Please find below feedback from our recent Digital Health Check with Coach Kevin. He has also included tips for parents on how to guide your daughters with their phone usage;
Dear Parents and Guardians
I just had the pleasure of delivering Wellbeing workshops to the students at Presentation Secondary School and I was so impressed with their insights into the challenging world of Social Media and their relationships with their phones. It is amazing, at such a young age, the awareness many of the students have of the perils of social media and spending so much time on their phones. This is especially the case for teenage girls who are more vulnerable due to a number of factors. And the students were well able to articulate these factors. I hope these workshops might provide an opportunity for you to open up a conversation with your daughter about her own Digital Wellbeing. My experience is that it is best to start from a place of compassion. They are being manipulated, twisted and turned. While most are aware that so much of this time and energy attached to their phone is not good for them, taking actions to address the challenges is difficult. The algorithm will resist, and it is very powerful. Here are some tips and links to resources that you might find helpful. Many thanks to Ms lane for the invitation to work with your daughters at this crucial stage of their development.
Kind regards
Kevin Spain www.coachkevin.ie
The Young Person’s Life and Career Coach
5 tips
1. Know Your Job & Know Their job
The Parent’s job is to set boundaries.
The Teenager’s job is to react and express their feelings.
You’re doing your job to keep them safe, so they can do their job of building emotional regulation skills. Your primary job is to keep them safe, not happy.
2. Compassion and Communication is a great starting place to support your teenager as they navigate this brand new social challenge. They did not invent this problem.
3. Outsmarting a 15 year old on Social Media is not likely. Stay informed but not competitive with your teenager.
4. Monkey see Monkey do. Do as you say in relation to Social media or expect what you do.
5. Take Collective Action – Connecting with other families often makes things easier. Teens will only give up Snapchat if every other teenager does. And they have already done this in relation to Facebook because it became uncool and Twitter because they don’t like it. The power of collective action is best exemplified by the schools and parents in a initiative at — Greystones primary schools
Support your school’s efforts to curb phone reliance. School, like sport and hobbies is a very valuable breathing space.
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