I work for a parenting podcast and we had Ash Brandin on as a guest awhile ago. They are @thegamereducator on IG and are an excellent resource for learning about kids and screen time. Below is the link to our episode and their IG.
I'm an "unlimited screen time" parent and always have been. My oldest will be 14 this summer, and we have 3, so while obviously not statistically valid I've noticed some trends.
Our kids get more screen time in the winter than the summer, because in the summer, they're outside.
It's almost always their last choice, fallback activity vs their first choice, unless they're doing something social - like my oldest being on a call with his close friends, or my youngest being excited when a new spiderman video game is released and he can play online with his buddies, or my middle anxiously awaiting the release of a new movie or season of a show to watch with her friends.
Because it's not otherwise limited, and it's always been what we've modeled, there has never been issues with screens at restaurants, or at dinner, or at other inappropriate times.
They also spend a ton of time self-educating on screens. YouTube videos about space, apps like Brilliant and Skillshare to teach math, science, computers, cooking, baking, and more, even YouTube game walk throughs support problem solving and logic skills.
One of the best lessons I received as a parent when my kids were young was that the more something is limited, the more they'll want it, and the more disruptive that desire will become. And while sometimes we have to offer other activities because the screen time is causing challenges, we never explicitly limit it - which makes the kids feel like they can come back to it any time.
Though I have lots of things I wish I could do better as a parent, the screen time thing is one area I think we've done okay specifically because we basically followed this advice from day one.
I did the same. And my kids can take it or leave it. My younger son has learned so much! He loved Tier Zoo on YouTube. It’s a fantastic learning channel about animals.
And Mythbusters. And PBS. And the History Channel. And we also watched The Lord of the Rings and X-Men movies together. Gave us things to talk about. He has learned so much. I am amazed at how much biology and science he has learned !
He also had us watch together - Owl House on Disney+ and Epithet Erased on YouTube. Very interesting shows! Lots of creativity and imagination.
I finally started watching YouTube myself, and wow - I am learning so much myself on a huge variety of topics that interest me!
My older son is a gamer online. He has made many friends that way. And lately he is enamored with books. He wants to read and draw. He is opting to not play games as much online and to clean, read, draw, cook. And now he is enrolling in college too, after a 2 year break post-high school. All on his own. Both of my kids are making good choices in life and I am in awe of them. 💚
Thank you for validating and helping me find community in this kind of parenting.
So, I do pretty much all the things you say not to do, and feel screens are a net benefit. So it's very much individual.
I'll also point out that screen time rapidly increased as the domestic abuse increased. Screens kept the kids and I from completely self-destructing. Now that things are calming down a bit (the abuse switched back to the covert stuff, no more angry yelling fights), decreasing screen time is relatively easy.
So, with that in mind, I do not think restricting screens on extremely resistant kids is beneficial. If they are hiding from life, maybe they actually need to.
P*rn addiction is a growing trend in young kids and driving the explosion of SA perpetuated by children. It’s virtually all rape on tape and normalizes degradation of women and violence in sexual relationships; studies show 95% of it now contains marked levels of violence.
We noticed that my teenager became more sexist and condescending to me when he’d been looking at it, and has been a joyful happy kid who gladly takes maternal correction since my husband installed a router and software that makes it impossible for him to get this stuff/use VPNs. We set up two desktops and removed the Chromebook’s from the kids, so no computers in bedrooms. After this, my son voluntarily stopped listening to podcasters and vloggers that reinforce gendered division of labor/responsibility.We have had a number of frank conversations about how clear the research is on p*rn and how it trains the male brain to further objectify women. We have younger kids we wish to protect from seeing this at all. We were not careful enough with our oldest, and I can tell you, we were already more careful than a solid 95% of parents we know.
Progress: this teenager recently asked his dad to store the third cell phone (which we send with whichever kid might need it) in our room. It was understood that he was tired of withstanding the temptation of Internet access without accountability. A year ago, he would have put up no fight to the temptation.
So I would just add in that the Internet is a place where literally the most predatory, sexist, vile people try to get access to young kids. Sextortion is now believed to impact 2/3 of teen boys. Girls are facing AI p*rn and both boys and girls are subject to 24/7 bullying thanks to Snapchat and texting. For little kids, the concern is programming that reinforces negative behaviors or beliefs plus displacing far more valuable things like play, conversation, and reading. As they get out of that little stage, the focus has to include protecting their innocence, while also teaching them enough that if they are in school or watching stuff online, they can come to you with problems they recognize.
