Are There Late Night Creatures at Your House?

Parents of teenagers beware. Most teens are not getting enough sleep. The recommended number of hours per night for teens is nine. A recent poll by the National Sleep Foundation found that over 50% of teens ages 15 to 17 only get seven hours a night. That's two hours short for many teens, which makes them overly tired and moodier. Being a teen is already hard, and full of stress and changes. Being exhausted doesn't help. Are you a savvy parent who knows why?

Most teens are heavily scheduled during hours when their parents are up, with school, activities, lessons, sports and homework. When we go to bed, guess who stays up late to have some downtime and freedom? Yes, that would be our teenagers.

The drawing power of connection through social media is luring teens in to quietly snap-chatting, texting, instagramming, tweeting, face-timing, youtube surfing, downloading music and more in the dark of their bedrooms after parents think they are asleep. It's a trend the New York Times covered in a story on July 6 about the trend to "vampire" or "vamp" by being up late in the night. Some teens find it cool to see posts timed in the middle of the night, as it can represent freedom.

Parents need to communicate with teens about the need for sleep, and setting some reasonable limits to protect their sleep habits. Does your teen have a time when their smart phone, laptop, ipad, etc. is turned off and plugged in for recharging somewhere they can't get to it again before morning? As a family counselor, I am more concerned about this for younger teens than older ones. If your teen has disappointing or declining grades, this possibility is something it's smart to consider and do some surprise check-ins that all is dark and quiet in their room.

Danah Boyd, a writer/researcher with Microsoft Research recently published her book, "It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens". She considers social media sort of the new mall for this generation of teens to hang out together and have social contact. Many teens are so structured by day that late nights are the only downtime.

What's a parent to do? Stay in conversation with your teen about these issues of sleep, downtime, the need for social contact and the importance of setting some limits and boundaries. We also need to watch what we role model, and put our own technology to bed at a reasonable hour, have good sleep patterns and lifestyle habits.

Watch out for the vampires at your house. Check your teen's bedrooms first for the faint glow of a smartphone under the covers.

The Luxury of Disconnecting

Last week, I met up with a friend who had lost her cell phone by leaving it in a cab while out of town recently. While it was frustrating, she found the few days without a phone actually also very relaxing. It's a little luxury we can each afford, to make private time either with loved ones or friends, or by yourself, truly uninterrupted.

It turns out that setting up sanctuary time zones that are free of cellphones, email access, and social media  is trending. In today's edition of the New York Times, Caroline Tell has an interesting article titled "Step Away From the Phone" that describes how many people are setting some technology limits. AOL reported this past week on the concept of "Serenity Saturdays" with suggestions for limiting technology use that day and a suggested playlist of relaxing music to download and destress yourself.

In Tell's New York Times article, she shares that many families are using a special place in the kitchen, like a fishbowl or bowl, to deposit all cell phones during dinner time. Anybody who checks their phone can be given an extra task as a consequence, such as doing the dishes. This activity teaches everyone---adults and children---- to protect family time by becoming fully present and undistracted.

When friends or families are out for dinner or drinks, they can play "stack 'em up," where each person in the group adds their cell phone to the stack of them on the table. Anyone who peeks at theirs has to pay the check!

It's great role-modeling for parents to turn off or put away their phones when there are opportunities to play with the children, engage in family activities, or be present with each other.

You might consider a time at which you turn your phone off or put it away for the evening, as well as the computer and iPad. Add the television to the early turn off program, and you just might sleep better, interact more with those you live with, and feel more relaxed. Just because you can be available 24/7 doesn't mean you should be.

Tell also notes an increase in social invitations that are being issued with the directive NOT to bring your cell phone, or Instagram photos from the event, with signs reinforcing the policy at the door when you arrive.

Apparently, as cell phone use has reached an all-time high, it's now becoming more cool to be unavailable at times. Multi-tasking all day and evening takes a subtle toll on us. It's time to give ourselves a delicious luxury that is ours for the taking: being off-duty, and having private time to restore and recharge.

Your Social Circle: How Big is Too Big?

Here's a fun question in the age of social networking, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: how many meaningful relationships with people can the average person have? The answer: about 150. This number was derived from the research of British psychologist and researcher, Robin Dunbar. This research has been coined “the Dunbar number.” This week's issue of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine (Jan.14-21, 2013) has a nice, concise write-up about Dunbar's studies, and how they apply to most of us, written by Drake Bennett.

Dunbar grew up in Tanzania, and has an academic career in England, where he teaches at Oxford. He began his research career studying the behavior of monkeys. He found that primates’ behavior changed based on the size of their social group. The larger the size of their social group, the more they seemed to exhibit behaviors to be seen favorably by other members of the group.

Dunbar went on to study brain size and look at the advantages and complications of animals that evolved into having larger brains. The complications of large social groups include competition for resources, like food, as well as the data that must be processed about the relative hierarchies and relationships with all the others in the social group. Dunbar’s research eventually led him to hypothesize that larger brains (and therefore higher intelligence) led to the development of larger social groups.

However, even the smartest primates have limits!  While there are individual variances for personality, and particularly extroversion/introversion, Dunbar theorizes that for most human beings, the limit of meaningful relationships a person can have is 147.8. In the Bloomberg story, Dunbar deftly describes that number as “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you bumped into them at a bar.”

Dunbar networks with his colleagues in a wide variety of disciplines to focus on the social brain hypothesis, including linguists, computer scientists, physicists, classicists, economists, archeologists, anthropologists, and literary scholars. He's spoken at TED conferences, and written several books for non-academics, including The Science of Love (2012).

Dunbar has been invited to consult with a former Facebook executive, who left to co-found Path, a mobile photo-sharing and messaging service, which began in 2010. After consulting with Dunbar, Path founders decided to limit their site’s users to 150 friends. Basically, Dunbar suggests that we, as humans, have an upper limit in the number of meaningful social relationships we can have, and beyond that is something else— perhaps marketing, or acquaintances, but probably not meaningful relationships. Dunbar recognized this pattern of 150-person limits across the world—many companies, clans, and even military units are often capped at 150.

No matter how technology expands, human beings have a finite number of intimate and meaningful relationships. Digital technology doesn't change the fundamentals of our biology and neocortex. I found it interesting that Dunbar, although well-liked by colleagues across disciplines, considers himself on the shy side. He doesn't use Facebook or Path, and says he got a LinkedIn account only by mistake.

Dunbar's research actually suggests other numbers as well. Most people, he believes, have an innermost circle of 3 to 5 people. The next circle has 12 to 15, and their loss would be difficult for us.

I found it interesting that Dunbar believes most friendships can survive only 6 to 12 months without face-to face contact. His research suggests that women can have 2 best friends, including her romantic partner, while most men have only one.

Dunbar's research has critics, but I found the Bloomberg article by Drake Bennett great food for thought and discussion about social networking, genuine intimacy, and the gaps between the two. It’s fascinating that Facebook allows 5,000 friends. Or maybe that’s just acquaintances.