Table 2 Navigating adolescent screen use: a toolbox for parents

1. Access to sources of practical, local scientific information

• The things that would interest me most would be academic research on [screen use] because that’s where I think they get very balanced arguments. It’s good to have New Zealand research or Aussie research, and not the American research… so we’re talking about us here in the Pacific.

• I think some basics about scientific information about screen use, and the effect it has on families and children’s development… the long-term effects, what’s happening with these children.

2. Examples of techniques that have worked for other families

• Maybe real-life interviews on what’s worked for other families… YouTube things on discussions on families and things. Discussions on modelling behavior for the parents just to be mindful of what they’re doing.

3. Teaching parents how to teach life skills for managing screen use, e.g., prioritization, mindfulness, self-regulation of behavior

• Would be really good if there were ways that you could manage screen time but in partnership with your child.

• Start early, start early somewhere, well before they become teens… The horse has already bolted for us, it’s more about pre-teens or whatever.

4. Strategies specific to a child’s age and/or personality

• [For example] if you had a moody teen you could try this, if you had a teen who was the oldest, this might work because we know older children react like this to certain things… without putting everyone in a box.

• Get a psychologist or a teen behavioralist to explain to parents what is going on in this teenage brain because sometimes it doesn’t matter what we do, we can’t change that wiring in their brain and they’re going to have to work through the normal developmental stages to come out the other end.

5. Techniques for having productive conversations with adolescents

• Having a good conversation about it that doesn’t quite quickly result in heightened emotions and [the young person] getting super defensive and feeling attacked, and me getting grumpy… Tools for having some good conversations around that.

6. Ideas for beginning conversations about social media, inappropriate content and addiction

• Being able to have those conversations… like the key building blocks when they start to get to that age of wanting to access social media and stuff like that, so maybe having guidance around those conversations, conversation starters even, and points to cover, that would be helpful.

• And also recognizing signs where kids are getting too addicted… if people have experiences with that kind of thing, whether that might be a sign that their kid’s playing far too much, or behavioral changes, behavioral signs, that kind of stuff.

7. Tools to help engage the whole family in relation to devices

• Something that you can actually do to use it as a positive family thing as opposed to just something that an individual goes and does by themselves.

8. How to work with boundary-setting

• How to set boundaries or “rules and regulations”, how to monitor and maintain them… how to deliver in a way that is non-combative.

• Tips and tricks, just to be aware these are the things that teenagers are doing to bypass your systems or this is how they do things incognito… The kinds of apps that are available if you have to monitor that.

9. How to manage those who are displaying problematic behaviors such as addiction

• Recognizing it in kids that are more addicted to games than others and how to work with those kids is probably a huge thing… it’s understanding what makes those kids get so hooked on these games and how to stop that.

10. The importance of different parenting styles in relation to screen use

• If you’ve got an “authoritarian” parenting style or an “authoritative” parenting style, that can determine a lot on how things work at home… if you can shift your parenting towards authoritative, where there’s high expectation but also high connection, you’re going to get better outcomes from that.

11. Build a non-blaming community intervention: Build courage in each other

• You don’t want parents going away feeling like, “Oh I’ve stuffed up because I’ve done this and we let them do that.” It’s got to be really positive and affirming of what can be done, and with a hopeful outlook of how technology can be helpful, but how to keep it in its right place.

• Parents’ meeting (face-to-face and online) would focus on the importance of “knowing you’re not alone” and “feeling like you’re in this together”; a potential opportunity for “building courage in each other”.

12. Work with young people: There’s always two sides

• So I was imagining like a whole family going along and doing a workshop rather than just the parents and then coming home and delivering the bad news that actually we’re restricting everything.

• Have a “teen panel” at the intervention, to try and get both parents and adolescents “on the same page”.

13. Work with schools: Build digital citizenship

• I think the children at school get quite a fair amount of training on digital citizenship. But it would be nice for us to actually also see what they are being told… can you actually do that for the parents as well, like we can see it.

• Awareness of policies about device use, homework etc. - if they’re using their device, it’s very easy for kids just to say, “It’s schoolwork, it’s schoolwork.”