Does this happen in your house? “Why didn’t you answer your phone?!” my children ask accusingly, if they can’t get hold of me after five minutes. Or sometimes it’s “why didn’t you answer my text?”

And when I write phone, I mean cell phone of course - that new extension of ourselves that has been steadily growing into an actual little limb over the past few years.

“I left it in the car while I was at the supermarket”, I respond.

"Well, I needed to get hold of you!” they reply.

What happened to children waiting patiently?

The upside of technology is that we can now keep more closely connected to our children than our parents were able to be with us. But is that necessarily a good thing? What happened to waiting for an hour after school to be picked up, but not getting frustrated, because you knew your mother would come eventually and that something important must have happened that had prevented her from being on time. And besides, you had things you could do while you waited like: read a book, stare into space, listen to the sounds around you, watch what was going on around you, talk to someone else who might also be waiting, think, dream, pray, write a poem, hum a song etc. We either tuned into the environment around us or we tuned into ourselves. Now when our children wait for us, they tune into their phones. And let’s be honest, so do we.

We are all starting to seriously overuse social media.

Social media used to mean the radio, television and the newspaper. And when I think about such things, I start to feel immediately relaxed and begin fantasising about a life when I actually have time to listen to the radio, watch television and read the newspaper.

However social media now means having to own an extremely expensive minuscule device (that quickly goes out of date and constantly needs to be upgraded ) which enables us to have access to Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, and Netflix so that we can ‘keep up’.  And ‘keeping up’ is vital in a teenagers world. If they aren’t ‘keeping up’ they are on the ‘outer edge’ of their peer group which is not a place where teenagers (or anyone for that matter) wants to be. So not only does social media now control position in a peer group, it also creates emotional pressure, as teens are constantly at everybody’s beck and call. What's more, as we are all so closely connected technologically, we are becoming programmed to expect instant responses. This creates anxiety, particularly for teenagers. They are seldom parted from their phones and therefore have no ‘down’ time where they can actually relax and not feel compelled to check their snapchat and send a response back for fear that lack of response or leaving someone on ‘red’ will evoke a negative reaction - that might potentially lead to a negative situation. Social media is no longer relaxing in the slightest. Not for us, not for our teenagers.

I know social media has many upsides and enables us to have information at our fingertips in an instant - it enables us to connect with friends and family on the other side of the world, it enables us to record our holidays via posting photos  - but it is also harming us.

Social media is not going to magically go away. It is up to each and every one of us to start being honest about how much time we are actually spending on our devices and putting in measures to ensure we limit our time on them. We can do this individually and as a family. We can guide our teenagers to help them to work out what would be a good balance for them. Remind them that ultimately we want them to be happy; limiting social media time is not a punishment, it’s an act of love.

Too much exposure to social media drains us and makes us feel exhausted. To re-energise and feel good we need to spend more time doing what makes us happy. What makes us truly happy? Everyone has a different list but generally speaking the list usually goes something like this: sunshine, people, being outside, exercise, family and friends, giving to others, being grateful, doing what you love, aka ‘using your strengths’.

Curb anxiety by limiting social media time and instead spend that time doing things that actually make you truly happy.