Figuring Out Screen Time For the School Year

My kids start school today.

YouTube and Video Games took over a bit towards the end of the summer—so much so that I am actually not even sure how much time they spent in front of screens these last few days.

So I’m thinking about how to best set them up for success this school year.

The following is a roadmap for figuring out limits for kids of any age in any family.

STEP ONE

Inventory of Devices

Decide what devices you want to focus on. This may include any device where the internet can be accessed, content can be viewed, private messages can be exchanged or games can be played or it might be a single device of concern.

Possible Devices

• Smartphones

• Parent Managed Phones*

• Smartwatches*

• Tablets/iPads

• Home Computers

• School Computers**

• Family TV***

• Video Game Consoles

Some Nuances to Consider

*If you can lock down a phone or watch so there is no internet or distracting apps you can leave these out. This is fairly easy to do on parent managed phones and most smartwatches but harder to do on Apple Watches.

**If you can lock down a school computer so they can only do school work on it, leave that out. Depending on the geofencing, firewalls etc that your school district has established, it may be possible for your child to access unrestricted browsers and youtube from school chromebooks when at home.

***If your family TV is NOT being used to watch YouTube you might leave that out.

STEP TWO:

Inventory of Activity

Because many apps allow you to do multiple activities within them, and many apps have browser versions, it is actually really hard to work out exactly how much time kids are doing the activities we want to keep an eye on across apps. For example, you can’t see a breakdown of how much time your teen is spending DMing on Instagram v scrolling through content. And, if you teen uses both the app and the browser version of Instagram you may not actually know how much time they are really spending with Instagram. Instead, I would organize an audit the way apps are organized in the app stores:

• Internet - this will include browser versions of any app

• Social Media - this will include Messages and Whatsapp which are technically Messaging

• Games

• Entertainment - this will include YouTube even though I personally think Shorts makes it more like Social Media

STEP THREE:

Audit of Time Spent

Take a look at a week’s worth of data to get a sense of what an average school day and weekend day looks like.

If your kid has a Smartphone, you can look at activity in the settings either through parental controls if you’ve set them up or directly on the phone in question

If you’re auditing home devices you may need to observe and record.

Look at the usage data in totality but also by category and even by app and see what sticks out.

In one week this summer, my child spent 6 hours playing video games and 4 hours watching YouTube (and almost 3 hours reading!) on our family iPad.

This doesn’t look so bad, right? Well—that same child also watched many, many hours of YouTube on our Family TV and played ALOT of Minecraft. Was he meeting his other obligations? Probably, this data was during the summer. But we will need to dial back our screens for school days for sure.

STEP FOUR:

Establish a baseline

The American Academy of Pediatrics shies away from setting an actual number. (It has in the past it has recommended no more than 2 hours of screen time for teens and adults per day outside of work which I still kinda like as a starting point).  

Instead it urges parents to focus on higher quality screen interactions v. low quality interactions.

For the school year, my recommendation is to look at the hours spent per day on the activity inventory above as well as time spent on homework, exercise & activities and of course, sleep. Figure out what is reasonable and achievable given the number of hours in a day and make that the goal.

How To Get Started

• Look at your child’s usage data with them. Look at total time per day and time by category and by app

• Estimate or observe your child’s time spent doing homework, exercising, doing activities and/or chores

• Estimate how much sleep they are getting

• Factor in hours they are in school

Scenario 1

Teen & Smartphone

You have a kid who’s spending too much time on social media everyday.

• Look at all the data together

• Discuss how you’re going to re-balance school days

• Tools you can use

  • Set device-wide and app-specific time limits in your child’s device parental controls or have them set them for themselves

    • consider disabling browser versions of problem apps

  • Create Focus Time windows for school, homework, activities and Downtime hours for sleeping in device parental controls or have them to set these up for themselves

  • Limit notifications for overused apps in settings to reduce temptation

  • Consider purchasing additional tech to help manage temptation like the Brick or a second Dumphone both of which allow an individual to physically separate themselves from problematic apps for periods of time

  • A contract like this one from Common Sense Media

• Consider sharing your own usage data and any changes you may be making for yourself

Scenario 2

Tween with YouTube, Video Games, and/or GroupChat

You have a younger kid who doesn’t have a smartphone but who is playing video games and watching youtube and group chatting with friends across various devices in your house

• Show or explain to your child the data you’ve gathered

• Announce the new goal 

• Explain what activities are included in this goal and what are not

• Explain the screen time limits you are setting up on devices and apps to help them via parental controls. These can be Focus Time and Downtime Windows or a Screens Allowed Windows (ex. after homework until 7pm so long as there aren’t other activities still going on like eating dinner or a sports practice.

• Consider a contract like this one from Common Sense Media

Exceptions For All Ages

You might tell kids of any age that face-timing family, watching tv with your parents, listening to audiobooks or making phone calls don’t count towards the limits

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