In this new podcast, Dr. Tim Jordan highlights critical ways girls can demonstrate to their parents that they possess the maturity and responsibility needed to earn a smartphone or use social media. These include having a solid sleep routine and getting enough sleep, appropriately managing prior levels of technology, exhibiting good impulse control, consistently following through with agreements without arguing or rebelling, making thoughtful decisions and learning from mistakes, maintaining a strong track record of handling boredom productively, and being transparent enough for parents to feel connected and understand their thoughts on important issues.
Dr. Jordan’s previous podcast discusses the social readiness signs teens need to exhibit to show they are prepared for smartphones and social media.
Don’t miss Dr. Jordan’s revised edition of Keeping Your Family Grounded When You’re Flying by the Seat of Your Pants, featuring four new chapters, including one on social media.
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
How To Tell When Your Daughter Is Responsible Enough To Try Social Media
How To Tell If Your Daughter Is Ready For A Smartphone Or Social Media
I have a topic that I know every one of you who is tuning in to this is interested in. Let me ask you a couple of questions to tease you. Do you ever wonder how to tell if your daughter is ready for things like smartphones or to try social media? I did an episode on the social aspects to look for to see if your daughter’s ready.
Do you ever worry you’re holding her back socially if you don’t give in and let her have a phone or let her go on social media? Does your daughter have a high enough level of responsibility that you can trust that she’s ready to handle it? That’s the topic for this episode. How do you tell if she has a high enough level of self-responsibility to be able to handle all of the challenges that come with smartphones and social media? Let’s talk about what you can look for and also, on the other hand, what you can tell your daughter you’re going to be looking for so she knows where she might need to improve.
One of the most important pieces for her to show you as far as her level of responsibility is whether she is keeping her life in balance. Does she keep things like schoolwork? Is she spending enough time on her schoolwork that she’s getting reasonable grades and putting a reasonable effort in? Does she spend enough time with her friends in person, hanging out, going out with them, having them come to the house, and having sleepovers? Is she also keeping in balance the time if she has a dating partner? A lot of girls get out of balance with that one where they spend so much time with their dating partner, and then they lose their friends. They don’t spend time with their families.
Has she shown you over time that she can keep her life in balance as far as time with you or with her family? Also, her activities if she’s playing sports or if she’s got some other activities. Does she have a job? I see some girls who go to work after school and they don’t get home sometimes until 9:00 or 10:00 at night at least a couple of school nights a week.
Does she have enough time to take care of herself doing self-care? Also, does she have a variety of interests? That also is part of our life balance. That keeps us healthy, grounded, and balanced. Has she shown you over time that she can do that for herself as opposed to spending all of her time in one area and not the others? She’s out of balance, which oftentimes causes some of those other areas to suffer more stress. Sometimes, that causes overwhelm and for girls to fall apart.
I saw a girl a couple of months ago who came in because she was stressed out because she was out of balance. I don’t think she was aware of that when she walked in my door. She’s a cheerleader for a high school team. She also is in theater. She’s in plays and oftentimes does the leads in the plays. If any of you have a high school theater kid, you know how much time that takes for kids. She was exhausted. Plus, she was trying to maintain good grades because she wanted to go to a good college. Her parents were on to her a lot about not spending enough time with the family, which created a lot of arguments and fighting back and forth because she was out of balance.
I remember one time when I gave a talk. I may have told this story before. I was giving a talk at an all-girls private high school. This was at the beginning of the school year. I was talking to the freshmen’s parents. We were talking about some of the complaints they were having about how their daughters weren’t spending time. I had them make a list on the board of the things that they wanted different with their daughters. I had a mom come up and she was going to do the transcribing.
I said, “Who’s got something they want different with their daughters?” People were raising their hands and talking about all different kinds of things. One of the dads said his daughter was always in her room with the door closed and talking to her friends. He said that she was online, was on Instagram talking to people, and was scrolling on TikTok. The mom started to write that down. I said, “Hold on. What is your concern about her spending so much time in her room on her devices?” They said, “She’s spending so much time in her room. She could be studying. She could be doing something else.”
