After 00 and 10, they seem to face two "parallel worlds" since they became sensible — — Virtual world and real world. To some extent, they have two sets of "ways of living" and even two "social support systems".
Under such circumstances, banning their contact with mobile phones and depriving one world may not make another world better. This also means that parents’ management of their children’s mobile phones is not simply to isolate their children from their mobile phones, but to help them better survive in the "parallel world" and add value to their lives.
Video games and social software firmly attract children’s attention, and even many parents think that mobile phones are the "root of all evils" that affect children’s studies.
Since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Education has issued documents, clearly requiring five management in primary and secondary schools, namely, mobile phone management, sleep management, extracurricular reading management, homework management and physical health management. Before the start of school in autumn, the State Press and Publication Administration issued a document to strictly regulate the time when online game enterprises provide online game services to minors.
Under such circumstances, do parents still need to control the time and scope of use of teenagers’ mobile phones? The answer is yes.
Under the rude ban, children are more likely to indulge in the internet.
If mobile phones are completely banned, can we go back to the era of rolling iron rings and playing glass balls?
The answer is probably impossible. Today, the mobile phone is not only a communication tool, but also a "leisure tool" with the update of the times. Not to mention that children love to play, many parents take their mobile phones and it is difficult to put them down. Whether children or parents, the first thing they need is to think calmly about what kind of existence mobile phones and online games are; How should we deal with this mode of existence and achieve a better life for ourselves?
What exactly is a mobile phone? Mobile phone is a bridge of interpersonal communication, which makes the world smaller and our life circle bigger. Mobile phones are also a tool to transform the world, and many traditional industries have been reshaped online; Including online education, has also entered the study and life of minors.
According to the "Research Report on the Internet Use of Minors in China in 2020" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and the China Internet Information Center, 11.5% of minors spend more than 2 hours online every day on weekdays, and 12.2% spend more than 5 hours online every day on holidays; Among these underage netizens, 62.5% often play games online, and more than half play mobile games.
It can be said that the mobile phone seems to be the entrance to a "parallel world". When you open the mobile phone, there are surprises and temptations. Some people are "hunting" and "growing vegetables" in it, and some people are lost in it. Both parents and children must learn to survive in this world. Don’t be afraid of strangeness, don’t shrink back from challenges, don’t be lost by temptation, and don’t be disqualified by ignorance.
But the reality is that the survey shows that 10% of parents don’t let their children play mobile phones at all, and even when their children surf the Internet, such parents are nervous. There are 60% children who check the information online normally, and they have been mistaken by their parents for playing games.
However, many parents talk about the wrong of mobile phones and games, but they can’t let go of their mobile phones. Their preaching is often difficult to convince children. At the same time, the study found that compared with children who are not addicted to the internet, the proportion of parents who surf the internet frequently is 16% higher, and the proportion of parents who don’t communicate with each other and play separately is 10% higher.
Research from China Youth Research Center shows that children are more likely to indulge in the internet in families that rudely prohibit their children from surfing the internet.
Those children who are academically gifted are not completely free from playing mobile phones and games.
Many parents think that after children are separated from mobile phones and games, the "extra" time will be spent on learning. After all, time is constant. If you don’t spend it on mobile phones or games, you will spend it on learning. Is it true?/You don’t say.
In fact, because learning efficiency is related to learning time and effect, the longer the learning time, the lower the learning efficiency without obvious improvement in learning effect.
To make matters worse, the inefficient learning mode will only bring children a low sense of self-efficacy, and they will become less and less fond of learning, even tired of learning and refuse to learn.
Whether you study, use your mobile phone or play games, in the final analysis, it is to let your children grow up and make them more knowledgeable, capable and valuable.
No matter whether the child goes online or plays games, when he becomes better and better, it means that parents should let go moderately and don’t dwell on details such as his study time; If the child becomes worse and worse, then parents should pay attention to his state. In our investigation, we found that those children with excellent academic performance are not students who don’t play mobile phones and games at all. From many dimensions, we can see that their lives are complete and their vitality is high.
Parents’ intelligent management of their children’s mobile phones does not mean that children and mobile phones are completely isolated. Mobile phone management is not a means to control children, nor a tool to reward and punish children, nor is it a way for parents to vent their emotions. Managing mobile phones is to improve the parent-child relationship, not break it.
Let children learn self-discipline, not heteronomy.
How to survive better in both virtual and parallel worlds? This requires parents and children to face together and explore together through agreement. Parents should be well-founded and avoid unilaterally adjusting their children’s rules of using mobile phones based on their own subjective wishes. Some parents said that it is not that children are not allowed to play mobile phones, but it is stipulated that they can only play for 30 minutes every day. Then why 30 minutes?
In the eyes of experts, children under 3 years old should not touch mobile phones and video games. They should climb, run, play with mud, play house, touch and feel the world with their bodies, instead of raising children on the screen.
At the age of 3-6, children can watch cartoons, science and education films, play interactive games and learn to sing and dance, but it is best not to spend more than one hour every day, and they should play with adults or children in the rest of the time.
At the age of 7-9, children can use their mobile phones to complete daily tasks, look up information in online courses, and interact in a circle of friends. However, these activities should be carried out under the supervision of parents, monitoring, guiding and managing the online content, interactive objects and overall time.
Children aged 10-12 can have personal privacy. Parents don’t have to supervise everything. They should grasp the overall direction, control the overall time, solve the problems they encounter, often communicate with their children about their online experience, and improve the online rules through mutual negotiation and interaction.