I let the kids have screens during breakfast time, because I myself very much prefer to eat breakfast quietly with my face in my phone, and this lets me do that. The general rule is no screens at dinner when all four of us are present, but if one of us is elsewhere for dinnertime, sometimes we'll allow them then.
One of my strongly enforced rules was not in the bedroom. When my daughter first got her phone (at 12years old - she is now 18) it had to stay in the living room at night when she went to bed. My 8yo has a phone in her room but the only thing it does is play "sleepy music" so she can go to sleep at night. She doesn't use it for anything else. iPads, computers, TV anything else is used in the living room only - so I can see/hear/monitor what's going on. Very rarely do I have to step in and say "Hey, I don't think that is appropriate. Please move onto something else" and if I do it is always with my youngest (6years old) as she is a boundary pusher! 8yo is a people pleaser and is very good at monitoring how things make her feel and not watching or engaging with anything that makes her scared/sad/uncomfortable.
I have not had set limits on screen use for my 3. They have all been perfectly happy to drop devices when asked or as soon as some other activity is on offer. They are especially keen to play with each other or myself and this is much preferred to devices. Sometimes we play something like Roblox all together - interacting over the game.
I don’t like the screen time debate as I feel that lack of screen time can often be a privilege and hard to for moms who are handling the house and parenting load. If dads would do better kids would have less screen time. My kids have a lot of screen time while at home, always monitored and appropriate for children. I would prefer they have less, but my husband will not participate equally in household chores or child care, so putting on a movie the kids like that will keep them occupied for some amount of time is a fallback on weekends so that I can work on cleaning and laundry so that we don’t descend into complete mess, grime and chaos. Yes they do play and color, etc. but those things just don’t give me the same amount of time to work on the house and in a time crunch I give in so I can get their clothes clean and keep us from walking on piles of crumbs on the kitchen floor. Husband doesn’t care of course and no way of communicating on my end will change things so sometimes it’s either they watch a movie or mess piles up. It’s not rocket science to figure out that he should engage with the kids while I clean or he can clean while I engage with them but then how could he take a nap or watch the game on the couch?
I spent 20 years in that environment. Being married to a wet blanket who didn’t help with anything. What a relief to be out of that situation.
My kids watched lots of screen. And I think kids have a natural propensity to make good choices. They are naturally interested in learning and exploring and experimenting and art and all kinds of interesting stuff.
My younger son loved Tier Zoo on YouTube. And Mythbusters. And Owl House on Disney+ and Epithet Erased on YouTube. He found all of those on his own and they are all great shows!
I love this advice. I don't have a TV in my house, and try to model healthy screen use to my children, neither of whom watch a lot of TV. We have a time-boundary with my neurodivergent 10yr old around computer gaming, but other than that it seems to manage itself. not having a TV allows us to make more conscious choices about what we watch (we watch on the laptop) and we still do a family movie night once a week.
This is great advice and I love the focus on making choices that fit your family's life. For me that's the most important thing, teaching them to make clear decisions.
But also due to my research focus I am very much of the opinion that screens are not good or bad and that there are not any ultimate norm or value that can be used about any digital tool, as they are all made by humans, as is the content.
What can be unconstructive in one context may be of value in another. And neither harmful nor beneficial content appeared from the technology itself.
For my daughter and me we always watch something together when we eat dinner. It's both a ritual, but also great bonding. We may stop the episode many times during dinner to discuss something that we saw or something else that it made us think of. I generally balk at the idea that screens or any other kind of distraction is a no no during dinner (in my childhood I used books). Both because any normative ideals along these lines have generally been used to abuse us and also because in our ND household this just feels nice to have routines like this that are not commented on.
Zawn, I didn’t know you could talk about this topic, too! You write about tricky things with intelligence and grace. Thank you for this newsletter. And also for the referral to Naomi. I just read 2 of her newsletters of yore and they are great, too!
