Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
It is a genuine relief to hear that what someone did online may not reflect who they are. Say that gently, and say the other half in the same breath: the people who saw it will judge it as though it does.
Both halves are true and they need each other. Offer only the first and you have handed over a reason for nothing to change. Offer only the second and you have confirmed the worst thing the person already suspects about themselves. Held together they say something workable: this came out of a state that can be worked on, and the consequences are still yours to meet.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these (Quran 17:36). Attention is treated as something you answer for, which is why the kinder explanation cannot be the whole of it.
وَلَا تَقۡفُ مَا لَيۡسَ لَكَ بِهِۦ عِلۡمٌۚ إِنَّ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡبَصَرَ وَٱلۡفُؤَادَ كُلُّ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ كَانَ عَنۡهُ مَسۡـُٔولࣰ ا
Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these
Qur’an 17:36read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A mixed methods study developed and evaluated a digital intervention for problematic smartphone use in students, and noted that it sits in a field with very few evaluated interventions. That is worth saying plainly here, because the ideas in this area are moving faster than the evidence for them. Offer this framing as a way of understanding what happened, held lightly, rather than as something settled.
Kent S, Masterson C, Ali R, Parsons CE, Bewick BM. (2021). Digital Intervention for Problematic Smartphone Use.. International journal of environmental research and public health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Compassion that removes the consequences stops being useful, and consequences without compassion just teach someone to hide.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
A rule that holds in your house and nowhere else is not really a rule. Children locate the unrestricted house within about a week.
When a death is filmed and passed around, some of the people who watch it are not all right afterwards, and a few are put in real danger by it. Ask what has been going round.
Not every app is doing the same thing to you. The ones that tend to hurt have comments underneath, a feed chosen for you, and a number attached to how you did.