E 266 How to Help Your Teen Use Social Media in Healthy Ways

 Have you ever looked at your teen scrolling on their phone and thought, “I’ve completely lost control of this?”
You’re not alone. Many parents feel overwhelmed trying to balance their teen’s screen time and social media use while keeping the peace at home.

In this episode, Cynthia Coufal, Teen Anxiety Coach and founder of The Anxiety Maze Navigator, shares how to:
✅ Set screen time limits without constant arguments
✅ Build a Family Media Plan that works for everyone
✅ Model healthy digital habits (even when you struggle too)
✅ Talk with your teen about online news, bias, and misinformation
✅ Strengthen your connection while navigating the digital world together

💡 This isn’t about control — it’s about communication, balance, and helping your teen use technology in ways that support their wellbeing.

📚 Explore resources mentioned: 

HealthyChildren.org Family Media Plan:
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/fmp/Pages/MediaPlan.aspx

UNICEF Digital Parenting Toolkit https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kEAH5jgapeFVo6y2UJ4mIalDdEm2EEJU/view?usp=sharing

SAMHSA: 
https://www.samhsa.gov/mental-health/children-and-families/online-health-and-safety-for-children-and-youth

All Sides
https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

Ground News
https://ground.news/

👉 Follow for weekly tips on parenting anxious teens and helping your family thrive in today’s digital world. 

 Struggling with anxiety in your family? If anxiety is causing tension, fights, or disconnect in your home, you don’t have to face it alone. I help parents bring more peace, confidence, and connection to their families. Let’s talk—schedule a free consultation today or email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com

Find my podcast
Email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com
Text me: 785-380-2064
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Transcript

 Have you ever looked at your teen scrolling on their phone and thought, I have completely lost control of this, or maybe you've tried setting limits and your teen has started an argument with you, or it just feels like, how in the world am I gonna help control the social media stuff? If you've ever wondered that, we are gonna talk about that today.

And even if you've never set any limits or boundaries before, we're gonna talk about how to do that today. Digital habits are really important and we don't want to take away all access from our kids. We may want to if they're very young, but, uh, if we're talking about teenagers, they do need to have some access too.

Social media and news. And so I wanna talk today about how can we have that balance [00:01:00] between them learning the how to use it and like, and, and then how they're using it, how your whole family is using it.

You play such an important role in this and we, our kids are digital natives and we are not, and so it is. Sort of difficult for us to figure that out because we don't have the same skills having had it our whole lives as they do.

And I just want you to know that. All families are struggling with this to some extent, and the things that I'm gonna teach you today, adults need to have these skills as well as teenagers. And so I thought this was a perfect, a perfect episode to come after last week where we talked about how the algorithms and the things in social media really suck us into things.

And this is a way that we can help. [00:02:00] Uh, deal with that with our teens and with ourselves,

and it all starts with your home environment when it comes to screens and social media. Your relationship with your child or teen matters far more than any rule or app restriction. So we do want your home to feel like in a po you want it to be a positive environment, but also a learning environment.

So if your teen feels like they're being judged or punished for the things that you're going to talk about, then that is going to cause them to start hiding things from you and you will lose visibility into their world. So try calm, curious questions, asking them how does social media make you feel? Or What's been hard or stressful online lately?

Just get some ideas from them because sometimes what we think is happening or what we, [00:03:00] the things that are upsetting to us maybe aren't as upsetting to them, but we need to know where are we at with this? Trying to have an understanding of where they're coming from and ask these questions to understand not to correct them, and the calmer and more open you are, the more likely they are gonna be calm and open with you.

And you'll be able to actually come up with some ways to work on this together.

So, of course, setting clear rules and boundaries, that's part of being a parent in every aspect, but it goes with social media and digital use as well. And so once you've opened that communication with them and you're safe, and you are listening and understanding where they're coming from. Then you can move towards creating some sort of structure or plan together.

The, there is a website, and I'm gonna put it in the show notes and in the description of the YouTube [00:04:00] video. I think it's healthy children.org, but they have a family media plan and they kind of help you decide how to create this family media plan. It's not about controlling your family, it's about everyone being in agreement with what the rules about devices and social media should be.