The mom started to write and I said, “Hold on. What’s your concern about that?” He said, “The rest of the family is downstairs and we’re doing things together. We’re playing board games together and she’s up in her room with the door closed. She’s not down with us.” The mom started to write that on the flip chart and I said, “Don’t write yet.” I mirrored that back and said, “It sounds like you’re concerned as your daughter’s in her room and she’s not spending time with the family when you guys are doing things together. What’s your concern about that?” This dad paused. I will never forget it. He said, “My concern is I miss my daughter.” I turned to the mom and said, “Write that down.”
We do miss our kids when they’re out of balance. They are busy little bees. Many of them are too busy. I’ve talked about it before. Sometimes, their lives do get out of balance. I don’t think it’s sometimes. I think it’s often. You can let your daughters know, “I’m going to be looking to make sure that you are keeping your life in balance.”
Here are some things that they can show you that say that they’re getting their life together and they have their life in balance. One of them is how they handle their sleep. Are they getting enough sleep? Do they have good sleep routines? I counsel a lot of girls who will come to my office and they’re exhausted and stressed out. I’ll say, “How much sleep do you get every night?” Probably the average answer I get from a high school girl is maybe six hours.
The Impact Of Sleep On Teenagers’ Mood And Focus
They’ll go to “bed” at 10:00 or 11:00 after they’re done with their homework, talking to their friends, and all that stuff and sleep at maybe 11:00 or midnight. They have to get up at 6:00 to get ready for school because some of them try on 8 outfits and do their makeup and all that. They end up getting 5 or 6 hours of sleep, and that is not enough for anybody, especially a teenager whose brains are growing and changing. They need at least 8 to 9 hours of sleep a night.
I’ll ask them how much sleep they think they need in order to be able to not be so stressed and to be able to wake up in the morning, go to school, be alert, be in their first class, do their homework in the evening, and do their activities. Most of them don’t have a clue, so we do some experiments. I have them think about, “If you’re getting up at 6:00, and let’s say you need 8 hours of sleep, then that means you should be going to bed at 10:00. If you get up at 6:30, maybe 10:30.” It’s not going to bed at 10:00 or 10:30 but falling asleep then. That’s a big difference. A lot of girls I work with have a hard time falling asleep. That’s a whole other episode we can talk about.
It’s them figuring out, “Let me try it. Let me try and go to bed at 10:30 for a while and get up at 6:00 or 6:30 and see if that works.” They’ll come back to see me in a few weeks and then they’ll tell me a lot of times that it didn’t make a difference and they’re still exhausted. It might be they need more sleep or they might need a little bit less. Everybody’s a little different, but they need around eight-ish hours at least. That’s a minimum.
We also know that as girls and boys go through puberty, there is a lot of shifting going on in their brains. There’s a part of their brain called the pineal gland. It starts releasing melatonin increasingly later in the night. Melatonin, which our brains secrete, is awesome because it makes us drowsy. It helps us to fall asleep. A lot of times, teens are night owls because of that change. They tend to want to fall asleep later, not that they want to but their brains want them to, and then wake up later. Our culture is set up as not that because a lot of high schools start at 7:30, 8:00, or 8:30. You wonder why these teens are not awake. It’s because their brains aren’t set up. Their circadian rhythm is not set up for that schedule. We have to keep that in mind as well.
How To Help Your Teenager Develop A Good Sleep Routine
They need to figure out how much sleep they need and then work backward. It’s like, “If I need 8 hours and I’m getting up at 6:30, I need to be in bed by 10:30. Now, I need to start developing some evening habits that would be more conducive to me than falling asleep at 10:30.” We talk about how they can do that. They can figure out kinds of things like making sure that their room is dark, making sure their room is cool enough, maybe having a sound machine, and making sure there are no devices in their room, i.e. phones, tablets, and anything that can ping, buzz, or beep, including a TV. If those things are in their rooms, it’s so hard for them and us to not want to check them. If you check it, then you wake up. All of a sudden, it may take another 20 or 30 minutes to get back to sleep.
There’s all that research about how the blue lights from screens make it harder for us to fall asleep because the lights tell us, “It’s daylight. Wake up,” and because it suppresses melatonin production. I educate girls about that. Most of them have not heard before that it makes it harder for them to fall asleep. Most people need 30 minutes or maybe even 1 hour after the lights go out or after the screens go out for their brain to make enough melatonin to cause them to feel drowsy enough to fall asleep. That is part of the sleep routine.
