A lot of parents struggle with the idea of giving their kids access to smartphones or other connected devices. How old should they be when they get their first phone or tablet? What parental controls, if any, should you use?

No matter what you decide, you need to follow one “imperative” rule to help your kids grow up to be happy, successful adults, says psychologist Jean Twenge: “No electronic devices in the bedroom overnight.”

“That’s just a situation where there’s, kind of, no argument: ‘You do not need that phone in your bedroom when you are supposed to be sleeping. Period. End of story. Mic drop. We’re done,’” says Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University whose latest book, “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World,” published on September 2.

Twenge has spent much of the past decade warning parents about the risks of giving young adolescents unlimited access to smartphones and social media. She’s cited research connecting their usage to higher rates of mental health issues in teens, including anxiety and depression.

Some other parenting and medical experts have issued similar warnings: In 2023, then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory warning that the risks of social media and connected devices have helped create “a national youth mental health crisis,” for example.

In her book, Twenge advocates for parents to wait as long as possible before handing over smartphones to their kids, or allowing them on social media platforms. She recommends keeping kids from joining social media until they’re 16 or older, and from having full access to their own smartphone until they have a driver’s license and are expected to “get around independently.”

But banning devices from kids’ rooms overnight is her No. 1 rule because of its potential to improve their sleep habits, she says. Doing so is “absolutely crucial for both physical and mental health,” she notes in her book.

“If you have the bandwidth to fully follow only one rule in this book, make it this one,” writes Twenge. “No devices in the bedroom overnight is very straightforward and costs nothing.”

Devices in bedrooms can easily cut into sleeping time, whether your teen puts off shutting their eyes to continue scrolling through social media or the sounds of notifications keep waking them up, research shows.

More than two-thirds of adolescents surveyed by Common Sense Media in 2023 reported missing out on sleep “sometimes” or “often” due to using phones or other devices late at night in their bedrooms. Overall, 77% of teens get an insufficient amount of sleep, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Not getting enough sleep is a risk factor for just about everything we’d like our kids to avoid, from getting sick to feeling depressed,” Twenge writes in her book.

Looking at screens in bed is connected to higher rates of mental and physical health issues for adults, too. But healthy sleeping habits are even more important for kids, because their brains are still developing. Sleep can help enable their cognitive development and mental health, including their ability to learn and regulate their emotions — traits they’ll need to develop to grow up and become happy, healthy and successful adults.

“If you can only do one thing, [this rule] might end up making the biggest difference,” says Twenge.

Any of Twenge’s rules will likely be met with resistance from kids, especially teenagers who already regularly use their smartphones and other devices at all times of day, she says. You can more easily implement and enforce these types of policies by communicating them to your kids at an early age, she advises.

Twenge recommends having conversations about the dangers of smartphones — and the need for strict rules around their use — as soon as elementary school. “Kids are getting these devices younger and younger” and your child might have friends who are already using connected devices at that age, she says.

Parents of older kids can also backtrack and put new, stricter rules in place. That’s what Twenge did with her own three teenage daughters, after initially allowing them to use their laptops overnight, she says. Retroactively establishing strict rules isn’t easy, she adds: “The first few days might be tough, and you might get some slammed doors.”

Her advice is to be transparent, but firm, about your decision process. “You should be honest with your kid [and say], ‘Look, I made a mistake. I now know more, I’ve learned more, and we’re going to do it differently going forward,’” says Twenge.

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When people ask me what couples fight about the most, they expect the usual suspects like money, sex or parenting. But after years of research, and from real-life experience in my own marriage, the answer is much simpler: tone of voice.

That’s right. It’s not the dishes in the sink or the unpaid credit card bill. It’s how partners speak to each other about those things that creates tension.

It only takes a subtle shift in tone — a sigh, an eye-roll, or a sharp edge in your voice — for a simple question like “Did you take out the trash?” or “Sure, whatever you say…” to land like an accusation.

