

Phones off during mealtimes, give your kids your full attention when you are having a serious conversation or doing an activity together, and remove your devices from your bedroom overnight.
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Your kids are watching everything you do, so if you perpetually take calls during dinner, interrupt bedtime stories or family movie night or walk around all the time with your AirBuds in, they are silently taking notes. Enlist your kids’ help to research new accounts and privacy settings – Common Sense Media is a fantastic free resource for reviews on apps, games, movies and TV. Insist on approval for all new accounts and games and record usernames and passwords. Set up strict privacy controls on online apps and games. Set up parental controls on devices and SafeSearch on browsers. Small kids, school-aged children, tweens and young teens need help to stay safe from identity theft, phishing, online harassment and predators. All devices (including phones) should be charged out of bedrooms overnight. If you have space, consider creating device-free reading nooks, play areas, or places for socializing.


Experts also agree that, at the very least, beds should not be places where devices are used. Mealtimes should be device-free, wherever possible (that includes parents). Critical discussions about the whys of screen time are as important as the whats. Even young kids can help come up with guidelines for your family, and teens will appreciate having some say in how things are supposed to work. Involve your kids in creating family tech agreements. Online school and homework is work, so it’s only fair to balance that with some online fun, but steer kids to the creative stuff where possible and help them be mindful of time spent on the rest of it. If your kids are devoting time to schoolwork and creative pursuits online and not (just) scrolling endlessly through Instagram or Tik Tok, you’ll want to cut them some slack. Composing music, editing video, writing a blog or coding a game is creative, productive work that stimulates young brains, quite unlike the entirely passive drool-inducing experience of watching YouTube live streams or videos of other people playing online games. Here are some practical ways to think through screen time for kids of all ages.ĭistinguish between active and passive screen time. With an uncertain school year about to begin and families everywhere facing the prospect of online schooling part of full-time, screen time is once again on everyone’s minds. Summer offered some respite with good weather and a chance to go outdoors. The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. As we all grappled with what this meant for our jobs, our families, our kids’ learning, our businesses, our elderly parents, and our communities, it really didn’t matter if we had to briefly resort to electronic babysitting to keep everyone sane. When lockdowns and restrictions first hit us all back in March, parents understandably abandoned most (if not all) of the screen time rules in their homes.
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If you’re worried about screentime for your kids and how to guide their use of digital tech this fall, join me online Tuesday, August 27th for a one-hour parenting webinar, Smartphones, Sexting & Social Media: What Parents Need to Know.
