Edit: I know this is ridiculously long, but once I started typing, I realized I needed to get some things off my chest. I’m not even sure if it makes sense with the question, but it was a needed rant. Sorry.
I got “digitally grounded” my Freshman year of high school. For 10 months.
My dad discovered I had a few albums mid-download and immediately cut the internet to my room. They went through my computer and discovered that I had a Myspace lolrememberthose? and didn’t approve of one of the pictures, so they made me shut it down.
They then went through my email addresses and pretty much read everything. They didn’t approve of some of those conversations, and once again, made me shut down both accounts.
They took my CPU but left me the monitor and my laptop. They took away my radio. They took away my cell phone. They forbid me to use the house phone. At this time, I wasn’t allowed to send letters or receive letters without them being pre-read by my mom.
I didn’t get any of those things back until the middle of the next summer. Which was HELL considering I’m a pretty social person. I couldn’t do anything for that year. I couldn’t go anywhere or talk to anyone. I came home from school and slept all afternoon. I never left my room and pretty much still don’t except for the bathroom and food breaks.
My best friend would come over at about 2am and sneak me letters in so he could still talk to me outside of the few minutes we got to see each other at school.
The entire thing happened again in the spring of my sophomore year.
I had been grounded for making a Facebook ohnoez! for about three months. I still got to keep my email which I checked constantly during school which helped a lot.
I still didn’t have communication with anyone except during school hours, which really made me depressed considering my best friend had graduated the year before.
Then one day, I was at my aunt’s house and since I wasn’t around my parents, I was online talking to some people. The first thing they said was “Hey.. are you doing okay? I heard what happened.” and “I’m so sorry”. Now.. this really really confused me. I had no contact with the world, so I didn’t know anything happened.
After asking a few people what was going on, I was told that my best friend Matt had killed himself two days earlier.
I flipped out. I ran from my aunt’s house to my grandmother’s and started screaming at my mom. I pretty much stole her purse and ran back to my aunt’s house with it so I could get my cell phone.
After listening to messages I had on there, I realized that Matt had tried to call me the night he died, but because I had been grounded for so long, he had no way of talking to me.
He had some relationship issues, and being very sensitive, he couldn’t handle some things that happened. I listened to those messages on repeat for about two hours before my mom came storming in the room demanding that I give her everything back.
Nothing inside of me said Hey, calm the hell down. It’s not her fault.. but everything DID say It’s her fault you had no contact. so I flipped out on her again. I physically attacked my mother that day. I’m not too proud of it, but I was angry and confused and the most depressed I’ve ever been.
Since then, I’ve never had technology taken away from me. Between work and the ranch and my sister’s health issues, cell phones have become a staple in our lives.
The internet is needed for most of my college classwork, so that can’t be taken away from me..
So the moral of my story is: Digitally grounding kids for extreme periods of time isn’t very effective.