If your child’s life has included a Minecraft phase, you know what I’m talking about. There’s the beginner level of the game that you play, walking from place to place collecting resources for survival, and there are the deeper levels, that can include creating entire neighborhoods to programming your own action sequences and building tools that you make available to other players.
In other words, you can play in passive mode or you can juice up your creative powers and be a contributing participant in an innovating Minecraft community.
When I get online, I can waste a lot of time alongside the best of them…browsing, falling down an internet rabbit hole in the name of research, tuning out other obligations I don’t want to face in the moment. I look up, and it’s hours later. Sound familiar?
And then there are those incredible screen time opportunities — finding inspiration in a favorite blog, discovering the exact piece of research data I was missing, laughing uncontrollably with the whole family at a funny movie scene we’ll recall for years, gathering momentum and notes for my next project.
Screen life is full of contradictions:
Consume (“I’m going shopping!”) or create (“Wow, you shot and edited that film on your ipad?”)
Connect (“that’s just what I was thinking?”) or disengage (“if I look busy, no one will bother me”)
Discover (“that gives me a great idea!”) or distract (“I just need to ‘veg out’ for a while”)
Recognizing these differences means we don’t treat all screen time as the same; we know it’s more complex than that and consider that reality when creating screen time rules with our family.
Learn more about showing our movies in your school or community!
Join Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD for our latest Podcast
Learn more about our Screen-Free Sleep campaign at the website!
Our movie made for parents and educators of younger kids
Learn more about showing our movies in your school or community!
Register your interest in bringing our new movie to your school or community
Learn more about showing our movies in your school or community!
Join Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD for our latest Podcast
Learn more about our Screen-Free Sleep campaign at the website!
Our movie made for parents and educators of younger kids
Join Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD for our latest Podcast
Register your interest in bringing our new movie to your school or community
As we’re about to celebrate 10 years of Screenagers, we want to hear what’s been most helpful and what you’d like to see next.
Please click here to share your thoughts with us in our community survey. It only takes 5–10 minutes, and everyone who completes it will be entered to win one of five $50 Amazon vouchers.
If your child’s life has included a Minecraft phase, you know what I’m talking about. There’s the beginner level of the game that you play, walking from place to place collecting resources for survival, and there are the deeper levels, that can include creating entire neighborhoods to programming your own action sequences and building tools that you make available to other players.
In other words, you can play in passive mode or you can juice up your creative powers and be a contributing participant in an innovating Minecraft community.
When I get online, I can waste a lot of time alongside the best of them…browsing, falling down an internet rabbit hole in the name of research, tuning out other obligations I don’t want to face in the moment. I look up, and it’s hours later. Sound familiar?
And then there are those incredible screen time opportunities — finding inspiration in a favorite blog, discovering the exact piece of research data I was missing, laughing uncontrollably with the whole family at a funny movie scene we’ll recall for years, gathering momentum and notes for my next project.
Screen life is full of contradictions:
Consume (“I’m going shopping!”) or create (“Wow, you shot and edited that film on your ipad?”)
Connect (“that’s just what I was thinking?”) or disengage (“if I look busy, no one will bother me”)
Discover (“that gives me a great idea!”) or distract (“I just need to ‘veg out’ for a while”)
Recognizing these differences means we don’t treat all screen time as the same; we know it’s more complex than that and consider that reality when creating screen time rules with our family.
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If your child’s life has included a Minecraft phase, you know what I’m talking about. There’s the beginner level of the game that you play, walking from place to place collecting resources for survival, and there are the deeper levels, that can include creating entire neighborhoods to programming your own action sequences and building tools that you make available to other players.
In other words, you can play in passive mode or you can juice up your creative powers and be a contributing participant in an innovating Minecraft community.
When I get online, I can waste a lot of time alongside the best of them…browsing, falling down an internet rabbit hole in the name of research, tuning out other obligations I don’t want to face in the moment. I look up, and it’s hours later. Sound familiar?
And then there are those incredible screen time opportunities — finding inspiration in a favorite blog, discovering the exact piece of research data I was missing, laughing uncontrollably with the whole family at a funny movie scene we’ll recall for years, gathering momentum and notes for my next project.
Screen life is full of contradictions:
Consume (“I’m going shopping!”) or create (“Wow, you shot and edited that film on your ipad?”)
Connect (“that’s just what I was thinking?”) or disengage (“if I look busy, no one will bother me”)
Discover (“that gives me a great idea!”) or distract (“I just need to ‘veg out’ for a while”)
Recognizing these differences means we don’t treat all screen time as the same; we know it’s more complex than that and consider that reality when creating screen time rules with our family.
I've been noticing the ways I can be rude, in person and on my phone. This week I share two recent examples of my own, plus why correcting myself out loud strengthens self-awareness. The talk that follows isn't about your kid. It's about you going first.
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An Oakland library has started lending out sports equipment and games alongside books, so families can borrow gear to use at nearby parks. It is a reminder that borrowing and lending between families is a simple way to fill a summer afternoon without a screen, while quietly modelling generosity and humility. We are out of practice at asking, but the person on the other end is usually glad to help.
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E-readers are convenient, but there are three reasons to lean toward paper books this summer. First, e-readers are screens, and the pull of everything else you could do on one makes it harder to stay immersed. Second, a large meta-analysis found people understand and remember slightly better on paper, especially with longer texts. Third, easy access to endless book samples makes it too tempting to jump ship rather than work through the slower parts, since reading, unlike TikTok, is about delayed gratification.
READ MORE >for more like this, DR. DELANEY RUSTON'S NEW BOOK, PARENTING IN THE SCREEN AGE, IS THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE FOR TODAY’S PARENTS. WITH INSIGHTS ON SCREEN TIME FROM RESEARCHERS, INPUT FROM KIDS & TEENS, THIS BOOK IS PACKED WITH SOLUTIONS FOR HOW TO START AND SUSTAIN PRODUCTIVE FAMILY TALKS ABOUT TECHNOLOGY AND IT’S IMPACT ON OUR MENTAL WELLBEING.
