Teen Called the Cops After Mom Confiscated Her Phone

We all often joke that young people are addicted to their phones, but some of them seem to be truly… well, literally addicted to their phones, especially when it comes to the way they behave when we takes away their phone.

For one mom on Reddit, her daughter's response to this punishment reached a level that left her distraught and wondering what to do next.

The teen called the cops after her mother confiscated her phone as punishment for not doing her chores.

We've all heard a myriad of stories about how digital devices can harm the mental health of children and teens, not to mention adults.

But many scientists have begun to sound the alarm that the problem is far more damaging than we think, with one University of Southern California sociologist comparing cell phone and social media addiction to cigarettes or even cocaine – and calling for it to be regulated accordingly.

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There's no way to know if that's the problem between this woman and her teenage daughter, but this 15-year-old's behavior certainly suggests it.

“I asked my daughter to clean her room and do other household chores around 9 a.m.,” the mother wrote in her since-deleted Reddit post. “At 4 p.m., she still hadn't done them. So I went to her room, took her laptop and told her to give me her phone. She told me no.” And wow, did things go downhill from there.

After the mother physically snatched the phone from her, the teenager called the police to accuse her mother of abuse.

“I had to chase her around the kitchen table and finally managed to snatch the phone out of her hands,” the mother wrote of the conflict with her daughter, adding that she never caught his daughter, “just the phone.”

Nonetheless, her daughter left with her 18-year-old sister to go to a nearby gas station, according to the older sister's Life 360 ​​indicator.

“I get a phone call 30 minutes later from the cops,” the mom wrote. “She called the cops for taking her phone from me and told them I was emotionally abusing her.”

The cops didn't want it, but that didn't end the conflict. After another altercation over the girl using her older sister's phone, the mother had to break down her bedroom door to get the phone from her, but she jumped out the window and returned to the gas station to call the police again.

This time, she told the police that she wanted to file a complaint with social services. Luckily, the cops were unwilling to accommodate the girl's demands. “They said taking his phone wasn't abuse; it was a parental act,” the mother wrote.

But her daughter insists she is “crazy” and a “bad mother”, and the mother wonders: “Where did I go wrong and what should I do next?”

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Cell phone use has been shown to fuel aggression in teens, and many Redditors felt it was time for some tough love.

Of course, it's completely normal for teenagers to be angry. Their hormones are raging; they're stifled and hemmed in by rules at home and at school — and that's before we even mention the fact that the world is falling apart around them.

But it seems clear that this teenager is on a whole new level and she's not alone. A 2023 study found that more than 50% of adolescents studied were not only angry, but showed signs of aggression.

A study conducted at Western University in Canada places the blame squarely on cell phone and social media use, with lead researcher Emma Duerden likening the adverse reaction to taking away a teenager's phone to a “hunger” in due to the similar ways in which serotonin and dopamine are affected in both cases. .

Understanding the problem is of course one thing. Knowing what to do is another. The mother once tried therapy, but her daughter refused to engage in the process. So Redditors felt it was definitely time for some tough love.

“Don't bother trying to take the phone from her. Be smarter than her,” one Reddit user wrote, suggesting things like Wi-Fi and signal blockers that will allow the mother to “take his phone' without actually picking it up.

Others suggested turning off the girl's phone service altogether. “Completely cut off phone service for a while,” one parent wrote. “There needs to be a plan to restore confidence.”

People urged her to take a similarly tough approach to her eldest daughter, who continues to help her call the cops, and to take steps to protect herself, like cameras, so she can prove that she is not abusing her daughter now that social services have done so. been involved.

“She’s going to hate you right now,” one mom wrote. It is very good. It’s time to do the hard parenting.”

Hopefully that makes a difference, because the phone's pull proves to be way more than most of us can handle.

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John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.