Smart Parenting in the Smartphone Era Part I: Know the Risks

 Part I: Know the Risks


Smart Parenting in the Smartphone Era Part I: Know the Risks

By Wendy Baribeau, LAMFT


Many Catholic parents have decided to give their children computers, smartphones and tablets for a variety of reasons. While nearly all schools in this country, including Catholic ones, have embraced the belief that technology aids learning, most parents are not fully aware of the dangers that unsupervised internet usage creates.


Every day, kids and teens seemed to be glued to their smartphones and devices. Although most parents have a general concern about internet content, lack of offline interests, and attention-span issues, they may not understand the alarming risks that recent studies have revealed. Understanding the risks and admitting your children are vulnerable is the first step to protecting them.


Risk One: Mental Health Disorders are Rising

In 2008, most American teenagers owned a smartphone. Since that time, we have seen an increase in mental health disorders among our nation’s teens. Here are the main concerns:

  • Suicide. Teen suicide rates have increased 56 percent since 2007. Teens who spend three hours or more per day on electronic devices are 35 percent more likely to have at least one suicide risk factor, including hopelessness, lack of meaning, or lost interest in life. Children taking their life by suicide at younger ages today than ever before.
  • Anxiety. Research shows risks of mental health disorders increase with screen time of two hours or more per day.
  • Addiction. A recent research study imposed a 24-hour media abstinence period. These teens reported feeling “paralyzed, going crazy, emptiness, tortured, and insecure,” all of which are classic withdrawal symptoms from substance abuse and dependency.

Risk Two: Underdeveloped Brains More Susceptible

An individual’s brain is not fully developed until age 25. The frontal lobes, which handle judgment, insight and impulse control, are the least mature region of the teenage brain. In addition, a little bit of stimulation to a growing teenage brain leads to strong craving for more rewards that can easily become an addition. This explains why teens become addicted to things quicker and recovery is harder.


Interestingly, 70 percent of teens say they want parents to set online filters, although they probably won’t tell their parents directly. Perhaps this is because God created an ordered relationship between parents and children. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “the fourth commandment …. requires honor, affection, and gratitude toward elders and ancestors.” (CC2199)


In addition, “this commandment includes and presupposes the duties of parents, instructors, teachers, leaders, magistrates, those who govern, all who exercise authority over others or over a community of persons.” (CC2199)

We cannot rely on teenagers to monitor themselves. Parents have a moral obligation to protect their children and teenagers from these dangers.


Risk Three: Pornography More Dangerous Than Ever

Pornography may be one of the most common concerns for Catholic parents today. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that:


“Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense.” (CC2354)


However, pornography exposure goes way beyond even these serious moral offenses today. Here are some growing issues:

  • Age of Exposure. The age when children are viewing pornography for the first time is getting younger. The average age children are seeing porn today is 11 years old, and children rarely tell their parents.
  • Wrong Perspective. In addition, most teens don’t think porn is bad for society, and many view it as sex education.
  • Portrayal of Sex. The content of modern porn is not about sex but violence, degradation of women, and the most extreme sexual acts. The violence, aggression and rape in porn has undoubtedly contributed to the #MeToo culture we live in today.
  • Addiction. Pornography is extremely addictive and both teens and adults find it incredibly hard to stop.
  • Sexual Problems. Porn contributes to erectile dysfunction and sexual aggression, including child on child.
  • Mental Health Problems. Porn increases ADHD symptoms, depression, loneliness, and anxiety.
  • Fuels Child Pornography. Adult pornography fuels the demand for child porn and human trafficking. Children and teenagers are making porn themselves and at times, uploading it to social media. The porn industry makes over $100 billion dollars per year and is aggressively marketing to young potential customers. Large, powerful technology companies are accomplices.

Risk Four: Social Media Magnifies Peer Pressure

Although social media use is not as addictive as pornography, it introduces a new level of problematic peer pressure. Snapchat brags on its website that its daily active users open the app on average 25 times per day. Here are common social media issues:

  • Fear of Missing Something. Teens are naturally worried about missing out, but social media magnifies this fear with 24/7 pressure to keep up. This results in feelings of loneliness and marginalization.
  • Cyberbullying. Cyberbullying can be traumatic and extremely hostile including comments such as “you should kill yourself.”
  • Sexting. Not only is this morally problematic, but it is illegal for teens to possess nudes of anyone under the age of 18.
  • Perfectionism. Photoshop-style filters on Snapchat create an unrealistic standard of “beauty” for young girls.
  • Uneducated Education. Teens are “educating” other teens about sensitive and complex topics such as eating disorders, abortion, depression, cutting, medications, and LGBT issues.

