A Digital Trainer's No. 1 Rule: No Screens in Bed. Ever.

Friends, kids and teens in Germany spend about 2.4 hours a day on social media on weekdays and about 3.3 hours a day on weekends. That alone adds up to 18.8 hours a week. Then there are video games: about 1.5 hours a day on weekdays, plus more than two hours on each weekend day, which comes out to almost exactly 12 hours a week. And let's not forget Netflix, Amazon Prime & Co.: on average, kids stream more than 1.8 hours a day on weekdays and more than 2.5 hours on weekends, which is another 14 hours.

These numbers come from the book “Allein mit dem Handy – So schützen wir unsere Kinder” (roughly, “Alone with the Phone: How We Protect Our Children”) by Daniel Wolff. Daniel is a digital trainer who has been in close conversation with students, teachers, and parents at hundreds of schools since 2017. He has also gathered relevant experience as a high school teacher and as a university lecturer at LMU Munich (the Competence Network for Media Education and Digitalization, or KMBD). We talked with him about smartphones and rules for the digital world.

Mr. Wolff, you've been visiting schools as a digital trainer for almost 10 years now. What has changed the most in that time?

The gap when it comes to handing over that first smartphone keeps getting wider. On one side, more and more kids get their own smartphone very early, as early as preschool. On the other side, since about last year, there's also a clear rise in the number of kids who say they won't get a smartphone until 7th or 8th grade. So some parents are more carefree than ever, while others are becoming more and more aware of the problem. That gives me a lot of hope!

How well informed do you find students when it comes to the dangers online?

In elementary school, often not at all. In 5th and 6th grade, only so-so. In 7th and 8th grade, that changes overnight: by then, the kids have already experienced so much that nearly all of them know more about the internet than their parents do. Many 9th graders and most 10th graders strike me as extremely self-reflective, especially when it comes to their own media consumption.

Where do you see the biggest dangers for kids online?

I'll just list the most important ones: addiction to short-form videos (think YouTube Shorts, TikTok, or Instagram Reels), mobile gaming addiction, cyberbullying, cybergrooming (stalking by child predators), sexting (sending “sexy” photos or nudes, with the risk of blackmail afterward), lack of sleep (from secret nighttime use), overstimulation, desensitization from incredibly cruel content, insecurity from hardcore pornography, shrinking attention spans and learning abilities, and parasocial relationships with AI chatbots.

If you want to see more, I'd recommend taking a look at the “Gefährdungsatlas” (the “hazard atlas”) from Germany's Federal Agency for the Protection of Children and Young People in the Media. There are about 40 more risks to read about there…

What can parents do to get their kids ready for the internet?

First of all, parents should get up to speed on the topic themselves, so they understand what a life-changing moment it is when their child gets a smartphone. Then, BEFORE handing it over, I'd settle all the important family rules in a “media usage contract,” for example at www.mediennutzungsvertrag.de (a German-language site). The most important rule should be there from day one: no screens in bed. Ever!

Is there a case from your experience that affected or moved you especially?

Yes. Honestly, it keeps happening in my job that a child turns to me in distress, because I promise kids that they can always come to me with anything, without punishment. Just four weeks ago, a 14-year-old girl came up to me after the workshop, visibly tormented, and told me that she expected nude videos of her to show up in her school's class chats at any moment, that very day. She mentioned that she didn't know anymore whether she even wanted to keep living.

Of course, I stayed at the school until her parents arrived, until we'd had a conversation together with the principal, and until an appointment with the police was set. It turned out the blackmailer was a man from India! It's hard to believe what can happen online. Luckily, everything turned out okay in the end!

Where do you see the opportunities of digital media for our kids?

It's almost impossible to imagine our lives without digital media now, especially artificial intelligence. Quick information, better communication, great educational resources, and the world's knowledge in your pocket: smartphones are the “Swiss Army knife” of the digital world. It all depends on what you make of it! In my view, kids should be allowed to try all of it with a teacher or parent guiding them, but preferably not alone.

What are the effects of too much screen time?

With the very young kids, say in 3rd and 4th grade, science isn't even sure yet! But teachers all across the country (I've personally been to about 500 schools) report chronic tiredness, apathy, general disinterest, aggression, ever-shorter attention spans, and social deficits in how kids deal with each other.

And then there's something I call a “loss of basic trust”: many very young kids today have already seen such terrible things, without meaning to, that they lose hope for a good future early on. Most parents don't even know about it, because almost all kids would rather not tell them about these experiences, out of fear of having their phone taken away…

If you could give parents one tip, what would it be?

Please buy EVERY family member their own alarm clock, and a family charging station! Set it up somewhere convenient in the living room, hallway, or kitchen, so all the smartphones, tablets, and Nintendo Switch handhelds can charge there. Then collect all the plug-in chargers and announce the “toothbrush-toothbrush rule”: nobody in the family uses a digital device after dinner in the evening (that includes the parents!), and nobody uses one the next morning until they've brushed their teeth.

That way, kids get enough good sleep and can reach their potential at school. In my experience, this works because kids get up to go to the bathroom now and then at night, and they can check whether their parents are sticking to the new rule. We can only teach our kids sensible media use if we model it ourselves…

You can order the book here