Also, they may need to empty their heads because they have so much stuff going on in their heads. I have so many patients I see who have such busy brains. That’s true oftentimes because they’re not taking the time during the day to express things. Things build up, things like thoughts, anxieties, feelings, and emotions. All kinds of things build up that they don’t want to deal with. They get busy from them and get distracted from them.
At 10:00 at night when they lie down on their beds and they turn off the lights to fall asleep, everything they’ve been shoving down all day comes bubbling up and then it’s hard for them to turn it off. I bet a lot of parents tuning in to this show at this very moment would say, “That’s true for me too.” They might need some time where they journal those thoughts out in those last 20 or 30 minutes before bed. They can do some drawing or some coloring. They can do something to unload their brain. Are they exercising regularly? If they’re not, then it’s hard to fall asleep. Do they have a routine or do they go to bed about the same time every night? That helps a lot. You can talk to them.
No phones in the bedroom. Create a docking station outside their room to avoid temptation and improve sleep. Share on X
They need some education about how they can develop a good bedtime falling asleep routine. That includes not having that phone and electronics in their room. I would make sure there’s a docking station in their parents’ bedroom or down in the family room, somewhere where they can’t see it and get teased by it. If they can learn to develop a good sleep routine and they’re getting enough sleep, that helps a lot for you to be able to say, “They’re starting to get their life in more balance.”
I see a lot of teen girls, especially in high school, who have a hard time falling asleep because they’re so worried about a friend. If their phone is in the room, what happens is at 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, or 12:00, a friend calls. They’re depressed. They’re going through a rough time. Sometimes, they have suicidal ideations or suicidal thoughts. This friend is listening to them and wants to help. She can’t not talk to them because they’re like, “If I don’t, then they may do something to harm themselves.”
I’ve seen girls staying up until 1:00, 2:00, or 3:00 at night because they’re so worried about their friends. They’re being good friends in some ways, but in other ways, they’re not. I’ve never met a teenage girl who was a certified therapist or who has the training and the ability to help a friend who is depressed or who has suicidal ideations. They need to pass it on to their friend’s parents, a school counselor, or someone needs to give that girl some help, which is not them at 2:00 every morning trying to counsel them so they don’t hurt themselves. I see a lot of girls who have a hard time with their sleep because of that, so they need to set boundaries and take care of themselves.
One way that girls can show you that they have a level of responsibility is by making sure that they get enough sleep and have developed some good sleep routines. I know and you probably know from watching your daughters that if they’re not getting enough sleep and they’re sleep deprived, everything falls apart from there. They’re unfocused. They’re crabbier. They’re moodier. They get triggered more easily. Nothing is better. Everything gets worse when they’re not getting enough sleep.
You also can look for levels of responsibility in how they’ve handled previous levels of any kind of technology, like getting away from the TV. If they’re watching YouTube videos, do they have the ability to know that if the screens are supposed to go off at 10:00, then at 10:00, the screens go off? Video games are also a big one. Boys tend to do more video games than girls, but girls do as well. I see some girls who say, “I want to get off but I’m halfway through this level.” They have all these reasons why they can’t turn off that video game when they’re supposed to.
They’ve made an agreement with their parents that the video games go off at 1:00, and at 10:30, the parent walks into their daughter’s room. 1) It shouldn’t be in their room, but 2) They’ll say, “You know the agreement is 10:00,” and the girls would go off on this whole thing about levels and, “I can’t stop now.” What they’re showing their parents is, “If that keeps happening, I don’t have the level of maturity, impulse control, and responsibility to handle even this level of technology. I will not have that ability with something that is even more intense, like a phone or social media.”
Whether it’s video games, watching YouTube videos or TV, or having their pads or maybe a smartphone. , they need to show their parents that they have the ability to follow through with the agreements and turn them off when they have agreed with their parents that it needs to go off. Their ability to handle their previous levels of technology will educate their parents, “Are you ready for the next thing?” which might be a smartphone or social media.
Why Teenagers Are More Susceptible To Addiction And Impulsivity
Do they have good impulse control where they’re not showing you addictive behaviors? This is a tough one because most teenagers have a lack of impulse control and they have some of what look like addictive behaviors because of what’s happening in their brain. Let me step aside for a minute here and talk for a moment about what’s going on in their brains that makes it hard for them to control their impulses.
