My Parenting "Screen Time" Philosophy
Like many people who now work with computers, I was told as a child I spent “too much time on screens” and then built a career out of it.
I still have to manage my own screen habits carefully and most of my procrastination takes the form of “bad screen time”.
That tension sits at the heart of how I approach screens with my kids. I don’t want to overreact and forbid my kids from using any “screens” but I also don’t want to set them up to fail in a much more deliberately addictive landscape than the one I grew up in.
🥇 Dimensions of Screen Time
Screen time, be it for adults or children, has various dimensions:
- 🧑🎨 Creation (e.g. programming, art, building) vs. 🛍️ Consumption (e.g. watching video)
- ⚽️ Active (e.g. playing games) vs. 📺 Passive (e.g. watching video)
- 🍿 Long (e.g. films/movies) vs. 💨 Short (e.g. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube)
- 💗 Social (e.g. multiplayer gaming, watching video as family) vs. 🎧 Isolated (e.g. playing single-player game with headphones)
- 💵 Paid up-front (e.g. bought/subscription content) vs. 💳 Paid indirectly (e.g. advertising, in-app purchase funded)
You can likely tell from my wording which I consider to be “better” and “worse”. It’s not that any of the “worse” options are inherently bad but I want to forbid them for now and discourage them as the kids get older.
For our kids (currently 6 and 8 years old), we’ve banned short-form video, screens in their own bedrooms and indirectly paid content.
As a result, both kids currently mostly choose and prefer paid, creative games, often played with each other. The intention isn’t to maintain these rules forever but to loosen them gradually as self-regulation improves with age.
⚖️ A Balance of Screens
As a fairly active family that has a (hyperactive) dog, likes to exercise together and lives in Scotland, we want to ensure that “screen time” is balanced out with physical activity. This means if there’s days that are very short (thanks Scottish winter), have horrific weather or have had a lot of intense physical activity, we may be a bit more lenient on screens.
The standard level looks like:
- Monday to Thursday: at school all day, no screens until 17:15 at earliest, stops when dinner is prepared (normally ~30m later).
- Friday (half school day in Edinburgh, weirdly): up to 1 hour after lunch, 17:15 until dinner (normally ~30m later).
- Saturday to Sunday: up to 2 hours after lunch, 17:15 until dinner is ready (normally ~30-45m later).
When there’s no chores to be done, I may also indulge in a bit of cheeky screen time myself at the weekend too when kids are enjoying theirs.
Having this be structured and predictable for both adults and kids has reduced sadness and anger around screen time restrictions.
Our kids obviously still push the boundaries sometimes but they understand why (and sometimes enforce them themselves).
We have a fairly hard stop at the given time/time limit but aren’t too rigid about e.g. letting them finish off a current “round” or save the game before stopping.
I expect as kids to get older we are more lenient about “rules” and instead move to “recommendations based on experience”. I suspect it will help that we minimally use social media around them and keep phones away at family meal times. Kids (rightfully) sniff-out hypocrisy and respond poorly to it.
🛫 Travel Exceptions
When we’re travelling internationally, things are a little different. Our kids can’t get up and run around or exercise and it makes life a little easier for everyone to be flexible.
We save iPads for the aircraft or train, require headphones (kids don’t like it but learning to be considerate is important) and don’t limit time. When we’re at our destination, iPads are hidden for the rest of the trip. Any remaining screen time is watching live TV, 1990s style.
When we eat out, iPads stay at home. We instead bring books, comics or colouring to meals and try to keep kids engaged (and our own phones away).
♣️ Alternatives
We’ve found Lego, comic books, colouring books and reading books to them to all be good non-device alternatives. For non-screen devices we’ve found audiobooks from an adult’s phone (particularly in the car) and a Yoto player for each child to be helpful.
Both our kids love their Yotos and generally fall asleep with them and we rely on the auto-mute feature at their sleep time. They also use it to know when they can get up and sometimes enjoy sitting in bed listening in the morning. More sleep for the adults, bliss!
💁 Practical Tips
As a household, we’re pretty much all-in on Apple products where possible. If you’re similar, the following tips may be useful:
- Set up an Apple “family” and add any kids’ Apple devices as “child accounts”. Yes, this is a bit of a pain the first time but it allows you to set and monitor robust parental Screen Time controls.
- Pick an appropriate age rating for limits for your kids. Ours are both at 10+ despite being 6 and 8 because I’ve vetted the content to be appropriate and Apple are conservative.
- Set up Screen Time based on what you want to do as standard. If that’s a 2 hour limit normally: great. You can easily override this in exceptional circumstances with a PIN.
- Use only Apple Arcade for all iOS games. You may well have (or it may make sense to have) it on an Apple Family subscription already. All Apple Arcade games have no in-app purchases or advertising. They also seem to shy away from spammy, gambling mechanics that are rife elsewhere.
- Only allow specific sites in Safari, block everything by default. Yes, this is also a pain but the blocklist approach is hilariously impossible to actually lock down for kids with half a brain.
- Don’t allow new apps to be installed without parental approval. This sends you an iMessage which lets you approve within the Messages app. If they request a non-Apple Arcade game, politely decline and explain why.
All of this means that the default enforcement is done by the device/Apple and not by the parent and they are trusted to freely explore a safe device without oversight.
These all help to avoid issues I’ve heard friends report with inappropriate content in games, kids racking up spending in games, tantrums from unclear boundaries and other negative consequences. The only downside I’ve found is that you can expect your kids to kick your ass at games earlier than expected.
Thanks to Brian Corcoran for complimenting my approach here in the pub one day and requesting this post.