Research backs this up: One study found that when we interpret messages, only a small portion comes from the actual words. The rest? It’s all nonverbal: facial expressions, body language, and especially tone.

When we argue with someone we love, tone tends to dominate because it carries emotional weight. A clipped delivery can sound like blame. A flat one might feel like indifference. Sarcasm can come across as contempt.

We often don’t remember the exact words said in a fight. But we do remember how our partner sounded and how it made us feel.

We all slip up. When we’re tired, stressed, or distracted, our tone can betray our actual intentions.

The fix is to catch yourself in real time. If you notice your voice is harsher than intended, pause. Then, try these simple repair moves: 

• “Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come out so sharp. Let me say it differently.”
• “I realize that sounded a lot harsher than what I intended. What I’m trying to say is…”
• “Hold on, I don’t like how that came out. Let me try that again.”

It doesn’t need to be dramatic, but you should be honest. That means calling yourself out instead of pretending nothing happened. With practice, this honesty becomes easier: You build the muscle by noticing your slip-ups, owning them quickly, and then rephrasing. 

These small adjustments show your partner that you’re self-aware, and it can stop an argument before it snowballs.

When your partner’s tone turns sharp, it’s natural to mirror it. But doing that often leads to a blame spiral about how you’re fighting, instead of resolving the actual issue.

The key is to interrupt the cycle without escalating it. Try saying:

• “I didn’t like the way that sounded. Can you say it a different way?”
• “I want to hear you out, but your tone is making that difficult for me right now. Can you try again?”
• “I get that you’re frustrated, but can you explain that for again a little more calmly?”

No accusations. No defensiveness. Just a simple nudge toward better communication.

Sometimes, both partners fall into the tone trap. One person gets defensive, the other responds with more edge. Soon, you’re both in a reactive back-and-forth.

The only way out? Someone has to be brave enough to hit the reset button.

I call it a “reset phrase.” This could be:

• “Let’s start over.”
• An inside joke.
• A nonverbal gesture like a hand squeeze.

In my marriage, sometimes my wife will laugh and say, “Listen to us. We sound like teenagers.” Other times, I’ll make a joke and suggest we take a breather. These resets don’t erase the disagreement, but they do defuse the tone, allowing for a more productive conversation.

Mark Travers, PhD, is a psychologist who specializes in relationships. He holds degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the lead psychologist at Awake Therapy, a telehealth company that provides online psychotherapy, counseling, and coaching. He is also the curator of the popular mental health and wellness website, Therapytips.org.

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Companies like Starbucks, Paramount and Microsoft are among the latest to issue new return-to-office requirements, but mass RTO has been a years-long push across Corporate America. Getting workers back in hasn’t been so easy.

People are spending about 25% of their days working from home, and that share hasn’t budged since spring 2023, says Nick Bloom, a Stanford professor and leading researcher on remote work trends, and based on a recurring survey of 10,000 Americans from his team at WFH Research.

Work-from-home rates have persisted, Bloom tells CNBC Make It, even as the labor market sours, people cling to their jobs and leverage swings back in the direction of CEOs making RTO calls.

What gives?

Bloom points to a few factors. First is a “growing compliance gap.”

“Firms are announcing RTOs,” he says. “It just does not look like employees are following through on the ground.”

He thinks of it as passive resistance: CEOs make a big announcement, but the middle managers tasked with enforcing the rule don’t want to follow it themselves, much less make direct reports do so.

Managers are typically assessed on the performance of their team, and if they’re performing well enough, they’re unlikely to see the benefit of an increased attendance rule, Bloom says. Senior leaders may overlook any rule-bending too.

Many businesses are also shrinking their layers of middle management. This can lead to burnout among the bosses who remain, which in turn can result in less enforcement of these RTO mandates.

Then, there’s the issue of tracking whether people are in for the actual number of days required by company policy.

