Most parents we talk to have a general fear or dread of “too much screen time” hanging over their family. We’ve felt the same fear and dread and have probably spent too much time thinking about screen time.
We had a dozen years of parenting and six kids before our house experienced its first iPad in 2010 (or was it 2011?). Because of that, it’s hard for us to see screens as a “bad” thing. To us, the iPad felt like a miracle.
At that time, there was practically a whole industry on how to travel with kids, and it wasn’t about where to stay or what activities to do—it was about how to keep kids entertained during flights and long car rides. There were DIY projects and how-tos and much discussion among parenting bloggers of which kid-travel-hacks worked and which didn’t. Gabrielle remembers spending hours prepping for family vacations, trying to come up with activity kits for each kid to keep them occupied during road trips. She absolutely dreaded the (rare) flights we took because managing the kids was so exhausting. We remember discussing whether it was harder to be the driver or harder to manage the kids’ snacks and entertainment on a drive, and both wishing we could call dibs on driving.
And then, we, and many other parents, started experiencing travel with an iPad, and that whole how-to-travel-with-kids conversation disappeared. Screens made really challenging parts of parenting so much easier! We weren’t asking questions about how much screen time is too much screen time, we were asking: How long until the baby can hold and manage a screen themselves? We would not wish the challenges of those pre-screen days on any parent, and we know that our experience colors our opinions on screens.
So does this bias mean we believe there should be no limits on screen time for kids? We think this type of rhetorical question masks the real issues. For young kids, American childhood is usually quite busy—there may be trips to the park, and visits to Grandma’s house, and circle time at the community center, and neighborhood dogs to say hello to, and playdates, and preschool, and toy LEGOs to build, and nap time, and lunchtime, and snack time. If a child is squeezing screen time in there, too, that’s probably not something to worry much about.
But maybe the bigger issue is: What exactly are we talking about when we say screen time? Are we bothered that our twelve-year-old is reading books on a Kindle instead of in paper format? Are we trying to cut down on the amount of reading they are doing? Are we concerned when our kids are building a world or an object in Minecraft—an act of problem solving and creating? Are we saying we want less of that? Are we stressed when our kids are watching hand-lettering tutorials for Procreate and drawing lettering designs on the iPad? Are we troubled when our kids like keeping a digital journal (like a blog) instead of a hand-written journal? Are we furrowing our brows because our kids are looking up facts online about Australia for a report? Are we worried about how often we’re sitting down as a family to watch a movie? Does that count in our mental calculations of too much screen time?
When we discuss too much screen time with each other and with other parents, the answer is: no—the sorts of examples we’ve just listed are not what parents are concerned about. In fact, most people agree that screens have allowed for wonderful experiences for their families. A nonverbal child with autism may rely on their iPad for communication. That’s amazing! A tween has learned to edit short videos and made birthday movies for each member of the family. What a treasure! A family has bonded over PowerPoint parties where they make and present funny or interesting slideshows for one another based on a theme. Delightful! Grandparents who live far away get to video chat with their grandkids and read them bedtime stories. It’s miraculous! During dinnertime discussions about the school day or current events or history, families can look up maps or data or news stories instantly. Unbelievably cool! Screens have enabled both of us to work from home with flexible schedules, and that has made a huge difference for our family. To us, screens have been a major blessing!
So if our collective parenting concerns aren’t truly about too much screen time, then what are they about? When we’ve drilled down in these conversations, there are some specific fears and concerns we’ve discovered (let’s discuss some of those below), and then an overall sort of vague feeling of distrust directed toward new technologies and cultural changes. This feeling of distrust seems understandable to us, and likely every generation of parents has experienced something similar; we can’t look into the future and see if the technological changes of our day are going to cause problems for our children’s futures, so we treat these changes with suspicion.
Over the years, we’ve tried to tackle the specific screen-related fears, and work through the overall fear of too much screen time—partly because we needed to deal with a specific problem, and partly because we just weren’t willing to be constantly stressed out about screen time.
For specific concerns, we tried to pinpoint the problem without just blaming screens or demanding no more screen time. At one point, it felt like screen time was interfering with a good night’s sleep for one of our kids. So we came up with a plan to collect all the device chargers in the house and set up a charging station in our bedroom. The kids would check in their screens at bedtime for charging, and could pick them up in the morning, recharged and ready to go. The issue we were trying to overcome was someone not getting enough sleep. And we suspected eliminating screens at bedtime would solve it, or at least help. (But we also knew it could have been some other issue or stress that was keeping them up, and that removing screens could have meant they would stay up late doing something else. We tried to stay focused on solving the sleep problem and not assume it was a screen problem.)