And you can talk about in this family media plan, things like when and where will we use devices? Wow. What does screen free time look like? What, where, where are we or what are we doing during those times? Like a lot of families do mealtime as a screen. Free time. Bedtime could be a screen free time. Uh, maybe when we have guests, there's at least a certain amount of screen free time.

Talking about privacy rules, like what is okay to share online, what is not okay to share online? Maybe other like privacy where, [00:05:00] how much does the parent get into the teen device or see things. And I. I really recommend because of so much reading that I've done on devices that you keep devices out of the bedroom overnight.

Now, one of the other things I'm going to tell you about the rules is that we really need to, as adults and parents, we need to be following the same rules that we're asking our kids to do. And so this one could be tricky because if you use your device at night or in the morning before you get outta bed.

It'll be difficult to not have it in the bedroom overnight, but I really think for teens having a device in the room in the night is just, it's, it's just too, it, it's just too there. It's too available for them to get to, to scroll on it or to read messages. Or send messages that. [00:06:00] They probably wouldn't do maybe in the daytime.

And so if there's a way where you could be charging devices in a different room. Or at least having a device free time, an hour before going to bed, all of those things can help people get better. Sleep and sleep is so important no matter how old we are. It helps rejuvenate our body. It helps our brains grow and develop, and it's just so important for them to be able to do that and not be, uh, worried about their device or the device, keeping them up really late at night.

And just talking to them about why that's important, why is sleep important? Why is it important not to be on your device at night? And I know a lot of teens tell me that they use it for an alarm. And I use my device for an alarm too. I don't have kids at home though, so I feel like I have a, I don't know, an, an open, I can have a device in my room 'cause I'm not asking anyone else not to [00:07:00] do it.

And it doesn't distract me because I know how important sleep is and I, I fall asleep to it anyway, so it's not like it's keeping me up and I'm not, uh, worried about what people are sending me or I'm not worried about sending people messages in the night. And I do use it for an alarm, but there are analog alarms.

There are my mom doesn't have any kind of device and. She has a little travel alarm clock and hers broke recently and we had to get a new one, and they have 'em on Amazon. They're just really tiny, and they sit by your bed and they tell you when to get up. So there are such things as that. If you are wanting to implement something like this, I.

And just having a family conversation about it, like we've realized everyone's staying up too late and people are cranky and we're not getting things done, or, you know, our grades are slipping because we're staying up too late or we're having too many drama triangle problems because there's too many messages going around in the night and keeping us up and, and we're [00:08:00] being upset about it.

Just know that these conversations are kind of just like starters to this, this whole concept, like we're not gonna change everything overnight. We're not gonna get everyone to do all the things right when we start talking about it. We're gonna have to do this kind of in a slow. Process. And so maybe we start out with, we're not going to have phones, dinner time.

We're gonna put our phones away and we're gonna talk to each other and we're gonna, you know, or maybe we're gonna have a family game night and everyone's gonna put their phone away so we can play this game together. We're gonna put a puzzle together, or whatever kinds of things that your family likes to do, maybe your.

If you have guests over, you know you're gonna say that we don't get our phones out when we have guests at our house. And then after you have a rule that you kind of are following for a while, then you can add another rule and add [00:09:00] another rule. If that is what everyone decides in the family, that that's what you want to do.

So each step that your teen takes to adjust, and, and does, it helps you to also model those things and show that, you know, this is a good plan for the whole family. And like I said, modeling healthy habits for yourself is gonna be helpful for your whole family because they need to see that this isn't just about.

These are the rules for the teens and no one else has to do it because anytime teens think that something's unfair or that someone's getting to do something that they're not getting to do, even if it's an adult, they're gonna be less likely to wanna follow it. So if you're doing the same things and you're following the rules that you're setting together, setting down together to talk about as a family, they're gonna be much more likely to follow along And, and do those things. And as you're using your phone, if you notice that you're spending too much time on your [00:10:00] phone, you could even say out loud, I, I'm spending too much time on my phone. I'm gonna start setting limits for how often I am on it. My husband and I have, it's not like a strict rule. Like we don't ever look at our phones because I wanna be available if my kids text me or you know, I need to know something for my job or whatever.

