Why You Shouldn’t Limit Screen Time for Kids (And What You Can Do Instead)

Should we limit screen time for our kids or not? We want what is best for our kids as concerned parents. I’ve invited Beth, a working homeschool mom of 5, to share her solution to the screen time battle. Check out what she does instead! You’ll love it! 

Like many parents of young kids these days, I went through a phase where I tried to systematically limit screen time in my home.

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Each child had a specific amount of time they were allowed on the computer each day. To ensure they abided by that, we even had log sheets for them to fill out.

When this didn’t work, I tried limiting their screen time even more AND introduced a system with different charts listing different time limits for different activities.

Sound complicated?

Guess what. It was!

It was also super stressful.

The constant monitoring and micromanaging were tedious. Coming up with new systems every time I realized something wasn’t working out right took up precious time and energy that could have been better directed elsewhere.

Not only was it stressful for me, but it was causing rifts between my children.

If one child broke the rules (even without realizing it), it would set off a tantrum from another child who thought that things were unfair. There was a LOT of nagging, bickering, and snitching. None of which improved my mood, lol.

Above all, though, these attempts to limit screen time just were not effective. And what’s the point of putting so much continued effort into systems if they aren’t working?

That’s when I realized that maybe the answer was simple: stop trying to limit screen time.

But I didn’t want to just give them free reign to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. I needed to find a way to ensure that my kids were learning and experiencing the important things without having to feel like a technology prison warden.

Thankfully, I found what works for us and want to share with you guys some tips on how to strike a balance between allowing kids to creatively utilize their tech time, while also setting some clear boundaries.

While it may not be ideal for every family, I’d love for you to give it a try and let me know how it works out for you.

What to Do Instead of Limiting Screen Time

Instead of continuing to limit screen time, here are a few things you can try instead.

Set a Few Clear Boundaries

Rather than continuing to limit screen time, I decided to simply set some boundaries about how, when, and where devices can be used. This may sound like it’s the same as limiting screen time, but I promise you it is vastly different from when I had my kids filling out multiple log sheets to track their screen time.

Our rules are fairly simple:

Rule #1: We limit screen time that is solely techertainment (purely entertainment, with no educational value) to one hour per day.

Rule #2: Productive tech time is unlimited, with some guidelines about when/where devices can be used and chores that needed to be completed beforehand.

You can get the full details on this switch and how it worked with my family here.

⇒Now, these are just the rules that work for our family. Your rules may be different. However, the key is to set a few boundaries that you feel are critical so that you don’t have to worry so much about screen time (or how they are utilizing it).

Teach Kids About Balance

Rather than trying to limit screen time overall, have a chat with your kids about the importance of finding balance in their lives- including how they utilize technology.

Talk to them about the importance of balancing screen time with time spent doing other things. Suggest that they take regular breaks from the screen throughout the day. Not only to rest their eyes (and necks/hands), but to connect with family and friends.

This is, of course, a good thing for them to practice as far as screen time. However, learning to find a good balance is a key life skill. One that not everyone develops – even adults.

As with adults, one way to teach kids about balance is to have your kids sit down and do three things:

1. Write down their goals and an estimate of how much time they spend on those goals daily (or weekly).
2. Write down the things they have to do each day (like school work, extracurricular activities, chores, etc) and how long each activity takes.
3. Write down how they spend the rest of the time that is not spent on daily activities or working towards their goals. Ironically, a great way to do this is by tracking their time for a week.

I’m sure that many of us who have taken the time to think about how we REALLY spend our time have realized that we waste a lot of our precious time doing things that don’t really move us forward on our goals.

Doing an exercise like this serves to highlight the need to change the way we do things.

With your kids, this exercise may help them to visually see how they spend their time and whether they need to self-govern their screen time so that they can find more balance between technology, their personal goals, and the other things they have to do on a daily basis. You might be surprised by the decisions they make when you step back and allow them to work through the decision-making process on their own.

When creating goals specific to computer (and mobile device) usage, consider teaching your kids to identify which types of tech usage are productive and which are not. I talk about the process we use to help our kids determine if they are using their online time productively.

Recommend Cool Things

Spend some time looking for cool things for them to check out – both fun, techertainment things as well as things that are more productive. You never know what they will enjoy.

Browse the web for fun websites and apps that are related to topics your kids love, concepts they struggle with, and topics that you plan to teach them about.

You can even pop into various communities (including Beth’s group: Techin Your Homeschool Facebook group) to ask your fellow homeschool moms for their suggestions.

Create a list of websites, videos, apps, and other resources that you can introduce to your child and begin sharing them. This way, you know that they are using some of their tech time to check out things you approve of.

These are just a few tips for how you can stop focusing your energy on limiting screen time and shift your focus to helping your kids make the most of their screen time.

If this has got you thinking, check out posts at Techie Homeschool Mom:

• 5 Tips for Healthy Tech Habits in Your Family
• Are Your Kids Wasting Time on Electronics? 3 Questions to Ask
• Why I Stopped Managing My Kids’ Screen Time

Thank you, Beth for sharing these tips with us.

Do you limit screen time or not? I’d love to know.

Bio: 

Beth Napoli shares wisdom gained from 14+ years homeschooling her 5 daughters at Techie Homeschool Mom. She inspires and equips homeschooling moms to meet the needs of 21st-century learners and incorporate more technology into home education. Beth’s not a computer expert; she just geeks out over cool web tools and online learning resources and loves to share what she finds with other homeschool moms.

Beth is also the creator of Online Unit Studies, tech-driven internet-based thematic learning experiences and the hostess of the Techin’ Your Homeschool Facebook group.

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