I have been a parent for 14 years, almost 15. My son is 14 and a half. A great portion of that time has been spent wondering about thinking about making plans for carrying out plans, building guidelines, building family culture, all these many ways to approach and think about and talk about and plan for screen time in our lives.

If you are not a parent or your parent that has screen time under control, then I salute you. I feel like we’re in a pretty good place with it. It comes up often enough, though, like in waves of we’ve got it figured out. And then we need to adjust something. And then we’ve got it figured out. And then something changes out there in the world of technology.

I thought I would just share some best practices and some research around the idea of technology for ourselves and for our children.

Most of my own focus on screen time over the last decade has been navigating it as a parent, although I will say that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my own screen usage, my technology use, which devices I’m using, how I’m using them, why I’m using them, and the benefits and detriments of all of that.

Technology is part of our lives, and it can be so wonderful. It can be amazing, used in fascinating, innovative ways to make our lives more convenient, more entertaining, and more fulfilling. And, just like anything, there are limits to the benefits.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Technology

That’s where I want to explore today, the ideas of the benefits and the detriments, and then also some practical tips, different strategies that we’ve employed in our own family.

If you have additional ones or different from what I share on this episode, I am ears wide open for screen time suggestions for a family. So please send me your own if after you listen, you’re like, oh, I have a few more that Miranda may want to know about. I do. Thank you for that in advance.

Hopefully, today’s episode will just give you a practical application, a new way to, a practical perspective, as well as some specific tips that you might try if you find yourself in the wild west of screen time in your own life or your own family life and feeling like you could use a little shift towards a better overall relationship with technology.

Tech Peaks of the Week

Times Mind Games: Connections

As we get started today, I thought I’d share some favorite tech peaks of the week. music Peak of the Week number one is something that’s accessible to everyone online, on your phones. You’ve all heard of Wordle, I’m sure. It swept the world by storm probably during the pandemic. Is that when this began?

And I had, there were some early adopters. My husband is one who’s done the Wordle every single day for as long as it’s existed. I have been a very late adopter. I resisted it for a long time, probably mostly because of how popular it was. I tend to be a questioner, a little bit of a rebel in terms of if everyone’s going that way, maybe I don’t want to.

And it took a little convincing for Dave to get me on board, but I went ahead and tried it. And it’s fun. I do really like it. Now, in addition to Wordle, which I do most days now, I think it’s a fun way to use my phone that’s gamified. It’s quick, it has a stopping point, which is important for not having it become an endless loop of addictive behavior.

But also, it opened the world of New York Times games to me. These are available for free to everyone. And while I do Wordle, the game that I most love right now is called Connections. Connections is a game where there are 16 tiles that have random, seemingly random words on them. And the instructions say that you are to find the matches of four that have some relationship.

So, you choose four tiles. And then when you hit the fourth and press enter, then it tells you whether you’re right. And if you are right, it will tell you what the connection is. And if you’re wrong, then it will shake up and you must start over. increasingly difficult. So, there’s like a level one connection, a level two, a level three, a level four.

I almost never get level four. Level four is basically whatever’s left over when I found all the other connections is how that last row comes together for me. It’s so fun and really a good mind bender. It takes your understanding from different areas of your life and puts them all together.

And This is a specific creative practice. There are two types of creativity that I studied in my graduate thesis. One is divergent creativity, where you’re coming up with new combinations that have never been put together before. And then there’s convergent thinking. Convergent creativity is connections.

It’s looking at seemingly Unrelated things and finding the way that they relate. So, playing connections to me has felt like a daily creative practice and exercising my convergent thinking, how things that may not seem like they go together at first can be put together in a meaningful way. And it is interesting.

It’s fun. And I highly recommend it. So, if you haven’t played connections through the times games, give it a try, and let me know what you think.

Health App Mood Tracker

My next peak of the week in the realm of technology is a new feature on my watch and phone. I imagine that there’s all sorts of apps for this as well if you don’t have an iPhone.

Through the Health app that’s automatically loaded onto everyone’s iPhone who has an iPhone, there’s a new feature for logging your mood. This is part of an initiative towards mental wellness, mental health, done through the company. And what it does is prompt you a couple times a day to log your mood.

You can either log how you’re feeling now and give a specific scenario. it’s maybe 20 words or less and, log the emotion you’re feeling, why you’re feeling it. It starts at neutral, and you can go slightly neutral or slightly positive, extremely positive. And you can also go the other way, slightly negative, extremely negative, and it captures just a glimpse into how you’re feeling in the moment.

