- 25 April 2022
- Michael McGrath
Your mobile phone – Godsend or ball and chain? A few months ago, I got a long overdue chance to do some reading.
A piece by Rosie Taylor for the Telegraph in London carried by the AFR in January caught my eye. The piece covers the story of a child psychologist who decided to give up all her social media accounts. She was responding to what she describes as the “burgeoning body of evidence” that social media harms young people’s mental health and that her continuing to use it was unjustifiable. This caused quite a stir among her thousands of followers, though how she managed to follow that stir having given up being connected is not covered in the article.
This issue affects us all – what is reasonable usage and how much is too much?
Certainly, shouting at your kids to get offline whilst being glued to your own device is not going to be received well and lacks a certain credibility. Given I have a 15-year-old still at home who needs to be online for schoolwork, where the line is between school and being connected with peers is increasingly blurred.
Since reading the article I have re-committed to staying across the research in an attempt to find what the middle way might look like between abstinence and a full-on binge.
Now after you’ve liked this post, left a comment, and shared it with your friends, why not put your phone down, and take a break?
Read the full article here – https://www.afr.com/technology/how-your-social-media-habits-affect-your-children-s-20211214-p59hi8