I work for a parenting podcast and we had Ash Brandin on as a guest awhile ago. They are @thegamereducator on IG and are an excellent resource for learning about kids and screen time. Below is the link to our episode and their IG.
https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/fresh-take-ash-brandin-the-gamer-educator/
https://www.instagram.com/thegamereducator?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
I'm an "unlimited screen time" parent and always have been. My oldest will be 14 this summer, and we have 3, so while obviously not statistically valid I've noticed some trends.
Our kids get more screen time in the winter than the summer, because in the summer, they're outside.
It's almost always their last choice, fallback activity vs their first choice, unless they're doing something social - like my oldest being on a call with his close friends, or my youngest being excited when a new spiderman video game is released and he can play online with his buddies, or my middle anxiously awaiting the release of a new movie or season of a show to watch with her friends.
Because it's not otherwise limited, and it's always been what we've modeled, there has never been issues with screens at restaurants, or at dinner, or at other inappropriate times.
They also spend a ton of time self-educating on screens. YouTube videos about space, apps like Brilliant and Skillshare to teach math, science, computers, cooking, baking, and more, even YouTube game walk throughs support problem solving and logic skills.
One of the best lessons I received as a parent when my kids were young was that the more something is limited, the more they'll want it, and the more disruptive that desire will become. And while sometimes we have to offer other activities because the screen time is causing challenges, we never explicitly limit it - which makes the kids feel like they can come back to it any time.
Though I have lots of things I wish I could do better as a parent, the screen time thing is one area I think we've done okay specifically because we basically followed this advice from day one.
I did the same. And my kids can take it or leave it. My younger son has learned so much! He loved Tier Zoo on YouTube. It’s a fantastic learning channel about animals.
And Mythbusters. And PBS. And the History Channel. And we also watched The Lord of the Rings and X-Men movies together. Gave us things to talk about. He has learned so much. I am amazed at how much biology and science he has learned !
He also had us watch together - Owl House on Disney+ and Epithet Erased on YouTube. Very interesting shows! Lots of creativity and imagination.
I finally started watching YouTube myself, and wow - I am learning so much myself on a huge variety of topics that interest me!
My older son is a gamer online. He has made many friends that way. And lately he is enamored with books. He wants to read and draw. He is opting to not play games as much online and to clean, read, draw, cook. And now he is enrolling in college too, after a 2 year break post-high school. All on his own. Both of my kids are making good choices in life and I am in awe of them. 💚
Thank you for validating and helping me find community in this kind of parenting.
So, I do pretty much all the things you say not to do, and feel screens are a net benefit. So it's very much individual.
I'll also point out that screen time rapidly increased as the domestic abuse increased. Screens kept the kids and I from completely self-destructing. Now that things are calming down a bit (the abuse switched back to the covert stuff, no more angry yelling fights), decreasing screen time is relatively easy.
So, with that in mind, I do not think restricting screens on extremely resistant kids is beneficial. If they are hiding from life, maybe they actually need to.
What you’re saying is both sad and accurate. It rings true for my experience, too. Thank you for sharing it.
P*rn addiction is a growing trend in young kids and driving the explosion of SA perpetuated by children. It’s virtually all rape on tape and normalizes degradation of women and violence in sexual relationships; studies show 95% of it now contains marked levels of violence.
We noticed that my teenager became more sexist and condescending to me when he’d been looking at it, and has been a joyful happy kid who gladly takes maternal correction since my husband installed a router and software that makes it impossible for him to get this stuff/use VPNs. We set up two desktops and removed the Chromebook’s from the kids, so no computers in bedrooms. After this, my son voluntarily stopped listening to podcasters and vloggers that reinforce gendered division of labor/responsibility.We have had a number of frank conversations about how clear the research is on p*rn and how it trains the male brain to further objectify women. We have younger kids we wish to protect from seeing this at all. We were not careful enough with our oldest, and I can tell you, we were already more careful than a solid 95% of parents we know.
Progress: this teenager recently asked his dad to store the third cell phone (which we send with whichever kid might need it) in our room. It was understood that he was tired of withstanding the temptation of Internet access without accountability. A year ago, he would have put up no fight to the temptation.
