Three Questions to Ask When You’re Worried About Your Teen’s Phone Habits

When a teen’s phone use starts to worry their caregivers – the irritability after scrolling, the sneaking it after bedtime, the constant negotiations – it can be hard to know what to do about it. Often the go-to response is to reach for a rule. Rules serve a purpose and some structure around phone use is useful, but a rule aimed at behavior doesn’t tell you anything about what’s driving the behavior. Often, the reason is that we’ve misidentified the problem itself:...