New Age Parenting Issue – Dealing with Child Cell Phone Addiction

Any idea what keeps your child busy most of the time? Is it watching soccer match on TV, playing a video game, or chatting on the cell phone? If you have guessed chatting on the cell phone, you’re absolutely right!

Cell phones keep the kids of the day most occupied. They can give watching TV or playing a game but can hardly give up updating their friends about their latest activities. Even if the kids are at the stadium watching as important a thing as THE OLYMPICS; they cannot stop texting their friends about what’s happening there!

In short, kids are completely addicted to cell phone use.

How do you know if your child is addicted to cell phone

Wondering how you will make out if your child is a cell phone addict? Well, just the way you have “sensitivity test” for most chemical products or cosmetics, this also has a special test! Simple check your child for the below given points and you’ll know the truth!

# Your child checks the inbox after every few seconds to ensure there isn’t a new message

Observe your child’s cell phone handling. If you find your child to check the phone pretty restlessly in a really short time span, say of about 10 to 15 seconds; take it as an indication for your child’s addiction – either to somebody special ( your child may be in love with somebody!) or to the gadget (your child’s cell phone!).

# Depends on the cell phone for every other thing like wrist watch, music player, and diary

Has your child stopped wearing his favorite wrist watch recently? If he has always been fond of wearing watches and has given up his fondness ever since he has got the watch, it can be his dependence on the phone for checking out time. Latest phones come loaded with hundreds of mini gadgets and apps that give a chance to the users to give up carrying lot many things. But kids are kind of different, if they love a thing, they’ll never give up their longing to have them.

If your child loves portable gaming console, he won’t stop loving it unless there’s a better substitute and cell phones prove better substitute for several many things and if your child like the idea of carrying one phone that replaces all the other things; phone is his most favorite thing!

# Your child neglects people in the real life for communicating with them through messenger chatting

You’re shouting, literally screaming. You know one more word at that pitch will bother your neighbors! Your spouse has just run up to you and little daughter is kind of scared! But your teenaged son isn’t paying any heed to it at all. Where is he exactly? What, what did you say – he’s chatting with his friends through the chat messenger app on the phone? Go, bet on it – your child is addicted to phone!

# Text messages are more important for your child than friends and family

It’s dinner time and the whole family is together! Hey, what’s this, your child is still stuck to his cell phone! Precisely, he is always doing just this. Whether it is study time or time to dine together; nothing matters more to your child other than texting to friends.It is a sure sign of child cell phone addiction; your child needs a cure, perhaps some kind of therapy! Though it is serious, don’t take “therapy” part seriously!

How this addiction can prove damaging

Yes, it is true, child cell phone addiction is damaging. It can cause severe longtime harm.

# Your child will start neglecting important things like studies, games, and other activities

Once a kid falls in love with the cell phone; he turns into an intense hater of all the other important activities like studying the course books, everyday tasks assigned by school/teacher, games and even the personal hygiene in some cases! This then leads to poor performance in academics, dearth of hobbies, and bad effect on the health.

# Social behavior and personality will be affected

Spending 15 to 16 hours in simply typing things and communicating only through texting or chatting weakens the inter-personal skills of a growing child, especially a young adult or adolescent as adolescent years are constitute the time when most of the development takes place. With lack of face-to-face communication and personal interaction with people, your child will stagger in personality development and social behavior.

How can you stop your child from getting addicted to cell phone

No doubt being a parent is a tough job. Well, is there an option otherwise? If you have a kid, there’s no other option, say whatever! Check out below given tips to help your child stay off cell phone addiction.

# Have special digital device usage rule for the family

Don’t allow anyone to use any digital device while having dinner together or while your kids are doing homework. Kids ape parents; if you aren’t breaking the rule, they won’t break it either.To make it more effective, set special “fine” for those who break the rule! Say, 10 extra Math sums after dinner, or studying one hour extra will make your rule work more effectively.

# Disallow phone to kids’ bed room and at dining time

Don’t let your kids carry the phone to their room. This will be a great relief indeed! At least, there won’t be any texting, chatting, net surfing or any other digital activities for the night!

# Monitor child cell phone use

Observe your child’s digital device use regularly. Checking out exactly how much time your kids spend on phone is a pretty tough job. Even then, you can make it easy; all it will require you to do is to use special cell phone monitoring software on your child’s device. This will give you access to all the cell phone activities of your child.You’ll know what your child is doing and when. So, there won’t be any more lying game from your child’s side! Now, he won’t be able to say, “Hey! Mom, I’ve been studying for last two hours, lemme text-chat a bit!” when he’s actually been text chatting for the entire day!

In fact, an advanced monitoring system will even let you track your child’s location and make out several other things like what your child downloads; sites he visits; who he talks to; and the communication histories from text chatting and chat messenger apps on the phone.

This will prove a great way to restrict your child’s excessive cell phone usage and introduce a more natural and digital device free lifestyle!