Managing Screen Time – Setting Family Rules

Screen time is often a concern for parents/carers, and it can be very tricky to know how best to manage and balance this for our children. Screens are inevitably a part of our every day lives, so it is important to work out how screen time can be managed in our homes.

Here is some information on setting family rules for screen time for children, taken from the website raisingchildren.net.au:

Strategies for managing screen time and digital technology use

Family rules

Here are some questions to help you negotiate screen time in your family:

• Do you want guidelines about screen time hours? What about weekends, holidays, and tech-free days?
• When can your child use digital technology? For example, not until after homework, or not during mealtimes? Do children need to ask you first?
• Where can your child use digital technology? For example, in family rooms but not bedrooms?
• How can your child use digital technology? For example, to play a puzzle app or make animations but not to watch YouTube videos?

Making the rules
It’s important to involve all family members when you’re making family rules about screen time. Your rules should be flexible enough to cover school days, weekends, and holidays.

It’s a good idea to revisit the rules every few months and whenever you introduce a new device into your home. This helps you ensure the rules are still meeting everyone’s needs.

Breaking the rules
Sometimes your child might break the rules you’ve agreed on. For example, your child might play on the tablet without asking first. You can discuss and agree on some consequences for these situations with your child. For example, the consequence for using the tablet without asking might be no tablet for a day.

This article continues on the website with information on setting up routines, managing transitions and supporting choices when using digital technology – follow this link if you’d like to read more: https://raisingchildren.net.au/pre-teens/entertainment-technology/screen-time-healthy-screen-use/managing-screen-time-3-11-years

Thanks for reading, Sam, school counsellor