Phone addiction: Why looking beyond bans helped teen reclaim his life

When the phone was a pivot

“He was extremely distracted by his phone,” Lalljee recalls. “Most of his time went into apps, video calls with friends, scrolling and constantly switching from one platform to another. It had become a proper addiction.” The boy himself did not agree. Like many teenagers, Tarun insisted he was in control and saw nothing unusual about spending nearly all his waking hours online.

Mimansa Singh Tanwar, clinical psychologist, head, Fortis School Mental Health Programme, says that is often how behavioural addictions work. “Young people don’t always recognise the problem because the reward feels immediate,” she explains. “The emotional centres of the brain are highly active during adolescence, while the part responsible for impulse control and decision-making is still developing. Likes, messages and constant novelty feel intensely rewarding.”

For this boy, social media had become more than entertainment. Whenever he felt stressed about school, awkward with friends or simply bored, he reached for his phone. Every time he did, the real world receded a little further.

The first intervention was a bit drastic

The intervention, when it came, was drastic. Tarun’s screen time was cut to a maximum of two hours a day. There would be no secret devices, no spare or dummy phones and no exceptions. His parents expected anger. They did not expect grief. “He was absolutely lost,” says Lalljee. “There were anxiety, social withdrawal and repetitive behaviour. He was terrified that his friends would forget him or move on without him.” He kept asking the same question: What if they stop talking to me?

The fear was genuine. For many teenagers today, social media is not simply a tool for communication. It is where friendships are maintained, jokes are shared and identities are built. Losing access can feel like losing an entire social world.

The first few weeks were brutal. Tarun became irritable and aggressive, shouting at his parents and refusing to cooperate in therapy. At school, his concentration collapsed. Sometimes, absent-mindedly, he would pick up his geometry compass box and hold it to his ear like a phone. “The habit had become physical,” says Lalljee. “His brain and body were searching for something that was suddenly gone.” His sleep worsened, he developed a noticeable squint from years of excessive screen use and, at one point, overwhelmed by frustration, he threatened to run away from home.

Many parents imagine recovery as a matter of discipline: remove the phone, impose strict rules and wait for the child to adjust. But Dr Tanwar says addiction rarely works that way. “When young people spend excessive time online, you often find they’re escaping something—anxiety, loneliness, academic pressure or emotional discomfort,” she says. “If you remove the coping mechanism without addressing the underlying need, the distress remains.”

How the middle ground is the best way

That insight changed the course of the boy’s treatment. The goal was no longer simply to reduce screen time; it was to build a life that felt more rewarding than the screen. Lalljee began asking him questions he had not heard in years: What games did he enjoy as a child? What subjects interested him? Which friends made him happiest? At first, he had no answers. His world had narrowed so completely that he struggled to remember who he was outside his phone.

“The rebuilding began with small rituals. Evening walks. A sport he once enjoyed. A hobby he had abandoned. His parents stopped making every conversation about screens and focused instead on spending time with him,” says Lalljee.

“Children need emotionally available parents. They need adults who are interested in their lives beyond academics or discipline,” concurs Tanwar.

Finally, a balance

The boy resisted at first. He sulked during family outings and complained endlessly. Sometimes he sat through football practice staring at the ground. But gradually, something shifted. The awkwardness of meeting friends in person gave way to laughter. “He discovered that conversations stretched longer when they weren’t interrupted by notifications. His friends played an unexpected role too. They agreed not to lend him their phones, removing the temptation and reinforcing the idea that his friendships could survive offline.” Says Lalljee.

Therapy helped him understand what social media had been giving him all along: validation, distraction and a sense of belonging. Once he recognised those needs, he began looking for them elsewhere—in sport, in friendships, in hobbies and in his family. “He learnt relaxation techniques and strategies to manage boredom and anxiety. Slowly, he began to realise that boredom was not something to be escaped immediately and that loneliness did not have to be numbed by endless scrolling,” says Lalljee.

The tantrums eased after two and a half months. The aggression subsided. By six months, the transformation was unmistakable. The boy who had once threatened to run away rather than surrender his phone was thriving again. “The results were excellent and he continues to do well, “says Dr Lalljee.

The lesson his family learnt was not that social media is inherently harmful or that teenagers need to be cut off from technology altogether. It was something more difficult and perhaps more hopeful: screens cannot simply be banned away. A child has to be given something more compelling than the screen—a life rich enough that the virtual world no longer feels indispensable.

(Name changed to protect privacy)