Screen time for children is a touchy topic for most modern day parents. I have lots of important information, motivation, and practical ideas for you on how to reduce screen time for kids. This post is for you if you are the parent of…
- A toddler who throws tantrums when TV time comes to an end
- A preschooler who appears to be addicted to their electronic device
- An elementary schooler who begs to have a smartphone of their own
- A middle schooler who prefers playing video games over doing just about anything else
- A teen who isolates from the family and spends hours a day scrolling on social media
If you are craving authentic connection with your child but their device dependency has caused a divide between you, you have come to the right place.
Screen Time for Children
Although the recommended daily screen time limit for kids between the ages of 5 and 17 is no more than 2 hours per day, many families around the world are greatly exceeding this limit. Countless kids are getting up to 7 hours of screen time each day and parents are paying the price when it comes to their kid’s behavior and a lack of family connection.
How Does Screen Time Affect Kids?
If you have noticed a link between screen time and behavior problems in your household, you are not alone. Too much screen time can affect kid’s sleep, mood, self-control, attention span, and imaginative play. Kids who get too much time on tech display difficulty entertaining themselves. After excessive screen time, many kids appear dysregulated and struggle transferring to the next activity.
When my husband and I saw the negative effects of screen time on both kids we observed in the culture around us and our own children, we decided to take serious measures to limit screen time and gift our kids a low-tech childhood.
Does your child need a screen detox? Learn how we do an annual break from devices and how you can too here:
Limiting Screen Time Benefits for Kids
Ever since we made the intentional choice to reduce screen time for our kids and limit the types of technology we allow into our home, we have noticed some awesome benefits in our children.
Our low-tech kids…
- Enjoy the simple things in life
- Play outdoors for hours most days
- Know how to entertain themselves
- Read piles of books for pleasure
- Create more than they consume
- Have developed healthy hobbies and impressive skills for their ages
- Display longer attention spans than their high-tech peers
- Are content in independent play, free play, sibling play, and unstructured play
If you are interested in some of the positive results of a counter cultural, low-tech lifestyle here are some sample screen time rule ideas to get your family started:
Screen Time Limit Ideas
- Reduce screen time to one hour in the late morning and one hour in the early evening.
- Limit screen time to 45 minutes while you cook dinner and connect with your spouse.
- For younger children, consider reducing screen time to just thirty minutes of a slow paced show.
- Break up tech usage by allowing thirty minutes of screen time before lunch and thirty minutes before dinner.
- Limit your child’s screen time to every other day instead of daily.
- Eliminate individual screen time and instead host family movie nights one evening a week.
- Set the boundary that there will be no screen time on week nights. Save tech usage for the weekends.
- Allow screen time twice a week. Once midweek and once on the weekend.
- Allow screen time once a week.
Screen Time Limits for a Extra Low-Tech Family
- Use screen time in moderation as a tool for educational purposes such as to watch cooking videos, drawing tutorials, or to participate in virtual music lessons.
- Do a digital detox once a year, such as an entirely screen free summer or fall.
- Utilize screen time for your kids only on the occasional sick day when everyone is feverish and puking.
- Limit screen time to once a month and make it a communal family experience such as a movie night.
- Save screen time for only the harsh winter months and commit to being screen free on days when it is manageable to get outside for many hours during nice weather months.
- Choose a more sporadic approach to screen time. Take a month or so to read aloud a family novel together. Once you have finished, watch the movie version of the book with your kids.
How Do You Set Screen Time Limits for Kids?
Screen Time Reward Chart for Kids
Use a before screen time checklist like the one included in my free printable package below. This resource will help you as a parent ensure that your kids do the positive activities you desire them to do before they ask for a device.
Also, consider using a screen time reward chart to keep track of ways your child can earn screen time. Instead of letting your kids use devices whenever they want, have them “save up” screen time points over the course of the week and cash in their earnings on the weekend.
There are several ways you could go about this screen time reward chart system. You could allot ten minutes of screen time per chore completed, per twenty minutes of reading, per chapter read, or per one hour outside. You could also permit screen time when you notice things like consistently kind behavior toward siblings, being a peacemaker in conflict, or for your child completing their morning and evening routine without being prompted.
SIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER TO GRAB MY FREE LIMITING SCREEN TIME FOR KIDS PRINTABLE PACKAGE INCLUDING 4 FREE PRINTABLES
(Free printable Before Screen Time Checklist, Kid’s Screen Time Budget Chart, Screen Free Hour Tracker, Family Screen Time Bingo)
Reduce Screen Time By Half
If your kid is currently getting above and beyond the recommended daily screen time limit for kids, try cutting their screen time hours in half for one month. Then, trim the hours back again the following month. Keep doing this until you have reached a healthy screen time limit that you are comfortable with as a parent.
