How to make sure your children can enjoy the summer without a device in their hands

Summer holidays mean more free time for children. So how can parents encourage teens to make good use of this time to put away their devices?

Insight Counseling psychotherapist Mary Morehouse says it all starts with a family conversation. Mary tells The Lift that social media is a part of teenagers’ lives and that we can’t pretend it isn’t.

He explains to The Lift: “It was designed to be addictive. So let’s have a little empathy, from a parent’s perspective, about how difficult this is to deal with.”

Another issue is that this baby’s brains are still developing. “They don’t have the prefrontal cortex, that decision-making ability that was developed to stop. They don’t really know because they can’t know.

Research shows that teenagers spend an average of 3.5 hours a day in front of screens, and about half say it makes them feel worse.

Mary suggests teenagers check how much time they spend on the Internet and then check how they feel – do they feel better or worse?