If you don’t feel like doing it in the moment, you can also click down to log how I’m feeling today overall and give just like a general how the day went. If you’ve been listening for the last couple of weeks, that I’ve talked about, telling the story. Of both the good and the bad that’s happened, finding the optimism, but also leaving room for the negative.

Last week’s episode was all about creating space for grief and acknowledging our humanity is not just about being happy, but also about wholeness, about experiencing all our emotions. And something that’s been really telling for me is that even during hard times, when I feel like there’s a challenge happening in my life because I’ve been logging my regular in the moment mood How things are going right now.

I found that my right now is 90 percent positive, and I talked about this with the positivity ratio a few weeks ago and about telling the story of you know this negativity bias will tell us that if something goes wrong that everything’s ruined and what happens when you’re logging in the moment, how you’re feeling.

Most of us, most of the time are going to be feeling a little bit positive, a little bit above, above neutral. And I’ve maybe had one time in the last couple of weeks that I remember that. It pinged me at a moment that I was down, and I was like angry about something and I, I made sure I logged that all in and I wrote what had just happened and why I was feeling that way.

The power of looking back over my last month and seeing all these little dots of positive, slightly positive. There’s a neutral, there’s a slightly positive, there’s a negative. Okay, that was a hard day. There’s a good day. There’s a, a moment that something great happened.

But for the most part, I can look back and see that things are pretty good. And that Reframe, being able to see it in like data and look at it, knowing that I’m the one who’s answered all those questions feels great. And for people who are going through challenging times for people who are going through great times for any of us, being able to claim a little tiny accurate picture of our overall general feeling in our everyday life can be cool.

And in fact, in a lot of positive psychology research. A program like this is what has been used in taking the research and in capturing overall life satisfaction and overall affect, positive or negative affect.

It’s something like this where it gives you a little ping. In the past, it’s been pagers that would, log in. One for positive, two for negative, whatever, the health app doing that automatically for me, and it will do it on my phone, it will ping it straight to my watch, gives me an intentional, practical, daily, or at least a few times a week practice of capturing these individual moments of emotion that tell my broader story to myself.

Then being able to look at that and capture that I in the past I’ve used a mood journal on paper, and that’s had a similar interesting perspective of giving me patterns that I can look over my patterns.

There’s something about the immediacy of this capturing right in the moment. It’s not at the end of the day that I sit down and journal it. It’s like right in the moment. I can capture how I’m feeling, and it gives me a second of mindfulness as well. Like when it asks me, how are you feeling? I check in with myself.

How am I feeling? And it’s pleasant to say, huh? I’m feeling pretty good, even though I have this challenge going on, or even though there’s this problem that I’m trying to work out, or even though I, I feel sick, or I got up late or whatever it is that happened, I’m feeling pretty good right now.

And that moment of mindfulness and coming into our bodies, into our lives and checking into that feels Really great. So, I highly recommend the turning on the mood tracker app on your iPhone if you have one if not Downloading a mood tracking app that will do the same thing for you.

Daylist on Spotify

Finally, the last tech peak of the week is the day list on Spotify.

I’m sure some of you have seen this on Instagram. It’s been going around this idea that you can log onto your Spotify account, a free account, or a paid account. You log on and you click day list and Spotify has curated based on your listening patterns and your history, a specific day list for you for the moment.

And I think it must consider where you live in the weather and stuff too, because I’ve gotten some that are specific about rainy day, moody jazz. And I’m like, oh, it’s raining and it’s the morning. And I’m, so it’s, just fun, funny, a great use of technology to read your patterns and see where you are, maybe even location wise.

I don’t know if it does that. I’m just assuming, but I’ve seen people share theirs and they’re wildly accurate and hilarious. And telling not only that, but mine have been great mixes, a lot of discovery of new artists that I’ve never heard of that are similar vein to things that I like to listen to anyway.

If you haven’t tried creating for yourself a day list on Spotify, give that a try and enjoy it. I’ve got for peaks of the week for you this week, the connections game on times games, the mood tracker, either on app or on Apple and the day list on Spotify, enjoy.

My Self-Righteous Screen History

Okay, let’s talk about screen time for a little bit. I’m going to give you just a quick history, so you know where I’m coming from in terms of technology. I was self-righteous about not being a TV watcher for this middle part of my life.

The Early Years

From the time Dave and I got married, I think we had a little tiny TV with a VCR like underneath it. We got married in 2006, VCRs. Maybe it was a DVD player. It can’t have been a VCR, right? In 2006. I think it was a little TV, like a 10×10 with a little DVD player underneath it that we would use to watch movies.

