033: Screen Time and Teens: How Parents Can Build Better Communication Habits Interview with Laura Lyles Reagan

So, I mean, one of the things that I saw, it was around, um, around COVID time, and that I had a lot of young people coming in really stressed about trying to figure out how to be able to functionally get through school, and that it seemed like the pressures of life were even more than they have been in decades previous.

I'm not sure, what's happening for you when you look and you're working with families around adolescents and their relationships with time and how parents are managing that?

Yeah.

It is, it is very much a challenging time.

Um, and I think C- COVID probably put a big, hot, big spotlight on that, right? Because some kids really thrived in the online space, and being intrinsically motivated, it just sort of released them from the structure of, you know, adults telling them what to do.

And others truly floundered because they thrived on that sense of community in the classroom and really needed the interaction in order to connect.

So I think it's sort of personality driven.

Are you intrinsically or extrinsically motivated, and are you introverted or, or extroverted? Those are t- obviously spectrums, and there's lots of middle ground in between that.

But, um, you know, some kids did well and some didn't.

I'm seeing today, though, that attention spans are shorter.

[laughs]

Mm.

You know, it used to be we were timed to the 22-minute television, um, comedy show.

You know, that was the length of the attention span.

And now we are, you know, much shorter because of the advent of YouTube short-form videos.

It's just like kids scroll past, zoom, zoom, zoom.

And so if you don't have that hook to get their attention, [laughs] you might miss it.

And it's kinda co-opted brain chemistry is what I'm understanding, you know, from neurologists.

That there's a way to interrupt that and help them make conscious choices about how they use their time.

Now, uh, that's, uh, it's so, so true.

I mean, that there is some research that is really happening right now that there is a brain chemistry change for not just kids, adolescents, and teens, but also for us as adults, too.

Right.

So, I mean, I, I think that it's super interesting.

I, I wonder if there's a journey that both parents and adolescents could be going on together around not short-circuiting, but interrupting that kind of pattern and what it would look like.

I'm just speculat- I'm just kinda throwing it out to you as a, as a coach.