Clear, practical advice on kids and screens.
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Short answers to the questions parents actually ask. The answer first, then the reasoning. The full thinking is in the article each one links to.
10 questions
Often because you're escaping something: restlessness, a dull task, the silence where your own thoughts turn up, and the phone is the nearest emergency exit. Learning to sit with that discomfort takes practice. The notifications, around 60 a day, are quick to turn off.
From the article: Take back control of your focus: become “indistractable”
Start with the notifications. Turn off every one that isn't urgent the moment it arrives, and your phone stops interrupting you 60 times a day. You decide once, and the decision lives in your settings instead of your willpower. Your phone is a tool again.
From the article: Take back control of your focus: become “indistractable”
Everything that isn't urgent the moment it happens, I'd say. Open Settings, then Notifications, and keep calls, the calendar and perhaps plain text messages. Email, LinkedIn, Snapchat, news, games and offers are built to feel urgent without being urgent.
From the article: Take back control of your focus: become “indistractable”
Because they earn money every time you open them. Your attention is the product, and a notification is the app's way of calling you back in. Worth telling your child: “The apps buzz because it pays them. Now we decide who gets to interrupt us.”
From the article: Take back control of your focus: become “indistractable”
More than you notice. A vibration alone is enough: in one experiment, concentration dropped measurably in people who heard their phone buzz without checking it, roughly as much as if they had used it. The thought “who was that?” costs you focus.
From the article: Take back control of your focus: become “indistractable”
Over 25 minutes on average, when researchers followed office workers through their working day. By the time people were back in the interrupted task, they had passed through two others. Each notification you allow in costs far more than the seconds it takes to read.
From the article: Take back control of your focus: become “indistractable”
Kids read every glance at the phone as something mattering more than them, before they can say so. Parents often distracted this way report more restlessness in their kids. In restaurants, kids nag more once the phone comes out, and replies turn short and sharp.
From the article: Take back control of your focus: become “indistractable”
Mostly by doing it yourself. A parent who leaves the phone face down and does nothing when it buzzes shows, day after day, that a person can own their own attention. Explaining and repeating help, but the example weighs most.
From the article: Take back control of your focus: become “indistractable”
I would, but together with your child and after you've done your own. Go through the apps and let your child answer whether each one is ever urgent. Friends who genuinely need them fast can call or text, and they learn that quickly.
From the article: Take back control of your focus: become “indistractable”
Add them to your phone's “always allow” list under Focus or Notifications, and they get through regardless. For total quiet, give your closest people a separate messaging app, Signal or Viber say, with notifications always on. And ask them to call if it's urgent.
From the article: Take back control of your focus: become “indistractable”