The teen brain is not fully formed. It’s undergoing a lot of pruning and a lot of changing. More neurons are being created. There are more connections happening. What’s interesting is that a lot of times, our girls are starting through puberty earlier. The average age is around ten, ten and a half, and eleven. By the time they’re 12, 13, and 14, they look like what would typically be more like an 18-year-old. They look older than their age.
A lot of times, we end up treating them as if they’re older because they look older instead of what I think is more appropriate, which is to treat them more like their chronological age, not their apparent age or what their appearance might fool you into thinking because their brains are not mature yet. For the average girl, the prefrontal cortex in their brain or the executive center part of their brain isn’t fully mature until their late teens, which is 18s and early 20s. For boys, add another 5 years at least, so mid-20s. Their ability to control their impulses and think before they act and all that is not in place yet. That part of their brain is not mature enough.
It’s important to know that the teenage baseline level of dopamine is lower. They tend to be a little bit more bored and a little more numb. It takes a little bit more to get them excited, but once they get stimulated, their release of dopamine is higher than adults. The receptors in their brain are more sensitive to that so that enhanced dopamine release increases the reward drive in their brain. They get a bigger high or a bigger thrill from things which causes them to gravitate towards things like thrills and risky behaviors.
Do you want to know why teens often do dumb things? A lot of times, that’s the answer. It is because their brain gets a higher reward. They get more dopamine than our brain does. This increases when they’re with their peers. Often, they think other people might be watching them, which is hard because people always have their phones out and are always recording things.
We’re constantly entertaining people with our behaviors, which makes it even harder for teens to control those impulses because those things are going to end up on social media. Since they think that’s going to be on social media, oftentimes, they end up doing things that they know they shouldn’t because it’s too hard not to. There’s an increased susceptibility to addictions and impulsivity in our teenagers. That is also why teens who start smoking or doing drugs in their teen years are much more likely to become addicted than somebody starting when they’re 25 or 30 because their brains are so vulnerable.
The reward system part of the brain is our brain's most primitive motivational system. It evolved to propel people to consume. Share on X
They did lots of experiments in the past when they were looking for what they used to call the pleasure center of the brain. What they found was there was a different part of their brain that they labeled the reward system. The reward system part of their brain is our brain’s most primitive motivational system. It evolved to propel people to take action. It helped to propel people to consume. When the brain recognizes an opportunity for reward, it releases dopamine, which tells the brain what to pay attention to.
Dopamine creates feelings of arousal. You’re more alert. You’re more awake. You’re captivated. We recognize the possibility of feeling good and we’re willing to work to get that feeling. That’s what the reward system in our brain does. It doesn’t make you feel happy and content when that part of the brain gets stimulated and you get that dopamine. It creates more of a seeking or more of a craving, a desire, and anticipation. We’re not satisfied. It’s not pleasure yet. It’s the desire to want that. It’s a promise of reward to keep us hunting, gathering, working, and wooing. That was put in our brains because it helped us survive.
If you were walking around forging, which is what we used to do thousands of years ago, there may not be food all the time. If you saw some game or a bushel of blackberries, your brain learned to say, “Eat those now.” We would get a shot of dopamine in our reward center. The brain said, “You need that. You want that.” They want us to eat those now because they may not be blackberries tomorrow. The brain is like, “They may not be game tomorrow. We need to do it now.”
When the reward system in our brain sends dopamine and we start getting that craving and stuff, it also sends a message to our brain’s stress centers. That triggers the release of stress hormones like cortisol, which makes us feel anxious as we anticipate that desired thing. That need to get what we want isn’t, “I would like blackberries.” It’s like, “I need blackberries.” It feels like a life-and-death emergency. It’s a matter of my survival to eat that piece of chocolate cake or answer my phone. That’s what it did.
The initial reward back in the day many years ago was food. It’s not that much now. It can become that, but there are so many more things that we become attracted to now. That is why when girls show up to my weekend retreats or my summer camps and they’re checking in at the check-in table with their parents, one of the first questions someone asks them is, “Where’s your phone?” They’ll pull it out or they’ll say, “I gave it to my mom.” I’ll say, “Mom, Dad, do you have their phone?” They’ll say, “Yes.”