Less Screen Time More Play Time
Get your kids outside for several hours each day. Technology kids who are used to lots of screen time may resist this change in routine at first, but persist.
Outdoor play for kids is critical for healthy child development.
Help your child develop the habit of spending at least thirty minutes playing outside before using any devices. Aim to get your kids outside after each meal for at least an hour per time.
If that number sounds overwhelming, start small with little family walks and short spurts of free play for your child. Build up their outdoor hours over time.
Exchange Screen Time for Reading
The benefits of reading for kids are incredible. Reading is one of my favorite ways to reduce screen time for kids. By making reading a part of our family’s daily routine, we have eliminated the temptation to overuse screen time.
Reading lowers stress, increases relaxation, expands knowledge, increases attention span, promotes empathy, advances vocabulary, and gives kids an academic edge.
Some excellent ways to limit screen time for kids are:
- Read aloud to them for ten minutes a day (more days than not)
- Require them to read independently frequently
- Provide them with engaging audiobooks to listen to
- Set up a weekly book club with friends or family over the phone for your child
Family Screen Time
What can parents do to limit screen time?
Many people pass time on devices trying to fill the need for the connection they yearn for in real life. Parents can reduce screen time for kids by setting boundaries, increasing family bonding experiences, and making communal family screen time the standard rather than allowing devices to be habitually used in isolation.
Make Screen Time a Communal Experience
Instead of allowing every family member to isolate with their own device set the precedent that screens are meant to be used together. Allow each sibling to choose a thirty minute episode of a slow paced television show to watch together in the afternoon a couple of times a week.
Set the expectation that screen time is something to be enjoyed out in the open as a group for a limited amount of time. Do not tolerate the discord and division that devices can cause by allowing your kids to isolate in their bedrooms with screens.
Save screen time for the occasional family movie night or sibling bonding time.
Screen Free Meal Times
Instead of propping up a tablet for your toddler and allowing your tween to scroll on their phone during dinner, make meal times a screen free family affair.
Kids who interact with their family every night over dinner have a huge advantage over children who eat their meals isolated from their loved ones in front of a screen.
Meal times are an excellent time to collect devices in a basket and go screen free. Disconnect everyone—including mom and dad—from tech. Stash phones and tablets in a different room every evening during supper.
There are all kinds of opportunities to connect with your children over meals. Let your kids help choose the dinner, chop ingredients, cook the side dish, set out plates and forks, fill up cups, and clean up afterward alongside you.
Engage your kids in thoughtful conversation over delicious food.
Conclude dinner with an appealing family read aloud book before each family member pitches in to tidy the kitchen and dining room together.
Make the Weekends Sacred
Implement Screen Free Saturdays, Screen Free Sundays, or both. Make the weekends a relaxed family time in which screens are simply not an option.
Delete social media apps. Unplug the TV. Disconnect the Wi-Fi router.
Lock smart phones, tablets, and laptops in the trunk of your car if you have to.
Go to great lengths to protect your family’s weekend opportunity to reboot through a consistent digital detox. On Saturdays, your family can clean the house, run errands, and visit new places together.
On Sundays, your family can do things like cook a special breakfast, go to church, have lunch with friends, rest, read, take a family walk, clock extra hours outside, and play board games.
A couple of screen free weekends under your belt and your family will be looking forward to this time of peace and calm.
How Do I Fix Too Much Screen Time for My Child?
Be clear about your new screen time limits. Post your boundaries clearly on the fridge where everyone can agree and refer back to them so that screen time cut off is not a big pain point in your parenting.
No matter how many hours a day of screen time your family is currently consuming, there is hope.
You can fix too much screen time for your child by taking simple steps and continually evaluating what works as your child enters new ages and stages.
Screen Time for Special Needs Child
If you have a child with special needs who has frequent challenging types of medical appointments, consider allowing screen time only during those difficult outings and keeping your home generally low tech otherwise.
The struggle to keep screen time balanced between siblings is a common parenting issue.
If you desire to keep screen time fair between siblings, you could calculate the amount of screen time your special needs child utilizes during drives to and from appointments and then allow your other children the same amount of screen time during a designated time of the week, such as Friday afternoons.
How Much Screen Time Per Day is Healthy?
The recommended screen time limits are zero hours for children under two, no more than one hour for children ages three to five (co-viewing with a caregiver), and no more than two hours per day for children ages 5 to 17, except for school related screen time.
Should Kids Go Screen Free?