Another specific fear was online abuse or bullying via social media. There are so many terrifying articles featuring instances of abuse and if you read the news at all, it’s basically impossible to avoid them, so, of course, parents get worried about this, and we were not immune. We managed our concerns around this specific fear in three ways:
1) Based on what we read, the worst of the abuse seems to happen in middle school, so we came up with a plan to not allow smartphones until high school. Granted, that was easier to do when there were more phone options that weren’t smartphones—kids could still text or call without having access to apps in their pocket.
2) We also followed the guidelines set by the apps—if thirteen was the minimum age, we didn’t allow for an Instagram account until thirteen. And if thirteen came along and they weren’t asking for Instagram, we didn’t feel compelled to introduce it or bring it up at all; there’s no need to make a big deal of it like, “Hey it’s your thirteenth birthday, let’s sign you up for Instagram!” If they did want to sign up, we let them have only a private account and allow only followers they knew in real life.
3) We talked to our kids directly about our fear: Hey, social media can be a lot of fun, but sometimes there are creepy people who reach out. Maybe they will ask you to do something dangerous and threaten to hurt your parents or your siblings if you don’t do it. They are lying, and they aren’t safe people, so you need to tell us about that. And it’s not just you, creepy people reach out to us too. It’s not your fault and you don’t need to be embarrassed about it. Just tell us.
Another specific fear (related to the previous one) is not knowing what your kids are accessing online. There are parental control software options you can use, and you can limit their phone privacy and do safety check-ins (if they are sending or receiving inappropriate pics from peers, that’s illegal!). But we think our best response to this fear is instituting family screen time. We think of it as the current version of gathering to watch must-see TV on Thursday nights like previous generations got to do with their families. How it works: We gather in the family room the same way we might to watch a movie, but instead of all watching one big screen, we’re all watching our own small screens. No headphones allowed. And we’re sharing as we go. Someone’s on TikTok and someone’s on Instagram and someone’s on YouTube and someone’s on Twitch and we’re sharing the latest post they made, or something funny they found, and we’re laughing and reading tweets aloud and saying, Oh, did you see this meme? Did you hear this news about your favorite musician’s next album? Instead of looking at a screen being an isolated activity, it’s something enjoyable we’re doing together.
Another benefit of family screen time is that it’s a chance to reinforce to your kids that everything they’re seeing online, you’re also seeing. If they’re seeing memes and headlines about a news story, you’re seeing them too—maybe a slightly different version is being shared on Instagram from what’s on TikTok, but the messaging is basically the same. Sometimes kids think that their parents have no idea what’s going on in the world that the kids or teens are living in. But family screen time can correct that notion. Plus, it helps you learn what your kids are interested in and what’s making them laugh. It helps you understand what your kids are getting out of screen time and is a chance to watch for any red flags.
Rather than worrying about too much screen time, we focus on introducing screen time opportunities that are positive and creative.
When blogging was in its heyday back in the aughts, our kids who were old enough to read started free Blogspot blogs. We still have the URLs and look up the blog posts from time to time and they are a family treasure. The topic of one memorable post, “My Favorite Blues,” featured a list of different blues, which included among eleven options, “glittering dark blue,” “middle blue,” “ocean blue,” and “lightest blue in the world.” These blogs were shared with cousins and friends and grandparents who could comment and interact. The blogs provided lots of positive feedback to budding writers.
When we lived far from family, we used our kids’ love of Minecraft as a way to bond with cousins. On Sundays, they would organize long Cousin Minecraft Sessions where they would all build and play together on a shared server. Years later, those Minecraft sessions were replaced with Cousin D&D Sessions.
When the kids wanted a gaming system, we started with a Wii U and focused on games with lots of movement—like Dance Dance Revolution, and Wii Sports, or games that were fun to play with multiple players so four of us could play at once, and it could be a group activity. We followed game ratings and bought only age-appropriate and family-appropriate games.
During the Covid lockdown, we bought a refurbished iPad and Apple Pencil and designated it the drawing iPad. We removed as many apps as possible so that it was only used for Procreate, our favorite drawing app.
When Wordle came out, we all got into it and shared scores on the family text chat.
We host family PowerPoint parties a couple of times each year, where there’s a theme and each person creates and presents a slideshow.
As mentioned earlier, we use screens for family jam sessions—we use an app on our phone to display the chords and lyrics on the TV, so we can all see them and play and sing together.
