In our digital age, even parents have adopted high tech art of family discipline by snatching cellphones, blocking Facebook pages, pulling the plug on PlayStation.
When Lantha Carley's high-schooler got a midterm grade report that contained letters of the alphabet that were not A, B or C, she decreed there would be no more Facebook until he delivered a report card with better grades.
"He lived with no lasting damage," the Washington Post quoted Carley as saying.
"It's a modern version of grounding," said Richard Weissbourd, a Harvard psychologist and author of The Parents We Mean To Be.
"It's like taking away a weekend or a couple of weekends. It's a deprivation of social connections in the same way," he added.
In a report earlier this year that captured part of the trend, 62% of parents said they had taken away a cellphone as punishment, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Parents "know how important and vital it is to their teens' existence," said the report's co-author Amanda Lenhart.
"They were getting them where it hurt," she added.
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