Even though the reccomended daily screen time limit for children our kids’ ages is up to two hours per day, we found that number to be way too excessive. We noticed clear links between screen time and behavior issues. We also noticed so many rich and immediate benefits when we pulled the plug on tech altogether.
For our family, we found that daily screen time was way too much for our young children. When devices were a daily option, the negative effects of screen time on our family were obvious.
We began our technology journey as a very typical American family. We were device-dependent.
We leaned on screen time to fill our children’s days and to experience the illusion of a break.
We thought screens were the place to go to unwind, but they never left any of us feeling refreshed.
All of us became overstimulated and irritable after too much screen time. Just like you, we knew in our hearts that there was a better way than to live life distracted by devices.
The amount of screen time we have allowed in our family has fluctuated over the years, depending on the season and circumstance. When I had a young baby and my mom went on hospice care for the last two weeks of her life, my children watched way more television than I typically allow.
During other times when we have not been in crisis mode, we have done digital detoxes and entire screen free summers with our four young children.
We would currently classify ourselves as a very low-tech family.
How Our Low-Tech Family Does Screen Time
Our children have zero access to smartphones, personal tablets, iPads, educational apps, and video games. We do not feel these types of electronic devices add any value to our family.
My husband and I deleted all of our social media back when our second child was just a baby. We have since added several siblings to our crew and that baby has grown into an awesome seven year old.
I traded my iPhone for a flip phone years ago. That was one of the best decisions I ever made for my mental health and for my family.
About seven years ago, we also got rid of our smart TV and we still have no television in our home to this day, but when we want to watch the occasional movie as a family, we have the ability to do so through our laptop.
When our first child was a toddler, we used to have the TV on, streaming shows in our living room during most of her waking hours. It did not take very long to connect the dots between screen time and behavior problems in our child.
The constant distraction of fast paced, overstimulating shows was harmful to our child’s sleep, behavior, and our connection as a family.
I do not think I have missed our old living room TV one day of my life since we got rid of it.
Now, if we want to watch the movie version of a book we read (like Charlotte’s Web) or allow our kids to watch a show on a sick day, we can use our laptop.
It is no secret that most people in today’s world could benefit from a drastic reduction in their screen time. We see it all around us. Relationships are suffering. People are losing the ability to look one another in the eye, focus, and have meaningful conversations.
Neighborhood streets that were once filled with kids shooting hoops, climbing trees, and riding bikes are eerily empty of children.
Kids are isolated indoors playing video games for hours.
Families are deteriorating as members segregate in separate sections of their home on personal devices.
True hospitality is becoming rare.
Friendships are relegated to social media.
Connection is based on quick virtual messages and comments that only take a few seconds to send.
People are finding their worth in their “following” and the amount of “likes” they receive.
This is not the world I want my children to grow up in or the example I want to set.
Thankfully it is not all doom and gloom.
These little devices in our palms that entice us day and night have an off button.
TV’s have a plug we can pull. Tablets can be tucked away. Xbox’s can be sold on Facebook Marketplace. Social media can be deleted. Wi-Fi routers can be unplugged.
Technology can be put in its rightful place as a tool meant to be used in moderation, not a master designed to rule our lives and divide our families.
You will have to assess your family’s personal struggles and convictions when it comes to screen time and make an informed decision for yourself.
What we have decided for us is that screen time is not a given. It is not a part of our daily or weekly routine.
We occasionally allow our children to watch old school shows that do not stimulate them when everyone is under the weather and we simply need to loaf around, but for the most part, we have substituted audiobooks for shows.
Every once in a while, we allow our children to bust out the art supplies and watch a drawing tutorial.
We use technology in moderation and as a tool.
More often than not, we go several weeks to months without our children having any screen time. They do not even ask for it on a regular basis anymore. Our kids are accustomed to our low-tech lifestyle. They are too busy doing the good work of being kids to be longing for virtual distraction. They know how to play independently, with one another, and with peers. They craft, create, and pursue their hobbies instead of gravitating toward screen based entertainment.
We have tried to be intentional by prioritizing strong family relationships, practicing hospitality, and forming community around us instead of isolating on screens. Instead of distracting ourselves with devices, we bounce and play and laugh together.
We draw and read and write. We chop and stir and cook. Sometimes we travel to new places but mostly, we make home a cozy space.
There are so many good things to fill our time without besides tech.
If excessive technology usage has you feeling faraway from the very people that live in your home, it is time to reclaim your family and gift your children the blessing of a low-tech childhood.
Take one step today that will get you closer to connection tomorrow.
Leave a comment below and share your biggest struggle when it comes to limiting screen time for your kids!
Leave a Reply