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Social Media Wellness, By Ana Homayoun

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Ana Homayoun, author of Social Media Wellness: Helping Teens and Tweens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World, wrote an article in The New York Times about the conflicts parents face with allowing their children to have smartphones. She gives insight on how to minimize the risk of smartphone addiction by establishing guidelines and monitoring children's use. Reasons for Concern In Homayoun's article, she cites a study done by Common Sense Media in 2016 which found that half of teenagers felt addicted to their smartphones, 78 percent checked their devices hourly, and 72 percent of teens felt pressured to respond immediately to social media messages, texts, or any kind of notification. Homayoun also cites another study done by Pew Research in 2015 which found that 74 percent of teenagers from 13- to 17-year-olds had smartphones and a quarter of them felt like they were online continuously. Distinguishing Appropriate Use from Abusive Behavior …show more content…

Many times children are using their devices for both school work and free time simultaneously. Homayoun suggest looking for certain signs to see whether their smartphone use is counterproductive or not. Hilarie Cash, a psychotherapist and the chief clinical officer at reSTART, says to look for sudden intense anxiety, irritability, or even aggression when the device is taken away; lying, breaking rules, skipping social events to spend more time on the phone, and sleep deprivation can also be red flags for abuse. A 10-item questionnaire developed by South Korean researchers was published in the journal PLOS One and is great tool for identifying those red flags and determining smartphone addictions in

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