For the most part, we don't just sit on our devices at night when we're, we have our together time and we just watch tv. So we're looking at another device, but at least we're engaged in that one activity together. And we're not like having a show on that We're supposed to be watching, but we're also on our phone or also on our tablet or whatever.

And it is, it's really nice to just have that time where I'm not worried about what's on my phone. And if there's a break, some of our streaming services, we pay the cheapest amount, so we get ads. So sometimes on the ad we'll get our phone out and look at something or see if someone has texted us. We [00:11:00] don't stay on it all the time.

And so that's, you know, an activity that you could say, you know, when we have together time, even if it is watching a movie or TV or something, we're not gonna have other devices out. We'll just be enjoying the, the one thing that we're doing together. And just teach that these are life skills, this is, adults have to do this too.

This isn't just what young people have to do. And then navigating news and media bias together. So this is very important I think right now, especially, but probably always, I mean, I remember hearing news stories when I was young. Like being scared of them or, or misunderstanding them or not really sure.

And it was just from the tv. So you know, our kids live in our, in our homes and they hear us talking about news events or they, as they're older, they're, you know, seeing stuff on social media. So we need to be able to talk about that.

So [00:12:00] when your teen sees something upsetting online. Don't try to just rush in and explain it or fix it. Just start with what have you heard or seen? Because their, their perception of what they heard or saw might be different than yours or different from what you thought they experienced. So just ask them about it so you know for sure.

Then if they have questions just answer as honestly as you can with aids. Appropriate information. You don't have to get into the graphic details of anything. But you can talk about it in whatever's way is comfortable for you, and asking them what kind of questions they have about what they saw or heard.

And you can be truthful because so many times recently, especially the stories are hard for me as adults. Like we're hurting and sad and angry. It's okay to say to our kids, yeah, that [00:13:00] was very upsetting to me too. Or, I'm very angry about this too. Or I'm very sad about this, or, or whatever. And just again, making all emotions normal.

'cause all emotions are normal. Talking about them and showing that adults also feel this way and. Also the guidelines that you put on yourself. Maybe you know when you know that news is upsetting or hurtful, maybe you have boundaries on that and you could share that with your child about how you do that.

There really isn't, I don't think there's any news outlet, newspaper or TV news or any of it that is completely non-biased. There are some that are fairly balanced and and we know the ones you know that are or are not. And we all have our own ideas about which ones we want to listen to and watch. And our kids might be opposite from us, [00:14:00] and we have to allow them to have opposite views.

They are different people from us, and when they do, we need to be able to talk about that. So first of all, we wanna teach. Our teens and we wanna do this ourselves to be able to read sideways. And that just means to look at all sides of a story. So when a story is, when we, when we hear of a story or read a story to find other.

Other viewpoints of that same story so that we can make a better decision about how we feel about that story or what our beliefs are on that story. And there are a couple things, and again, I'll put all this stuff in the show notes, but there are a couple of sites. All sides is one and ground News is another where they explore all sides to stories so that you can see, what are those different viewpoints? So you can talk about that [00:15:00] as a family and also that this is just important in a, in a world where we are, you know, we have a 24 7 newsfeed and that's not going to go away as our children become adults. This is a life skill. To learn like that, you need to vet your sources.

You need to look at all sides. You need to see what is exactly going on, and then make your own decision from there. Now, when I'm talking about when our kids are opposite than us, I know that's hard. I. I don't have a, you know, all I can say is just be an open, safe place for your child to talk about anything, whether it's against how you feel or not.

I navigate this in my own life, not with my children, but with my, with my mom. My mom and I are total opposites when it comes to. How we feel about a lot of things, and we always have been. And that was a problem that we had when I was a [00:16:00] teenager, that, you know, she wanted me to think certain things and I didn't, and I still don't.

And I'm 57 years old, she's not gonna change my mind. She's not going to. Sway me in her direction, and I know I'm not gonna sway her either. So us having those conversations about who's right or wrong or what's the right thing, or they're not productive conversations. And so I, when she brings up any of that stuff, which she always does, I just tell her that I don't, you know that, that's fine.

