Digital wellbeing isn't just a teen challenge...
- Jacqueline Vickery
- Jul 14
- 5 min read
Most adults who feel stuck around managing technology: they know they need to have better conversations, but they're not sure how to have them, especially without it turning into a standoff about rules or expectations.
Research from the Harvard Center for Digital Thriving has found that three mindshifts can change how families talk about digital life — together.
The Harvard Center for Digital Thriving works directly with teens, caregivers, and educators to understand how families can better navigate digital life together. One of the most useful things they've produced is a set of mindshifts for adults, not teens. Simple shifts in perspectives can change how families talk about digital life — together.
From Us vs. Them → Us and them
The default frame for most tech conversations at home puts adults on one side and young people on the other. The adult is trying to manage, limit, or redirect. The kid is trying to get more time, more access, more autonomy. Everyone is in a tug of war, and no one is winning.
But research tells us that teens are often trying to regulate their own tech use. Young people consistently describe wanting to use technology in ways that support rather than disrupt the things they care about — their friendships, their sleep, their ability to focus. They're not indifferent to the pull of the screen, rather, like adults, they're also aware of unhealthy habits and many of them want help navigating it.
That finding changes the adult role considerably, from teen media use as problem to be managed to a more collaborative effort of how adults and teens can create healthy habits in the home.
Teens want to self-regulate and adults want to help. Those two things are more compatible than most tech conversations suggest.
Everyone in the house is navigating the same designed environment, subject to the same attention-capturing features, working out the same questions about when tech serves them and when it doesn't. Treating digital wellbeing as a household project — where everyone's habits are on the table, including the adults' — sets up better foundation for a conversation than a rule handed down from one side to the other. And it's more likely to build the kind of trust that makes a teen willing to come to a caregiver when something isn't working.
From Referee → Coach
Most adults who are worried about a teen's tech use default to calling fouls: too much time, wrong content, phone at the table, up too late. Rules typically stem from a desire to protect, but overly refereeing your teens' media use creates the conditions for the next violation rather than empowering your teen to build a healthier relationship with media.
Instead of being a ref, think of yourself as a coach. Coaches still hold standards — they're often even more exacting than referees. But they prioritize relationships and work alongside their players to help them develop skills, practice in real situations, debrief what went wrong, and prepare for the next hard moment. They're invested in the long game, not just the current infraction.
For families, this shows up in how you respond when something goes sideways online — a conflict in a group chat, a video that disturbed your kid, a habit that's gotten out of hand.
A referee calls it out or enforces a penalty, but a coach asks: what happened, what was your role in this, what could you do differently, what do you need from me?
Research consistently finds that teens are more likely to come to adults when something goes wrong online when they trust that adult to respond with curiosity rather than immediate consequence. Building that trust is a coaching function and creates the conditions for young people to build the agency they need to thrive.
From "What the Heck?" → "What's Familiar?"
A lot of what adults find confusing or alarming about young people's digital lives is the platform, the format, the specific features. What the heck is the Snapmap? Why side of TikTok is your kid on and what does that even mean? What's happening on a Discord server or when they're on Twitch all day? Most parents didn't grow up with these platforms; they look quite different from the blogs and MySpace profiles of our youth. Given how quickly humor, slang, social norms and technology changes, it's reasonable to feel lost.
But the feelings underneath your teens' media practices aren't new at all, in fact, you've likey experienced them yourself as a teen. The anxiety of being left on read is the anxiety of not knowing if a friend is mad at you — a feeling that has existed in every generation. Finding out your friends made plans without you on Snapmap is exclusion, which is one of the oldest and most painful social experiences there is. The creator your kid watches for hours is providing a sense of intimacy, competency, and belonging that young people have always sought from peers, mentors, and communities.
The technology changes every few years. The adolescent need for belonging, identity, and peer connection doesn't.
When caregivers lead with what's familiar - motivations, feelings, needs - rather than what's foreign, the conversation moves from "I don't understand why you do that" — which closes things down — to "that sounds like you felt left out" — which opens them up. Recognition is the way into empathy, and empathy is what makes a teen willing to keep talking.
You don't have to understand every platform, feature, or social norm to ask what the experience felt like or why this interaction, platform, or content is important to them. Recognizing the shared developmental need, the feelings, the challenges of growing up can help you connect over shared experiences, even if the tech looks different.
Putting the Mindshifts Into Practice
The research is clear that the quality of the relationship between a teen and a trusted adult is one of the strongest protective factors in how young people navigate digital life. That relationship is built in small moments, most of which have nothing to do with a crisis. Here are a few places to start.
3 questions to ask a teen in your life:
These work best when caregivers approach with curiosity, rather than looking for a specific answer.
What's something or someone you enjoy online that you think I'd like too?
What's something you do online that you think I'd misunderstand if I saw it?
If you could change one thing about how our family/household uses phones or media, what would it be?
3ways to build digital wellbeing as a household:
Digital wellbeing isn't just challenging for young people, it's something families can work on together, which means adults have to be in it too.
Name one family value and ask together whether your tech use supports it or works against it. Connection, presence, sleep — pick one that matters to your family and put it on the table for everyone.
Make mutual changes. If you're asking your kid to change something about how they use their phone or gaming, change something yourself at the same time. The parallel commitment shifts power dynamics and creates accountability.
Tell your kid one thing screens pull you toward that you wish they didn't. The honesty shifts the dynamic and opens the door for them to do the same.
Mindful Media works with families, schools, and youth-serving organizations to build the critical thinking and digital wellbeing skills that last beyond the workshop. Learn more about program development and professional learning.
Event Alert:
If you're in Northern Colorado, join us Thursday, July 30 at Innosphere Fort Collins for Level Up: The Inter-Generational Digital Game Show — a two-hour, three-round game show where families figure out together how the digital world really works. Have fun and leave with critical media literacy to promote digital wellbeing at home.
Level Up is made possible through a partnership between Mindful Media and Wholesome Generations, a Fort Collins-based nonprofit nurturing healthy individual wellness and intergenerational relationships.
