This month, I conducted a little interview with my youngest about the TimeLimit app on F-Droid:
Teenagers can manage their own time on screens using parental control tools provided the initiative comes from the children themselves.
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I’m not entirely sure what the blog was about. No offense to you, of course. I do not mean to judge, I am just curious what we are supposed to learn from this.
It seems obvious to me that we cannot group all teenagers together based on what one teenager said in an interview with their own parent. A more suitable title would be “Can My Teenager Manage Their Own Screen Time?”
But even if we assume that you’ve interviewed a statistically significant portion of the teenager population, the question of whether they can manage their own screen time is not a good research question. There are of course some who can and some who cannot. The better question is how we can get teenagers to manage their own time, how can we facilitate an environment in where a child develops a psychology that allows them to initiate this on their own accord.
I’m also very confused at the conclusion you came to:
Parents can step in an provide some technical support or explain concepts like “trackers” and “open source” where needed . . .
What do you mean by “step in”? Within the context of the blog, I would think “stepping in” means managing the child’s screen time as opposed to them managing it themselves.
. . . but we do need to understand that terminology ourselves before we can help our children on their own privacy journeys.
This statement implies that screen time management (which is what the blog was about) is part of the privacy journey. I would agree, but you don’t talk about this in the blog anywhere, so there is zero context as to why this is being stated here like this.
To answer the titular question by OP I would imagine.
I hope you’re being genuine, because otherwise that would be annoying.
Please read what I wrote further down in my original reply. To reiterate, there are of course teenagers who can manage their screen time, but also those who cannot. This is empirically and obviously true.
The answer, “Yes, teenagers can manage their own screen time, but they need to do it on their own initiative,” just makes us ask what precisely we need to do to make teenagers initiate this on their own accord.
However, I would only regard my “criticisms” as valid under the fact that the blog is supposed to “teach” us something (by providing an explanation of the empirical data they gathered in the interview). If it turns out, actually, that the blog writer was simply sharing an interview with their child with no specific research question or researching methods in mind, my criticisms aren’t really valid. That is why I asked him what the blog was supposed to be about.
Okay
Well, while OP can best answer that. I think the blog post was about to give us an idea of what a teenager may think and how they may go about it. It’s to show that some latitude with education around the importance of screen time should be given to teenagers if they are to become healthy users of technology when they become adults in their 20s and 30s.
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I would agree, if it were not for this portion of the conclusion:
I do feel we got to the bottom of the question “Can manage their own screen time?” The answer is a clear “yes,” but as is the case with so many habit-related things, the initiative has to come from the children themselves.
Nothing else is further stated from this. There is no further analysis of the interview (which is what I meant by “providing an explanation of the empirical data they gathered in the interview”). What you replied just now is an explanation of the interview, but it’s only your explanation, not the blog writers’.
So it is not fit, in my opinion, to say
Instead, it would make more sense to say that this is what you specifically learned from the blog.
Like I said, OP can answer what you’re asking before. I replied what I think of it. Obviously.
You’re reading too much into it and analyzing language and verbiage/lexicon with what I said more than needed leading to semantic differences at best with how you feel about the combination of words I have used to express myself. I’m not sure pedantry here is warranted.
I said what I said because it is what I specifically learned from it. That’s what that means. Also unsure why you’re pointing it out like that. I thought it was obvious when anyone comments on anything that it’s their views on it.
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I ask what OP’s blog was intending to be about. You patronizingly responded to my reply. I repeated to you what I said in my original reply to OP. You then say, “Okay, maybe OP can answer that,” (which was the whole point of my original reply).
I agree:
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This is a public forum. What did you expect? Only select people to respond to your seemingly important questions?
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Not sure what you problem is here but I’m done.
I expect people to read what I said. Had you did, you would have simply replied to my original reply with what you said here:
instead of being sly like here:
I do not understand why you are heated. This is a failure of reading text. If only I spoke with you in person, I’d think you wouldn’t be so mad. I tend to be too upfront and logical. Nothing I said is against you at all. I am responding only to what you said, not to you specifically.
