Ive heard of parents who gave access to tech, didn’t regulate screen time or treat it as a high value or privilege item to hopefully reduce the fascination with it. Maybe put limits if grades are failing but otherwise it’s fine.
I could see a benefit to allowing kids to manage their own screen time to hopefully teach them early how to self regulate their media early.
My husband’s family was like this, four boys, parents rarely took away screens. My mom was very strict about screens and gaming. I have to admit I think his family are all better adjusted as adults than me or my sibling.
So for parents that weren’t strict, did they turn into well adjusted adults? And what was the extent of any limits you imposed?
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I think this depends so much on the particular kid. Some kids need those firm limits or they’ll go wild. Other kids do well with more flexibility.
But generally, I’ve always been on the side of teaching responsible use of stuff like this so that kids don’t see them as special or end up craving them because they’re missing out. We don’t have a lot of rules. I personally think it’s super important to teach media literacy and self regulation, because if kids never learn those skills when they’re young, they’ll have a harder time later.
My daughter’s still young (almost 9, in 3rd grade), but you can already tell she has a much different attitude towards screens/tech/TV than some of her friends. For example, I can’t even have the TV on if her friend "Alice" is over. Every time Alice even sees the TV, she stops and becomes almost catatonic watching it. Like you have to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention. Doesn’t matter what’s on, she’s just transfixed. Is that because her family has stricter rules or because of her personality? It’s hard to say, but there’s a marked difference.
As I type this out, I realize our approach to tech is similar to how we approach other things in our house, like junk food. We don’t ban it or even really strictly limit it, but we try to encourage a healthy, balanced relationship with it.
Who knows if this will bite us in the ass later. We’ll see, lol!
Unfortunately we do this out of habit at this point. My husband loves tech stuff and video games so do the kids. If allowed the kids will be on the internet from the time they wake until they pass out. It is a real struggle to get them interested in real life hobbies. If we could do it again things would be different. Even a month of no screens didn’t do much. They just counted down the days till they could have them back
My kids are teens, and we didn’t limit access to screens much. Both kids would have rather been out playing than anything. Neither uses their phone excessively, their grades are great, they’re both super involved in extracurriculars and sports. Very well-rounded.
It worked fine for my daughter who is 16 now. We had some rough patches in 5th and 6th grades. But after that she’s been fine. We only ever had to take it away from her one time for her to never slip on her grades again. I mean, she’s not done growing up, so I guess we’ll see in her 20’s but so far so good.
Edit to add: My husband is big into tech stuff and I am not averse, either. So, it just happened this way.
This way of thinking about it ignores the fact that for many people, there is value inherent in the content and social expectations around tech devices. Your parents didn’t make access to screens high value for your and your sibling, whatever it was you wanted to do with them is what created that value.
Parents should be teaching their children how to manage screen time, but it should be done in an age appropriate way with the necessary guardrails for their developing brains.
I absolutely disagree with the idea of letting children regulate their own media consumption, even if you don’t set screen time limits. Many adults struggle with the algorithms that feed us content, and we supposedly have fully developed frontal lobes.
Our daughter is 8 and its been fantastic. Our daughter self-limits her screen/video game time because it’s not something fancy or mysterious, its "mundane". When you put it on a pedestal it becomes this sought after thing. She spends a lot of time on a tablet, but she’s DRAWING on it – creating digital art. Its fantastic! And I think it gave her a jump start on her reading abilities because she’s had to figure out what certain things mean and attributed their patterns to language. But then half the time I figure she should be off playing video games she’s making art or reading or playing pretend. I have zero regrets. Conversely, her cousins are very limited screen time to the point where if we let her have her tablet they’ll try to sneak peeks or get it away from her and they get in trouble for it. It becomes this forbidden fruit.
I mean.. I’m that child. I was given access to screens as much as I wanted. My mom even let me fall asleep to TV when I was a baby.
The biggest issue was I didn’t know enough about internet safety and because of that there was a time in my life when I was doing very unsafe things with men on the internet. I was lucky that it never led to anything bad, but it shouldn’t have happened
Outside of that, my relationship with screens is fine. I’m a huge gamer which is probably related but I also love to read and spend the vast majority of my free time listening to audiobooks and knitting or crocheting.
I am also ND though which I’ve heard can make a difference with that type of thing? Idk. I’m definitely not addicted to screens and I’m generally on my phone less than other people in my social group
I don’t limit screen time and my son who is 5 self limits. He has a tablet and sometimes brings it around for background noise and sometimes turns it off completely to do something else. He will ask for it in the car sometimes but if he doesn’t have it he also can entertain himself just fine. His favorite thing is actually going to playgrounds and playing with other kids and if he has that as an option he will always choose it over tablet time. He is also ND though.
We have a young teen (14)and a preteen (10).
We’ve never been strict, because the forbidden is always more attractive.
We see their age mates buy candy and devour it before going home, and have some hefty restrictions on their electronics, such as 15 minute youtube allowance and no unsupervised internet or tv.
And so they break rules and learn to lie to their parents and keep stuff hidden.
The parents become an enemy.
Our restrictions are that the kids have to put down their screens when asked. And they do with no complaint, as long as we lwt them finish what they’re doing.
