In this episode, I’m digging deep into one of the biggest challenges facing homeschooling families today: finding balance with tech and screen time.
I explore:
- What the latest research really says about the impact of screens on our kids (it's not as simple as 'good or bad').
- How to create screen-free boundaries that actually stick.
- How my family found our own balance with technology, and what you might want to borrow for your own.
If you’re struggling to make screens a positive part of your life without them taking over, or want some help dialing your balance, this one's for you! 👏🏼
Show notes
Synthesis AI tutor (give it a try!)
Pew Research Center's Library of research on tech use in teenagers
A meta-analysis of the effect of media devices on sleep outcomes
Common Sense Media research on tech use in tweens and teens
2024 Internet Matters Child Digital Wellbeing Report
Considerations for screen use in neurodivergent youth
'Type of screen time' effects in children
Note: I explored a LOT of research for this episode, not all of which is captured here. But these links, articles, studies, research papers, and statistical breakdowns will give you a good starting point if you want to dig deeper yourself. Just follow your nose!
Complete transcript
INTRO
Helloooo and welcome to the Life Without School podcast, here to help you and your children live the life you want to, not just the one you’re told you should.
I’m Issy, a writer and home educating dad from New Zealand.
You can find my work at starkravingdadblog.com - all of my posts, podcast episodes and more, all designed to encourage, support and reassure anyone walking this road less travelled.
Thank you so much for tuning in to listen today. Alright, let’s get into this episode.
/INTRO
Hello, and welcome to what I can confidently say is the most requested topic for an episode since I started this podcast. Screens and technology, and how on earth we find our way to some sort of balance with it all.
And that reflects the challenge, right? We are in a hugely difficult - interesting, and exciting, too - but hugely difficult era of parenting. The speed of development in technology has been mindblowing. When I was a young child, you wouldn’t even have a single computer inside your home. When I was a teenager, you would, but it would probably be one family computer that took up an entire desk somewhere.
But now…now that’s all just in a child’s hands. Or, in a teenagers pocket, or on their wrist. In a lot of homes, there’s a device in every child’s hands, or in every pocket. And behind every one of those screens is a completely open world with almost no limits on any front. Good and bad.
We are living in an unprecedented time in terms of tech availability and use. Which means it’s an unprecedented time in terms of parenting. So to start, I want to say this. Please be kind to yourself. Please don’t be hard on yourself. When it comes to managing all this - this massive responsibility that’s been thrown at us as parents - we are in brand new territory. Remember that, as we work through this, and as you take things away to try in your own family life.
Before we get into this discussion, I feel the need to preface it with a disclaimer. Every take on technology, and screens, and gaming, and social media, has its own bias. Like it or not. And my take here will be no different. I’ve invested many, many hours of research into this episode, and I’ll explore it all in the most balanced way I can, but whether I’m conscious of it or not there will be aspects of what I talk about that are coloured by my own beliefs and experiences.
And while I think that’s totally ok, I do feel the need to say it - because there will almost certainly be a lot of people who find comfort and genuine usefulness from this episode, and then a lot of others who completely disagree with most of what I say. And, I’m quite sure, will not be shy about letting me know.
So - just understand that this is one take out of very many takes out there. If you resonate with it, if you find it helpful, that’s wonderful. If you don’t - that’s ok.
It’s also probably worth outlining really quickly the life experience I’m drawing on as I speak to this topic. Obviously, I’m a dad of four children, two boys, two girls. who are currently aged 17, 14, 9, and 5. As a family we’ve experienced both the formal education system, and home education - and we’ve been living life without school for about 8 years now. My wife Kate and I originally met while studying education at university, and she went on to become a primary school teacher. Though, as is well documented in other episodes, she’s had to unlearn a huge amount of that formal training during our journey through home education. I didn’t end up as a teacher, I ended up working in the technology industry instead. And that’s where I’ve spent my professional life for the past 17 or so years, since about 2007. I even had a stint there working alongside the guys who originally built Youtube, before they sold it to Google, where I got to see first-hand what goes on behind the curtains of these very well funded software startups that are obsessed with building ideas that pull users in, and keep them there.