Basically, we’ve looked for ways to encourage creativity and learning on screens, so that when the kids are bored or craving screen time, we don’t feel compelled to distract them with another activity, and instead can say, What are you building in Minecraft right now? Go see how much progress you can make in an hour. What are you drawing lately? Can you design a sign for your sister’s birthday? How far did you get in those keyboarding tutorials?
We don’t like the general assumption that screen time is horrible or a bad thing or bound to cause problems. We don’t see how that’s a helpful stance to take. Having access to all the world’s knowledge in a little device is incredible. And beyond that, we both use screens all day, every day, for work. Every desk job does as well, and a lot of other jobs too. Because we work at home, our kids see us using our screens for work every day—we don’t want them to fear screens but to understand them as a tool for work and creativity. We want the baseline to be: Screens aren’t essential for lots of things, but they are a useful part of life.
If your own kids are getting themselves down over social media comparisons, one solution could be to get off the triggering platform. Another could be to dive deeper into making content so that your kids understand what goes into what they’re seeing and that what they’re seeing may be as fake as any scripted TV show. Take a weekend and plan out an awesome video, and what it should be about; gather props from around the house, decide on an outfit, do hair and makeup, record lots of takes until you feel like you’ve got a few you’re happy with, edit the video on TikTok or Instagram, working with the allowed time limits. Add music. Then share it with friends and family.
If you do this, maybe they’ll love it and have fun creating additional videos. But even if they don’t love the process of making the video, or even if the video doesn’t turn out quite how they expected, they’ll learn a few things: They’ll learn that everything they’re seeing on social media is pretend. They’ll know how much time these social media people are spending on hair and makeup and planning outfits. They’ll know that despite the hair and makeup work, there is still a filter that changes their looks even more—that the faces they are seeing are not reality. They’ll understand that this “casual” video they are seeing may represent many hours of work, and many takes, and lots of editing; that someone could have spent four days making a thirty-second TikTok.
Again, if they love making the video, they’ll know this is an option, that it just takes lots of time and work and that with practice people get better at it. If they don’t love it, they’ll know not to be jealous of the creators they are watching—they’ll know the videos they see require lots of work. They’ll know that even if you put in lots of work, the video you make may get only a few likes, or no reaction at all; the amount of hours spent doesn’t translate into views or money.
This seems like valuable knowledge for any child who is both interested in and stressed out by social media. Taking your kids through an exercise like that (let’s try to make the best video we can make with the time and the resources we have) makes it really clear that the vast majority of what we’re seeing online is an intentional creation, not a snapshot of unedited reality.
We realize the general dread around too much screen time that parents experience is just the most recent form of a problem that has been going on forever. When we see people feel an urgent need to eliminate screens from their kid’s life, we understand the instinct, but we also think of it as the modern version of the parents who wouldn’t allow their Gen X kids to watch TV. We understand there were some pros and cons for those kids. Pros: Maybe they wrote in their journals more, or spent more time outside, or had to come up with creative ways to spend their free time. Cons: They often felt socially ill at ease—they weren’t seeing the SNL skits or sitcoms that were being talked about at school and couldn’t relate. As adults they still have some cultural blind spots. And yes, anytime they went to a friend’s house, they would want to do nothing but watch TV. Television became a forbidden treasure they could seek after. We know the parents felt like they were doing their kids a big favor by not allowing TV, but it’s unclear whether those kids, now adults, appreciated the favor then or now.
After “TV is going to rot their brains,” our culture experienced “video games are going to rot their brains,” and now we’re in the middle of “too much screen time is going to rot their brains.” Along those lines we wonder: If a modern parent tried to eliminate screen time for their kids now, in the same way that a 1970s parent might have tried to eliminate TV watching, what would that even mean? No smartphone? No TV? No family movie night? No computer for doing homework? For schools, so much communication with students happens through online platforms, so a no-screen life may not even be possible. If a parent was able to accomplish such a thing, would there be pros and cons? Sure. But as far as we can see, it’s not clear at all that the pros would outweigh the cons.
We also take into account that if too much screen time ends up creating a future outcome that is negative for our kids, it won’t just affect our kids, it will affect approximately eight billion people. That means it won’t be a personal problem to solve, it will be a cultural and a technological shift that the whole world will be dealing with.
If our kids were somehow in the 1 percent of humanity who is not dealing with the problem, we’re not sure that would actually be a benefit for our kids.
In our experience, worrying about too much screen time—which we have definitely done—is misplaced worry and wasted energy. If there’s a specific screen-related problem your kids are experiencing, you can deal with that specific problem. But worrying about a vague outcome of too much screen time that we don’t know will even happen is unnecessary.