Our youngest said herself that she felt she spent too much time on her ohone, and asked us to take it away until her chores were done.
As for candy, they keep their stashes in their rooms, but we have a rule that candy is only allowed for an hour a week during a special family cartoon hour.
During that hour they can stuff their faces as much as they like. But they’re fairly relaxed about it.
However, if they eat from their stash during the week, they can’t have candy for that special hour.
Both have broken the rule. Once.
Because we trust them by default, they don’t want to lose that trust, and we don’t want to lose theirs either.
As a result, they don’t hide their mistakes, because we don’t punish them for doing something stupid, save for the utter terror of the raised eyebrow.
We’ve told them, time and again, thst only if their actions are outright malicious will they be scolded. And we’ve never had to.
I was raised this way, but also tv and sega/computer games in the 80s were slower paced and you had fewer options, more ad breaks, etc so at some point you would get bored and walk away. My mum also took us out to playgrounds and outdoor spaces and did fun crafts and projects with us so we learnt to get dopamine from other sources and entertain ourselves.
My kids have tablets with time limits on them. They have endless choices of shows to watch on Netflix (not just the 1-2 shows on tv that may interest them), no ad breaks, and even though we limit the number of new games they can install it’s still sooo many more than the 3 I had growing up. These things are tailored to give dopamine hits and keep kids reeled in like nothing else. My daughter is somewhat self limiting and will walk away to do other self directed fun stuff. My son would never look away from a screen in his entire life if we didn’t make him. We kept them away from tv/Netflix until they were around 2.5-3, and tablets until they were about 4.5, and even when he was a baby he was obsessed with things with buttons and screens before he had ever seen what they did. There’s something hard wired in him to be a little tech dude.
My son was a 90’s baby. I didn’t worry about screen time, but to be fair he didn’t have a phone until high school and even then they were mostly used for calls and texts. I feel for the this generation of parents because phones are now portable computers and seem to be far more addictive.
Kids have no incentive to self regulate screen time. You can lecture them with the research on why it’s bad for them, but that won’t matter to a child. We can’t even get some adults to cut back on their own use when we show them research.
Kids also don’t self filter. They can’t help but be curious and type things into a search engine. They don’t understand why they feel as they do when they stumble on hardcore porn, but they can’t help but keep watching. A child’s devices must have parental controls.
How it turns out for kids who don’t? Research shows higher rates of anxiety, depression, and lower self esteem the more they use things like social media. And we know excessive porn causes problems in men, so it’s even worse in children.
I personally feel like this is very dependent on each individual kid and their personality and temperament. My husband is the oldest of his siblings and had way more rules growing up than his siblings (for example, he had to read a certain amount of time before getting to play video games which turned him into a voracious reader), and as an adult he manages tech very well and actually despises most social media. His two siblings pretty much had free range and both of them as adults are chronically online even still today.
With our daughter (10) we have some restrictions. It’s been a balance over the years and figuring out what works for her. We used to have a rule where video games were only allowed on the weekends. Then we had a rule where daily it was fine but she couldn’t play past 7. Our rule now is I don’t mind her watching tv shows before this chore, but one of her chores is to read for 30 minutes daily before she’s allowed to play videos games or play on her iPad. Excessive video games and iPad time is definitely noticed in her behavior so while she doesn’t have time restrictions, I’m not afraid to cut her off. The younger she was the more fuss there was about restrictions, but I’ve always talked with her about balance and my reasonings and she has always understood. Now that she’s older she doesn’t fuss at all and understands. She actually will get frustrated at times when other kids only want to be on their tech.
How we have handled tech has been very much geared toward her personality and how she personally handles it. I’m expecting currently and I fully expect it’ll be trial and error with this one as well.
As an adult I struggle with screens and was limited and not taught how to self regulate with them. I think the difference is not having kids teach themselves how to self regulate (emotional self regulation is a must teach so why don’t people seem to see that screen time is the same?) but teaching kids how to self regulate their screen time age appropriately with them so that in the long run they can do it. You don’t throw a dirty house at a kid and expect them how to know house chores you expect their age to know how to do you teach themselves and you build on their own understanding as they grow up.
It’s going to be specific to the child.
My parents didn’t care, I’d usually spend all day with friends at a park or running around town but when a new game came out like gta 5, whatever cod, warframe, etc, we’d all be inside for a week or 2 non stop playing and aside from telling us to do chores or go to sleep there was no limit. I, on the other hand, have to limit my kids kuz they get so engrossed that they stop hearing and throw fits if asked to do anything.
I’m not sure that it is as easy as that I’m afraid. So many different factors are at play here.
We don’t really regulate much, but our kid would much rather be outside playing than on screen time anyway. His grades are excellent and a lot of times he would rather play with his toys instead, so we haven’t really felt the need to limit it. We are strict about content, though.
My kids don’t have a screentime limit, but we set appropriate expectations like no tablets in room while asleep and their bedtime is 8pm- no later than 9 everyday. My kids are in school 8 hours a day, definitely allowed to be on screens to relax. My oldest is the only one that really uses screens, my younger 2 rather play with toys/ color and just have TV on as background noise.