But there wasn’t like cable, or anything hooked up to it. And then when we moved after about the first year of our marriage, we moved to New Hampshire, and we decided we didn’t need a TV. So, we didn’t have a TV. for the next several years.

And like I said, we were self-righteous about it. We would watch movies on a computer, on a laptop sometimes at night, but for the most part, we just didn’t watch TV. And Dave was busy with school. I was busy with work and with writing on my blog.

It just wasn’t a big part of our lives. And I remember thinking, oh, it’s so nice that we don’t even have to think about this when we have kids, because it’s just not part of our culture. It’s not part of our family.

The Middle Years

We had Milo in 2009 and Elliot in 2011, and at this point, iPhones had just barely come out, and Dave and I got iPhones around the time that Eliot was born, maybe when I was pregnant with Eliot.

So of course, we didn’t have an iPad, we had just barely gotten smartphones for the first time. We, I think, got a TV while I was pregnant with Eliot. So, in 2010 sometimes we got a TV. We used it for watching movies and let Milo watch movies. I remember feeling okay, he’s two, the American Pediatric Association says that around two they can have some exposure to screens.

And I remember. Being a kid in the 80s and coming home from school and sitting up on the counter, I’d get like a snack, probably like Ritz crackers and peanut butter and set up on the counter, my whole body on the counter and lean against the cabinet shelves behind me and watch hours of after school programming and got up every morning and There was a little, again like a 10×10, this one really did for sure have a VCR in the bottom of it that was in the corner of our kitchen so my mom could have TV on while she was cooking, or I don’t know why, the shelving was built for that TV to just sit right there, and I loved it.

I loved sitting and watching Fraggle Rock and whatever else I watched when I was that age. So, I think that my reaction as a mid 20s with a kid thinking like for sure screen time is going to be wrong or hard wasn’t so much about my own experience or understanding. It was more about trying to listen to the recommendations that I was hearing about.

A lot of the early parenting years are filled with so many different types of advice that it can be hard to make sense of them all. I remember just feeling strongly, we’ve got to make sure that our kids have, have very limited screen exposure. Not a bad thing and can be a bad thing if you’re so stressed out about it that’s all you’re thinking about and it’s making you unhappy.

Diving Into Technology

The next real milestone in my personal screen journey as a parent was when Plum was three and we were taking the kids to Big Bend for the Christmas holiday. At this point, we had a TV up on the wall in our house in Texas. The kids watched TV on occasion. They also all went to preschool and spent, we spent a lot of the day out doing things.

I’m a busy body and for sure was even more then. And so, we would go on adventures every single week. We went out multiple times to go on hikes and go to playgrounds and meet friends at the pool and go to museums. And we were out doing things all the time. And so, there wasn’t a whole lot of downtime. 2.

Sit and watch TV. And I still wasn’t much of a TV watcher. And so, it was just like a non-issue. And we’d really resisted the idea of individual screens for the kids until this year when plum was about three, we were doing this nine-hour road trip as a family. And so, we decided to get the kids all their own Kindle fires.

And they were preloaded with books and with educational games and all the What you might call the vegetables of the technology, like all the nutrients that we thought would be great for them. And those ended up being fine. Like the kids were pretty engaged with them. And, then we spent the whole week in camping and I’m not kidding Like it wasn’t more than a year before those kindle fires had either been lost or broken or we didn’t really Like we had a hard time kind of programming the parent child situation on the back of them, like the programming was difficult to manage.

And so, we didn’t use them all that often. Ironically, I also had a minivan at the time that had a DVD player in it, so the screen flipped down from the ceiling, and they could watch movies when we were on road trips, which we went on a lot of road trips when my kids were young, and we drove that car all over the country and watched a ton of movies.

I have a couple memories. Sing was one that I loved when they would watch because the music is good. So that was fun to listen to. Dave and I could probably quote the entire movie of We Bought a Zoo. I don’t know why they loved that movie so much. And so, they watched it on repeat. And I don’t know that I’ve ever sat and watched the whole movie myself, but I know all the words because I’ve listened to it a hundred times.

The Kindle fires gave them an extra if they didn’t want to watch the movie, they could do something else, and I tried to sometimes say like just look out the window but that seems futile at those ages and at this point when there’s other fun things, they can be doing online So why not? I want to emphasize that all during these years.

So, this is like at that point, Milo would be eight or something. This has been something that we’re thinking about and talking about consistently as a family from the time the kids are like two and three years old. It’s a topic with lots of questions and not a lot of specific right answers, which can be difficult because the right answer for you and your family probably will be different than for me and my family or for your sister or your neighbor and their family.

So, it can be a little tricky to wade through the middle and figure out what you want to do. How you want to handle technology as a family.

