Should you take away the phone? Lets ask Maslow.

Parents who are looking for ways to motivate their teen often see a cell phone as the most obvious object to capture their son or daughter’s attention. However, in some cases what was meant to be a warning shot (taking away the phone) has triggered an all-out war (increased resentment and rebellion) with their teen.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow described a person’s needs and motivations as hierarchical, where the need to be and feel safe is a prerequisite to the needs to be and feel connected and then competent, before a person can “self-actualize” — move into state of being where growth and becoming motivate ones decisions and provide fulfillment.

Now consider a cell phone. On one hand, phones can contribute to safety as it allows a teen to reach someone in an emergency, access maps or other important information, and when a parent’s routine monitoring results in helpful conversations in which parents can both tolerate and calmly talk about “unacceptable” behavior in your teen or his or her friends. On the other hand, cell phones can promote an unsafe environment if a teen is doing unsafe things online, or parents secretly monitor the phone or do so just to “catch” them doing something wrong and therefore trust at home is deteriorating.

Regarding connection, a cell phone can obviously be a powerful way for a teen to stay connected with friends, but can also be distancing when there are no limits at the dinner table, in the car, late at night, or during other family events.

Too often parents are taking phones away because they are fixated on their son or daughters competency (school work, etc.) and not appreciating how fragile the teen’s sense of safety (perhaps in the relationship with parents) or connection (belonging among friends). Taking a phone away in this case just worsens safety and connection, and any hope you had in improving competency collapses on top of a pile of unmet needs. So if you are going to take the phone away, make sure you have thoroughly considered, in order, safety, connection and competence, and make sure your decision is promoting these needs, not undermining them.