Screens, Screens Everywhere

A post about handling screens in the 21st century is one of those things that just has to happen in the life of a parenting blog. It’s one of the biggest challenges of modern life even for adults, and therefore the question of what to do as parents must be asked.

I don’t plan to detail here all the problems with screens, the research that has been done on the subject etc. This is a blog about our experience as parents, and I’m here to share with you what we do, why we do it, and finally, what works well and what does not (or did not, for us).

Before we get to it, a COVID disclaimer. As we all know, COVID made things more challenging in many parenting aspects. To make the discussion clearer, in this post I will focus on pre-COVID times, good-ol’- 2019. I’ll try and write a COVID-focused post at some later date (hopefully, before COVID is over! Or do we hope it will be over so fast I don’t get to write it?)

The Battlefield

Screens are everywhere

When I was growing up, during the 70s and 80s in Israel, we had one screen in the entire house. ONE. A single TV, at first black-and-white and eventually in color. I still remember the world before you had a VCR at home, able to record your favorite show. The TV schedule determined when you watched, and if you missed your favorite show, you had to wait another week until it was on again. Most hours of the day, there was nothing worthwhile to watch on TV – we only had two or three channels where there was anything worth watching.

Today, it’s the opposite. In our house we still have a single TV, but this one is connected to a PS4. Beyond that, four of us (parents and two oldest kids) have cellphones. Then there is the family iPad and several laptops for work and school.

Consider also that our house is still “sparsely populated” with screens compared to other families I know, where there are multiple TVs, sometimes one in each room, and each kid has their own iPad.

Screens are always interesting

Cellphones are always on, laptops are on for work and school, and there are thousands upon thousands of interesting things to search, play and watch on all these screens.

With Netflix putting out new shows each week, and 500 hours of video uploaded to youtube every minute, it’s really impossible for there not to be something worth watching online at any given point in time. Like a sugar addict in a candy store where the candy is free, it would require a Herculean effort from anyone, adult and child alike, to resist the temptation in the long run. It’s a game you are bound to lose, if you play for broke.

Screen policies in our house

#1 – Location, Location, Location

Let’s start with the simple stuff: No TV in the kids room. No cellphones charging in the rooms.

The people who lived in our apartment before us had a TV stand in every bedroom, and when we arrived we unceremoniously removed them. Today, all our kids mostly spend time reading in bed as they prepare for sleep. I’m quite positive this would never have happened if there was a TV they could fall asleep in front of.

Similarly, all cellphones (parents’ included) are left to charge for the night in the living room. This prevents falling asleep in front of a tiny screen, and going to your phone the very first thing in the morning.

#2 – Tech-enforced limits (when possible)

There is another topic that is worth discussing – limiting viewing time using technological tools. I’ll try to write a post about our experiences in this area some other time. For now I’ll just say that we use Qustodio, and are very happy with the functionality it provides.

#3 – No screen before 11am (even on vacation)

That’s right – there are no screens for recreational purposes before 11am. Again, I’m talking pre-COVID times, when Zoom was not such an integral part of schooling.

From my experience, when you wake up in the morning and your brain is starting up, it’s important to let it be stimulated by the real world. Eating breakfast. Getting dressed. Talking to your family members. Then, read a book, or play a game, build some Lego or do an art project. Walk the dog, for all I care. But do something that engages you in the real world, and gets your brain working normally, not on that dopamine drip we get from online activity.

Screens are mostly a passive pastime. They serve as a great break from life. When your kids wake up in the morning, all tired and bleary-eyed, it’s very tempting for them to move straight into a relaxing staring contest with the internet, in which their brain does not need to exert much effort. But that’s exactly the opposite of what you want, which is to wake their brain up.

I know it’s very tempting for parents to let their kids go online in the morning. That way, the kids are kept busy and you can sleep in another half hour. However, with my kids I know that if they start the day watching a youtube video, they are much more grumpy once it’s done and they have to get breakfast etc.. That half-hour sleep you gain with screens has to be paid for later when they finally disconnect, and you are dealing with kids fighting over anything at all, complaining about their life, etc. Not worth it, in my opinion.