Phones for the Kids?

Fast forwarding a little bit. We decided to start our older kids with entry phones when they turned 11 and they were going to the upper grades and in elementary school and then to middle school, wanting to just have a little more communication with them and have them have more communication with their own friends.

It went okay. We ended up feeling Pretty soon, like after about a year or two, we felt frustrated with some of the limitations and heard a lot of feedback from our tweens that it was uncool to not have a phone like their friends. And while I really support kids learning to differentiate, themselves from their friends and their families’ rules and values from other families’ rules and values.

This one seems to be a big deal for kids and teens to feel like there’s some specific things they can or can’t participate in because of their individual technology. Again, we’re in the Wild West.

Sometime in the last few years, my boys discovered video games and really love them, and they’re good at them, and so we bought a PS4, a PlayStation, and our kids have played various different world building games, primarily Minecraft is the one that they, really love, Mario, all the different Mario variations has been really fun, and my boys are both really into Fortnite, which is a huge, massive, multimillion dollar, online, multiplayer competition elimination game.

As just a sidebar, I have indicated to my kids that we feel more comfortable with them saying eliminate than shoot or kill when they’re playing this third person elimination fighting games. Maybe a simple or silly thing, but something that has felt like a good value institution for me.

Now: Fully Immersed, with Intention

Okay, so where we are now, right now, is that my daughter has a smartwatch, my boys both have iPhones, we have a family computer that’s out in the dining room that is available for homework and for video games.

We have a gaming station available for video games. My oldest who is almost 15 has a monitor with an Xbox in his room in his basement den where he can play the Xbox when the other screens are occupied. We also have a family tv that is in use for shows and family movie night and lots of things.

Over the last 14 years technology has become a big part of our lives and a big part of something that we’re managing on a regular basis as parents. I’m both pleased that we have the technology and that it can bring so much enjoyment and entertainment and connection, even learning.

At the same time screen time at home causes a lot of struggle, there’s some friction around the guidelines and the limits, and it’s something that Dave and I are continually monitoring and managing, and it feels like another full time job aspect on top of regular parenting with kids and chores and schoolwork and friends and, family culture in general. There’s this whole other layer now that is brand new for this generation that we are in real time learning how to manage and what the effects are of mismanagement or non-management and it can be a little tricky.

I don’t have the answers, just some ideas.

This podcast today doesn’t have a lot of answers, but I am going to share some ideas of things that we have done that have felt better, that have felt like systems that created some ease and some peace at home around screens. And I want to share some research that can help you have a new perspective in terms of screen time and your kids that may be helpful for you in making your own family guidelines and decisions around this topic.

Risks of Excessive Screentime

So first, I just want to validate for those of you who may have some concerns that, screen time can have all sorts of negative effects for various reasons if it’s excessive. I want to validate that, yes, there can be negative effects to excessive screen time just like there can be negative effects to almost anything that we do.

If you do too much of almost anything, it can cause negative effects. Screen time is similar and there’s some negative effects that I just want to get out of the way as we begin, so we’re on the same page.

Sedentary Lifestyle

There is the risk of a more sedentary lifestyle, not going out and playing, not moving your body, not moving around. If you’re sitting, playing on a video game, or watching TV for long periods of time without moving around, that is time that your body isn’t moving and it’s pretty good for our bodies to be moving.

So, some negative physical health just that comes with the sedentary nature of the hobby. That said, kids often move a lot in their daily lives just because of the nature of being a kid, especially younger kids that are running around a lot. Having something that they can do that teaches them to sit and be still for a while could be a positive.

Sleep Disruption

The next one is sleep disruption. This is real for kids and adults all of these are for kids and adults, but the idea that your brain is activated. All those dopamine hits that you get from screens, especially if you’re interacting, if you’re playing a video game, those are telling your brain to stay awake.

And the recommendation is that at least an hour or two before bedtime, two is optimal, putting all the technology away all the screens of any type so that your brain has a chance to produce some melatonin, recognize that it’s time to wind down and get ready for bed. across the board, that’s going to be better for sleep.

The risk of gaming into the night or watching a show late at night is that it can disrupt your sleep pattern. The one that I tend to be most concerned about with my kids is reduced face to face interaction.

Reduced Social Development

When kids are spending more times on screens or playing video games without people in real life, they may not be forming the same types of friendships and interactions and having the social development that they would otherwise have, that we had running around our neighborhoods growing up, and that’s something to consider.

For sure, there’s a risk of addiction. Because particularly with games that are an endless loop that, and with screen technology that’s an endless loop for myself, I know that something like Instagram that is a continuous role that never, you never reach an end point that is harder to put down because there’s always something there.