I agree. I don’t think there is a problem, actually. We are having a discussion, with each of us constantly clarifying with each other.
But let us allow discussion back to being related to OP. I am still confused on what OP meant by this as a conclusion to the blog (I have not read the blog writer’s other blogs):
Parents can step in an provide some technical support or explain concepts like “trackers” and “open source” where needed, but we do need to understand that terminology ourselves before we can help our children on their own privacy journeys.
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So, OP is suggesting that we, as parents, give total control of the mobile devices to the teenagers. Very bright idea 
No, kids and teenagers can’t and shouldn’t have total control of their devices. They are called teenagers, it is in the name.
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I think child-rearing is more nuanced than that. There are ways to raise a child without being authoritarian. That doesn’t imply that we allow them to let loose. That is why I question the research question. There are and are not children who can manage their own screen time. I think a better question would be to ask how we can make them manage their own time responsibly. It’s possible.
But I suppose it requires us to ask, “How do we make children responsible?” which is actually asking “How do we parent a child such that we no longer need to parent them?”
Which then this devolves into more of a scientific account of child-rearing.
Hard to find this concept inherently in the name… I guess “teenagers” does share some letters with “can’t and shouldn’t have total control of their devices”? 
Teenage life is mainly about navigating the world independently, while still having a safety-net to fall back on and hopefully also parents acting as great mentors. If you still need to use authoritarian tactics with teenagers you might’ve failed as a parent.
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Hard pill no parent will willingly swallow. But will always remain true.
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I assume you don’t have kids. You should and must control their devices and apps. I am not saying you should watch over them all the time and act like a police but you have to know and control what they are doing while giving them space.
Otherwise your kids will be exposed to predators, stupid tiktok challenges, bodily and mentally harmful actions, and unwanted bills from many apps
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This is exactly the logic authoritarian nation states use to monitor everything they can about their citizens.
Why do you think we should do this? Where is the freedom for the teenager to learn, grow, make mistakes, and repeat the cycles with other things in life.
Yeah, this is where educating them comes in. You teach them what to do, what not to do. If you don’t know, you get them this learning while learning yourself (might as well do it together). But to control their lives (akin to holding a gun to their heads) and calling it safety is moronic.
Teaching has limits and I don’t want my kids to learn the consequences of bad decisions via hard way.
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You can’t eliminate all hurdles in their lives. They won’t know how to be when they grow up. They’ll always be dependent on you or other things for support.
No limits should exist when teaching kids, especially teenagers. They are literally there to make mistakes with a safety net. But you still have to let them be and make those mistakes. Only then they’ll learn. Those are the prime years for that stuff.
I guess this is coming down our own philosophies on how to parent.
That is a noble reason. I agree that we have to have some control over our children. After all, they are our children and it is our responsibility to take care of them.
At the same time, the best way to learn is to fail, which I think you acknowledge:
Children can’t learn to walk if you keep carrying them everywhere. You can’t teach them how to walk without letting them walk in the first place, meaning that yes, teaching has limits.
Control also has limits. You cannot control every aspect of their life. 18 years down the line, they will be no longer legally under your “control.”
I think we all agree implicitly on this, but are at different spots on the spectrum and are unable to express the full extent of our beliefs, which results in half-baked explanations of the beliefs we actually and truly hold. That combined with the tribalistic nature of humans and we sort of get a false dichotomy of positions: there exists “my position” and “your positions.” In reality, there are no positions. There are things we agree with and things we disagree with. Positions only exist as a social construction to reduce cognitive load. Positions are abstractions of our likes and dislikes, the things we agree and disagree on. But they are not our actual beliefs.
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If they make a small mistake like sharing questions of the next exam in a Whatsapp group or sending love messages to another person instead of their boyfriend/girlfriend, that can be a good lesson learned session but if they join tiktok challenges and die, or became a victim to a child predator in roblox or facebook, or play blue whale or similar deadly games and do unimaginable things out of fear, what would that mean then?
Sorry but just wishful thinking, saying hopes and prayers to every bad thing which didn’t happen to you or anyone close to you, and dreaming of a ideal world is just a dream which cannot come true
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