A lot of times, girls get this anxious thing that goes on. They’re like, “I need that phone because I need to fall asleep,” or, “I need to check with my friends. I have a friend who’s depressed,” or, “I use it for my alarm clock,” or, “I need it to play music.” They get frantic. That’s because of that reward system. The stress hormones start to peak again in their brain and they want it. They’re afraid that they’re going to need it. Their brains are set up to be stressed, more impulsive, and more addicted. They end up craving things like phones and social media when they get a taste of it. They’re convinced that the only thing that’s going to make them feel better is the object that the dopamine is pointing them toward.
When you think about technology, you think about video games, phones, or social media. It becomes the anticipation of new messages, photos, and videos that make us laugh and makes us feel better. That’s what caused us to keep hitting that refresh button or the search button. It’s the promise of reward. That’s why they call it a search engine because, like rats hitting a little level in those experiments, it’s us pushing the levels on our video games. It’s us looking at the next wall. It’s the next scrolling. We want that shot of dopamine. Our brains want that shot of dopamine.
Social media is the unpredictability of the scoring and advancing that keeps the dopamine neurons firing, and it becomes as addictive as drugs. Share on X
I don’t play video games and never have, but I’ve read research that shows that video games have been made easier because they want them to be more likely for kids to not give up. They want them to stay playing. The promise of the next level or next big win is what keeps the dopamine firing, which keeps them wanting to do more that it’s hard to pull away from it. It’s the unpredictability of the scoring and advancing that keeps the dopamine neurons firing. It becomes as addictive as drugs. It’s the same place in our brain that cocaine causes the same issue with dopamine. It’s the same part of the brain, which is the rewards system in our brain.
What all of us need in those situations is for our brain to kick in and our prefrontal cortex to say, “I know it’s time to turn that off. I know I shouldn’t eat that piece of chocolate cake,” or, “I know I need to put my phone away.” What we want to have happen is for the longer-term thinking part of our brain to kick in. What helps is for that thing that our brain is saying we need and we need it to survive, we need that to be out of sight and out of mind.
Why It Is Important For Teenagers To Have Good Impulse Control
If that phone is not in your daughter’s bedroom and it’s in your room, and they don’t see it and hear the buzzing and stuff, what happens is that the immediate reward system calms down. The immediate gratification system calms down. Our brain starts to treat it more like a future reward. When that happens, our brain can focus on the longer-term outlook, which says, “Do I need to be up all night? Do I need that piece of chocolate cake? Do I need whatever?” That future thinking part of the brain can kick in and it’s more reasonable and can tell us, “Don’t give into that impulse.” If it’s right in front of you, the short-term gratification reward system kicks in. It’s hard not to give in, especially with an immature brain.
That out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing is one of the reasons why people like me and others often always encourage parents to not allow their teens to have those phones and any kind of technology in their rooms. It’s too hard to not look at it. That’s one of the reasons why their brains are not wired to take care of themselves with things like technology and social media because of that reward system and because of their increased susceptibility to addictions and impulsivity. It’s hard for them to have that kind of control. They have to show you that over time. Their brain needs to mature.
For other things we need to look for as far as whether they are responsible enough to be able to handle things, one of them is how good have they been as far as following through with agreements. If you sit down, make an agreement with them, and talk about accountability, do they follow through with agreements? If the agreement is to get off their iPad at 10:00, and then every night, they’re on their iPad at 10:30 or 11:00, what they’re showing their parents is, “I don’t have the ability to follow through with my agreements. I don’t have the maturity yet.” If it ends up in power struggles or if they end up rebelling, sneaking, and lying, it doesn’t mean they’re an evil person. It means they’re not ready. That’s all. They’re not ready for that level of impulse control.
I had a girl in my office several months ago. She came in with her mom because they were having these knockdown drag-out fights, arguments, and things. A lot of it was about this girl who wasn’t following through with her agreements, so they would get into an argument. The girl would get mad and she’d say, “All my friends have this or that.” She would stomp out of the room screaming at her mom, “I hate you.” She would stomp up the steps, go into her room, and slam the door.
At that moment, she got a very short-lived momentary feeling of being powerful. Standing up for herself, screaming, yelling, and getting in her mom’s face gave her a sense of control and power for a short period of time. I asked girls in the offices, “What did you teach your mom when you did that?” The answer to that is, “I taught her that I’m immature. I taught her that I am out of control. Therefore, I need more management. I need to be more micromanaged. I need more restrictions.” I don’t want them to be micromanaged, but you get my point.