There are some games that have a start and a finish that are easier to extract yourself from because there’s a clear end point. The same thing with watching a show at a particular time rather than a series where you can just keep watching the next one and the next one and the next one.

I’m for sure guilty of that. If I find a show that I love, I just want to watch all of them, even if it’s six seasons. I want to watch them in a week and not do anything else because I just get deep, quick. The risk of addiction and of staying connected longer than you even want to be real and there are some things that we’ll talk about in a minute that can help with that.

Academic and Behavioral Issues

Academic performance and behavioral issues are two risk factors that I really felt strongly about. I remember telling my kids, you’re, if you just play video games all day, you’re going to rot your brain. Like you’re not going to be able to think anymore. You’re not going to remember things.

And this is me just like spouting off, in the same thing with if you’re playing a violent game or a fighting game, an elimination game, you might tend to feel more violent or to engage in those ways in your real life. And I’m going to tell you that I was relieved to see research that refutes both risks as real.

Risks that in fact, academic performance can be increased by kids engaging in video games and certain types of screen time because it engages their minds in a new way and problem solving and exposes them to new things. It’s great learning. And the same goes for behavioral issues where I love. tweet that Adam Grant sent out said that the rumors of dangers of video games are vastly exaggerated.

In 101 studies with over 106, 000 kids and teens, video games had a negligible impact on their grades, depression, attention, or aggression. There was only 3 percent that showed problematic behaviors, which the authors of this study showed were more likely symptoms of mental health issues, like underlying mental health issues that didn’t have to do with the video games than the video games themselves.

So, if those are risks that you’ve been worried about. I just want to toss out that bit of research that can relieve your heart around your kids losing ground at school or being more aggressive or disruptive because of the types of gaming or technology that you’re using.

Benefits of Technology Use

While there are some real risks with overusing technology, there are also some assumed risks that turn out not to be completely accurate and all of the risks can be mitigated with some simple guidelines and boundaries and some clarity on the part of the parents, which I think is where information and even just a conversation like this, listening to someone else who is going through the same thing as you can be helpful hearing a, you’re not alone in feeling like you’re in the wild west with technology and your kids and yourself and be that.

It is okay to create some guidelines and to struggle through it and figure out what works for you and what doesn’t and then just to settle into it’s okay. What we’re doing, what we’re trying right now is the best that we can do right now and that’s what we’ve got. That’s what we can give it.

Opportunity Cost

One of my favorite lectures last year during my Master of Applied Positive Psychology was with Jonathan Haidt, who is the author of many books. He’s an academic. He’s really an interesting guy. And first he talked about the dangers of Instagram or social media for young girls, which I, there is a ton of research while there’s, a lot of research showing that video games are not inherently negative and that they can build a lot of problem-solving skills.

He showed a lot of research that there’s some real. Negatives for teens, particularly teen girls engaging in social media, in their 12 to 16 ages and because of some of that research we have set in our family, a clear guideline that no one will use social media until they’re over the age of 16 that has felt good for us.

It’s felt like an easy. Blanket, like this is what we have decided, and there’s not really any reason for you to participate right now. There are other ways for you to engage with your friends online. And so that’s worked for us so far. Another thing that Jonathan Haidt said that I thought was fascinating was that the main risk of screen time and technology use for kids right now is not the technology itself.

It’s the opportunity cost. What are they not doing? because of the time that they’re spending on screens that they otherwise would have been doing. And in our family, we’ve discussed this with our kids.

What are some of the things that you can do when you’re not using screens? That’s playing with your friends outside, jumping on the trampoline, drawing pictures, reading books, writing comics, helping around the house, cooking dinner, baking brownies, all, riding your bike, riding the scooter, playing with the dogs. There’s a whole list of things that are, screen free activities that if the screens didn’t exist, that kids would be doing.

Building a lot of problem-solving skills, a lot of, even practical, like balance or cooking or, experimenting and being creative, different things that they would do in the real world, like the tangible world that they aren’t doing when they’re hooked up to technology.

Not saying that they’re not being creative in other ways, but it was interesting to hear him say the real. Key is to strike a balance. And isn’t that the real key to everything in our lives, right? Strike a balance. So, with our kids, one of the things that we’ve done is to invite them to choose some alternative activities that they participate in on a regular basis so that we know that they’re, we’re supporting them in.

Consider the Whole Picture

Diversifying their entertainment and their hobbies and their learning experiences, they go to school. So that’s one thing that they’re doing, mostly off screens. It’s a little bit interesting in our middle school. Most of the classes they do use their computers actively during the day. So, you know, even though when my kids are at school all day, that doesn’t mean that they’re off screens all day, which is a little bit disappointing in some ways.

