mental health and social media – Dr. Stephanie Smith

UGH! Enough of the onslaught of news, “news” and on-line conversations already. It’s too much. Keeping abreast of the latest goings-on and government orders are one thing, spending hours in deep-dive mode on your phone or tablet is another.

I recently wrote an article over at Health eCareers in which I offered real, do-able strategies for decreasing media and screen time. After all, it’s rarely as easy as saying “I’m just going to look at my phone less.” Yea right. Here’s one idea:

One tip I didn’t write about in the article:

Make use of the tools that are already on your phone! For iphone users, go to Settings –> Screen Time –> Then play around with Downtime, App Limits and Communication Limits options. You can also watch your Daily Activity on the Screen Time page. Monitoring this is one way to keep yourself honest.

Check out the entire article, with ideas for managing both social and traditional media here:

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I think parenting has always been a tough job, but these days the blistering-fast changes in technology have made it more (at least intellectually) challenging than ever before.

I often talk about the dilemma like this: When I was growing up there was no such thing as cell phones, the internet or Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat so I can’t call my mom and ask her questions like…

At what age did you let me get a Twitter account?

Did you “friend” my boyfriends on Facebook?

How much time is too much time on YouTube for a 10 year old?

…to help me make good parenting decisions for my own family.

And it’s a huge bummer that I can’t ask her because that’s how so much of parenting is done: remembering how we were parented and/or asking our own parents for advice.Â But that doesn’t work anymore because technology changes so rapidly that the parenting rules of just a few years ago now seem antiquated.Â Remember when we used to say…

Keep the family computer in a public place like the kitchen so you can monitor your kids’ usage.

…Ugh. That’s so 2004. And totally irrelevant.

It can be hard to keep up with the changes and the apps/sites/outlets that kids are frequenting.Â I just saw this sort of funny, sort of serious description of the tops sites and how kids use them.Â Take a look: