Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt guilty about the amount of time your kid spends in front of a screen. I imagine most of us are in the same boat — and if you’re not, can I get a copy of your perfect parenting manual, please? For the majority of parents, it’s a constant conundrum, no matter what age your kids are. When they’re young, you worry that too much screen time will turn their developing brains to mush. When they’re older, you worry that they’re too immersed in the virtual world to be present in the real one. It’s a problem our own parents didn’t have to tackle, which makes it feel doubly difficult sometimes; it really is uncharted territory, and you can’t just go to your mom for advice on this one.
Thankfully, we’ve got advice from experts to lean on when those screen time doubts start creeping in. And to find out whether our feelings about screen time are justified, we turned to one of the biggest experts of them all: psychologist, author, podcaster, parenting guru (and mom of three!) Dr. Becky Kennedy, best known as simply “Dr. Becky.” She recently partnered with Amazon Kids to answer the most common conundrums surrounding technology use. So we asked her the burning screen time questions parents really want to know: is screen time bad for our kids, and should we be feeling guilty about it?
Good news: the answer is no, and no.
“The most important question about screen time is, ‘Am I using screen time in a way that works for my kid and our family?” Dr. Becky tells SheKnows. She reminds parents that there are short-term needs and long-term needs when it comes to screen time.
“Sometimes short-term needs are, ‘I need my kid to be fully occupied for an amount of time, so I can fill-in-the-blank: decompress, cook, answer emails, work out, have time to myself,’ whatever it is. I totally understand this!” she says. And most often, that involves screen time.
Long-term needs, on the other hand, are goals we have for our kids that can’t necessarily be brought about by technology — which, Dr. Becky says, might sound like: “‘I want my kid to be able to access their own creativity and turn that creativity into action. I want my kid to learn to be bored, and to wait, and to know that that’s part of human existence. I want my kid to learn that hard work and effort is what leads to good feelings, as opposed to only mindlessness and low effort leading to good, exciting feelings.'”
“[I]t’s not a way of saying long term needs should always trump short term needs,” Dr. Becky clarifies. “It’s a way of saying we just need to think about them both.”
When it comes to striking a healthy balance, we have to re-evaluate the very meaning of “screen time.” Only measuring it in terms of minutes spent ignores the vast differences in content and engagement. Educational apps, interactive games, and co-viewing experiences can be valuable, while passively scrolling social media for an extended period of time may have negative impacts; not all screen time is created equal, and if it looks like your kid is indulging in more than they should, evaluate what kind of screen time it is. The aim isn’t to eliminate screens — because you and I both know that in this day and age, that’s never gonna happen — but to ensure our children use them (at least mostly) in ways that support their development and well-being.
While the professional recommendation used to be less than two hours for ages 5 and up, even the American Academy of Pediatrics is hesitant these days to set a specific number of screen time hours for kids. “Because children and adolescents can have many different kinds of interactions with technology, rather than setting a guideline for specific time limits on digital media use, we recommend considering the quality of interactions with digital media and not just the quantity, or amount of time,” their website advises.
Three tips from Dr. Becky to ensure healthy screen time use: define screen time boundaries in advance (and take advantage of your child’s device’s ways to manage those boundaries, such as parental controls), encourage your kids to learn on their screens before playing, and anticipate (and prepare for) the inevitable meltdowns around screen time. She suggests designating a specific time to put away the screens every day, and joining your child at the end of it to ask about their game or whatever else they’re engaged with to help gently bring them back into the “real world.”
At the end of the day, though, Dr. Becky has a message for screen-time-stressed parents that might help us breathe a little easier.
“To me, if you’re a parent who’s just struggling with screen time with your kid, you’re probably doing it right. It’s a tool we need to use,” she reassures us. “It’s something I don’t think parents need to feel guilty about. It’s just something parents need to have a level of mindfulness about relative to making sure we’re setting up our home today for success — but that we’re also setting up our kids for success long-term.”
Before you go, check out these celebrities who have shared their technology rules for their kids.
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