Tim Bono, author of When Likes Aren't Enough, reveals some strategies parents can use to help teens cope with setbacks and maintain a positive outlook in the face of obstacles and failure. Ultimately, the tools discussed in this interview are things that can also improve your own life if you apply them.

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One of life’s enduring challenges is finding happiness in daily life. Far too often, we get caught up in the monotony of the day, shuffling back and forth between work, school, and the people we cross paths with. That’s why it feels rewarding when carry good vibrations and positive energy throughout the day instead! Although for many teenagers, finding happiness can be especially difficult.

Research suggests this could have something to do with social media. With the rise of social media sites, teenage attention is caught up in the shiny, impeccable images of their peers on apps like Instagram and Snapchat. Teenagers unable to balance what they see online with the imperfections of real life can be vulnerable to a massive mental health crisis. This, among other factors, has caused teenagers to experience high rates of anxiety and depression, reducing teen happiness across the board. This makes me want to know how to make your teenager happy!

On this week’s episode of Talking to Teens, we’re going to explore expert ideas for how to make your teenager happy with Professor Tim Bono. Tim is a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches one of the most popular classes at the university. The class isn’t your typical university course by any means, because it’s not about art or mathematics… It’s a class on how to make your teenager happy! The class uncovers the psychology of happiness, and how students can pursue happier lives through positive psychology. Tim is also the author of the book When Likes Aren’t Enough: A Crash Course in the Science of Happiness, in which he details the latest and greatest in happy living.

When I asked Tim about social media use and teens, he mentioned a study that found a correlation between the relative happiness of a teenager and how many hours they spend on social media in a day. This has a direct impact on how to make your teenager happy.

A Social Media Study

The results of the study were not what I expected. It turns out that teens who spend more time on social media tend to have a lower self-esteem and are less happy across the board. It seems odd that social media would make people feel less connected to their friends, but that’s what the data suggests. It’s critical for parents to understand this relationship because it’s not an obvious one, but has big health implications for how to make your teenager happy.

If you are concerned that your teen might be spending too much time online, there are numerous ways you can decrease their time on social media. For example, you could use parental controls to limit the time your teen spends on certain apps. Parental controls vary, but one control I can personally recommend is setting daily limits on certain apps on your teen’s phone. By setting a one-hour daily limit on social media, teens can stay in the loop on their apps, without losing their day to the them. If you feel strongly that your teen is spending too much time online, take time to have a conversation with them expressing your concerns.

However, social media is not the only factor that affects how to make your teenager happy.

Agency

If you want to know how to make your teenager happy, you need to know about agency. Tim tells me that agency is a psychological concept that can help improve a teen’s sense of self-worth and happiness. Agency is when a person realizes that they have power to control their own fate and can work to live their life however they want. One way to have a sense of agency is through attribution, which comes in two types, Internal and External.

Internal attribution is the feeling of reward one gets from completing a task they set out to do on their own, whether or not they accomplished the goals they set out to accomplish.

External attribution is the feeling of accomplishment one receives when they have received outside assistance to complete a task, and generally it is a less rewarding feeling.

Mastering how to make your teenager happy means emphasizing internal attribution opportunities. For example, if a teen uses CliffNotes on an essay and earns a good grade, they will most likely feel some type of external attribution as they used someone else’s notes to assist their thoughts. Even though they got a good grade, it is likely that they won’t feel as accomplished as they could have. Contrarily, if they came up with all the ideas on their own, they might feel better about themselves because they did all the hard work unassisted. Even if the overall grade is a little lower.

Parents can help by guide their teens towards internal attribution over external attribution by highlighting their teens’ hard work. To take steps towards recognizing internal attribution, you could ask questions about the difficulty of your teen’s work and how they managed to get it all done. Upon reflection, your teen might gain a sense reward for their hard efforts and feel happier. Over time, this can build a positive mentality that your teen will use to tackle any problem they face at school, at work, or at home.

Highlighting your teen’s efforts also taps into a psychological concept called the Locus of Control.

The Locus of Control

Like attribution, the locus of control has internal and external aspects that can help you identify how to make your teenager happy. To have an internal locus of control means to determine your own destiny via the actions and decisions you make. On the other hand, having an external locus of control means what happens to you is generally less under your control. Psychologists find that having an internal local of control is associated with improved mood. Here’s how you make your teenager happy with this knowledge:

If your teen comes home from school feeling accomplished about an essay, asking the right questions can help your teen adopt that sense of joy in the long term. The trick is getting them to understand their accomplishment was something totally under their control.

Did they research extensively? Write a rough draft? Go to office hours for clarification on the topic? In your pursuit to learn how to make your teenager happy, there are a wide range of questions that you can ask your teen. The point is to help them realize the power they have over what they do. Alternatively, if your teen receives a bad grade on an essay they spent a lot of time on, it could be helpful for you to ask similar questions about the essay in order to determine where they came up short. By helping your teen determine how they came up short on their assignment, they can take control of the situation and improve their approach for the next writing assignment.

Together, having insight on social media, agency, and control can positively influence how to make your teenager happy. Other topics we discuss in this episode include:

• The importance of sleep schedules
• Multitasking (and why it’s hard!)
• How to get teens t...