Last week Good Morning America ran a powerful story about the intense pull of screens and why having and enforcing, limits are so important ... and hard. If there is any way you can make the time to watch the 3-minute video with your kids, teens or students—you will be so glad you did.
The video shows what happens when a couple allows their four children ages 6 to 11 to have as much screen time as they want for 48 hours. The kids often used more than one screen at the same time, and the producers counted all screens used when calculating times—so 3 hours with two screens going would be counted as 6 hours. The total time on screens for each of the kids came to 16, 29, 35 and 46 hours over the course of the two days. On Sunday night when the experiment finished, and the parents took their devices away, the kids had major meltdowns.
Knowing which rules, limits, and guidelines to have can be confusing for parents, and then comes the work of implementing them consistently which can be exhausting. While filming Screenagers, I learned how reticent parents are to share their screen time rules. The fear of being judged as “lazy and too lax” or “overly controlling” prevents many of us from telling others the rules we are trying (I count having no rules as a type of rule setting).
The reporter for the Good Morning America story, Becky Worley, wrote an accompanying blog to her segment in which she reveals her own family rules:
“I have been covering and studying this issue (tech) for a long time. As a result, I am super strict with my 10-year-old twins: No screens at all during the week and only TV shows on the big screen on the weekends. No YouTube, no tablet games, no Xbox or PlayStation in our house. My two exceptions are planes and hospitals.”
And to my point, she adds:
“This is the first time I’m writing about what our family does because I don’t want to seem judgmental; there are a million different types of kids, family situations, and techniques for parenting.”
If the video motivated you to rethink the limits in your home, here is a free online tool to help which is put out by American Association of Pediatrics (AAP). If you have rules, but they need a refresh, now could be that time.
For this week’s Tech Talk Tuesday here are some ideas to get a conversation going about limits:
March 6, 2018
Last week Good Morning America ran a powerful story about the intense pull of screens and why having and enforcing, limits are so important ... and hard. If there is any way you can make the time to watch the 3-minute video with your kids, teens or students—you will be so glad you did.
The video shows what happens when a couple allows their four children ages 6 to 11 to have as much screen time as they want for 48 hours. The kids often used more than one screen at the same time, and the producers counted all screens used when calculating times—so 3 hours with two screens going would be counted as 6 hours. The total time on screens for each of the kids came to 16, 29, 35 and 46 hours over the course of the two days. On Sunday night when the experiment finished, and the parents took their devices away, the kids had major meltdowns.
Knowing which rules, limits, and guidelines to have can be confusing for parents, and then comes the work of implementing them consistently which can be exhausting. While filming Screenagers, I learned how reticent parents are to share their screen time rules. The fear of being judged as “lazy and too lax” or “overly controlling” prevents many of us from telling others the rules we are trying (I count having no rules as a type of rule setting).
The reporter for the Good Morning America story, Becky Worley, wrote an accompanying blog to her segment in which she reveals her own family rules:
“I have been covering and studying this issue (tech) for a long time. As a result, I am super strict with my 10-year-old twins: No screens at all during the week and only TV shows on the big screen on the weekends. No YouTube, no tablet games, no Xbox or PlayStation in our house. My two exceptions are planes and hospitals.”
And to my point, she adds:
“This is the first time I’m writing about what our family does because I don’t want to seem judgmental; there are a million different types of kids, family situations, and techniques for parenting.”
If the video motivated you to rethink the limits in your home, here is a free online tool to help which is put out by American Association of Pediatrics (AAP). If you have rules, but they need a refresh, now could be that time.
For this week’s Tech Talk Tuesday here are some ideas to get a conversation going about limits:
March 6, 2018
One of THE most challenging things as a parent is knowing how to respond when our kids break rules around screen time. Today I write about what to do when transgressions happen, consulting about the WISE before taking action and why consequences should be short..
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Having policies/ rules around tech is valuable and worth the work. But I am the last to claim that this is easy. You may know my personal story from Screenagers, where you saw me learning the hard way how critical it is that we find ways to involve our kids in defining screen-tome rules with us — vs. my initial, more top-down techniques. In today’s blog, I give 11 rules/policies to consider for the New Year. And I also include a couple of recent studies you may want to share with your kids.
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As the New Year begins, it's natural to think about resolutions and ways to improve our habits and routines. But instead of focusing on revamping screen time rules, I've been thinking about the moments when my family and I turned off, or turned over, our devices and were more present with each other. One of my resolutions was to share these memories with my family. My hope is that it will foster not only a feeling of gratitude but also create a "family piggy bank" of positive experiences to draw upon when tech troubles inevitably arise.
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.