Teach teens to listen and understand your concerns. This builds maturity and trust. Share on X
The last thing a teen girl wants is to be micromanaged or for her parents to think that she’s immature and out of control. What she needs is to be able and willing to sit down with her mom and dad, talk through agreements, and listen. I teach girls all the time in my office to listen to their parents and mirror them back. They might be like, “It sounds like you don’t want me dating because of whatever.” If a parent says, “That’s my concern,” then I teach the girls to keep going and say, “I don’t understand. What’s your concern about that?” and then let the parents share more about what they’re concerned about.
It is then for the girl to mirror that back until they feel like their parents have been fully heard and they get to what their real issue is. A lot of times, they are scared because they’re afraid their daughter is going to become sexually active. They have a family history of addictions. They’re afraid that if their daughter is going to go to these parties, they’re going to end up smoking weed and get addicted. There’s some issue that’s usually deeper than the initial on top. It’s like that example I showed you about the parent or the dad who was saying, “My daughter’s always up in a room.” The real issue was, “I miss her.”
If the daughter can learn to mirror her mom or dad and get down to what the real issue is, oftentimes, she can then offer some solutions. She can be like, “How about this? If I can show you A, B, and C, then would you be okay with me doing it? If I meet your concern in some way, then would you be more willing to let me try whatever it is?”
A very mature way to handle when you feel like you’re not getting what you want or what you need is to listen, hear the other person’s concerns, and try to meet them in a calm way. You’re teaching your parents something different. You’re teaching your parents, “My daughter’s growing up. She’s taking us seriously.” They can learn to mirror, listen to concerns, and then meet them. That’s how they’ll get more of what they want, including what might be a phone or social media.
How To Encourage Teenagers To Make Good Choices And Decisions
Is their daughter showing their parents that they’re making good choices or good decisions about things? No teenager is perfect with their choices and decisions. We always want our daughters to trust their gut or trust their intuition when it comes to making decisions. In order to do that, you need to be able to get quiet and access your intuition and your gut. Do they have that ability? Are they showing you that? Maybe they need some education about that.
Their having a history of making pretty good decisions most of the time is important. Can they also make decisions that are different from their friends sometimes? That’s also an important way of showing your parents that you have a level of responsibility. I had a girl at one of my retreats years ago. I always use different names. I’ll say her name was Kat.
She was in eighth grade. I’d seen her once in the office and then she came to one of our retreats. She was talking on the retreat about how she was upset and sad because she was pulling away from her friends. Her friend group that she had had for 3 or 4 years was starting to get more racy. She said that a couple of them had tried weed several times. Some of them had become sexually active with boys. They were becoming, in her mind, more wild and she wasn’t ready for that. She didn’t agree with it. It didn’t mesh with her values, so she was struggling with it.
We heard her out. In my office, I heard her out as well. We talked to her about what was important to her. What she came to was that she wasn’t ready for it and her values were important to her. She told her friends she wasn’t comfortable with it and what ended up happening was she started to spend time away from them, which meant for a little while that she was alone. She was in between groups, if you will, which is a hard place for a pre-teen or teen girl to be.
It took her a little while to find some more people to hang out with. That’s a tough place to be in, sitting alone at lunch, eating lunch in the library, or eating lunch in the office or sometimes in classrooms, but this girl had the guts and the maturity to go through that process and find some friends who better matched her values. If your daughter can show you that she’s had experiences like that, that would be a huge deposit into your account of, “My daughter is becoming more mature, responsible, and trustworthy.”
Also, do they learn from their mistakes? If they make a mistake, it’s not enough to say, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” I always encourage parents to go through a process of asking girls about the whole process of why they made the mistake. I saw a girl in my office a few months ago who got caught stealing some clothes from a store. Her parents flipped out, got angry, grounded her, took away her phone, and all this stuff. They did a lot of punishment but they didn’t help her figure out why she made the mistake.
In my counseling practice in my office, I helped her go through the process. She remembered being in the store and she saw some cute outfits that she wanted. They were similar to what some of her friends were wearing and she couldn’t afford it. I had her remember that moment in the store when she was looking at those things and she knew she shouldn’t be taking them if she remembered that an alarm went off inside of her.
