In our GKIS blog articles, we’ve talked before about how social media and smartphone use can be addicting for kids, and how phone addiction can have negative impacts on kids’ and teens’ mental health and social skills. But what GetKidsInternetSafe is passionate about is prevention. That is why Dr. Bennett created the Social Media Readiness Course for tweens and teens. In this best-selling course, she incorporated education about the red flags of risk for digital injury as well as the psychological wellness practices she’s developed in her psychology practice over 30 years. Many of these practices involve mindfulness, a mental health practice that has demonstrated great outcomes. In today’s GKIS article, we will discuss what mindfulness is exactly and whether it is something your family can use to help prevent the damage caused by smartphone addiction.
Defining Smartphone Addiction
As smartphones have become more popular, it can be difficult to determine whether one is using their phone “too much” or if they are addicted. Studies are finding that we are dependent on our phones and many people are developing separation anxiety from them.[1][2] Psychologists have been looking for ways to prevent smartphone addiction. One of the more promising findings has been mindfulness practice.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a type of mental practice that’s been gaining popularity. It has its roots in Buddhist philosophy, but it’s a non-religious form of meditation and mental awareness of the current moment.[3]
Mindfulness can be improved with exercises that focus on breathing and focusing on your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.[4] The goal is to bring your attention to what’s happening in the present moment, instead of stressful thoughts about the past or future.[3]
Health benefits include improving cognitive ability and reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.[3]
How can mindfulness help with smartphone addiction?
A 2019 study found that mindfulness can lessen the impact of separation anxiety related to having a smartphone addiction. Students in the study who scored higher on a mindfulness rating were less likely to have depression and anxiety symptoms.[5]
It was also found in a 2017 study that low ratings of mindfulness were predictive of young adults having internet and screen addictions.[6]
Another study found that mindfulness was also able to lessen the impact of bullying and cyberbullying on student depression.[7] This suggests that mindfulness can help with the symptoms of common digital injuries, not just the internet and phone addiction itself.
What can I do if someone in my family has a phone addiction?
There are many easy mindfulness exercises available online. Most only take between five to ten minutes. A quick Google or YouTube search for “mindfulness exercises” can help you find one that works for you.
It’s also important to help make sure that your family doesn’t become addicted to their smartphones in the first place. Our GKIS Screen Safety Essentials Course is a set of four modules that will help walk your kids through the most important things they can do to keep themselves safe online.
For a more direct approach to your kids’ internet safety, The GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit will provide you with apps and guides on how to implement parental controls and keep an eye on what your kids are doing online, in a way that you and your family can both be happy with.
Thanks to CSUCI intern Brandon Bishop for doing research on smartphone addiction and mindfulness and authoring this article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Ask anybody what they need more of – and they’ll say SLEEP! Surveys report that sleep deprivation among Americans is rampant. As a psychologist who treats kids, teens, and adults, I see that those who suffer the most are teens! Teens are burdened with a ton of schoolwork and the temptations of social media, video gaming, and binge-watching YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix. With crazy busy work weeks, we crave “me-time,” especially during those precious moments when we’ve settled in for bed without interruptions and distractions. Unfortunately, most people don’t know why sleep is so important. Without enough sleep, we are at risk for mental illness and overall performance decline. Today’s GKIS article goes over the reasons why sleep is so important and how to preserve your mental health and learning capacity by protecting much-needed restorative sleep.
Why is sleep so important?
During sleep, our brains conduct general housekeeping and memory-strengthening duties. Housekeeping tasks necessary for brain health include the pruning, repair, and new growth of neurons and the removal of toxins.
Memory strengthening, called memory consolidation, occurs by stabilizing memory traces that were collected while awake. Memory consolidation occurs with both declarative (fact-based) and procedural (how-to) information. Rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep is particularly important for stabilizing complex or emotionally charged memories.[i]When we don’t get enough sleep, our brain’s housekeeping and memory consolidation tasks remain undone, leaving us unable to efficiently acquire (onboard) or retrieve information.
Sleep deprivation not only stunts learning, but it can also cause:
mood swings,
negative mood states like depression, irritability, and anxiety,
If people regularly sleep fewer than six hours a night, research has found that they may have:
a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease,
a 200% increased chance of having a heart attack or stroke,
a 70% reduction in cancer-fighting T-cells, and
disrupted melatonin and cortisol which can lead to weight gain and Type 2 diabetes.
