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.
This week, try using your tech conversation to notice the different qualities screen time can have.
As well as our weekly blog, we publish videos like this one every week on the Screenagers YouTube channel
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!
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
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.
This week, try using your tech conversation to notice the different qualities screen time can have.
As well as our weekly blog, we publish videos like this one every week on the Screenagers YouTube channel
Sign up here to receive the weekly Tech Talk Tuesdays newsletter from Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD.
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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.
This week, try using your tech conversation to notice the different qualities screen time can have.
As well as our weekly blog, we publish videos like this one every week on the Screenagers YouTube channel
Parenting in this digital age is full of challenges. I imagine many of you are nodding in agreement. And when we look for advice online, it can feel like a sea of perfect experts with perfect advice: “Just follow these three easy steps and everything will fall into place.” In this week’s blog, I share a story about a moment with my daughter Tessa that did not go quite as planned but ended up teaching us both something important.
READ MORE >
Wow! Summer really goes by fast, doesn’t it? Back-to-school is already here for some and not far away for others. Ahead of this school year, I’ve hand-picked four of our most useful blogs. Practical, timely guides to help you set your family up for a healthier, more balanced relationship with technology in the months ahead.
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.
