Setting Phone Limits and Suicidal Ideation

Question: How do we support parents who want to set limits on their daughter's smartphone and social media app use, when every time they take the phone away, the daughter says she will feel suicidal without her phone? 

Answer: Thank you for this important question. Supporting parents through these conversations is challenging, especially when suicidal statements are involved. If a teen expresses that they are feeling suicidal for any reason, families should take that seriously and consider calling their doctor, contacting 988, or taking their teen to the nearest emergency room. The AAP’s Blueprint for Youth Suicide Prevention offers clinicians additional strategies for screening and responding to suicide risk, including this section on Strategies for Clinical Settings that might be particularly helpful. Additional resources for teens experiencing a mental health crisis can be found at 988lifeline.org.  

Understanding Each Other 

Once you know your child is safe, it is time to better understand how they are feeling. If an adolescent is struggling to set their phone aside, it’s important to ask them why. As explained in this previous portal response, teens who have strong emotional reactions to losing access to their phone may be worried about a friend, seeking mental health or social support online, or may be struggling with interpersonal challenges such as social exclusion or cyberbullying. It can help to ask teens why they are concerned about losing access to their phone in order to help address their concerns.  

Similarly, it is important for parents to explain why they want to have limits around tech use. For example, parents may have concerns about tech use getting in the way of sleep, family time, or schoolwork. Clinicians can help families address concerns from the adolescent's and parent's perspectives, and suggest strategies that support the child's health. The 5 Cs of Media Use and 5 Cs User Guide for Clinicians provides additional guidance on how clinicians can talk to families about media use.  

Setting Boundaries 

Many parents want to support their adolescents with balanced social media use, but may not know how to establish and stick to family media rules. A qualitative interview and focus group study of parents of teens ages 13-17 found that some parents even avoided trying any strategies to help manage their teen’s tech use in order to avoid arguments and conflict with their teen. This study also found that some parents experienced strong emotional reactions from their teens, including aggression after removing access to their phone, although there is no evidence about how common experiences like these are.  

There is evidence that some types of parent-implemented technology rules are associated with problematic internet use among adolescents. A study of 4,592 U.S. adolescents ages 12-17 found that when parents had strict time-based rules for technology use, there was an increased risk of problematic internet use, especially for adolescents who reported high levels of loneliness or who had psychopathological risks such as anxiety and depressive symptoms. 

On the other hand, this same study found that parent rules based on content, such as the type of apps and websites the teen was allowed to visit, were associated with lower problematic internet use among adolescents.  This was especially true for adolescents who had psychopathological risks such as anxiety and depressive symptoms.  

These findings indicate that parent-implemented rules about content may be more helpful for adolescents than strict time limit rules, particularly for adolescents who have some anxiety and depression symptoms.  

It’s important to note that there are a range of rules and guidelines families can use to help manage their tech use and balance online and offline time. These guidelines could include: 

• Phone-free times (such as the last hour before bed),  
• Phone-free zones (such as the dinner table), or  
• Rules about the order of after-school activities (such as finishing homework before scrolling on social media).  

It may not be necessary for parents to physically take away a teen’s phone unless there is a safety concern. Instead, consider the tips below.  

Tips to Share with Families 

• Consider creating a Family Media Plan, which is a set of shared guidelines that families create together to support balanced media use. Rather than having parents create and implement rules without teen input, the Family Media Plan encourages all family members to co-create media guidelines that work for everyone 
• Rather than taking a teen’s phone away, consider choosing a space in the home where the teen can store their phone at night or when doing homework. This can still provide breaks from tech use to support other important activities like schoolwork and sleep without creating a power struggle or conflict between the teen and parent.  
• Encourage teens to use phone and app settings such as night mode, do not disturb, or within-app time limits to practice managing their own media use rather than relying entirely on parent-enforced rules. The Glossary of Digital Media Platforms outlines how to adjust these settings in different apps. 
• Check out this previous portal response to a question asked by a teen: Is it normal to be super upset when my parents take away my phone and computer? This response explains that teens may have a variety of emotional reactions to not having their phone, and provides tips for how to thrive during tech-free time and how to talk to parents about tech rule concerns.   

References  

• Chen, Y. A., & Fan, T. (2024). Adolescents' mental health, problematic internet use, and their parents' rules on internet use: A latent profile analysis. Computers in Human Behavior, 156, 108232.   
• Marsh, S., Chu, J.T.W. & Calder, A.J. ‘I tried to take my phone off my daughter, and I got hit in the face’: a qualitative study of parents’ challenges with adolescents’ screen use and a toolbox of their tips. BMC Public Health 24, 217 (2024).  

Age: 10-17 

Topics: Setting Limits, Mental Health, Suicidal Ideation 

Role: Clinician