For those who stay awake 16 hours straight, they may lower their overall functioning to resemble somebody who is legally drunk. Furthermore, sleep-deprived individuals often fail to recognize impairment. In other words, they don’t realize the costs and keep burning the candle at both ends.
Vamping
Missing out on much-needed sleep and staying up all night on screens is called vamping.
Teens with chronic sleep deprivation have been found to demonstrate:
How might you decrease the risk of vamping and encourage healthy sleep?
Stage the room to be restful.
I know it’s nearly impossible to motivate kids to unclutter their rooms. But a soothing environment contributes to a soothed mind. Offer your support by helping your child create a more restful environment with a fresh bedroom makeover. Light paint colors, soft textures, organized closets and bedside tables, soft lighting, white noise makers, and yummy smells can turn a chaotic hovel into a relaxing paradise.
Recognize that nutrition, exercise, and screen content impact the quality of sleep.
Research has demonstrated that young children who watch violent television content have more sleep problems, particularly delayed onset of sleep, than children who view age-appropriate content.[iv] Furthermore, kids who get adequate nutrition and exercise, especially outdoor exercise because of sunlight setting your circadian rhythm, also get better quality sleep. In practice, I find that teens, in particular, benefit from the mood benefits of regular cardio and cooperative team play.
No screens in the bedroom.
Why? Because screens wake up our brains! The blue LED light from the screen stimulates the photosensors in the retina that signal the brain to suppress melatonin production (our sleep-regulating hormone) and makes us more alert. Less melatonin disrupts our natural circadian rhythms, which can lead to sleep during the day and wakefulness during the night.
Using screens before bedtime has been found to cause people to:
go to bed later,
prolong the time it takes to fall asleep,
delay the timing of REM sleep, reduce the amount of REM sleep and sleep overall,
Screens also condition us to be awake in bed. If we are often awake in bed, our bodies will automatically be conditioned to cue, or believe that the bed is an “awake-only” zone.
Alternatively, if we only rest and sleep in bed, our bodies will be conditioned that the bed is a “sleep-only” zone.
In psychology, we call this type of cued learning classical conditioning. By these principles, we must resist the urge to do anything in bed but sleep to develop good expectations and habits.
Make the No Screens in the Bedroom Rule BEFORE it’s necessary. It’s asking a lot to say no TV, video games, tablets, or smartphones in the bedroom, but vamping leads to sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation leads to impulsivity and risk-taking.[vi] Impulsivity while in intimate spaces leads to intimate gestures like sexting and viewing inappropriate online content.
Also, use alarm clocks with red-lighted numbers in bedrooms rather than screens for timekeeping.
Encourage a soothing nighttime ritual.
We are creatures of habit. Habitual activity during the thirty-minute bedtime wind-down signals the body to anticipate rest. Components of a soothing ritual may include soft lighting; quiet, repetitive, or white noise sounds; and comforting activities. Sticking to a consistent bedtime schedule is also important.
Screens off thirty minutes before lights out.
As our brains sort through our memory caches, information is prioritized to either forget or remember. Because experiences that trigger emotion are typically important, evolution has shaped our brains to prioritize memories infused with emotion. Based on cognitive science theories, looping on a troubling experience is thought to be the cause of nightmares.
Just like the response to fright when we’re awake, stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline dump into our bloodstream when we have nightmares. If we are troubled upon falling asleep, agitated dreaming and tossing and turning may result, leaving us tired, irritable, and cognitively scrambled the next day. Over time, this can seriously impair mental health.
Although emotionally triggering and arousing screen activities like gaming, texting, or viewing activating content aren’t as troubling as real-life trauma, they still stimulate the same brain regions activated with chronic stress, often for hours at a time. The hangover from chronic stress has been referred to as mental brownout. Limiting activating screen activities at night and giving your children time to soothe prior to bedtime will result in better quality sleep overall and pave the way for healthy learning during the day. Particularly, avoid eating, triggering discussions, video gaming, and intense exercise before bed.
Teach sophisticated self-soothing strategies.
The opportunity to spend time with a relaxed parent is another factor critical to self-soothing. From birth, a child’s brain synchronizes with a responsive parent. Eye contact, narrative moment-to-moment comments with emotion words, and general conversation teach kids what emotions are and how to deal with them.
We cannot provide this kind of synching and teaching if we are focused on screens instead of each other. Also, if you don’t sleep well one night, don’t stress about it. Getting anxious or angry will wake you up more, and most of us get poor sleep here and there and simply make it up later.
