Tips For Minimizing Screen Time For Your Kids

AGE-APPROPRIATE SCREEN TIME

Screen time guidelines, naturally, change significantly as you kiddo grows.

For a start, it’s better to introduce any kid of screen time the later the better – but definitely, Leith says, not before the age of 2. Kids that young don’t need extra stimulation as everything about their lives in novel to them.

For preschoolers, school and home life are still predominantly play-based, which helps with language development, turn-taking skills, role modelling, building imagination, fine motor skills and problem solving, visual-spatial skills, and other that cannot be replicated on a screen. Watching interactive age-appropriate content on a TV screen is a much better option hand-held devices since it doesn’t affect posture and promotes sustained engagement.

For school-aged kids, hand-held devices will at some point become inevitable. Balancing screen time with other activities is paramount for their development and growth, including enough sleep, a healthy nutrition, socializing, and physical activity.

Teenagers need autonomy and to make their own decisions on how they use their devices because self-responsibility is an important skill to learn before you step into adulthood. Discuss screen time with them and compromise, talk openly and understand the content your kids enjoy so you can have healthy, informed, and compassionate discussions with them.

IMPACT OF SCREEN TIME ON THE BODY AND THE MIND

A rule of thumb is, if your kid is mature enough for screen time or a device of their own, they are also mature enough for a conversation about its impact on their body and mind. Leith suggests working out non-negotiable rules and more flexible guidelines that create boundaries around screen time that will leave room for healthy psychological and physical growth and development.

THE MIND: Devices – games, social media, and most of all the algorithms that the internet operates on – are addictive. It provides us with shots of dopamine and serotonin that make us good, but also create a loop in which we crave more to feel calm, normal even. It’s addictive and ultimately unhealthy for the brain to be overstimulated and go through highs and lows of excitement. Our mind needs time to process our experiences and let our own thoughts, values, and feelings arise so they can be observed, for attention to expand, and metacognition and deep thinking to happen, actively and passively, without any external noise. So that your kids can get to know themselves for who they are.

THE BODY: Over the last 8 years, there has been a significant decrease in children’s fine and gross motor skills, their strength and endurance, their eyesight and core muscles. As a result, they are exhausted, but also anxious when left alone without external stimulus – and these two things perpetuate each other.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT RULES AROUND SCREEN TIME

First things first, you are the one modeling screen behavior to your kiddos. The effect the devices have on you and your children is the same, the only difference, though it is a significant one, is that you remember how things used to be before the internet with all its benefits and “traps”. Model good attention practices like consciously using your own devices, using only one of them at a time, and letting your kids know what you are doing on your phone (business or pleasure, explain in more detail than just “working” or “I’m on my phone now”). Then, when you can give them attention because you have finished work or finished you screen “me time”, give your kids your undivided attention.

Some other things that you can do are:

DEFINE RULES & BOUNDARIES: Rules create a routine, and routines decrease anxiety. Now that the future is uncertain and circumstances keep changing, it’s even more important to create safety within your home. Leith suggests absolutely no screen time before sleep and school because those are times when calm is needed to rest or to take in new information. No screens during meals when there’s so much sensory stimuli and so much opportunity to bond. Consciously disengage, possibly as a family, and choose to, for example, leave your phone(s) in another room during charging or during certain times of day. Don’t use screen time as a reward – incorporate it into the daily routine so that it could be consciously taken advantage of to your kiddo’s benefit.

CATEGORIZE SCREEN TIME: online school time are inevitable and shouldn’t count under screen time just as the work you do on your computer doesn’t count into yours; gaming might not be the same as scrolling social media, etc. Using technology as a fantastic tool (learning or FaceTiming friends and family, for example) is not the same as passive engagement.

Leith answered some of your excellent questions (like what to do about your child's peers and other families having different screen time practices) and shared her own stories and real-life examples that might change your perspective and improve your entire family’s everyday. Screen time is not just a relatively new issue that is hard to navigate with kids born into the digital era – it’s one of the key issues of our time that affects everyone, on the level of individuals, community, society, and the world as a whole. Have an open conversation with your kids, but don’t forget to occasionally put your phone away and have an open conversation with other adults and yourself.