Age-Appropriate Conversations with Youth About Media Use

[Dr. Lisa Linder] As an early childhood mental health clinical psychologist, I’ve kind of staked my career on the idea that we can tell children anything. So, we can talk about almost anything with a child in a developmentally-appropriate way. And I think one of the things that we as parents- we kind of are like the wizard behind the curtain, like, pulling the strings and like, “No, you can’t do that.” So why not explain, like, what if we just stopped hiding things from children and we’re like, “Hey, here’s why I don’t want you to have media all the time. Here’s what it’s doing to your brain, and it’s making it so you can’t think and you can’t come up with your ideas. You know how you like to draw dragons?” Or, you know, like, “If you have too much of that coming in, you’ll never get to think about how to do these things. And so when I tell you to stop, and you’re like, ‘No, Mommy! No!’ You know? And that’s because your body, that media has been telling you you need this. And like it’s more exciting, but it’s not. And it doesn’t help you think. And I don’t want you to get- there’s this word called ‘addiction,’” right? Like I think that we can spend the time talking to kids about this so we can reference it when it’s happening, right? And be like, “I’m worried that this is happening. Let’s calm down. Let’s think about- let’s transition. Because you’re, right now, you’re needing this too much.”