Technology Addiction in Kids & Teens: HELP!

Ben Kessler is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker at Coping Partners. He has over ten years of experience working with children ages six and up, adolescents, adults, and families. After receiving his Master of Social Work from Loyola University, Ben joined the Jewish Child and Family Services as a Clinician, Clinical Supervisor, and Assistant Director of Outpatient Adult, Child, and Family Services. Ben is skilled at engaging his clients and works from a strength-based perspective, knowing that trust and a solid therapeutic relationship are central to successful psychotherapy.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

The effects of social media and technology on teens and kids
Ben talks about building positive relationships with technology
Creating technology boundaries in your home and life
Ben discusses the value of setting video game time limits
How to create healthy limits with screens
What happens when technology is taken away completely?

In this episode…

Technology and social media use has become increasingly prevalent, especially among kids and teens. While these platforms can provide opportunities for communication, connection, and education, children can also become too dependent on them. How can you establish healthy technology boundaries with your children?

According to Ben Kessler, technology addiction occurs when its usage disrupts children’s relationships and behaviors. When this happens, each member of the family must participate in a 30-day abstinence period from technology. This strict boundary allows children to understand technology’s detrimental effect on their mental health, build physical relationships, and discover healthy activities.

In this episode of The Coping Podcast, Dr. Leigh Weisz hosts Ben Kessler, Licensed Clinical Social Worker at Coping Partners, to talk about technology addiction in children. Ben also highlights the importance of parents teaching young children the boundaries of healthy technology use and describes what happens when technology is taken away completely.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners.

Coping Partners is a mental health practice dedicated to helping children, adolescents, and adults manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems and much more in the Chicago suburbs.

Our practitioners are devoted to building on our clients’ strengths and bolstering weaknesses.

To gain insight and tools for getting unstuck check out our website at CopingPartners.com, email us at support@copingpartners.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01

Welcome to The Coping Podcast where we share strategies for coping with the stressors of life, especially the difficulties of parenting. And here is your host, Dr. Leigh Weisz.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 0:15

This is Dr. Leigh Weisz. I am the host of The Coping Podcast where I feature top experts on topics like raising healthy children, parenting and so much more. Past guests include dietician Laura field trauma therapist, Dr. Michelle Cutler and neuro psychologist Dr. Lisa Novak. This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners. Coping Partners is a mental health practice in the Chicago suburbs dedicated to helping children, adolescents and adults. We help manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems, and much more. Check out more episodes of our podcast and our website at copingpartners.com And you can contact us with any questions you have. Just a quick disclaimer, the information provided is for educational and informational purposes only. This is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a client therapist relationship. The information provided is not a replacement for being assessed and evaluated by a licensed professional and is not intended to replace mental health or medical advice. Before introducing today’s guest, I wanted to give a big thank you to Lynn Shaiman, who I met at Jewish child and family services, because she actually introduced Ben and me and I’m so grateful for her for training me and connecting us. So now without further ado, I’m going to introduce our guest. Ben Kessler is a licensed clinical social worker who has over 10 years of experience working with children, ages six and up adolescents, adults and families. He received his Masters of Social Work from Loyola University, Ben worked at the Jewish Child and Family Services as a clinician, clinical supervisor, and Assistant Director of outpatient adult child and family services. And now we’re very lucky to have him at Coping Partners. So thank you so much, Ben, for being here. Oh, thank you for having me. I think the topic of technology, and kids and teens is one of the trickiest for parents to navigate. Because as parents, it’s our job to keep to keep kids safe and healthy. And we know that technology can be really fraught with negative consequences. But at the same time, it’s not going away. So maybe Ben, you could start by just sharing with us some of the concerns that you have about teen teens and kids growing up with social media and technology and some of the negative repercussions you’ve seen.

Ben Kessler 2:54

Yeah, Lee, it’s such an important topic. It seems like not so ever. It seems like every so often, someone who leaves Google or one of the major companies goes on 60 minutes or something like that, and reveals the inner workings of what’s happening in these big companies. And it’s important for us to know how this is affecting our minds and how it’s affecting children. And so when I’m talking to parents, I’m trying to help them understand what technology is. Technology is a tool that’s supposed to help us achieve a specific outcome or goal. And when technology changes in our life, or especially in children’s lives, it can affect their mood, behavior, and how they interact with the world around them. And it goes from being a tool to something far different in their mind. And then it affects affects the family system in ways that parents couldn’t anticipate. And that’s when they typically contact us. Mm hmm. So tell tell

Dr. Leigh Weisz 3:51

us a little bit about it. You know, we hear the term technology addiction thrown around. And I think as parents from even a young age, we’ve seen what happens when they get their first sort of glimpse of the iPad, and, you know, the tantrums that ensue when it’s taken away from them. But tell us a little bit about what this really looks like, you know, in kids and teens and what people come to you for and how you how you manage

Ben Kessler 4:17

that. Yeah, so I think so I think some of the early symptoms or signs that we see is our children, adolescents, teens, young adults, even even adults who are experiencing a lower depressed mood, irritability, especially in children, frustration, feared annoyance, with simple everyday tasks that they’re typically able to complete and inability or outright refusal to do to take the next steps in life. That would really get them where they want to be, and need to be for their progression and stage in developmental stages of life. And so I think what we see is really a lot of irritability and children, a lot of anger and upset, especially when the device, or this tool is being talked about possibly being taken away, or restricted. And I think when we see that reaction, so disproportionate disproportionate to the situation, that’s when we really want to, we always want to take it seriously. But that’s when we want to think more deeply about it. And what is that

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