Mum Mind Podcast: 'I see boys dropping out of sport at the age of 12 because of their online lives'

A new podcast series about keeping children safe online aims to empower parents to know what to do, and say, to promote sensible screen use.

Tue, 12 Mar, 2024 - 15:01

Helen O’Callaghan

When parents talk to Bethan O’Riordan about their child’s online life, two issues unfailingly come up. First, there’s a sense of going around in circles, of never really getting anywhere.

“Parents say ‘I ask my child to come off their device, they say no, and a huge argument ensues. I take the device away … and then I give it back. Nothing gets resolved’,” says psychotherapist O’Riordan, who specialises in parenting issues.

Parents also don’t like “who their child is” on their smartphones. “We’re mainly talking children aged nine and over. Parents hate the way the screen hypnotises their child. They can’t talk to them — they feel the child has gone off to another planet.

“Families are hanging out less, and many parents, especially of teens, are afraid to say ‘no’ around devices. They’re afraid of losing their child even more.”

O’Riordan and toddler behaviour expert Stef McSherry of Kinderama have launched a podcast series about keeping children safe online. The aim is to empower parents to know what to do, and say, to promote sensible screen use.

O’Riordan and McSherry want parents to know: How much is too much? What’s the developmental impact of screens? How to control screen/device use in your home. Rules for being online and what to do when it all goes wrong. And how to manage those after-screen meltdowns.

Stef McSherry, Founder and Creator of Kinderama and Kinderama.com

The podcasters are launching their three-part series because of “demand from parents, and an increase in children and teens presenting with complications arising from screens — poor concentration and social skills, developmental delay, anxiety, and self-harm”.

O’Riordan says the online world on a tiny screen is hyper-stimulating for children. “Their senses are so hyper-stimulated they’re just not motivated by the normal things of life. I see the natural pleasure and motivation for life waning in children. I see boys dropping out of sport at the age of 12/13, where they wouldn’t have before.

“I see younger children just not interested in the likes of digging in the mud, or sitting in a restaurant colouring. Children can’t find anything in the real world that matches the high level of excitement in the online.”

With a recent CyberSafeKids survey finding that one-quarter of six-year-olds have their own smartphone, O’Riordan emphasises the importance of play for younger children. “Play and movement underpin emotional regulation. These are the foundation for how young children manage their feelings. They don’t learn through logic — play is everything. So if we’re replacing play with screens, children are missing out developmentally.”

O’Riordan believes most of the life skills we need develop from being with our family. “Family’s the training ground for life. Hanging out with them in real life creates secure attachments. There’s the natural falling out and coming back together that we need to learn for life. This opportunity for learning is gone if our children aren’t hanging out with us.”

In contrast, O’Riordan sees a fakeness in ‘relationships’ children have in the online world.

“In real life, relationships are tricky and sticky. You have to negotiate and get on with people you don’t like. Online, children are so used to creating a utopia for themselves. They’re in control of the game, of the group on snapchat, of who they want to talk to.

“Yet, one of the greatest skills is tolerance. Learning to tolerate people who won’t play our game — that’s great. Whereas in the online world, you can be excluded, deleted, removed — and that’s not life.”

Describing their podcast as “an antidote to the murky parenting advice” in the online/social media world, O’Riordan cites some of the questionable advice she has heard. “Like saying to a parent ‘why don’t you set up a fake snapchat account with a fake picture of a really pretty girl/boy and then, [as this person], ask your child to add you as a friend. If they accept the friendship, you know your child is lying to you around whether they’d communicate with somebody they don’t know’.”

But … hang on, says O’Riordan: What kind of relationship do you want with your child? “If you want it to be honest and open, then you have to be that way with your child. If you want to know if your child is accepting fake friendships, you check your child’s phone every night and you’re transparent around doing that. And you ask ‘who is this person — I don’t know who they are’. The more transparent you are, the more transparent your child will be.”

Kids tell O’Riordan how, unknown to their parents, they circumvent timing control apps, grabbing themselves extra hours on their phone. Should a parent suspect/discover this, what’s needed is conversation — ‘Oh, so you want more time? Let’s talk about what you want to do with this extra time’.

“Some kids love watching good music videos on YouTube, or tutorials on how to do something, but if they use time chatting with their friends, they lose time to do what they’re interested in. That’s a conversation,” says O’Riordan.

A mum of three children aged between nine and 12, she recently found her youngest on his device early in the morning despite a no-device-before-9am rule. Moments like these, when we witness our child doing something ‘wrong’, O’Riordan says, represent an opportunity to make things feel safe.

“We can meet them in that place, and have a conversation. I said to my son ‘what is it you love about this guy you watch on YouTube?’. And I said ‘after we’ve had our breakfast, after the dog has gone out for a pee, we’ll watch that together and you tell me what it is you love’.

“Life is making mistakes. And it’s not about shaming our children. But we’re not being permissive and passive either. We’re not saying ‘oh, you broke that rule, that’s OK, don’t worry’. We’re very clearly saying ‘oh, you like this — great. Just now is not the right time’.”

O’Riordan urges parents to ensure their child has a life beyond screens. “If parents are saying ‘oh I can’t get my child to empty the dishwasher/to have a shower’, the balance has gone out of whack. Children have to live in the real world first, the online second.”

She recalls a teenager telling her one of the most annoying things she found about her parents. “She said ‘when I come out of school, my parents are always looking at their phones — they’re never just waiting for me’. So parents have to be really honest with themselves and think about what they’re mirroring back to their children,” says O’Riordan who purposely keeps a magazine by her kitchen chair and a book beside her chair in the sitting room — “So I don’t just go to the phone.”

The CyberSafeKids research found 45% of 10-year-olds can use their smartphone in their bedrooms — and 80% of parents of 11-year-olds with smartphones said their child’s internet access is only ‘sometimes’ or ‘never’ supervised. So what do you do if the genie is out of the bottle?

“Well, that’s life,” says O’Riordan. “You’re learning. Your child’s learning. You can always re-jig. You can always take a pause. Life is about having moveable and flexible boundaries, saying ‘look, I think we’re doing too much of this, what do you think, let’s have a chat’.”