Risk Five: Video Games Fuel Addiction and Dangerous Behavior

In June 2018, the World Health Organization classified “gaming disorder” as a mental health disorder because the effects of excessive gaming are severe. Gaming is highly addictive. More symptoms of ADHD were found in adolescents who played video games for one hour per day. Some of the most popular games include extreme violence, porn, theft, and gambling. Many modern games encourage isolation. Recent studies show correlation between violent video games and physical aggression.


Risk Six: Sophisticated Predators Lurk

The internet has been a boon for pedophiles, sex offenders and predators due to its anonymity and accessibility to kids. Many kids and teenagers enjoy meeting “new friends” or, to parents, “creepy strangers” online. Many even prefer it over face-to-face communication.


Predators are notoriously patient and methodical in the grooming process. They use pornography to lure kids and teens. They use social media sites, email, and gaming chat rooms to slowly build a relationship with unsuspecting or lonely children. Many young girls are harassed for nudes on social media but are too embarrassed to tell an adult. Teenagers can “fall in love” with someone they have never met in person.


Risk Seven: Problematic Programming

Failing to supervise children in selecting TV, movies and videos online creates another risk. Many TV shows and movies rated 13+ will have sex, violence, drug and alcohol use, mental illness, and dangerous pranks without portraying any realistic consequences.


In 2018, Netflix aired a TV series called “13 Reasons Why” that glamorized the story of a teen girl who died by suicide, ignoring the laws on responsible suicide reporting by media companies. Videos on YouTube and YouTube for kids are not censored and showcase the best and worst of humanity from around the globe. Teens watching dangerous pranks and dares often try to imitate them.


Many issues associated with children and teens’ modern use of smartphones can be considered scandalous, and parents have a moral obligation to take action. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Scandal can be provoked by laws or institutions, by fashion or opinion. Therefore, they are guilty of scandal who establish laws or social structures leading to the decline of morals and the corruption of religious practice, or to social conditions that, intentionally or not, make Christian conduct and obedience to the Commandments difficult and practically impossible.” (2286)


Next Week: Practical tips for parents on using internet filters, adding parental controls, managing screen time, and more.

For more information about Wendy or her team, please visit Holy Family Counseling Center.

