Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
When someone misuses a device, sending explicit messages or piling on to someone or going where they should not, the useful read is that they were not ready for that much freedom yet. Not that they are a bad person.
Readiness gives you somewhere to go. You can name the skill that was missing, hand back a smaller amount of access, and set out what would show they are ready for more. Shame gives you nowhere, because it makes the whole thing about their character, and a person already carrying plenty of that will hide the next incident rather than tell you. Be clear that the behaviour was wrong while keeping the response about capability.
Qur’an and Sunnah
But man exceeds all bounds when he thinks he is self-sufficient (Quran 96:6 and 96:7). Overstepping is put down to a misjudged sense of being able to handle it, which is close to what a readiness gap means.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review gathered the unhelpful beliefs that appear to sit underneath internet gaming disorder and that treatment therefore aims at, which supports thinking in terms of what a person believes and can do rather than what they are. A meta analysis of forty case control studies also found cognitive impairments in problematic internet use once the weaknesses of individual studies were accounted for. Both describe people already in difficulty and neither tells you who will end up there.
King DL, Delfabbro PH. (2014). The cognitive psychology of Internet gaming disorder.. Clinical psychology review doi
Ioannidis K, Hook R, Goudriaan AE, Vlies S, Fineberg NA, Grant JE, Chamberlain SR. (2019). Cognitive deficits in problematic internet use: meta-analysis of 40 studies.. The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A missing skill can be taught and demonstrated, whereas a verdict on someone's character leaves nothing to work on.
When not to
Where there is sexual content involving a child, or serious threats, safeguarding procedures come first and are not something a family should be left to handle alone.
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 someone says they did not really mean it, that it was not really them, the temptation is to hear an excuse. It is usually better information than that.
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.
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.