Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
Who pays the bill does give a household some say. That argument weakens every year a child gets older, and it runs out entirely once they are an adult sitting in front of you asking for help.
With a sixteen year old at home on the family plan, parents setting terms is reasonable and worth saying out loud. With an adult, the same move fails, and the work becomes building a regime together that they actually want to keep. The common error runs in both directions: treating a grown adult like a middle schooler, or acting as though a family living with a dependent teenager has no standing at all.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Seek the life to come by means of what God has granted you, but do not neglect your rightful share in this world (Quran 28:77). Both errors are refused in one line, which is the balance this particular decision needs.
وَٱبۡتَغِ فِيمَآ ءَاتَىٰكَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلدَّارَ ٱلۡأٓخِرَةَۖ وَلَا تَنسَ نَصِيبَكَ مِنَ ٱلدُّنۡيَاۖ وَأَحۡسِن كَمَآ أَحۡسَنَ ٱللَّهُ إِلَيۡكَۖ وَلَا تَبۡغِ ٱلۡفَسَادَ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِۖ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُفۡسِدِينَ
Seek the life to come by means of what God has granted you, but do not neglect your rightful share in this world. Do good to others as God has done good to you. Do not seek to spread corruption in the land, for God does not love those who do this,’
Qur’an 28:77read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A study comparing groups found that people with high levels of smartphone addiction had measurable deficits in the behavioural and cognitive self control needed to rein in their own use. That is worth knowing before assuming an adult can simply decide to cut down, because some of the machinery for doing so looks weakened. It compares groups at one point in time, so it cannot tell you which came first.
Fabio RA, Stracuzzi A, Lo Faro R. (2022). Problematic Smartphone Use Leads to Behavioral and Cognitive Self-Control Deficits.. 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
A limit only holds when it comes from someone the person accepts has a right to set it.
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
For some people the online part is not a side issue sitting next to the depression or the anxiety. It is one of the things holding them in place.
Most parents setting rules about an app have never scrolled it for ten minutes. The rules are usually reasonable and the picture underneath them is missing.
Check, feel the small relief, put it down, feel the pull again a minute later. If your phone use has that shape, it is running like a compulsion, whatever else it is.