I like tactile learning and, reading and writing and drawing and using the blackboard and things like that, which I think is just old school. It’s slowly disappearing, at least in the elementary school right now, 95 percent of their work is done by hand, and they use the computer lab, which again, it’s good.

They need to learn how to use technology that’s part of the tools that we’re going to be using in our lives and are there opportunities to not use it? School is one place to do some hands-on learning and engaging with other people and talking and, reading and writing and drawing and dancing.

Choose an Instrument, Activity, and Art

In our family, we also invite them to choose an instrument. And so, we’ve got guitar players, piano, we have a new ukulele player, and they do lessons for the instrument and get to practice at home.

They also choose an active hobby. I have kids doing CrossFit classes right now. I have a Soccer player who has practice a couple times a week and games on the weekends and in addition I’m trying to help particularly my boys who have a real interest in not only video games, but video production and video creation do some real learning some hands-on learning for their technology skills in a classroom environment.

I’ve signed up my boys for an computer animation class at the local Visual Arts Center, which is, a mishmash of adding in some technology, but also in a classroom setting where they’re engaging with other people and with a teacher learning skills that will help them use the technology even better, but a combination of social interaction, social learning and technology, which feels like a really great.

Then in an effort to stay organized, I’m going to call that tip number one, that one of the biggest threats to technology use in ourselves and our kids is opportunity cost.

TIP NUMBER ONE: Keep A Balance of Activities and Experiences

Asking ourselves what else could we be doing and making sure that those things that we love to be part of our regular lives are included along with the use of technology that and this goes for parents as well as kids. If you want to be active, if you want to be reading, if you want to be birdwatching, if you want to be doing creative projects, if you want space on your schedule to organize your kitchen, how much of that time are you using, doing, using technology mindlessly, not intentionally, but mindlessly that you could be mindfully accomplishing something or enjoying something or, resting in a way that is offline.

Just looking at the whole picture and making sure that all those pieces are incorporated in a way that feels good to you and doing that with intention, with some clarity around what do I want to be part of my life and how do I want to use these different opportunities that are available to me in meaningful ways.

I went over some of the risks of technology. Now I want to share some of the benefits, some potential benefits. With kids playing video games and engaging with technology in different ways, there’s a lot of real benefits.

Some Benefits of Technology

Cognitive Skills

One is cognitive skills that there are video games that can enhance cognitive abilities like problem solving and critical thinking.

For sure, lots of hand eye coordination. I’ve heard about that a lot for years. and also even engaging in watching TV, watching a fun show can give ideas for ways to engage in the real world that kids might not have known about.

One recent example of this is that my daughter is obsessed with the Is It Cake challenge and we come away from watching that show wanting to bake and we’re not making realistic looking cakes, but we just it gives us the inspiration and that little bit of Oh, yeah, that looks so fun.

And then we use that to bridge into creating things in the real world in our lives. And that has been a huge benefit.

Social Skills

Another benefit is social skills. And this seems paradoxical, but multiplayer video games online in person can provide opportunity for social interaction and cooperation. During COVID, if you had kids that were gaming during COVID, you may be recognized as I did, how nice it was for your kids to be able to interact with other kids, even when we were completely physically isolated.

In our family, we’ve had one of our kids have a very best friend move across the world. My son’s best friend moved to France last summer and the way that they’ve been able to stay connected and maintain their real-life friendship through talking on the phone, texting, and playing video games on the same server at the same time has been wild for me to watch.

I had a friend move away when I was young that I was good friends with, and she just moved. And that, that was the end of the relationship. And the way that these social skills can be maintained, and the social interaction can be maintained through technology is cool to watch.

Creativity

Creativity is another thing that can be engaged in through technology that can also be engaged in offline. It can be engaged in online, particularly problem solving and world building games can be interesting. And my oldest uses Fortnite to create video skits and produce videos.

It’s been interesting to watch how he uses, he leverages the technology of having, People serve different roles in a skit that he creates, he’ll write out a skit, have his friends log on and perform different parts, almost like he was producing a movie with a script, and different, different angles of the camera of where they’re filming from, and then he’ll produce the whole thing into a video and add voiceover and add music and add editing and The video game itself has become a medium for really creative video production in a way that I didn’t ever even know was possible.

Educational Content

Some other benefits are, of course, educational content, teaching different subjects. I know I have learned a lot of things that I know from YouTube, and my kids being able to have access to that is also great.

