Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
Ask your child to show you their feed and explain it to you. You are asking to be taught rather than to inspect, and from the other side those feel nothing like each other.
Something shifts when the young person is the one who knows more. They slow down, they explain who these people are, they tell you which bits are stupid, and you learn more in fifteen minutes than a month of checking up would give you. Do not use the first sitting to make new rules, or there will not be a second one. If asking feels too much, go and look at the platform yourself, though the shared version is the one that also does something for the relationship.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Tell believing women that they should lower their glances (Quran 24:31). The same instruction is given to men in the verse before it, which makes the discipline of the eye a shared one, and shared is the tone this conversation needs.
وَقُل لِّلۡمُؤۡمِنَٰتِ يَغۡضُضۡنَ مِنۡ أَبۡصَٰرِهِنَّ وَيَحۡفَظۡنَ فُرُوجَهُنَّ وَلَا يُبۡدِينَ زِينَتَهُنَّ إِلَّا مَا ظَهَرَ مِنۡهَاۖ وَلۡيَضۡرِبۡنَ بِخُمُرِهِنَّ عَلَىٰ جُيُوبِهِنَّۖ وَلَا يُبۡدِينَ زِينَتَهُنَّ إِلَّا لِبُعُولَتِهِنَّ أَوۡ ءَابَآئِهِنَّ أَوۡ ءَابَآءِ بُعُولَتِهِنَّ أَوۡ أَبۡنَآئِهِنَّ أَوۡ أَبۡنَآءِ بُعُولَتِهِنَّ أَوۡ إِخۡوَٰنِهِنَّ أَوۡ بَنِيٓ إِخۡوَٰنِهِنَّ أَوۡ بَنِيٓ أَخَوَٰتِهِنَّ أَوۡ نِسَآئِهِنَّ أَوۡ مَا مَلَكَتۡ أَيۡمَٰنُهُنَّ أَوِ ٱلتَّٰبِعِينَ غَيۡرِ أُوْلِي ٱلۡإِرۡبَةِ مِنَ ٱلرِّجَالِ أَوِ ٱلطِّفۡلِ ٱلَّذِينَ لَمۡ يَظۡهَرُواْ عَلَىٰ عَوۡرَٰتِ ٱلنِّسَآءِۖ وَلَا يَضۡرِبۡنَ بِأَرۡجُلِهِنَّ لِيُعۡلَمَ مَا يُخۡفِينَ مِن زِينَتِهِنَّۚ وَتُوبُوٓاْ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ جَمِيعًا أَيُّهَ ٱلۡمُؤۡمِنُونَ لَعَلَّكُمۡ تُفۡلِحُونَ
And tell believing women that they should lower their glances, guard their private parts, and not display their charms beyond what [it is acceptable] to reveal; they should let their headscarves fall to cover their necklines and not reveal their charms except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers, their brothers’ sons, their sisters’ sons, their womenfolk, their slaves, such men as attend them who have no sexual desire, or children who are not yet aware of women’s nakedness; they should not stamp their feet so as to draw attention to any hidden charms. Believers, all of you, turn to God so that you may prosper
Qur’an 24:31read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of mobile and interactive media use by young children notes that research on how these devices affect learning, behaviour and family life has lagged well behind their adoption. There is no study here testing whether looking at a feed together helps anyone. So this is a sensible way of closing your own gap in knowledge, offered as practice rather than as something demonstrated.
Jenny Radesky; Jayna Schumacher; Barry Zuckerman (2014). Mobile and Interactive Media Use by Young Children: The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown. PEDIATRICS doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A person shows you more when they are the expert in the conversation than when they are the subject of it.
When not to
If you have a genuine safety concern, that is a different conversation and it does not wait for an invitation.
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
When you wave off what your child is into, they rarely hear a comment about gaming. They hear something about themselves.
Gaming for an hour before you start the work almost never costs an hour. Do the thing that has to be done first, then the thing you want.
The studies tying childhood screen hours to later attention problems are correlational. They cannot tell you which way the arrow points, and there is a very ordinary reading where it points the other way.