So I would just add in that the Internet is a place where literally the most predatory, sexist, vile people try to get access to young kids. Sextortion is now believed to impact 2/3 of teen boys. Girls are facing AI p*rn and both boys and girls are subject to 24/7 bullying thanks to Snapchat and texting. For little kids, the concern is programming that reinforces negative behaviors or beliefs plus displacing far more valuable things like play, conversation, and reading. As they get out of that little stage, the focus has to include protecting their innocence, while also teaching them enough that if they are in school or watching stuff online, they can come to you with problems they recognize.
I let the kids have screens during breakfast time, because I myself very much prefer to eat breakfast quietly with my face in my phone, and this lets me do that. The general rule is no screens at dinner when all four of us are present, but if one of us is elsewhere for dinnertime, sometimes we'll allow them then.
One of my strongly enforced rules was not in the bedroom. When my daughter first got her phone (at 12years old - she is now 18) it had to stay in the living room at night when she went to bed. My 8yo has a phone in her room but the only thing it does is play "sleepy music" so she can go to sleep at night. She doesn't use it for anything else. iPads, computers, TV anything else is used in the living room only - so I can see/hear/monitor what's going on. Very rarely do I have to step in and say "Hey, I don't think that is appropriate. Please move onto something else" and if I do it is always with my youngest (6years old) as she is a boundary pusher! 8yo is a people pleaser and is very good at monitoring how things make her feel and not watching or engaging with anything that makes her scared/sad/uncomfortable.
I have not had set limits on screen use for my 3. They have all been perfectly happy to drop devices when asked or as soon as some other activity is on offer. They are especially keen to play with each other or myself and this is much preferred to devices. Sometimes we play something like Roblox all together - interacting over the game.
I don’t like the screen time debate as I feel that lack of screen time can often be a privilege and hard to for moms who are handling the house and parenting load. If dads would do better kids would have less screen time. My kids have a lot of screen time while at home, always monitored and appropriate for children. I would prefer they have less, but my husband will not participate equally in household chores or child care, so putting on a movie the kids like that will keep them occupied for some amount of time is a fallback on weekends so that I can work on cleaning and laundry so that we don’t descend into complete mess, grime and chaos. Yes they do play and color, etc. but those things just don’t give me the same amount of time to work on the house and in a time crunch I give in so I can get their clothes clean and keep us from walking on piles of crumbs on the kitchen floor. Husband doesn’t care of course and no way of communicating on my end will change things so sometimes it’s either they watch a movie or mess piles up. It’s not rocket science to figure out that he should engage with the kids while I clean or he can clean while I engage with them but then how could he take a nap or watch the game on the couch?
I spent 20 years in that environment. Being married to a wet blanket who didn’t help with anything. What a relief to be out of that situation.
My kids watched lots of screen. And I think kids have a natural propensity to make good choices. They are naturally interested in learning and exploring and experimenting and art and all kinds of interesting stuff.
My younger son loved Tier Zoo on YouTube. And Mythbusters. And Owl House on Disney+ and Epithet Erased on YouTube. He found all of those on his own and they are all great shows!
I love this advice. I don't have a TV in my house, and try to model healthy screen use to my children, neither of whom watch a lot of TV. We have a time-boundary with my neurodivergent 10yr old around computer gaming, but other than that it seems to manage itself. not having a TV allows us to make more conscious choices about what we watch (we watch on the laptop) and we still do a family movie night once a week.
This is great advice and I love the focus on making choices that fit your family's life. For me that's the most important thing, teaching them to make clear decisions.
But also due to my research focus I am very much of the opinion that screens are not good or bad and that there are not any ultimate norm or value that can be used about any digital tool, as they are all made by humans, as is the content.
What can be unconstructive in one context may be of value in another. And neither harmful nor beneficial content appeared from the technology itself.
For my daughter and me we always watch something together when we eat dinner. It's both a ritual, but also great bonding. We may stop the episode many times during dinner to discuss something that we saw or something else that it made us think of. I generally balk at the idea that screens or any other kind of distraction is a no no during dinner (in my childhood I used books). Both because any normative ideals along these lines have generally been used to abuse us and also because in our ND household this just feels nice to have routines like this that are not commented on.
Zawn, I didn’t know you could talk about this topic, too! You write about tricky things with intelligence and grace. Thank you for this newsletter. And also for the referral to Naomi. I just read 2 of her newsletters of yore and they are great, too!