There is an alarm that we all have, our conscience, that says, “Are you sure you want to do that? Is that the right thing? Do you want to make that decision?” All of us have an alarm like that that goes off. This girl, Natalia, said she remembered that alarm going off. I said, “How do you experience it in your body?” For her, it was two things, a pounding in her chest and a tightening of her chest. For other kids, it’s a tightening in their throat, a funny feeling in their stomach, or a lot of thoughts in their brain. They start to sweat. There is a physical reaction that says, “I’m at a decision point and my gut is saying, “You might want to step back, pause, and think about this.” At that moment, Natalia felt that in her body and she ignored it.
The next key question is, “Why do you think you ignored the alarm at that moment?” What Natalia realized after we talked for a little was that she always felt different from her friends and a little bit left out or a little bit on the outside. Most of her friends came from pretty affluent families and she did not. It was a private school that she went to and she was on a scholarship.
Her friends, when she would go to their homes, had nice homes and she lived in an apartment, which is fine but she felt different. She felt less than, like, “I don’t quite fit the mold here.” She wanted to be included. She wanted her friends to call her and all that. When the alarm went, “You shouldn’t be stealing these clothes,” she ignored it because she wanted to fit into this group better. She wanted to be able to dress in some of those clothes and feel like them. That’s why she made her mistake.
The last question in that process is, “What will be different? You’re still going to live in an apartment. You’re still not going to have as much money as your friends. What are you going to do about that?” We talked through some solutions to that for her so the next time that alarm goes off, hopefully, she’ll recognize the alarm, step back from herself, and say, “What do I want to do here? Is this worth it?” If your daughters can show you that they can go through that kind of a process and learn from their mistakes, that’s a huge, to me, sign that they’re developing the maturity and the sense of responsibility to make better choices. They’re going to make a lot of choices on their phones and on social media.
There are a couple of more things that you can look for as far as whether they are becoming responsible enough. One of them is, do they have a good track record as far as handling their boredom? A lot of girls spend way too much time on their phones and on their social media because they’re bored. They pick it up and start scrolling, and then hours go by.
I’ve read surveys and research that say that the average teen girl spends about 7 to 8 hours a day on devices of some kind. The girls I’ve talked to and girls in my retreats, when they go home or if they’re in the office, I’ll have them look at their phone and check. They’ll say, “I spend four hours a day. It’s not that much.” I’ll say, “I’m giving you permission in the office to pull out your phone. I want you to check back on your history to see exactly how many hours.” I’ve never had a girl who didn’t have at least 6 to 8 hours of time on their devices. They’re like, “Oops.”
Are they doing a good job of handling their boredom with a variety of things? Are they reading? Do they do art? Are they listening to music, making music, or playing an instrument? Are they spending time with their younger siblings? Are they spending time with their family? Are they doing things that are productive? I had a girl in my counseling practice who was handling her boredom by creating her own business. She was selling jewelry that she made.
She was very creative. She was thinking about going into fashion for college. She was doing that instead of scrolling walls for 7 or 8 hours a day. If they have a good track record of handling their boredom by doing things that are, in my mind, more productive than scrolling walls, that’s a good sign that they’re growing up, maturing, and increasing their level of responsibility.
The Importance Of Transparency And Open Communication
Last but not least, are they transparent enough with you, Mom and Dad? Meaning, do they share enough with you that you feel like you’re connected to them? You have a good connection. You understand them. You have a pretty good idea about how they think about things because they’ve been willing to have some open, honest conversations about drug use, drinking, sexuality, their futures, or the behaviors online that they see their friends do sometimes.
It’s good to go on some of those sites before your daughters are allowed on their own to say, “Show me some of the posts that your friends are making. Are they appropriate? Are they not? Why are they not?” How would you handle that conversation if they see that there’s a lot of drama and they see that their friends are arguing online or having some drama online? Are they willing to have those kinds of conversations so that they can show their parents or tell their parents, “This is how I think about that and why,” which is a much deeper conversation than, “I don’t drink. I wouldn’t do pot.”
The parents are like, “I want to know why. What are your reasons why? Have you been thinking it through? What are your thoughts about that?” They have at least a reasonable level of transparency where parents feel like, “I understand my daughter’s way of thinking. She’s not some airhead out there going, “I don’t know,” and doing whatever their friends do. She’s being thoughtful about things.” I don’t think that girls need to tell their parents every deep, dark secret that they have, but enough so their parents hear about how they’re thinking things through. They may even show examples of how they’re thinking differently than their peers.
