OPINION: I think most parents go through a challenging time as their kids reach adolescence, when their kids start testing boundaries and trying to define themselves through their peer relationships and risky behaviors.
I remember making my parents’ lives difficult at times, most notably growing narcotic plants in my bedroom and crashing their car in the middle of the night.
This resulted in them looking confused and concerned in the emergency department.
I remember this and tell myself that all parents go through hard times with their adolescents, but also that they all come out on the right side.
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I have evolved into a reasonable adult who got on well with my parents after I left home.
However, the level of conflict that my partner and I have with our son over access to the internet, gaming and generally using social media has sometimes brought us close to crisis.
It dominates our relationship with him.
We have tried various strategies to reduce and manage potential conflicts around technology, but we feel we have largely failed.
It started innocently enough.
When our kids were in elementary school, on their way to high school, we talked about getting phones.
They claimed “every other kid in our class has one”.
They claimed that they would be the only children without a phone and would therefore be social pariahs.
Despite our doubts, we brought phones from the UK.
We imported cell phones with locked operating systems and had an application that allowed us to control their access, track their phone usage, and even track their phone’s location, as long as it was near Wi-Fi.
We thought this was brilliant and were totally hooked on the corporate marketing, which emphasized children’s access to a quality device, with full parental controls.
There was no way our kids could call anyone on their phone unless they asked for permission to add the number to their contacts, which we then had to approve.
They also only had access to applications that we approved. We let them play Minecraft and other educational games and congratulated ourselves on applying a great solution.
Of course, in no time at all, our kids were lobbying us about the limits these phones imposed and “how embarrassing it was in front of their friends” that they couldn’t call anyone without our permission.
It didn’t help that we talked to them regularly about what we’d seen them texting friends.
We could see everything. They had no privacy on these phones.
They soon threw the phones away. Apparently a phone under that much control was no better than no phone at all.
When we realized this hadn’t worked, we folded them up and brought them all the second-hand iPhones the following Christmas.
Although we were not allowed to have data, it was received with great pleasure.
They immediately started tweaking the settings on their phones and soon became experts at operating them.
Of course, after that came requests to access social media.
They needed Wi-Fi to use the phones for social media, and we still wanted to retain some ability to mitigate this, so we brought in a router that was re-marketed as giving parental controls over access and content.
By now my son had received a PlayStation gift and he needed fast internet to play multiplayer games in real time.
Running the broadband through our parental control router kept his gaming constantly interrupted by glitches.
The amount of cursing that would come from him trying to play games became unbearable.
After trying to punish him for cursing or yelling loudly at his PlayStation, he lobbied us incessantly to bypass the router and give it clean access.
At a weak moment, I gave in and he was overjoyed with the improvement in his gaming experience.
I remembered being his age playing Donkey Kong in the fish and chip shop.
I spent hours and a lot of 20 cent coins on that arcade machine, so I was sympathetic to its desire to have a good gaming experience.
So, to be fair to his sister, we bypassed the parental controls and moved to unlimited internet access for everyone.
As a result, we entered the era of regular conflicts over long sessions at the gaming console, or arguments over every kid locked up on their device, watching videos, or constantly communicating via social media.
My main concern was that time on devices had to replace everything else.
Making sure time was spent on school homework became an ongoing struggle.
Practicing music, which used to be done without much resistance, was given a low priority and often wouldn’t happen without it becoming a mandatory condition before allowing device time.
Essentially, we moved into a space where access to devices and the Internet became the only currency we could use to get our kids to do something.
The damage I thought was happening was highlighted by my daughter having a bad experience on Instagram and as a result she decided to delete her Instagram account permanently.
Of course, she soon moved to TikTok. My son had started tinkering with desktop computers and, to my surprise, managed to build his own game console.
Being quite impressed that he could do this, I allowed him to have his bedroom and connect to our broadband.
My partner was less enthusiastic about that.
She was right, of course, he was working on it for hours on end, and often into the middle of the night after we slept.
Any attempt by myself or my partner to limit his time on it was met with so much protest and/or mugging that we would grow tired of the conflict and just give in.
If we cut off his access, he could hold a grudge for days.
I spoke to friends who had similar problems and they all agreed that the grief they received from the children was so disabling that they often avoided the conflict.
Many had given up giving the police access to devices.
Kids from families well enough to have broadband just expected unrestricted access. I decide to challenge this and I brought a timer and installed it on our router.
It turns off the internet every weeknight at 9pm. It turns on again at 6am and stays on until midnight on Friday and Saturday.
I thought this was reasonable, but it took two weeks before it was no longer the victory de jour.
My son, who has an independent income from a side job, simply responded by buying data packs on his phone.
We now have to ask for his phone at night, otherwise he will be on it all night.
This is now a perpetual evening battle that drains my partner and I so much that sometimes we just give up. I’m sure our son has learned that he can wear us out.
This generation of children is growing up with a very different experience than I had.
They are the most connected, but also the most prone to anxiety disorders. Obesity and related health problems are increasing and compared to previous generations, participation in physical activity appears to be decreasing.
Maybe I’m catastrophizing. They will all be fine and we have just had our own parental challenge like all generations.
I really wonder if our kids will give their kids the same level of access to devices and online content that we’ve allowed?
I hope not.
The author’s name has been withheld to protect their children.