And I say all of that to put the decision of how much stock you put in my opinion in your hands. I’m not necessarily any more or less qualified than anyone else to talk about this, but I have taken the research component of this episode very seriously, and do have a professional background that dovetails directly into the kinds of things I’m talking about here. Plus, the lived experience of 8 home educating years building balance around tech use in our home.
One more thing I need to say - this is a gigantic topic, and area of parenting. So please don’t expect to listen to this episode and have all the answers. I’ll get into as much depth as I can, and - as always - try and give you some actionable takeaways that you can apply to your own life, but I won’t even get close to covering everything we could.
So, with all that said, here’s how I’m going to approach this.
First, I’m going to summarise the main points from the studies and research outcomes I’ve been digging into over the past few weeks. We can’t have a discussion about how to best manage all this in our lives if we’re not clear on what recent research is telling us. Otherwise, we’ve just got our heads in the sand, throwing around opinions that are inevitably biased and probably quite emotionally charged. And if you’ve ever listened to my podcast before, you’ll know I’m a big fan of grounding things as rationally as possible. So that is where we’ll start.
Then, with the current research clear, I’ll go through four areas that I think are useful as a framework for how to think about, and use, technology safely and effectively in a home educating lifestyle. That will include creating screen-free boundaries, modelling the right behaviour, quality over quantity and consumption vs creation, and then a high level look at how Kate and I personally handle screens and technology in our home.
So - if that sounds like it’s going to cover what you feel you need from this topic right now, awesome. But make yourself comfortable, because this could take some time.
<BREAK>
Ok, so the first part of this is looking at the current research on the impact screens and technology have on children. The good and the bad, the pros and the cons.
This is really important. I can sit here and tell you what I think, and what I feel, and what I believe, but if we don’t bring ourselves up to speed on what current research is telling us, then I’m just guessing with my advice. I’m just throwing opinions at you. And for such a big topic, for such a significant challenge for parents, that’s not enough. So, like I said, I’ve put many hours into trawling research papers and studies and statistics from the past few years, and summarising my findings from all of that is where we’ll start. I will, by the way, include as many links as I can in the show notes, so if you want to dive further just go to my website and find this episode.
The first thing I want to say is that there is still a huge amount of contradictory research in this area. Many of the studies I’ve dug into have ended with pretty extensive limitation statements, and commentary about what future studies will really need to do to shore up the results. To give us certainty in them.
But, we can only work with what’s in front of us right now, so let’s start with what we know. Or, at least, what I believe we can know with enough certainty to build a sensible approach on top of.
The first thing I’ll talk about is utterly watertight and just not debatable in any way. And that is the impact of device use on sleep when a device is used in bed. The studies and results around this are extensive, robust, and absolute.
When a child or teenager gets into bed for the night, and instead of picking up a book they grab their phone, or an iPad, or sit there with a laptop, they will categorically lower the quality of their sleep. And, they will carry excessive daytime sleepiness throughout the next day. And, that will compound.
Now, you might be thinking that of all the issues and challenges related to technology use, this one feels quite minor. But to me this is where it all starts. Sleep is crucial to the development of physically and psychologically healthy children. Regular and repeated sleep disturbance has long been connected to negative physical and mental health consequences like poor food choices, overly sedative behaviour and habits, obesity, reduced immunity, stunted growth, and a raft of mental health issues. If we’re serious about giving our children the best possible shot at becoming the best versions of themselves, then this is where it all starts.
Because, make no mistake, this is affecting a lot of young people. While different studies have different numbers, they’re all pretty close. One showed that 40% of teenagers say they use a mobile device in bed before going to sleep. Another study had that number at over half. And, would you believe, almost 40% of teenagers in those studies were shown to wake up at least once over night to check their device.
One study even measured for - and clearly showed - that even just having a device present in the room, without being used, was associated with poorer sleep. Just knowing it was there, and thinking about it, disrupted the sleep of those teenagers.
So, point one - devices being used at bedtime will lead to negative health outcomes - both physically and mentally. Black and white, full stop.
