Here's some thoughts on managing screentime you might not have heard before
11 fresh ideas to help you think more deeply about balancing tech in kids' lives
I will start off by saying this article contains no advice. This is not a list of tips or hacks or how to. How we interact with technology relies on many factors which include a lot of unpredictable and wildly different variables such as personality, personal values, family schedules, unique circumstances including stress and trauma, to name but a few. There are so many variables in fact that we have been preoccupied with perhaps a somewhat pointless pursuit of finding ‘the answer’ to managing screentime in childhood ie. what is the right amount of time? What is the right age to own this device? Is the trade off of fitting in better than being socially isolated? I do wonder if a lot of anxiety and worry has been misplaced arguing for ‘an average’ or a right approach. I’ve always felt that we should see tech and it’s platforms as something we need to master and be slave to and this is how I’ve tried to approach balancing with that as a core principle - what are the very best opportunities we can tap into and what are the scary crevices we need to not fall down?
Perhaps then there are some more universal ideas that might move us on from talking about specific boundaries which vary in households and can be used to start a new conversation - less, is this bad? And more, what do our kids actually need? So on that note I wanted to share some things that have gone well for our family that we’ve unearthed in the mind-blowingly complex pursuit of raising kids in the digiverse. For context at the time of writing our children are aged 14, 11 and 4 - this is not concrete and is still ever changing and I will be making some changes based on learnings for example with my daughter who is yet to get a smartphone so consider this a TBC post!
TECH STABILISERS
I really do think phones are helpful. Even for kids. A phone is a communication device, one that is commonly used in how humans live and connect and I think kids should have access to that communication network and learn in childhood. We all shudder thinking about doing those lockdowns with facetime right? But a phone and a smartphone are not like for like, they’re not even from the same planet. I was born in 83’ and believe my generation had the best journey with tech. We got basic ‘dumb’ phones in our teens (which no one ever had any credit to use anyway) and then we got to play at curating our own spaces to explore our identity and play with others in early adulthood in the form of myspace and facebook. The complex systems driven by algorythms, influencers and so on, I didn’t really get into until I was in my late 20s which seems wild writing this!
This was a stabilisers route to tech consumption and I think it makes total sense. In all other areas of kids’ lives we start them off at level one and move them up, handholding them along the way. Whilst I got that by chance of being born at a certain point in the tech evolution, our kids have not, they’re digital natives born into the Alpha generation who take Ai, wifi and on-demand as a given. So we manually recreated the levelling up, by first buying an ishuffle off ebay and thus making their first experience of personal devices to be the discovery of the joy of music. We then moved them to a small itouch where they had the joy of spotify and adding their own photos (no internet access), before landing on a smartphone at 11. This felt early to me but like many kids lockdown sped things up. It was however used with no social media or youtube until age 13. Phoenix now has both those things, but eeking it out really helped slow things down and upskill him along the way.
NO PERSONAL IPAD OWNERSHIP
Although we have an ipad that’s more kid designated (yep, the cracked one) it’s never been gifted to them or called ‘theirs’. Ownership is a huge thing for kids. Any parent of a young kid will know how painful it can be teaching, sharing or navigating those ‘mine!’ years! I believe that assigning ownership to something and then controlling that thing is confusing and from a kids’ point of view just really annoying. Imagine getting a birthday present that’s then taken away and given back all the time. ipads have always been family devices and never available for open access, they always have to ask and it’s easier to reinforce time boundaries this way. And though this will be highly polarising we’ve never given any tech device as a present. When we got a switch Ben bought it back with the food shopping randomly one day. Some might take this as ‘spoilt’ but for us it’s been anything but, I’ve wanted to take the excitement and power out of bringing these things into the home and see them more as shared household appliances, not aspirational personally owned gifts, Santa has a no tech rule in our house!
NO SCREEN MORNINGS
This suits us better because I like to get in as much non screen stuff as I cam in the first part of the day and save it up for the evening when I am usually cooking, doing jobs or relaxing or need to numb out myself!! On school morning days we learned by experience that any screen was a major issue for getting anywhere on time and added an extra layer of stress! So the door to the TV and consoles room is always shut and we often describe that room as ‘being closed’. Sometimes I do curse myself for making this boundary, especially on the weekends when Scout gets up early and it’s dark and cold, but I know it’s worth it, as his behaviour is awful if he starts the day with TV, and I know I’ll need it in my back pocket for later on! I know people worry about doing differences in siblings but personally I think some of the boundaries you set for little ones are actually good to keep the older ones going with non screen play time too!
NARRATING MY OWN ISSUES
I didn’t really know this was having any impact to be honest, but have noticed recently in my teen that it has. I’ve always been vocal when I feel myself getting addicted to my phone or if I’ve spent too much time on it. I talk about it openly and I guess I’ve always presented it as something I have a complex relationship with. I think when kids see that, they learn to be cautious, or at least that’s what’s happened in our family. Our kids really like us as people, and our relationships are strong, so to know that something has made their mum struggle in life at times, I think probably has added a few question marks around it.
I’ve noticed that they both identify when their friends can’t get off their phone, and talk about how annoying and boring it is. Because Phoenix also follows my IG I sometimes post about how I’m being terrible by attempting an early night and then falling straight into a scroll loop - he’ll come up to my room and take the phone off me! In some ways he’s developing better habits than me and I hope by being loud and honest about my own issues he’s getting closer to figuring out how to live alongside it more harmoniously. I’m starting this early with my daughter too and regularly ask her to ‘take this thing away’, I think kids love to help their parents and love being given power and responsibility over some of our actions, she loves hiding it and then doing a freedom dance with me.
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