How to Help Your Kids Avoid Too Much Screen Time

One thing which lockdown has thrown into sharp relief is the need to keep children entertained while spending all their hours at home. This means it can be easy to turn to technology and devices to pass the time, but it also means that too long can be spent staring at a screen. 

Here’s how you can try to help your family avoid too much time spent glued to their device. 

Try to Limit Your Own Screen Time 

Kids are very impressionable; in that they will often copy what you do. Therefore you need to set a good example when it comes to screen time. It’s no good telling your family to stop spending so much time on their devices if all they see you doing is spending an unhealthy amount of time on your own. 

Make it a family agreement to limit screen time overall, and make sure that you do the same yourself. Set up a plan to take a break from technology, and if you do need some screen time, think about doing it on your own time and not on family time where your kids can see you. 

Provide Entertainment Away from the Screen

A great thing about technology and tablets is that they play games and keep your kids entertained. Therefore, if you don’t have an alternative to online games or games on a tablet, you’re going to be hard-pressed to convince your kids to take time away from the screen. 

It’s important to think of alternatives for family entertainment, and especially those that you can do together. A football table game is a great option for a family game which also gets your kids stood up and moving rather than sat down. Games for the garden on dry days are great options, too, like a ball and racket or even just a ball to kick around. If you have the alternatives there, you can make your case for using them! 

Make a Compromise

If you aim to completely ban your children from devices to try and be more strict with it, this might not work too successfully. Suddenly your kids want to do the very thing you’ve forbidden them from doing! Spending time on devices can be fun, and even educational, so stripping them of that time altogether might not be the best idea. Instead, discuss some ground rules and decide the right amount of time your kids can spend a day on their device so that you can organise a healthy schedule, and know when it’s time to switch it off. 

Set Up Parental Controls 

If you’d rather have a good permission system going so that you can limit a certain content for your children, you can set up the right parental permissions on their devices. If they can’t access certain things, they may naturally revert to doing another activity instead.

Spending time with technology can be great for certain family activities, but make sure it’s never too much.