Parents: Time to Rethink Your Child’s Relationship with Screen Time

Tips for relaunching media limits after a pandemic free-for-all

BY: Sarah Krongard， POSTED: August 6, 2021

Screen time is a popular, challenging, and often divisive topic among parents and caregivers who struggle to determine how to best regulate children’s technology use in a media-saturated world. Amid the COVID-19 lockdown, many caregivers adjusted their screen time rules, which often resulted in guilt-ridden parents anxiously questioning the many hours their children spent watching Peppa Pig or scrolling Instagram, in addition to remote schooling, virtual ballet class, and Zoom birthday parties. For many, screen-time regulations dissipated when technology served as the main connection to the outside world.

Now, caregivers may be wondering, where do we go from here? Do we continue with a relaxed approach to screen time, considering the role it played over the past year and a half, or do we implement revised media restrictions with children? What is the “new normal'' when it comes to screen time? 

For more mindful media engagement, consider this moment as an opportunity to pause, reflect, and reimagine your relationship with screens. Here are four recommendations to move from restriction-focused to a more integrated approach: 

Shift the frame away from “screen time” and toward “screen use.”

Focus on how and why your children are engaging with screens and stress less about the amount of time they are using media. What is the context for their screen use? For example, when spending time staring at their phone, might your child be in the midst of an emotional discussion with a friend, which is less about technology and more about the bond built through text-based conversation? When they are binge-watching streamed television, are they considering the connections between the narrative and their social and civic realities? What does the story make them feel, think, and imagine?

Consider the what in addition to the how.

What content is your child consuming, creating, or sharing? Is this content empowering and engaging? Or perhaps problematic or inappropriate? For example, is it violent, misogynist, exploitative, biased, or otherwise potentially harmful for your child’s development? More importantly, how is your child interpreting and making meaning from the content they see? Create space for open conversation with your children regarding the media they consume. Engage with curiosity to avoid judgments, and instead, try to understand why they are drawn to this particular program. Begin by asking questions that encourage emotional responses, such as, “What did you like about this program? What didn’t you like? Why?” Ensure that your child feels that their opinions about media matter. From there, try to dig into more analytical, age-appropriate conversations, exploring complex topics, such as character motivations or storytelling decisions. 

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