Hi all, uncertain where to place this.
My teenage daughter is addicted to her phone and bloody TikTok. Its effecting her school attendance where attendance support officers are involved. She said she has anxiety and we have gone to psychiatrists, therapists, paediatrician specialists but none of the advice is taken as she is glued to the phone (i.e. 30 minutes of exercise a day, positive reinforcement).
When you tell her to get up in the morning its basically the middle finger and not a care in the world. When she is at school she does shake and cry sometimes and there is anxiety but it's magnified by phone addiction - To a young brain, why not get the dopamine hits rather than sit in a class.
I am thinking of buying a basic flip phone, replacing the sim from her iPhone at night to break that addiction — will be for 5 weeks till she can demonstrate she can at least get up in time for school and do some work rather than lay in bed. after 5 weeks if all goes well, return phone and keep tight controls on it.
I know this will cause tremendous amount of rage but if she goes the way she is, her future will be (profanity).
Has anyone gone through this or offer advice of school refusal and phone addiction/anxiety?
Thanks!
Edit: After daughter fighting and saying how unfair it is to take her main communication with friends - that how can we be so cold and heartless to do such a thing, we negotiated to put on strict restrictions on her phone (iphone parental controls/time limit). Will see how it goes - it goes without saying that i am seen as the worst parent and she is getting condolences from extended family.
Thank you everyone for your advice and guidance. I hope other parents and teens survive todays society and vested interests.
Sounds complex but at a basic level all forms of addiction is linked to the body's need for dopamine release. If someone is getting all their dopamine from using their phone, they need to detox from it and train their brain to find different ways to release that chemical and he happy.
My brother had addiction issues in his teens and my parents took him overseas away from it all for months and he had no choice but to detox and cope.
Maybe treat the phone addiction like a drug addiction because at this point it sounds like it basically is. Remove them from the source, don't allow small drips because that's all they'll hang on to and coerce you into giving them.
Don't give in and make excuses for why people need technology and communication and so on, we all lived without it for decades prior to 2004.