How can parents enjoy the respite that screen time provides, without sacrificing our precious children to the entertainment vortex? How much screen time can we allow?

I’ll get to that. But first, let’s talk about why digital entertainment turns our darlings into grumps in the first place.

Research has been rolling in over the last decade, since we’ve put a tablet in every preschooler’s lap. And it doesn’t look good.

ADHD diagnoses, speech delays, vision concerns—research is pointing back to too much screen time as a major culprit.

• Vision

A doctor and NYU professor recently wrote in the Washingon Post, “Among 6-year-olds, the rate of myopia (nearsightedness) following lockdown was 21.5 percent; before covid-19, the highest yearly rate in that age group since 2015 was 5.7 percent.”

One parent who I helped coach through a Digital Detox told me that her daughter’s physician urged her to lay off the screen time, which was exacerbating her vision problems.

•Speech delay

“Parents think their tiny kids are learning language on apps. But it’s not functional language. They’re just parroting sounds. Kids need back-and-forth conversation with a loving caregiver in order to learn language,” a speech therapist told me. I asked if screen time was to blame for many of the delays she has been seeing.

“Absolutely. It’s so simple, just get on the floor and play with your kids. But parents will ask, ‘well, is there an app you can recommend instead?'”

• ADHD

A 2019 study revealed that “by age 5, children who spent two hours or more per day, looking at screens, were 7.7 times more likely to meet criteria for a diagnosis of…ADHD, than children who watched screens for 30 minutes or less each day.”

• Mental Health

We know that for teens and adults, depression and anxiety skyrocket as a result of too much time spent on digital entertainment. This has been well-studied. “Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy. There’s not a single exception: all screen activities are linked to less happiness, and all nonscreen activities are linked to more happiness.” From psychology professor and researcher Jean Twenge.

So what’s the answer? How much screen time is too much screen time?

The answer is that we’re asking the wrong question. A prescribed screen time number would be so nice. But many parents have discovered that what we need in our homes is something more than a time limit. We need to create a new posture towards digital entertainment; we must develop a sense of digital wisdom. This is a new frontier in parenting.

I have no qualms watching three hours of Lord of the Rings as a family. But thirty minutes on an iPad is an easy no. There are quantitative and qualitative differences in screen time. Seasoned parents also notice that each child tolerates screen time differently: one kid can handle a thirty minute show without incident; another child morphs into a swamp creature after 10 minutes on the tablet.

To complicate matters further, the APA continues to readjust screen time recommendations. Their metric is unhelpful on many levels. Primarily because it provides a false sense of “getting it right.” Even after adhering to the “experts’ advice,” parents STILL observe negative impacts of too much screen time. Grumpiness, boredom, inability to be occupied by anything except more screens, age-inappropriate tantrums.

Here’s the cold, hard truth: there is no exact, magical number. Kids are different, and tech entertainment is different.

We must use our parental powers of observation to decide how much screen time is too much, and which types we should outright nix. And we must impart and cultivate digital wisdom in our growing kids.

Parenting wisely in a digital world

As a mother of many, I implemented a digital detox two years ago on five of my kids. I had no idea that pulling the plug on our kids’ digital entertainment would radically transform our kids. My husband and I agree that this simple decision solved 60% of the parent-child conflicts in our home. What started as a two-week experiment turned into a total tech overhaul.

We didn’t realize the powerful hold technology had on our kids–until we removed all of it. Then, we made a long-term plan, intentionally adding back in the best parts of digital life, while leaving the rest behind. We don’t plan to release our teens into the world utterly incapable of navigating a digital world. We continue to teach and train, imparting wisdom and reminding them of opportunity costs.

We went from 1-2 hours per day of screen time (pre-detox), to once-in-awhile. How did the kids feel about that? They literally thanked us for giving them so much more time back in their days. Not initially, of course. Only after they observed the real-life fun they’d been missing out on, after they began honing the skills that they’d forgotten or stopped cultivating. A digital detox was our best parenting decision to date.

I am a full-blown convert in this area. My oldest kids enjoyed plenty of tablet time, YouTube, and video games when they were younger. I shrugged off limited-tech parents as old-fashioned. But then I saw the actual before and after in my kids. Can’t argue with results.

How much screen time do you recommend?

After parenting and foster parenting nearly a dozen kids ages 0-15, (and learning from plenty of mistakes!) we have found the following screen time guidelines work best in our home:

0-6: Quality TV shows and movies, enjoyed together as a family. (Will max out around 2-6 hours per week.) That’s it. No video games. No iPads at restaurants. No tablet-time in the living room. When we stopped allowing them to “play on our phone,” they stopped asking.

7-10: Family movies, together. (6 hours per week, with some wiggle room. No timer needed, just remember that each digital entertainment experience has a discreet start and stop time.) Appropriate video games, together, in a common area of the home: 30 minutes per week.

11-13: Same limits as above, plus allowed to use mom’s phone to text, call, and FaceTime friends. No personal smart phones, no social media accounts.

For parents who want their kids to have a way to call and text but not access the time-sucking smart phone: try the dumb phone. Several options are available that look just like regular android phones, but without web access and apps. There will be plenty of time for our tweens to enjoy the digital entertainment swamp. And we want them to learn and make plenty of mistakes while they are under our roof. But do we really want to hand our sixth, seventh or eighth grader access to the entire, unrated world? No.

What about social media? The apps themselves don’t allow users under 13. Go check out the late great Collin Kertchner on Instagram. Tap through his stories and learn about what real kids and real parents encounter online, before you open the floodgates to your kids.

Before we grant unfettered access to the world’s digital dumpster fire, we want to help cultivate our kids’ digital wisdom. What should they do when they see a pornographic image? (Which, if you hand your child a smartphone, is not a matter of “if,” but “when.”) What should they do when they see bullying? When they’re asked for their address by a stranger?

Okay, maybe that works for younger kids. But what about teens and digital life? How much time is too much?

According to Time Magazine, four large scale studies of teens show that “happiness and mental health are highest at a half-hour to two hours of extracurricular digital media use a day; well-being then steadily decreases, with those who spend the most time online being the worst off. Twice as many heavy users of electronic devices are unhappy, depressed or distressed as light users.”

How much time are teens actually spending on digital media use? Nine hours per day. 

Something tells me we have room for improvement.

What about adults?

Of course, imposing limits on our kids would be silly if we aren’t mindful of our own tech consumption. Do we also need to set timers for ourselves?

Tech expert and MIT professor Sherry Turkle has a simple formula for determining appropriate tech use, “I think if you use the metric, ‘Is what I’m doing enhancing my inner life?’ I think that as we become more mature, about the internet, about online life, we will become better at answering these questions for ourselves, and less looking to, ‘Oh, my, did I spend too much time online today?'”

Turkle’s metric is helpful for adults and older kids, as we navigating the strange and wonderful digital frontier.

For our youngest ones, allowing “too much, too soon” deprives them of the skills they need to become a person who can think and measure their inner lives.

Less is more.

Want your kids to have less screen time, but worried about how to occupy the time? Fill out those boxes below and you’ll get immediate access to 135+ ideas for screen free fun, Summer Survival Tips and more. 

Share your kids’ favorite screen-free activities on Instagram. Tag me @mollydefrank and use #insteadofscreens so I can find it. We can use our shared ideas to inspire one another. Talk about enhancing our inner lives. (How’s that, Dr. Turkle?)