We read these articles (on our phones) and get increasingly concerned about the negative effects of spending so much time on our phones. Nonetheless, we spend sleepless nights scrolling and chatting… and that’s just the way it is. It’s undeniably a bigger problem for teens, who have been inundated with hand-held tech from the get-go (and forced to go completely online by the pandemic during their formative years).

As you’ll read in this article, many teens are also dissatisfied with the amount of their time they spend on screens. Meet Logan, a high school student who actually decided to cut her phone out of her life completely. She went from taking a break from her phone during lockdown to getting rid of her phone altogether! It was at her parent’s request that she went back to having a phone at all (albeit a dumbphone). If you’re interested in hearing Logan’s full story, our full podcast interview with her is linked at the bottom of this post.

Even with so many of us really wanting to break the habit in ourselves and our teenagers, it feels borderline impossible to actually make it happen. This over-attachment to our phones has even warranted its own name, now being called nomophobia. Nomophobia is defined as the irrational fear of being without one’s phone… And if that isn’t concerning enough, statistics show that 66% of us suffer from this phobia.

So with being hooked to our phones to the point of it becoming debilitating, what can we do?

For starters, we can share information and some of Logan’s suggestions that will prompt a more nuanced discussion between you and your teen about technology and its implications in our daily lives. In our conversation with her, Logan shares what she’s learned through her experience of ditching her iPhone and what advice she has for others who can’t follow through with taking a phone break.

We’ll also share a tactic later in this article that you can try to implement at home that may help you and your teen find a better balance.

Like most teens, Logan grew into her phone. She’d been following along with Apple’s devices from the iPod era and found herself living vicariously through her devices once quarantine hit. It enveloped her the way it enveloped most of us - until she decided that enough was enough. She understood that literally all of her socialization was taking place via social media and that it was time for a change.

At first, Logan powered down her phone for a couple of days as an experiment. For her, those couple of days turned into never picking it up again. She shares how she didn’t have a phone at all for over 8 months before being pressured into buying a flip phone by her parents. We’ll get back to this later on.

After transitioning into life without constant access to the internet, Logan noticed loads of positive changes in her well-being. She slept better and thought better, but most importantly she felt better overall. 

“I started seeing things differently, and I just had an overall better outlook on my life. When I look around on the subway, I see so many people on their phones and you know, it gets me wondering how their lives would change as a result and if they would positively be impacted as has occurred for me… A lot of other kids were trying it too and finding the same positive effects.” said Logan in an explanation of how things changed after ditching her smartphone.

Well, beyond the obvious - like peer pressure and the urge to keep up - Logan points to parents as a serious source of the addiction. Parents are guilty of getting phones for their kids earlier for safety reasons. This is understandable in today’s day and age but sets youth up to effectively never learn how to live without their phones. “It's as if our parents are

encouraging it when they make us check in and contact them all the time. I think I definitely experienced a lot of that,” says Logan.

With tracking apps and the general control smartphones have brought to parents, being a “helicopter parent” has become a lot easier to fall into (and normalized) for many. Logan shares that such parental oversight plays a big role in teens getting hooked on their phones. Having been under pressure from her parents, Logan said that a compromise had to happen.

Some of the biggest changes that Logan and the other teens in the Luddite club have reported when splitting from their phones are:

• Longer attention spans: With apps like TikTok on the rise, Logan spoke about how her attention span was at an all-time low before she dropped her phone, (something that affects us all). She shared how she’s become an avid reader since then thanks to being able to focus on books for longer. Abandoning her phone also let her engage more actively with her environment overall.
• A better sleep schedule: After stepping down her screen time, Logan noticed a serious shift in her active hours. Without constant exposure to stimuli, she got into the habit of going to bed earlier and waking up earlier. She shared how much more she enjoys the mornings now.
• More intentional socializing: For Logan, adding the extra step of phone calls or emails to set up outings meant that she needed to add some extra effort. This means only going out when she actually felt like it.

Learning how to deal with being alone: We’ve all but forgotten how to cope with downtime. Forgetting what, dare we say, boredom feels like is actually pretty debilitating for our personal development, Logan points out. She shared that getting to know yourself and your interests beyond the latest TV shows and movies is its own adventure.

For a lot of teens (and even adults) though, the first step of backing away from phone use is trying to recall the last time we were without our phones. Most teens will only be able to recall “detoxing” from their phones during punishment - which isn’t a detox at all, but rather the opposite. Taking away our teen’s phones positions phones as highly valuable and only further endorses their attachment. Making it a punishment to go phoneless amplifies the importance of staying connected.

If this is a conversation you want to have with your teen, try kicking it off with one of the following prompts:

• Ask your teen if they think they're on their phones too much and why - the answer might be 'no' and that's okay 
• Say “I read an article that quoted a teen saying that she felt like she had to have her phone on her all of the time because her parents got worried when they couldn't check in. Do you feel like I check in with you too much (or that I insist you check in with me too much)?”
• Ask your teen to read this article and then ask them what they think about it

We at Teen Brain Trust are also big fans of the suggestion to take phone breaks. We, too, need phone breaks sometimes. It’s obviously easier said than done, but Logan ultimately suggests just trying it for a few hours, a day, or a week. 

If you ask your teen, ‘Do you want to take a break from your phone?’ they will probably say no. So instead, try building in time where you take phone breaks as a family. You can try small breaks, like during meal times, or larger breaks, like during a weekend getaway. 

Logan also recommends that parents try to refrain from imposing phone use onto their teens through constant check-ins, and suggests that we set an example for our teens by cutting back on our own screen time. 

All in all, it’s definitely not an easy move to make for anyone, particularly teenagers. Exploring the differences without being in constant contact via social media is, if nothing else, an experience. Be it only for a short period, the benefits are worth getting familiar with. For those of us who are less intent on demolishing the habit altogether, this article by Teen Vogue offers valuable insight into forming a healthier relationship with our devices.

When will you be taking a phone break?

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO TEEN BRAIN TRUST’S INTERVIEW WITH LOGAN ABOUT THE LUDDITE CLUB!