If you are reading this because you are taking our Social Media Readiness Course, you’re about to learn cognitive-behavioral exercises like diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, mindfulness, imagery, and meditation. These skills can prevent even the most persistent sleep disorders.
Exercising one’s mind to relax is critical to self-soothing. Another option for overcoming some of the negative effects of sleep deprivation is napping.
A full cycle of sleep takes about ninety minutes and provides cognitive rejuvenation that improves procedural memory and creativity with no sleep inertia (grogginess). Sixty to thirty minutes is good for slow-wave sleep, which helps with fact memory and retrieval but may still result in grogginess. Twenty to ten-minute power naps are shown to increase alertness and energy. If you have time to nap, it’s best to spend ninety minutes to complete a sleep cycle or just a power nap for ten.
[i] Xie, L., Kang, H., Xu, Q., Chen, M., Liao, Y., Thiyagarajan, M., O’Donnell, J., Christensen, D., Nicholson, C., Iliff, J., Takano, T., Deane, R., &
Nedergaard, M. (2013). Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain. Science 342.6156: 373-77. Web.
[ii] Goel, N., Rao, H., Durmer, J., & Dinges, D. (2009). Neurocognitive Consequences of Sleep Deprivation. Seminars in Neurology 29.04: 320-39. Web.
[iii] Dewald-Kaufmann, J., Oort, F., Bogels, S., & Meijer, A. (2013). “Why Sleep Matters: Differences in Daytime Functioning Between Adolescents with Low & High Chronic Sleep Reduction & Short & Long Sleep Durations.” Journal of Cognitive & Behavioral Psychotherapies, 13, 171-182.
[iv] Garrison, M. & Christakis, D. (2012). The impact of a healthy media use intervention on sleep in preschool children. Pediatrics, 2011-3153; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2011-3153
[v] Chang, A., Aeschbach, D, Duffy, J., & Czeisler, C. (2014). Evening Use of Light-emitting EReaders Negatively Affects Sleep, Circadian Timing, & Next-morning Alertness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.4: 1232-237. Web.
[vi] Killgore, W., Kamimori, G., & Balkin, T. Caffeine Protects Against Increased Risk-taking Propensity During Severe Sleep Deprivation. Journal of Sleep Research 20.3 (2010): 395-403. Web.
Well, so many things that I can’t possibly finish that sentence. Considering all of the moms I know, it isn’t an overstatement to say we all parent very differently.
Some of us strive for ultimate enrichment, with weeks crammed full of music lessons, sports, and club meetings. We may struggle for creative quiet.
Others of us delight in lots of home time full of craft supplies, home-cooked meals, and climbing trees. We struggle for scheduled adventure.
And some of us insist on activities rich in learning, hunting out the perfect schools to inspire intellectual excellence. We struggle for silliness and giggles.
Ultimately, we all struggle for balance.
It turns out moms will never achieve the perfect balance. Being a family is a perfect blend of imperfect chaos and failure. Even the most ambitious of us have to live without things we really want. It’s not how densely rich our lives are that counts, but rather, how you live a collection of perfect moments.
In my current silent morning moment, the sun is peeking up over the hill and I’m snuggled in my warm bed with my laptop glowing on my lap. It’s so quiet, I can hear the puppy snoring in the next room and a single sleepy bird just warming up his chirp. I smell a delicious hint of cinnamon pinecones that I bought yesterday and threw in a basket in my kitchen. My husband snuck out of bed a bit ago to let the dogs out so he can meditate on the balcony. I grin because often his meditation is followed by a nap, but he gets mad if I notice. My sarcastic hilarity about his morning “meditation” sometimes goes unappreciated.
The truth is I admire him tremendously for making that happen. After all, I fully intend to meditate. And workout. And cook more thoughtful new meals. But instead, I’ve been focusing on taking care of my sick mother and her stuff, getting the kids fed and clothed, and scheduling precious outings with my husband and friends to feed the woman that I am outside of mothering.
Fulfilling every “I’m gonna…” item on my list will never happen. In the meantime, I will commit to mindful Zen moments several times a day where I soak in every delicious sensation and fill my heart with the profound pleasure of knowing how lucky I am to love and be loved. Since the early days when mindfulness became vogue in clinical practice, I have recognized that our lives are not made up of huge ambitious building blocks. Our lives are built of tiny fleeting precious moments.
