolution. I also note their children are still of an age where it’s possible to impose these kind of rules and expect to be obeyed. When the Lewis/McCrory offspring reach adolescence, I wish their parents al l the luck in the world. My daughter, like most teenage girls, uses her phone to interact with friends — her phone usage is essentially a 24/7 extension of her social life. I know that unless I forcibly remove it, and strictly enforce our family’s ‘no phones after 9pm rule’ she’d happily sleep with her mobile under her pillow: four-fifths of teenagers with mobiles just that.
While she pleads that she ‘can’t wake up without her phone alarm’, I know the reason she really wants it is to let her get her fix of text message conversations with her friends, which would go on all night if I let her have the phone. The same applies at meal times. If I didn’t impose strict rules about no phones at the table, I would have stopped having any influence on my daughter’s life except as the human cashpoint that pays for the machine to which she is so hopelessly addicted.
And it is an addiction. Research has shown that back-and-forth texting activates the same parts of the brain that respond to taking heroin.
When I shout at my daughter to stop texting and talk to me, what she hears is me saying ‘ stop enjoying this fabulously pleasurable experience that makes you feel good and connected to the world and instead concentrate on a grumpy, middle-aged woman who wants to nag you about your homework’.
Not much of a choice, is it? The only way I can actually get her undivided attention is to take the phone away and refuse to give it back until she’s done the things I’ve asked her to do. It’s never a popular move.
When I first tried it, two years ago, there were major tantrums — she never smashed up my bedroom, but there were slammed doors and Post-it notes saying ‘I HATE YOU’ left around the house.
It would take days to get to a point where we could have a half-civil conversation. As she gets older (she’s now nearly 15) she accepts, albeit reluctantly, that there have to be limits. Maturity is teaching her that things like sleep, and being able to switch off from constant chatter are important.
It’s even harder for mothers of boys. Apart from the problem of porn, there is the whole world of video games, which, like social media for girls, offers a completely absorbing alternative reality that is addictively compelling. My nephew and his friends will happily play all day without a break, forgetting to eat, sleep or have any communication. They adore games like DOTA 2 ( Defence Of The Ancients), which is a kind of online battle arena where players using different computers — possibly on opposite sides of the globe — can take each other on.
It’s a self- contained world where puny teenage boys can become all- powerful through their skill at the keyboard. For many players, it’s their entire social life. My nephew comes home from school and spends the evening playing the game with his real friends from school and new friends he has met online.
My sister has been concerned that he spends so much time playing this game but until the router rage incident, she’d been reluctant to interfere in something that seemed to give him so much satisfaction. While these games appeal most of all to boys, girls can get just as hooked. One of my daughter’s friends admitted to me that on school nights she ‘restricts’ herself to three hours playing DOTA 2.
ON A non- school night, she’ll play for seven or eight hours straight, from 8pm to 3 or 4am. Not surprisingly, she always looks shattered. When I ask if she thinks she is addicted, she says: ‘Yes, I literally spend the whole day wishing I was playing.’
When I ask if that worries her, she says: ‘No, why would it? The only thing I am missing out on is all the parties that I don’t enjoy, so I’m all right.’
Substitute the word ‘video game’ for ‘heroin’ in that last scene, and it fits seamlessly. The physical characteristics are pretty much the same, too. She’s wan and pasty, with bags under her eyes and struggles to chat for long.
I once invited her to come on holiday with us to a house with a swimming pool and glorious views, but she refused because there was no broadband.
I hope all these teens will at some point grow out of their addiction and emerge blinking into the sunlight, but I worry that too much time spent online will
deprive them of the social skills they’ll need to have successful lives. My female DOTA warrior assures me ( by text, between games) that she’s learning about winning and teamwork. I really hope she is right.
But what she isn’t learning is how to look people in the eye and have a conversation.
No wonder so many employers are complaining that the new generation of workers have problems with the simplest social interaction. If they were online, they would be no problem, but talking face-to-face is something they’re just not used to.
So how does a responsible parent stop their children from getting addicted to their phones?
As I tried to explain to my distraught sister (and Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory, take note), you can’t get rid of them altogether. Modern life is increasingly unfeasible without access to the internet.
Annoyingly, the first rule is to check your own usage — if you’re constantly checking your phone, no teenager is going to listen to you when you tell them their quality of life will be improved by going offline.
The second rule is to have a digital bedtime. In my house, all devices are switched off at 9pm.
I know one parent who unplugs the router every night at 8pm to stop his children playing video games all night. But he had to then sneakily buy a second secret modem so he could go online and catch up on his emails without the youngsters seeing. The most important thing is to provide activity in the day that a teen feels is a halfway acceptable alternative to the digital paradise one click away.
It might be cooking a meal together or playing a game like Scrabble or charades. All children, even grumpy teens, love beating their parents at board games, so grit your teeth and be a good loser.
It’s hard work, but every parent needs to have some kind of strategy if they want their teens to come out the other side with the basic social skills everybody needs.
TWO weeks after the fateful night of the bedroom incident, my sister is already seeing results from such an approach. She quickly decided to stop being upset and get tough.
After she had made her (by now extremely contrite) son clean up the bedroom and raid his pocket money to pay for a new lamp, she put him on a digital diet — no internet use except in the sitting room for schoolwork only.
Only when he had stuck to those rules for a week did she allow him limited access to the world of DOTA 2.
It was difficult at first, but the other night, he came in to show her a cartoon strip he had drawn and illustrated for her. It was funny and sweet — and a world away from digital warfare.
‘I am so glad I did it. I feel like I have my son back,’ she told me.
I can only hope the two of them can keep it up.