Thank you for sharing that with me. I don't wanna talk about that. Or I don't want to, you know, and she'll have like a little ending about, well, you know, this is the right way, or whatever. And I just, I just let it, and I, the part that helps me deal with her the most is that I know in her, she's a good person and in her heart, she truly believes that [00:17:00] I'm being hurt in some way or I am.

Something's wrong with me because I think the way I do, and I know she just wants me to be okay and I am okay the way that I am. But I mean, I can give her some grace that she just wants me to have the best life I can have because she loves me and the way she's going about it doesn't work for me.

But I know that she, she feels like she's doing the right thing. And I do have when I was raising one of my teenagers, it was during the time that the Sandy Hook School shooting happened. And I remember he came home from school and he told me that he thought that the Sandy Hook shooting was faked and it was created by people who wanted to take everyone's guns away.

And that, you know, like it would be this terrible story that. Would get [00:18:00] everyone upset and then they would enact gun laws to take guns away from people. And that was very, that viewpoint was very upsetting to me, but I also wanted to have a good conversation with him about it. So I just asked open questions about, you know, like, well, why do you think that?

And what do you, you know, where did the source come from of this information? We looked into things and I showed him some things that I knew about and some sites that I also had gotten information from, and I understood his fear. Because we live in rural Kansas, um, many people own guns. We have guns in our home right now.

Most people have guns in their homes because of people are outdoorsmen. That's the reason why people in our family have guns is the, the, the sport of hunting. So I [00:19:00] understand like he was coming from, I don't want someone to take my guns away, and people at school are saying that they are. And so we just talked about it for a while and I don't really remember how it all ended, but.

I was able to talk about my side without feeling angry or I didn't wanna try to force how I was feeling on him. I just wanted him to really think about what, what was going on and, and why he thought that and where it was coming from. So that's just some examples of that. And then balancing the narrative is of course, this balance of look at all sides of the story, but also looking at positive news about good things that are happening along with the stuff that's bad now I, or that feels heavy and sad.

And angry. I want everyone to be, I want you to know what's going on in the world. Kids need to know what's going well. At least teenagers need to know what's going on in the world. Sometimes I'm not [00:20:00] sure little kids do 'cause they don't understand it. Teenagers as they're becoming adults, need to know what's going on in the world.

And, you know, they're forming their opinions about what's going on. But to not just stay in the negative, part of news that is so heavy and sad and and upsetting, but to also counter that at least 50% with things that are good. And so I subscribed to an email called Nice News, and it's just all sorts of stories about people doing good things in the world and baby animals at the zoo being born, and just all the things that feel good things.

And I think it, you know, if you have, if you're, if you're experiencing. You know, news, it, it is pretty heavy and sad most of the time or like upsetting. Then have like talk to them about other news. That's good. And even bringing up certain stories where families are doing things to help. [00:21:00] Make the world better.

'cause I do believe that we need to be the change that we wanna see in the world. And so if we want people to be loving and kind and caring towards other people, then we need to be that kind of person. And we need to be having actions in our community that show this love and care for others. If that's what you wanna do or whatever it.

The certain values are that your family has, but find ways that your family can be in action doing those things that are good so that that you don't have that helpless feeling like, I can't do anything about this. You actually can do things for your community. And those things help you have some sense of agency and power in what's going on, when many times we don't feel like we have an agency and power in what's going on.

These are other resources that I want you to know about. Um, UNICEF has a digital parenting toolkit. [00:22:00] The Children's Mercy Hospital has an online safety guide. There are fact sheets about digital safety on the CDC and the Yale medicine websites. And healthy children.org has a family media plan and again, I'm gonna put all these links in the notes so that you can just click on them and go to them for extra help in these areas.

But I just want you to know you are doing a good job. We didn't have a chance to learn these things as we were growing up. We've had to learn them alongside our kids many times, and we make mistakes where we just allow full access because we don't know what the consequences are to that. And now that we do know that there's some consequences to that.

We can start making changes and they may be small changes, but if you are open and honest and allow your children to talk about what they need and want and how they feel about [00:23:00] things, and then you can talk about how you are experiencing it and then come up with what are those, what are the rules where we're compromising, where we're.

We both, we all in the family agree to the rules and how we wanna do social media and the news and things will get more peaceful and you'll maybe have some really interesting conversations as a family about what all this means. So we'll talk to you soon.