Take a company that has a four-day office policy, but most people only go in for three. It can be hard to track exactly why someone didn’t meet the attendance requirement for a given week. They could be out taking client meetings, at a conference, at an appointment, taking a sick day or just on vacation, Bloom says.

One Fortune 100 company Bloom spoke with has a three-day attendance policy, but over an eight-week rolling average, they only flag if someone is in fewer than one-and-a-half days per week. The company’s HR chief chalked up the missing in-office time to people being out on business travel, Bloom says.

Other workers are showing up for the required number of days, but experimenting with how long they actually have to be there. Some 43% of hybrid workers partake in coffee badging, or going to the office for a few hours just to show their faces, and 12% want to give it a try, according to Owl Labs’ recent survey of 2,000 full-time workers. Among those who’ve been caught, more than half say their employer didn’t mind the practice.

Coffee badging is down from 2023 levels, but consistent with last year.

The majority of hybrid workers go into the office three to four days a week, which is up from last year, says Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs. At the same time, they’re finding ways to maintain flexibility by coffee badging, scheduling personal appointments during the day, or trying what he calls “micro-shifting” —working in short, non-linear blocks not bound by a 9-to-5 and instead based on personal energy, responsibilities or productivity patterns.

As far as flexibility goes, “they’re finding it wherever they can,” Weishaupt says.

Workers quit when they don’t get the flexibility they want, or see it being clawed back by their employers, experts say. That could be by design.

“RTO is being used as a bit of a cheap way to reduce headcount” by avoiding layoffs and paying out severance, Bloom says. Quitters could be scooped up by younger, smaller firms that offer flexibility as a perk when they can’t compete with big-company salaries. That could be another reason why work-from-home rates have, on the whole, remained the same.

The problem with using RTO to shrink headcount is “you don’t get to choose who leaves,” Bloom says.

Previous research from the University of Pittsburgh found that women, senior and skilled employees were most likely to leave companies that enacted new RTO policies.

Businesses say offering remote and hybrid work improves their ability to hire, especially for hard-to-fill roles or in so-called “talent deserts” in certain areas of the country, says ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud.

Around 20% of employers say they’re looking to hire fully remote workers this year, and a similar share are on the hunt to hire candidates in a hybrid role, according to ZipRecruiter data.

“There is still demand for these types of roles within companies,” Bachaud says, “but a smaller share than we’ve seen in the past, for sure.”

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Before Markeiz Ryan, 36, left the U.S. Air Force in 2019, he took a trip to Vietnam and that experience changed the course of his life.

“It just looked like so much fun and it really lived up to all the hype,” Ryan tells CNBC Make It. “I ended up having the best time of my life, and that depression was [just] gone.”

Ryan says that after that first visit to Vietnam and how happy he was there, he didn’t want to let go of that feeling. He started planning his return to the country.

The veteran returned to his life in the United States and the Air Force, where he completed his service on a military base in Wyoming before being honorably discharged in 2019.

Soon after leaving the Air Force, Ryan relocated to Vietnam, where he lives off roughly $4,000 a month, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. His monthly income stems from several sources, including VA disability, the GI Bill since he’s pursuing a master’s degree, and teaching English. Ryan also occasionally takes on odd jobs, such as voiceover work, and is an avid fan of day trading.

Ryan suffers from spine arthritis, respiratory issues, auditory pain, and mental health challenges from his time in the military.

“This might not sound like a lot in America but trust me, this is more than enough to be middle or even above middle class in Vietnam,” he says.

When Ryan first arrived, he worked with a longtime friend and realtor to find his first apartment. He moved around a lot at first because of all the noise pollution. He also wanted to take advantage of low rent prices during the covid-19 pandemic.

“There’s a lot of honking, street sellers and sometimes karaoke really loudly, so if you are very intolerant to noise, this might not be the place for you,” he says.

In 2023, Ryan moved into the two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment where he currently resides in Ho Chi Minh City. It is in one of the country’s tallest residential towers. Ryan says what he loves the most is the view.