Stress Relief and Persistance

There are some benefits to stress relief, using, watching a show, watching a movie, playing a video game as downtime to really dial down, engage in some escapism as a positive coping skill, that can be helpful.

Also, learning persistence and resilience, overcoming challenges and setbacks through particularly through video games, being able to accomplish things and make their way through different levels is a skill that can be learned within a game that then you can bridge and transfer into their everyday lives, even having the hard time getting through their homework.

You can use it. Some examples from when they had a hard time getting through this level, and they persisted, and they tried different things, and they kept logging on, and they kept making it through, and how they can use that same skill in something like doing their homework can be beneficial.

Tech Literacy

And then finally, technology is part of our lives. It’s a tool that we’re engaging with and for our kids to be able to be literate, be able to engage with it in a meaningful way, use it as a tool. As we’re teaching them about technology, culture, and guidelines within our family, it’s showing them a model for creating their own personal technology guidelines and boundaries in their own lives as they, eventually grow up and move on from our house.

If they have learned some skills and had some open discussions as a family about the way that these tools can be used meaningfully in our lives, then they carry those lessons with them into their individual everyday lives. Having given all those benefits, I want to share some other practical ideas and techniques that we’ve used at home to try to navigate this issue.

TIP NUMBER TWO: Get a Technology Safe

So, this is tip number two, and one of the game changers in our family, and it’s going to be silly, and I don’t know if I’ve talked about this before, but my number two tip for managing the wild west of technology in your home is to get a technology safe. Yes. S A F E. This is a strong box with a lock and a code, and a key and it gets to be the bad guy so that you don’t have to.

Something that I learned quickly is that kids can be sneaky and even though they want to follow the rules or the guidelines, it is really challenging to do that when all the, tools that they need to log on are available to them all the time. I’ve heard of lots of different ways of parents managing their devices, but the way that has been the best and the longest lasting, regulation at our house is Simply locking up the devices during non-screen time hours.

So the keyboard and the mouse for the family computer, the remote control for the TV, and all of the controllers for the video game consoles live in a little safe in our laundry room that has a keypad lock that Dave and I know that Code to and that the kids don’t know the code to and the devices sleep there overnight, and they also only come out during designated screen time hours and after, whatever our current guidelines are for accomplishing and, earning screen time for the day or the week are complete.

That’s when they’re available. And we’ve recently adjusted this. We used to, because our older kids are old enough to go to bed late later, we. You know what? Have Milo bring his controller up at 10 p. m. I’m usually asleep by 10 p. m. So, it’s been nice. We just recently adjusted and said all the devices are going to go to sleep at nine.

So even if you don’t go to sleep until 10 or 10 30, you have that extra hour where you get to wind down and not use your screen. And we make sure that they’re put away before Dave and I go to sleep, which is helpful. Having a specific place that is secure for all the technology to live feels like some clarity that our family needed.

And it Is more convenient than it is inconvenient. Occasionally, we have a moment where Dave and I are both gone and one of the kids will call and say, I finished my homework, I’m ready to watch TV or play Mario, and we’re not home to open the safe. They just must wait a little bit longer, and I feel like that’s easier for me.

It’s fine to learn a little bit of patience and to get home and unlock it and give the child whatever remote or controller they’re looking for. That’s easier than having. 24-hour access to all the devices and just hoping that they have the willpower to be able to not use them. Think about yourself and your own technology use.

Sometimes Technology Use is Mindless

How often do you pick up your phone and open it without even thinking about it? How often have you told yourself, I’m going to not spend as much time watching TV, or not spend as much time, scrolling Instagram. And because it’s there, you simply use it.

The same thing can happen for our kids. And giving clear, not only a clear guideline, but also a clear physical boundary has been phenomenal for our family and my sanity in terms of management.

TIP NUMBER THREE: Family Guidelines Written and Posted

My tip number three is to have a clear family guideline when it comes to technology use, have it written down and posted where everyone can see it, and adjust as necessary as the seasons demand.

This, for our family, looks like all of us sitting around the table and saying, Okay, we’re going to make some adjustments to our screen time guidelines, and we talk about what is reasonable for this phase of life, for maybe this semester of school, for the weather, for the other types of things the kids have going on, and then we build the guidelines together in our family.

There are some family guidelines, and then there’s some individual guidelines as well, because my kids have some individual devices. So, computer time and video game time and TV time is something that is designated for the family. And then my kids have individual screen time guidelines built into their phones that Dave and I can control through the family management system on Apple. That’s nice to manage individual devices.

And then just having a blanket policy as a family. Once you go to school and your homework is done, you can have this amount of video game time or TV time. And then all the devices go away before bed. Just feels clear and easy.