The next point was not as black and white as I expected it to be. At least, not on the surface. And that is the connection between social media use and mental health. Stay with me , stay with me, because we’re going to dig into this.
For many years, we all assumed there was. As parents, it kind of feels obvious, right? You have all sorts of content being slammed into a teenager’s face every day, with a range of issues coming from that. But then a study came out a few years ago - not from someone’s garage, but from the University of Oxford - showing that there is effectively no connection at all between time spent on screens and teenage mental health. Maybe you saw the clickbait-style title that went around with it at the time, and still often does - something along the lines of ‘screen time may be no worse for kids than eating potatoes’.
And a lot of people still reference this study in defence of social media.
But guess what? There was a major flaw in that study. It didn’t examine social media use specifically and in isolation; it looked at screen time overall, including watching TV and just owning a computer. In fact, it even counted talking on the phone as screen time. So other researchers have since taken the same data sets Oxford University used, and zoomed right in on the social media component. And what they have found - and we’re talking multiple research bodies here - is that, using those same data sets, twice as many boys, and three times as many girls, were shown to be depressed at high levels of social media use compared to no use at all. That is huge. The association between poor mental health and social media use among girls, in particular, is more significant - larger - than the association between mental health and binge drinking or hard drug use.
Aside from feeling absolutely shocked by that, we should also be seeing why the claims around screen time - using inverted commas there - and mental health are so confusing. It’s because a lot of the research so far - including one of the most highly cited papers, that one from Oxford University - bundles all types of screen time together when they are actually very different.
We need to be clear on that. As it stands, right now, there is no consistent proof or connection between general device, technology, and screen use and negative mental health outcomes. There is nothing out there, at least, that I’ve been able to find. And this is one of the biggest problems with the screen time debate. We can’t lump everything together and make these broad stroke claims. We can’t talk about screen time and social media use and conflate the two. They’re different things.
It’s a bit like saying cars are a problem when in one you have a conscientious 18 year old who has been driving legally for three years, and is using it to go to the library once a week, and in the other you have a reckless 14 year old using it to illegally race his friends at midnight. The car is not the problem. The use of the car is the problem.
So to sum this up, there is no clear connection between this concept of screen time on mental health. But there is absolutely clear research showing the negative impact of social media.
So how big is that impact?
95% of teenagers have access to a smartphone, and every single one of them uses the internet in some shape or form every day. In 2015, teenagers who said they were online almost constantly was 24%. Now, it’s about half. Online almost constantly.
In terms of what they’re using those devices for, and what they’re doing with their time, Youtube sits at the top with 95% of all teens regularly consuming content there. Tiktok, Snapchat and Instagram are a tier lower, but still very high - all between 60 and 80% of teenagers regularly using those platforms.
More than a third of teenagers say they spend too much time on social media, and more than half say it would be very difficult for them to give it up.
Now, remember that statistic from earlier that said twice as many boys, and three times as many girls, were depressed at high levels of social media use compared to no use? Well, this study defined high use. And it’s three hours a day. A study of Canadian youth reported that over 80% are spending more than two hours on social media daily. If we have a large sample showing that in a country like Canada, we have to assume we have some pretty bit numbers, globally, sitting at three or more hours. Which means, we have pretty big numbers globally of teenagers who are at twice, or - if you’re a girl - three times the risk of suffering negative mental health outcomes like anxiety and depression.
To help us triangulate this a little more, another study found that reducing social media to a maximum of one hour per day, led to significantly greater reductions in anxiety, depression, the experience of FoMO, and increases in sleep compared to a placebo group that had unrestricted access.
Did you catch something interesting in there? Reduced FOMO. You would think that teenagers reducing their social media use would increase that, right? That it would make them feel left out, even isolated. But this study found the opposite. At the start of the reduction in social media time there was an increase in FOMO, as you would expect. But it only lasted a few days, and then declined.
Huh - interesting.
Now I’m going to whip through a few other quick, but significant points, that are currently backed by research. Just so we can keep this moving on.