Children aged 13-18 should independently manage their own mobile phones and time, incorporate mobile phone management into their master plan of life, study and communication, constantly adjust and improve their mobile phone management level, and make mobile phones a "multiplier" rather than a "jammer" for their own life growth. In this process, the relationship between parents and children should be cooperative rather than antagonistic, and parents should gradually give their children the initiative in mobile phone management. In the whole process, maintaining a good parent-child relationship has always been the first magic weapon to give children the ability to manage their mobile phones.
Managing mobile phones is to let children learn self-discipline rather than heteronomy. Parents always let go and children always grow up. One day, children will use and manage their mobile phones and play games online completely independently. Theoretically, the earlier parents let their children learn the autonomous management of mobile phones and games when they enter adolescence, the less likely their children are to become addicted to mobile phones or games, and the lower the probability of parent-child conflicts.
Never choose "screen parenting" because you are afraid of trouble.
The essence of mobile phone management, like emotional management, network management, wealth management and time management, is a part of life management, so mobile phone management for children should start from an early age.
First of all, parents can’t "screen parenting" when their children are young because they are afraid of trouble.
Children’s best playmates are parents. Many parents give their children a mobile phone when they are young, so that they can calm down and play by themselves. When children develop the habit of playing with electronic products such as mobile phones through this "screen parenting" method, or find fun in it, parents often upgrade "screen parenting" to a way to control their children. If you are satisfied with your child’s performance, reward him to play with his mobile phone for a long time. If you are not satisfied, deprive him of the right to play with his mobile phone. Over time, in children’s minds, playing mobile phones and playing games is happy, and the occurrence of this happiness is irregular. Only when parents are in a good mood can they play as long as they can.
When the child enters rebellious adolescence in this way, he will think, why can I play casually when I was a child, but I can’t play now? Why can’t adults just play and I can’t? Why can’t I play when other children can decide for themselves?
At this time, it is easy for parents to enter the parent-child war if they want to take care of their children’s mobile phone use. This is why parents should manage their children’s mobile phones early, slowly and flexibly, not late, quickly and rigidly.
Secondly, parents should help their children to start a variety of happy modes. Some children have no playmates, no leisure activities, and can only stay at home alone after studying, and there is no one to communicate with, and they also lack independent activities at home. At this time, mobile phones and online games are the fastest thing for them to get started, the most timely positive feedback, and the easiest thing to put into their emotions. When they turn on their mobile phones, they can escape from reality and forget their unhappiness.
For such children, we should help them reduce their study pressure, reduce their rankings, reduce their homework, improve the parent-child relationship and teacher-student relationship, increase exercise, increase classmate interaction, increase extracurricular reading, give play to their hobbies and specialties, let them get in touch with nature and engage in social service activities, and rescue them from mobile phone addiction.
At the same time, we must help children build a circle of friends. From the middle and senior grades of primary school, the influence of peers began to surpass that of parents and teachers. In junior high school, peer influence becomes the "first influence", and developing peer relationship is one of the most important life tasks for adolescents. At this time, it is a critical period to help children build their own circle of friends, develop friendship and find their own social support system. Therefore, parents should provide more time, space, financial support, guidance and protection for their children’s socialization. With social circles such as painting circle, technology circle, performance circle and sports circle, children will not be lonely and depressed, nor will they just play mobile phones in their lives.
At this time, parents should retreat appropriately, don’t snoop and monitor, and let go appropriately to let their children grow up in the group. Otherwise, parents with high sense of control will encounter children who pursue high autonomy, and parent-child conflicts will be inevitable.
Facing adolescent children, parents should learn to "quit" appropriately.
The research shows that once a conflict occurs, the worse the parent-child relationship, the higher the proportion of children addicted to the Internet, and the higher the proportion of playing games and brushing videos. Therefore, in the face of adolescent children, parents should learn to "quit" appropriately, leaving enough room for their children to be independent.
Let children manage their own time bank. Nowadays, many parents are keeping an eye on the time when their children play mobile phones. As a result, the more they stare, the more they can’t stare, and conflicts occur. In fact, mobile phone management is a problem that children must face in this life. If they can’t control it when they are young, they can’t control it when they are older. In fact, many of us adults and even the elderly are no better than children in cell phone addiction.
The author’s suggestion here is: When children go to middle school, they should learn to manage their mobile phone use. If parents are not at ease, they can set up a mobile phone use time bank for their children. Parents and children agree on the total time of playing mobile phones every week. Within the total time range, children can choose when to play or how long to play each time. If the total time runs out this week, parents can confiscate their mobile phones in the remaining days. If it is overtime or has special needs, with the consent of parents, it can be borrowed in advance from the total time next week, but the time interest should be paid at 1: 1.5 or 1: 2 times. If you have a balance this week, you can automatically transfer it to next week or redeem the prizes your child wants. In short, it is necessary to gradually shift the parental management mode of mobile phones to the self-management mode of children.
With the era of cloud storage, big data, 5G Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and mobile terminals coming to us, no one can stop it, and everyone must open their arms to meet the changes. For parents, this requires courage and wisdom. It is not feasible to rely on blocking. It is better to equip the children’s body and mind first and let them be "Peter Pan" who embraces the new era.
(He Lingfeng is a professor at Shanghai Institute of Physical Education and a member of the Steering Committee of College Psychology Teaching of the Ministry of Education.)
