I Have to Do Five Squats for Every 5 Minutes on Instagram
For over seven years now, my kids have been helping me test smartwatches, phones, and parental controls for Wirecutter’s guides. I’ve reached a point where I know it’s time to let go. That is, it’s time for my teens (one of whom is in her last year of high school) to learn to set their own screen-time limits (they would say this is long overdue).
With parental controls, I’ve been the one determining how much time they can spend on their phones, including making sure they shut down at bedtime. Clearspace shakes things up a bit. Now it’s not so much my teens versus me as it is my teens and me versus the egomaniacal man children making billions of dollars by hijacking our minds. (Or, to put it more nicely, it’s “us versus addictive tech,” Ambrosi said.)
Clearspace is also changing my relationship with my kids. “The referee approach is you set the rules, you blow the whistle,” said Carrie James, co-founder of Harvard’s Center for Digital Thriving, a group that researches youth and technology.
I have long been the referee. Now I’m becoming more of a coach. I offer guidance as needed, and I share and model my tech challenges and how I’m tackling them. But I’m no longer the one stopping the ball or calling for a timeout, tempting as it may be.
“We want to coach our kids so they have a sense [that] they can have control over how tech fits into their lives,” James said. “They can make meaningful, intentional choices.”
James is a parent herself, and she encourages parents and caregivers to start the conversation with questions.
“It’s worth taking a step back and understanding: What is it that my kid is experiencing as they use their device?” she said. “Young people are really alert that they are using devices that sometimes feel out of control. They don’t love their digital habits.”
An app like Clearspace can help. The rest is up to us.
This article was edited by Ivy Liscomb and Kalee Thompson.