A good time to do these kinds of conversations is when you’re sitting down, which I hope you do, and watching TV shows with them or watching movies and then maybe pausing sometimes. Maybe there’s a teen in the movie or the TV show. You say, “Why do you think she would think that way?” or, “Why do you think she may have acted that way?” Your daughter is like, “She made a mistake.” You’re like, “Why do you think she gave in?” That’s a way to prompt your daughter to be thinking about why. That is another way to get into their heads and hearts to get a sense of where they are at with these issues.
Overall, one of the things to keep in mind whether your daughter is ready for social media in any way, and we’re talking about their level of self-responsibility, is have they earned the privilege of the next level of technology, i.e. a smartphone or social media, with mature, responsible behavior over time? It’s not mature, responsible behavior for 3 days or 1 week but over weeks and months. What you’ve done then is you put the ball in their court. You’ve let them know, “As soon as I see behaviors A, B, and C over time, then I’ll know you’re ready for D. I’ll know you’re ready for the next thing. Here’s what we need to see from you that will tell us that you’re ready for a phone or for social media.”
Give them a blueprint. Be specific. Don’t say, “Be mature,” because that’s like, “What does that mean?” I would lay out things like I’ve laid out with you here in this episode and the previous episode on levels of social readiness. I would lay out a blueprint that lets them know, “When I see a lot of these behaviors over time, and not that you have to be perfect but I see that you, for the most part, are showing these, then you’ll show us that you’re right to at least try that next level.”
That’s a good blueprint for you, moms and dads to know, “Is she ready?” It’s not about age. It’s not about a grade. It’s not about all of her friends having social media. It’s about, “Is she ready? Has she shown me those signs over time?” +Lay it out for them. Be specific so the ball’s in their court. It gives them a level of being responsible for, “I can make this happen if I want it.”
Having said all of that, I said this at the end of that last episode. I don’t think most girls are ready for social media until at least mid-high school, ages 15, 16, or 17, with a good track record as I’ve outlined here and in the previous episode. Sometimes, girls are pretty mature but they’re in a pond swimming where most of the people around them are not showing that level of maturity.
The other thing is, are they picking friends who are mature and responsible? If you’re around friends who are mature and responsible, then the mirror neurons and their brains are going to say, “I’m seeing how they’re behaving. I will tend to imitate that.” They also imitate the other direction. If people are smoking weed, smoking cigarettes, or doing naughty things, they’re more likely to do naughty things because the mirror neurons in their brains say, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing if I want to have connections.” Sometime in their middle high school years only with a good track record will they show you that behavior over time that we’ve talked about here.
I hope this helps. It’s a complicated issue but simplify it. They’re either ready or they’re not. They’ve either shown that they’re ready or they haven’t. If they’ve been given the blueprint and they’ve been unable to meet those standards, then they’re showing you they’re not ready. That’s all. They’re not mature enough.
Everybody’s mature at a different age. Some kids might be ready earlier when they’re 14 or 15 and some kids, maybe later. I want them to have some of those devices. I see that they’re valuable in a lot of ways but I also think there is a level of responsibility that needs to be in your daughters to be able to handle them and get the value without the costs.
This is a great episode to read with your daughter. Stimulate discussions and make some agreements together. Pass this on to your friends who have teens who are asking you questions like, “Do you think our daughters are ready?” This might give them information as well. I appreciate you passing these on. I appreciate you sending me feedback. Send it to my wife, Anne@DrTimJordan.com.com. Send me feedback. Send me questions or ideas you have for a future episode.
Also, I am revising a book that I published years ago. The book is entitled Keeping Your Family Grounded When You’re Flying by the Seat of Your Pants. It needed an update. I added four new chapters. One of them is on social media. One of them is on listening. One of them is on how we’ve gotten away from our play-based childhood and the cost to our kids because of that. One of them is on beginning with the end in mind.
There are four brand new chapters and I revised all the other chapters so it’s almost like a brand-new book. Look for that also. It’ll be coming out in a couple of months. I’ll be putting stuff on my website to let you know when it’s out. I appreciate you stopping by every week. I’ll be back here with a brand-new episode in a week. I’ll see you then.