TIP NUMBER FOUR: Transition Times

My tip number four is to create transitions between changing from screen time to non-screen time. This is what I mean: a lot of my friends and I have talked about how frustrating it can be to tell your child that it’s time to turn off the video game or it’s time to turn off the show and it feels like they can’t handle it.

Like full meltdown happens. One of the reasons that happens It’s because it’s hard to stop doing things that you’re having fun doing. That is not necessarily specific to screens. Anytime that you’re doing something fun and you’re, you need to stop. It’s hard in preparing for this episode. I found an Instagram educator called @thegamereducator.

They produce incredible content, videos, ideas, technology, they’re a Master of Education, and they’re sharing such helpful information for managing screen time with kids, so look up the Gamer Educator on Instagram. Recently they talked about the struggle to end screen time. And this is what they said,

“It can be hard when we decide to use screen time with kids because they have a hard time at the end of it. Struggling to end screen time is not a failure for you or your child or the screen. It’s just simply that struggling to end fun things can be hard and one of the best ways to manage this is by building in a transition time.”

Rather than saying it’s time to turn off the screen now and then being upset when they don’t, giving a little warning to say, can you finish up what you’re doing and then turn it off? Or when you get to a good stopping point, turn it off. you have ten minutes until the screen time will be over, so wind down.

Giving a clear transition. I remember doing this on the playground when my kids were little. Saying, 10 minutes until we’re going to leave, and they’d say, no, we want to stay longer, and 5 minutes, and they warm their brains up to the idea that it’s the fun thing that they’re really enjoying is going to end.

The same thing happens with screens, and for some reason, I know that I personally sometimes feel like, I told you to turn it off, so turn it off. They’re right in the middle of something. And I don’t like to be interrupted right in the middle of something either. So, remembering that with our kids and building a transition time into the off ramping of screen time is wildly helpful.

TIP NUMBER FIVE: Engage in the Tech with your Kids

My final tip today is to invite yourself into engagement and relationship with your kiddo with their screen time so that you can get a different perspective on it and enjoy something with them.

For example, if my daughter is sitting, watching, TV after she’s finished her homework and played outside with her friends, and I’m tempted to tell her to put it away and go play, Barbies or to do something different.

I can go sit next to her on the couch and watch with her for 10 minutes and form a relationship around and ask her what’s going on and why she likes this show and step into it with her and build a relationship around the thing that she’s enjoying rather than resisting it.

The same thing goes with my boys and the games that they’re liking rather than always vilifying the video games is the thing that’s wrong, recognizing that there’s something that they really love about them and that I can engage with that, that I can sit and watch them play.

I can ask to play with them. In fact, I’ve done this with both of my boys and their favorite games, Minecraft and Fortnite, and I’m. terrible at both. And it was so funny for me to get in and play with them. And we’re laughing so hard. We’re crying because I’m stuck at the bottom of a cave and I can’t figure out how to look around and I can’t jump, but I don’t know what I’m doing.

And it was fun to engage and have them feel like they’re showing me something. And rather than having. The screen time struggle always be something that’s pulling us apart. We can intentionally step into the relationship with our kids and the technology that they love to build a better relationship.

I’m going to end with a recent tweet from Adam Grant again. I love his sort of counterculture. takes on some of these things.

Adam Grant said, “Instead of telling kids not to play video games, adults should play too. Compared to kids who don’t play, those who play 3 hours a day have better working memory and impulse control. Experiments show cognitive benefits for adults too. Video games are a form of exercise for the brain.”

While, 3 hours a day seems excessive to me, Adam Grant has a point that adults can benefit from using screens and the types of screens that our kids love, particularly if we’re doing it with intention and in collaboration with our family and that we’re, forming some family relationships around things that an individual member is really enjoying.

Maybe having a more complete picture and a better understanding of all the different things going on with technology and kids can help us feel like. Even if we’re not winning in the Wild West, at least we’re settling in and feeling a little bit more content exploring and experimenting with all that technology is giving us right now in our lives and our families.

Now I mentioned at the beginning if you have specific screen time tips that you are using and loving at home, please send them my way. I’m always open to suggestions and new ways to navigate this frontier, and I hope that my sharing just some Candid ideas around it and some recent research about technology and kids has helped you gain a new perspective and maybe given you some ideas that you can try at home on your own.

As always, I appreciate your attention, tuning in, and sharing some time with me this week. I hope this episode has given you something to think about. And I appreciate you using this tool of technology to put me in your ears and to listen to some new ways that you can Apply simple tips to feel a little bit more practically happy in your everyday life.

I’ll chat with you again next week. Have a good one. Bye.

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