By Irene Rowland MS, NCC, LPC 07 Jun, 2023
There are many models for the stages of grief. The horseshoe shaped diagram is my favorite and I believe it to be the most realistic. Grief is not linear. People do not proceed through each stage in a neat, orderly fashion. Typically, stages are sometimes skipped and then returned to later, as well as stages being returned to multiple times. This can happen long after a person thought they had worked through that particular stage. Just as the traditional 5 stages of grief by Elizabeth Kubler Ross are not a simple progression through the steps, neither are the many steps in the horseshoe model. If you drew a continuous line of how the steps might go for an individual, you would see that with all the jumbled directions going across and up and down the graph, it would look like a bunch of tangled thread. For many, that’s what grief really looks like. The Descent of Loss It can be a slow descent or a rapid plunge to the depths of grief. As stated already, we may or may not experience all of these stages and not necessarily in the order shown in the diagram. The tumble down to loneliness, guilt and isolation can be quite rough which almost makes those lows look restful compared to what it took to get there. Shock, Numbness, Denial It’s typical to be in a bit of a fog after you get the news of a significant loss, whether that’s of a loved one’s death, a job loss, a serious health diagnosis or any other kind of change that could be considered life changing. Grief is a natural response to the loss of how you thought things would continue to be and the future you expected. Emotional Outbursts, Anger, Fear Grievers can be easily triggered. Some losses are traumatic. With trauma, often there is hypervigilance. The fight or flight instinct is revved up, as though we must be on the lookout for any impending dangers at all times. We have all experienced reactions from people that seem disproportionate to a situation. These emotional outbursts are sometimes due to grief. The increased levels of cortisol when a person is in this escalated state of vigilance causes a lot of wear and tear on one’s body and mind. As a result, anxious, angry, or fearful people are perpetually emotionally and physically drained. This of course can lead to impaired judgement and become a vicious cycle. When there’s an anger response to grief, it can be directed toward others or oneself. Anger turned inward is one of the definitions of depression. The anger is sometimes directed toward the person who died, the boss who did the firing, the spouse who left or sometimes toward those who played “supporting roles” because it’s too difficult to be angry with the source of our angst. Fear drives the thoughts and beliefs of some of the irrational actions and behaviors of a person experiencing a significant loss. A typical piece of advice after a significant loss is to wait at least a year before implementing any big changes such as moving or a change in career. Part of the reasoning for waiting is that the individual will be further along the healing path which usually means that fear is not as much a part of one’s reasoning process. Searchings, Disorganization, Panic Trying to make sense of our pain, of the unexpected tragedies, of man’s inhumanity to man, or any number of other baffling incidences in life, is also a natural reaction. We often feel we can bear a crisis more easily if we can find some purpose in the suffering. Of course, there can be redemption in suffering, miracles can occur in disastrous situations, good can triumph over evil and all of this can be appreciated in retrospect. It is often quite difficult to discern any of this in the midst of the difficulties. Further down the road of one’s healing journey, these treasures can be discovered. I have found that the person who grieves must discover these on their own, rather than having others point them out, because they only sound like empty platitudes coming from others. Disorganization is part of the mental fog and lack of clarity during the depression of grief. Often a person in this state may be unsure of the day of the week or even unclear of the status of the basic things that they normally could keep track of, such as whether they remembered to take a shower or eat lunch. It can be very confusing to find oneself acting and thinking in ways that are so untypical of the usual way of doing things. Often the energy isn’t there to even be concerned about the discrepancy of who they knew themselves to be and who this stranger in the mirror is now. Panic can set in when this disconnect is truly realized. There can be a fear that the old familiar self may not reemerge. Panic can be the answer to all the unanswered questions of what the future might hold. There can be the fear that things will always be this disjointed and hard to understand, that life as one knew it, is gone. Guilt, Loneliness, Isolation, Depression The situations and emotions that grief entails often bring a person to their knees. This is at the bottom of the diagram in the pits of despair. Guilt can color many of the questions we ask ourselves and sometimes there’s a continuation of attempting to blame others and to lay the guilt on their heads. We often have grandiose ideas of our own power to be able to cause certain situations that were actually out of our control. Likewise, we can also assign more power to others than they are capable of having and thereby believing they are at fault in some way in a loss situation. We have all heard absurd news claims that a particular person, country, gender or ethnicity is at fault for a situation when the truth is there are many factors that play into most situations. Loneliness and isolation can breed depression. Sometimes we make matters worse by intentionally shutting out the rest of the world. Time alone and loneliness are not the same thing. We need solitude to think things through, regroup, reflect and recharge. I say that as an introvert. An extrovert gets their energy from those around them, so in that case they may regroup and recharge better with the support of others, talking through their concerns in their grief journey and thereby processing their thoughts aloud. Isolation during grief can also be a protective mechanism against having to put on a mask and acting as though you are doing better than you actually are. Isolation means not having to answer people’s questions of how you are doing or having to deal with all the things people say as an encouragement which turn out to be the opposite. This can put the griever in the awkward position of being cordial when they really want to scream. Re-Entry Troubles If a person stays on the perimeter of life for too long when there’s been a big loss, it can make re-entry more difficult. It is almost as though time stands still for the griever, but the world has moved on and you don’t quite fit in now. Things that were once important to you may now seem trivial. The latest movie, fashion trends, and the current gossip are all pretty insignificant now as compared to whatever importance you may have placed on them at one time. It’s all temporal and often grievers become larger picture type thinkers. Much is trivial when you’ve experienced the degree of brokenness that you didn’t know was even possible prior to your loss. New Relationships, Strengths, Patterns After a major loss, there’s a lot of reevaluation that comes out of the experience. We think differently. We see differently. Often there’s a new thirst for life because we’ve developed a new appreciation for the gifts that still remain. New relationships may come from a support group that helped you weather the storms of your trial. You might decide to use the time you have ahead of you to learn new things, catch up on your bucket list, resurrect old hobbies or any number of ways we can regenerate ourselves. All of these options could involve new people in our life and new ways of doing things. Strengths can develop from weaknesses. Surely, the difficult stages preceding these more positive ones involved succumbing to weaknesses at times. If our faith is predominant in our lives, we undoubtedly experience that in our weakness, He is strong and carries us through. Hope, Affirmation, Helping Others These last stages of grief are part of the adjustment to the “new normal”, the new life without the person, place, career, or situation in which we had such a connection. This is a connection so strong that the loss catapulted us into this grief journey which in many cases eventually ends up also being a growth journey. Most of us are familiar with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which can certainly happen with a complicated grief situation. Some of the PTSD symptoms can occur with “regular” grief. Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) is also a possibility towards the end of the stages of grief. We can become more resilient, kinder, more attentive, more in tune with ourselves and others and generally living a life of more depth and meaning. Grievers typically don’t take things for granted as they may once have done. In the midst of the whirlwind of all these stages and conflicting emotions, God can bring beauty out of sorrow, restoration out of pain, and a peace that surpasses all understanding. This is hard to imagine during a time period when we could not envision there ever being anything positive coming out of loss. Often the magnitude of the loss experience feels like our solid ground is shaking and crumbling beneath our feet. We can find our way again and when we do, our losses become part of our life story. They may even be many chapters of our story, but it’s not the entire story. Our grief becomes part of us and can live side by side with life’s joys. There is life after grief and it can still be good. Photo Credit: unknown source
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