I cannot tell you where I got this rule from. It might have been something that I picked up at my house (Michelle hardly watched TV growing up, while I was a bit obsessed with it), or it might have been something I intuited. However, I can tell you that it’s one of the rules about which we are almost never flexible, and have never regretted it. Nowadays, we even get to sleep in when we want, since our kids have adopted their own morning routine, which involves non-screen activities.

#4 – Parts of Screen, and why they stopped working

When I was growing up, when all we had was a single TV and an Apple desktop computer, my parents instated the following rules for screen:

• Each kid could watch 3 shows (“parts of screen”) a day, 5 on vacations.
• 30 minutes on the computer counted as a part of screen.
• Watching others play also counted as part of your time.

This approach worked well. We were five kids in the house, but as I mentioned there was little to watch to begin with. We would play tournaments on the computer, so two could use their time in parallel. Overall, it worked well (at least, that’s how I remember it).

Now, decades later, we tried a similar approach in our house. At first, when we had two kids, or even four but the two younger ones were much younger, this worked. The older ones would choose a show they both liked to watch, and the younger two joined in. There were no cellphones in the mix, and our kids are not big gamers, so computer games also did not pose a challenge.

Time passes, however, and kids grow. They develop diverse interests, have incompatible schedules, and the number of screens around also grows. So, here is what would happen with our TV:

[A] Kid #1 uses his three parts of screen. Kids #2-4 don’t want that show, so they say “I will use my part later”, and go off to another room.

[B] The TV is in the middle of the living room, so as they pass through – to get a snack from the kitchen, supposedly – they glance at the show. Catch the highlights. Scan the scene. “I was just looking for one minute, Dad!”

[C] Then, when Kid #1 is done, Kid #2 says “it’s my turn now”, and the process repeats.

This was not good. The TV and computer were constantly on, moving from one kid to another. Even worse, we found ourselves constantly tracking their behavior, like timing their walk to the kitchen to detect any screen-related slowdowns so we could jump out of the shadows with an accusing finger – “gotcha!”

From a system that was supposed to be simple, we found ourselves policing the kids non-stop, which is not fun and not effective. It turned into a game of cat-and-mouse, in which the cat indeed caught a mouse sometimes, but not all the times. Not to mention that the mice outnumber the cats, and have much more energy and time on their hands, devoted to getting better at avoiding the cats…

#4 version 2.0: Watching Periods

We sat and took stock, and decided to go for a different solution. For each day, we looked at the calendar in advance, and found periods of time when everyone is home. About 1.5 hours – enough to cover the equivalent of the three parts of screen from the previous method.

Then we announced to the kids – “At this time, you have 90 minutes to enjoy any and all screens that you want”. We had enough screens to go around – that was sort of the problem, right? – that they could all have access to one in parallel. They had to negotiate who uses which screen when, but they manage, and they do have some shared interests that allow them to watch or play together, so it works out somehow.

This system works amazingly, for the most part.

First of all, it’s extremely low maintenance and hardly requires policing. As a parent, I just ensure nothing goes on before the screen period, and all screens are off after. There is very little incentive or opportunity for the kid to “cheat” the system on his or her way to the kitchen.

Second, they get more freedom – they can choose more flexibly how to use their time. It does not have to be on three shows, it can be on a movie, or lots of short youtube clips.

The main challenge we have with this approach is what to do on days when peoples’ schedules do not allow for a 90-minute period of this type. Usually, it’s easy to solve using the various bed-times of the kids. What I mean by this is that this problem happens when one of the older kids has some social activity, or a longer day at school. In these cases, we have the 90-minute period during the time they are out, and they make up their watching time later, when their younger siblings are asleep.

However, this is not always possible. Any system will have it’s “edge cases”, which cannot be covered by a simple rule. When this happens, we navigate around it by discussing with the kid that will be out what would be a fair solution (and sometimes revert temporarily back to the 3-parts approach). But despite this drawback, we find the viewing period method to work very well most of the time.

#5 (coming up!) The Big One: Week with No Screen

Every so often – this happens once or twice a year – we get the feeling that the kids have begun to spiral into a TV obsession. When this happens, we take out the big guns: An entire week with no screens.

How do we do it? How do we prepare ourselves and the kids for such a major change in the home dynamic? Stay tuned for all the info in my next post!