Table 6.
Domain 4. Recommendations: strategies to address phubbing
| Theme | Subtheme | Representative quotation |
|---|---|---|
| Incremental strategies | Detox or tapering | I’ve been sober from Instagram for fifteen months now. (06U) |
| If they’re looking at the screen for very long periods, we say they can reduce it gradually, that they can’t zero it out all at once (08T) | ||
| Replacement activities | We say it needs to be filled with things like sports, courses, or hobbies, making social connections. Otherwise, they’ll cling to the phone again, or there will definitely be tantrums, they’ll demand it. (08T) | |
| I’m seeing that in some of my patients they are purposefully disconnecting from their phones now, and they’re taking up things like cross stitch or painting, and they’re doing word searches, you know, in their free time or, getting back into reading (01U) | ||
| Delayed age of introduction to technology | I think the AAP’s recommendation is wait till eighth. So, typically, parents should wait until their child is in the eighth grade, so, like, 12, 13. And I’ll make that suggestion. (06U) | |
| Sanctuary hours | I personally don’t, use the phone from six to 08:30 every day because that’s my kids’ special time, and I’m focused on the kids. From 08:30 to 09:30, yes, I’m on my phone, and it goes to the silent from 09:30 onwards. (01U) | |
| Categorical strategies | Device limitations | Then what about a flip phone? And, like, I don’t know if they’re going do it or not, but the kid was not happy when I suggested that. (03U) |
| Active parenting and monitoring | So sometimes I have to, like, remind the parent that they’re the parent too. So they may have to do so things differently. It’s even hard for the adults to control this. (03U) | |
| You can’t completely shut it off, they’ll be exposed to it from friends in their environment too, but at least let the screens you give be ones where you can control the content, know what they’re watching. (09T) | ||
| Increasing buy-in from children, adolescents, and families | I think there’s a really good conversation that we can have with teens and adolescents from a motivational interviewing perspective and really helping them understand that the same way that we talk about substance use or smoking cigarettes back in the day; how these corporations spend a lot of money trying to force you to do this and you have to be individual and be free. (01U) | |
| I ask them to fill out a diary a bit more like to have the child track their screen times, to help them understand the magnitude of the problem at first. (10T) |