The no. 1 rule for device use at home
Courtesy of a US Assistant Attorney General
Earlier this year, I attended a presentation about online safety from a US Assistant Attorney General. It was coordinated by our elementary school’s PTA, and I was heartened to see about 75 parents in attendance. While she focused less on my areas of interest (family culture! cultivating wonder and beauty in the real world!) and more on her areas of expertise — namely, sextortion and the very worst dangers of phone apps — I was so grateful to be sitting in a room with peers who also care about the experience their kids are having online.
Because she was laying out facts, she offered very little in the way of blanket advice. In fact, as far as I can remember, she only offered one rule she wished every family would adopt, and I found it powerful in its simplicity and universality. It was: no devices in bedrooms. Ever.
For our AG, this rule seemed primarily about strategically reducing the opportunities for teens to get in over their heads online. It doesn’t eliminate the risk entirely, of course, but her argument was that teens are more likely to make poor decisions when they’re physically and mentally worn out at the end of a long day — and tucked away from parental oversight.
She also mentioned the importance of sleep as another important reason to ban phones from bedrooms, and on this point she is far from alone — experts everywhere echo it loudly. Jon Haidt calls sleep deprivation one of the “four foundational harms” of the phone-based childhood. Jean M. Twenge called keeping phones out of our bedrooms “absolutely the most important rule” in her new book. “The biggest link to happiness, and the biggest link to depression is sleep — always,” she’s said.
Similarly, psychologist Lisa Damour has called sleep the glue that holds us together. Some stats from The Anxious Generation underscore her point:
“Sleep-deprived teens cannot concentrate, focus, or remember as well as teens who get sufficient sleep. Their learning and their grades suffer. Their reaction times, decision making, and motor skills suffer, which elevates their risk of accidents. They are more irritable and anxious throughout the day, so their relationships suffer. If sleep deprivation goes on long enough, other physiological systems become perturbed, leading to weight gain, immune suppression, and other health problems.”
What is sufficient sleep? The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that children 6-12 years of age should sleep nine to 12 hours per night and teenagers 13-18 years of age should sleep eight to 10 hours per night for optimal health. Tough enough with school start times (I’m already dreading the transition to middle school for this reason alone!) but add in phones and social media and the challenge ratchets up a notch. To me, establishing this rule is less about trust and more the reality that phones are addictive and it’s easier to remove the temptation than rely on willpower in the battle for sleep.
Sleep deprivation and the shadowy corners of the internet are more than enough reason for me to get behind a bedroom phone ban — but I actually have three other reasons why I plan to prioritize this rule in the future. I’ll share those, as well as how I’d go about enforcing this rule, below.