Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
Among teenagers, saying they want to die has become something you say when the bus is late. You can no longer read intent off the phrase, in either direction.
So the words neither prove there is danger nor prove there is not. What tells you is everything the words leave out: whether there is a plan, whether the means are to hand, what has happened before, whether things have been given away or goodbyes said, whether someone has quietly stopped bothering with the future. Ask about those directly and plainly. Someone who was joking will say so, and no harm is done by asking.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not sit with them unless they start to talk of other things (Quran 4:140). The verse assumes the talk around you seeps in, which is part of why these words have worn so thin.
وَقَدۡ نَزَّلَ عَلَيۡكُمۡ فِي ٱلۡكِتَٰبِ أَنۡ إِذَا سَمِعۡتُمۡ ءَايَٰتِ ٱللَّهِ يُكۡفَرُ بِهَا وَيُسۡتَهۡزَأُ بِهَا فَلَا تَقۡعُدُواْ مَعَهُمۡ حَتَّىٰ يَخُوضُواْ فِي حَدِيثٍ غَيۡرِهِۦٓ إِنَّكُمۡ إِذࣰ ا مِّثۡلُهُمۡۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ جَامِعُ ٱلۡمُنَٰفِقِينَ وَٱلۡكَٰفِرِينَ فِي جَهَنَّمَ جَمِيعًا
As He has already revealed to you [believers] in the Scripture, if you hear people denying and ridiculing God’s revelation, do not sit with them unless they start to talk of other things, or else you yourselves will become like them: God will gather all the hypocrites and disbelievers together into Hell
Qur’an 4:140read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
There is nothing in the evidence behind this library about how young people talk about death or about how to assess risk, and it would be wrong to dress this up as research based. The nearest work is a review of findings from a study of more than 11,000 young people, reporting that screen and social media time has risen among 9 to 15 year olds with associations to mental and physical health. Risk assessment here follows ordinary clinical practice, not this literature.
Nagata JM, Lee CM, Hur JO, Baker FC. (2025). What we know about screen time and social media in early adolescence: a review of findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.. Current opinion in pediatrics doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A phrase that everybody uses stops carrying information, so the checking has to move from the language to the behaviour.
When not to
If there is any doubt at all about immediate safety, treat it as urgent and involve crisis services rather than waiting for the next appointment.
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
Pick one series and watch it together on the same evening each week. The point is not the programme. It is that something puts the two of you in the same room on purpose.
Taking the phone away leaves a hole the exact size of the phone. Something has to go into it, or the evening just becomes an argument you both lose.
If the screen limit in your house is only your preference, every evening turns into a negotiation about your preference. Borrowing a published figure, roughly two hours a day of leisure screen time for a child over two, moves the argument off you.