“The view is so good here. I can’t pass it up for everything. I’m never going to resign unless they kick me out,” he says.

His utilities round up to about $130, which includes electricity, water and housekeeping.

Ryan has been in this space for two years now and has no plans of leaving the apartment — or Vietnam.

“If I leave, it’s because Vietnam told me to leave. In America, I felt very unmotivated. I felt like no matter how hard you work, you’re still in poverty. You’re constantly chasing a standard that you can’t really achieve,” he says.

“Here in Vietnam, it takes a lot of the monetary pressure out of your day-to-day. You focus on what makes you happy, who you want to become and how you’re going to get there.”

This experience, he says, is the complete opposite of what his life was like back in the U.S.

“Every day I wake up with a long to-do list of things I want to do, not the things that I need to do, and it’s a completely different way of living. Even if you need to work 40 hours a week here, you’re doing it as an investment in your future. Getting out of survival mode makes things infinitely more human.”

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It can be hard to see other couples’ fancy vacations, expensive gifts for each other, and Michelin star dinner dates without feeling as though you aren’t doing enough to keep the spark alive in your own relationship. 

Yet, as both a psychologist who studies couples and as a husband, I always encourage people to inject novelty into their relationship. Thankfully, fun comes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and price-points. And often, the most meaningful forms cost $0.

Here’s what the happiest, most successful couples do for fun — that most others neglect.

Not every couple has the time or budget to hop on a plane whenever they feel like shaking things up. But that doesn’t stop happy couples from finding adventure. They just do it locally.

Research shows that “micro-adventures” (think: staycations, day trips, or even discovering a new coffee shop across town) can bring just as much joy as big vacations.

They explore their city like tourists. They hit the trails, visit bookstores, museums, or check out that weird roadside attraction. The idea is to make the ordinary feel novel.

You love reading. Your partner is into video games. It might not seem like a match made in heaven — until you realize you can do them together, separately.

Psychologists call this “parallel play”: when couples do their own thing, but in the same space. Instead of forcing shared interests, you’re just creating shared presence.

As a result, couples can easily stay bonded without burning themselves out. Low-pressure, comfortable companionship supports deeper intimacy just as much as active socialization can. 

Yes, doing your own thing is important. But research shows that shared hobbies and rituals are strongly linked to relationship satisfaction.

This doesn’t mean starting a couple’s podcast or training for a marathon (unless you want to). For most couples, it’s as simple as a standing game night, a Sunday morning walk, or a favorite TV show they only watch together.

The point is consistency. These small shared rituals become something to look forward to, no matter how busy life gets.

Errands. Laundry. Dishes. Not exactly romantic. For working couples or couples with kids, it can be especially hard to find time for fun. This is why researchers agree that intentional playfulness should be a priority.

The happiest couples I know are good at “hijacking” the mundane. If they’re stuck with a boring chore or task, they’ll find a playlist or a show to put on in the background to spice it up. And if they’re out of the house running errands, they’ll turn it into an opportunity for a little game or competition.

They ensure that laughter and silliness is always on the agenda, even if it happens to overlap with their other tasks.

Remember your first date? That inside joke you used to have? That song that used to be “yours”?

So many people look back nostalgically at the early days of their relationship and think about how easy and simple it was to have fun. But happy couples know that the thrill of the honeymoon phase never has to end if they continue to honor it.

Research shows that rituals play an integral part of relationship satisfaction, quality, and intimacy. Happy couples leverage this by giving the activities that once brought them together a cherished place in their relationship.

Make it a point to talk, dream, and joke with your partner in the same playful, coy ways you did when you first met. It will keep things fun while simultaneously honoring the many ways your relationship came to be.

Mark Travers, PhD, is a psychologist who specializes in relationships. He holds degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the lead psychologist at Awake Therapy, a telehealth company that provides online psychotherapy, counseling, and coaching. He is also the curator of the popular mental health and wellness website, Therapytips.org.

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