GENERATION IDISTRACT

JENNIFER ASHTON RYAN

Iknow I’m not the best one to be writing about teens and phone use, but it’s a fulltime issue for me. My daughter is 10, both preteen and prephone. For everyone on the other side, allow me this moment. My ideas about adolescent phone use can be your comedic relief for the week, for I do not know what it’s like. For now, my fresh memories are of elementary school—the parenting sweet spot—of her childhood, pretend play, and learning to read. I have only worries about everything coming next.

What I know is that a decade is long enough for some retrospection. For all the slow mom days of playing on the oor, doing the dishes (again), and clearing drawers of clothing sizes too small, suddenly my rstborn is turning 10, and I’ll admit, as the grandmas in the grocery store warned: That decade went pretty fast.

My rst season of motherhood was 2013 to 2023. I did everything newspaper articles have written that millennial moms do. I was on my iPhone when I could have been connecting with my daughter. I put down my phone so that I could connect with her. The telephone on the wall didn’t ring (it wasn’t even there), but the text messages poured in, hundreds a day, lifelines. I had no soap operas, bonbons, or wine coolers. For us it was iMessage, The Bachelor, and LaCroix.

As I approach the day that I’ll pass an iPhone on to my daughter, the reality makes me notice more about how I use my own device.

First, my phone is an incredible tool to accomplish work and mom stuff, one I don’t know mom life without. Ten years ago, I had a Wi-Fi-only iPod Touch. Then, I met my mom friends and the group texts couldn’t load on my not-smartphone, so my baby turned 6 months and I bought my rst iPhone. I was late enough to the smartphone table that I remember “the before.” I’d watch people with iPhones have them out all the time. I saw those people get pulled from in-person conversations. I knew they were more engaged with the person messaging than who they were actually with. I didn’t want to be like that, but even back then, I could see how inevitable it was.

Second, my phone is around more than I’d like. According to my screentime data tracked automatically by Apple (you can nd yours under Settings, then go to Screen Time), I pick up my phone about 200 times a day (if that number sounds high, compare yours). For a quarter of those times, I’m looking because I received a text message, which come in about 50 times a day. I spend about an hour a day on my text replies and another hour on Instagram, and that is with the 30-minute time limit that I’ve set and can override (and clearly do) in 15-minute increments. This has helped me cut daily Instagram time in half. It’s addicting and I’m quite susceptible. However, I have not yet been sucked in by TikTok.

Looking at these numbers, my brain hurts. It was only a month ago that I found the Screen Time menu and decided I wanted to cut back. I did for a week, and then the stats climbed right back up. I’m not going to stop using my phone, but I’m asking myself: Do I actually like this? Do I like this iPhone in my pocket, in my parenting, in my work, in my housekeeping, in my marriage? How can I manage my use more responsibly? Is this what I want for my daughter?

I can imagine a scenario when my daughter gets an iPhone and I’m constantly telling her to put it away. I see her having it out at dinner, or on the table during homework, and I bark. All the frustrations I have with my own phone use are behind my voice and— writing it in black and white now—I don’t want to be that way. My baseline beef with the phone is its effect on relationships. We’ll be creating boundaries in our family so that phone use and policing of it don’t drive us apart. And if they do, we’ll return to the baseline of why we care in the rst place.

You’ll have to tell me what you’re doing, what you’re aware of with your teens. Is their iPhone use in line with what you want for them? Or what they want for themselves? I made those 2013 observations about other people and their phones, yet it’s harder and harder to remember what my brain felt like before 200 pickups a day. I have my daughter now, in that sweet prephone state, and I know this stage can’t last forever. For 10 years, day in and day out, I’ve carried my phone, and I’ve been raising my children. Hand in hand they go.