Let’s capture as many moments today as we can manage. Even chocolate smeared faces and broken lamps will trigger sentiment and a quiet smile one day in our future. So instead of pitching a fit in the present, commit to sneaking off for a hot tea and a moment of grace, recognizing that there is somebody who has it far, far worse.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty GetKidsInternetSafe.com
All of us find it challenging sometimes to meet our obligations AND be an awesome parent. I hope this blog inspires you to be present and engaged with your kids today in a way that fills your heart and soul.
There is a secret to being an awesome parent! It also comes with a bonus feature of being the secret to life. It takes deliberate effort, but it’s fun and easy and requires you to fill your heart like you did as a child.
FLOOD YOUR BRAIN WITH HAPPINESS
AND
SHARE IT!!
Immediately upon reading this, did you…
A. Nod knowingly with a gentle, celebratory smile?
OR
B. Roll your eyes back with an exhale of defeat?
Your reaction determines which camp cabin you’ll create today, A) Camp Champion or B) Camp Naysayer?
Did you go to summer camp when you were little? If not, I bet you wanted to. Summer camp is every child’s dream; camp counselors with silly names like Skeeter, dirty sneakers, chili burgers, adventurous hikes, giggling skits, flashlight duels, and scary midnight sounds. Summer camp is a regular, magic-child-day multiplied by extra special. As a parent, you design and model which camp cabin your kids dwell in everyday. It’s all about how you “skeeter” it. Today, make it extra special.
As a child psychologist, I’ve learned how to capture, delight, and light up my little patients the minute they walk in the waiting room. My husband calls it my “sunshine” and often comments on the evident power of providing a ray of light to my patients. Once I capture their little hearts by showing them how they throw a sparkle into my day, they become deeply engaged in the alliance and work hard to meet their goals. After a session, Camp Champion parents feel the momentum, take the baton, and lead their children to victory. The sunshine is easy to elicit and it invigorates me. Honestly, I’m blessed to have my heart flooded with it many times a day. Psychologists call this being mindful and engaged.
Children thrive in Camp Champion, where wonder, delight, and magic blossom spontaneously. Beds get made by leprechauns, toothbrushes create swirls of sparkling fairy dust, pop songs get belted out with grand flourish, zigzag paths spring between rooms, and a lurching zombie cooks breakfast and pack lunches while dramatically dragging his broken foot behind him.
During magic moments, creative conversation blossoms and allows you to become fully aware of your children and what is important to them. The material from your mutual delight will seed private jokes and silly shticks that will provide delightful hits of entertainment to sprinkle throughout a day, everyday.
With so much to do and distractions pulling at your attention, it is easy for the home/cabin to become Camp Naysayer. If you get sucked into the vortex of business, your kids will find things to do on their own, complain of being bored when really they’re lonely, and they’ll seek solace with too much screen time. Some independent play and screen time is awesome, but every day, all day is too much. And I suspect that if you’re the leader of the Naysayer cabin, you too are lost behind your screen and also feeling busy, but bored…and lonely.
As a Mom, I’m aware that it’s impossible to spend all day in magical playtime. At this very moment while I’m writing this blog, The Babies (what we call the little ones even though they are now 12 and 10 years old) are orbiting me like long-legged chattering planets. My daughter is sitting on the stool next to me happily prattling about the visit I just promised her to the lamb barn this afternoon where we will volunteer time shoveling hay and feeding bottles to tiny lambs. Meanwhile, my 10 year-old son, not quite as infatuated with shoveling, is negotiating a pre-adventure visit to the shaved ice spot complete with rainbow flavors. My thoughts are engaged in no fewer than four different places. But I’m taking my own advice. When they talk I stop my activity, look them straight in the eye, and share a smile. Work can wait for this precious moment. With my oldest away at college now, I’m aware these moments are fleeting. My soul holds on to our magic moment memories like a direct feed to my life source.
Today be Camp Champion and skeeter your daily activities. When the kids aren’t around, block off some time to do your work and accomplish it without distraction. THEN, block off playtime with your kids. When you first lay eyes on them, soak them in with gratefulness and let them see your enthusiasm for the magic they bring into the room. Throw your sunshine, get amped, smile big, and challenge them to an adventure for champions!! They will buzz with excitement.
If you have a friend who is excellent at Camp Champion or who has earned a precious day with his/her babies, pass on GetKidsInternetSafe.com. I’d also love to hear about your magic moments in the comments!
Love makes us happy and time brings us love. Honor it. Cheers to a day of engagement with your kids rather than your technology.