There is a proven body-worry, eating disorder, and comparison issue when regularly exposed to the fake perfection of other people’s lives, especially in girls. Boys are far from immune to it, though - nearly a third have said they’ve been exposed to content encouraging them to build their bodies up through substances that are probably not safe. The most likely group to be viewing that kind of content? 13-year-old boys. Oh, and yes, among that group - those who regularly viewed that kind of content had measurably lower self-respect than those who didn’t.
There is also a proven dangerous-behaviour problem when exposed to challenges and trends, especially in boys. When they regularly consume these things - we’re talking binge drinking challenges, jumping off house roofs into swimming pools, climbing tall structures without safety gear, self-inflicted asphyxiation, you know the kind of stuff - their likelihood of trying those things increases.
Nearly half of 15-16 year old girls say that strangers have tried to message or contact them - that was only 30% a couple of years ago - and girls in the 13-14 year old range are more likely to say that being online makes them feel lonely and isolated.
Two-thirds of young people report experiencing harm online – whether that’s being bullied, or contacted by strangers, or watching extreme or hateful content. And that cohort were much less likely to say ‘I feel happy with myself’ compared those who never look at that kind of material.
Another study looked at whether or not children actually follow the safety advice they learn about being online. 11-year olds were the most likely age group to do that, but by the age of 15, when the risks are higher, less than half do.
And while two-thirds of teens say they would take an online problem to a parent, that leaves a third who won’t.
Oh, and by the way, half of all teenagers in that study say they don’t believe their parents have enough of an understanding of online issues.
72% of teenagers say they check for messages or notifications the moment they wake up. More than half of teens (56%) associate the absence of their phone with being upset, or feeling anxious.
Another study shows that a quarter of children report negative physical effects from their use of technology, which is a jump from the previous year, which was a jump from the year before that. Those effects range from fatigue and difficulty concentrating to vision problems and issues with posture.
Jumping down to the younger age group, a study of 3-5 year olds showed that any form of screen time can - depending on length of use - impact development of brain areas responsible for visual processing, empathy, attention, complex memory, and early reading skills. It’s worth saying that researchers found an accelerated aspect of that development - in visual processing - but that all those other areas were impacted negatively. So while I don’t think it becomes a ‘don’t-use-screens-under-5’ rule, there is very clear evidence that we should be highly limiting time on devices for under 5s.
But what about the good? Because it’s starting to sound like I’m painting screens and technology with a very negative brush. Something we should banish from our lives entirely. And that’s neither what I believe, or what the research shows to be true.
Studies show that around 70% of young people view technology and the internet as being important to developing their independence. That’s across areas like digital creation, hobbies, social groups, career gateways…all sorts of things. And so this is where we can have a disconnect if we try and restrict it totally. Teenagers, especially, view it as a key part of their developing lives.
85% of children feel that technology is important for helping them stay connected with friends and family that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. That’s probably an obvious one. But over 60% - so a pretty decent majority - say that being online makes them feel part of a group of people that is like them - a group of people they wouldn’t necessarily have the opportunity to find without it. That is, they’re finding community, friendship, support, and a sense of belonging. We don’t need to look far to find past research that shows how those connections contribute to people’s well-being.
Another interesting thing - and if this doesn’t perfectly illustrate the double-edged sword nature of technology today, nothing will - social media, for all its clear impact on mental health, has given us a platform to talk more about it. To be more open about. To find people who are going through similar things to what you are in life, and to feel less alone. As a society, we’re talking more about mental health and self care than ever before in human history. And, ironically, social media has played a huge part in opening that up.
Quality educational screen time has only positive outcomes. Research has shown that are no negative health associations with educational-focused screen sessions at all. They’re clearly linked to improving problem-solving, digital literacy, and cognitive skills. They help children explore math, coding, reading, anything at all under the sun, at their own pace. Engaging and personalised. A very high quality of learning and tuition is now available to almost anyone, anywhere. It has been democratised. And AI is levelling that up again - you’ll hear a bit later on about how my daughter Florence is literally tutored in math by AI now.
For neurodivergent children, technology is an incredibly useful tool for emotional and sensory regulation. It can become a key part of a neurodivergent child’s kit for managing their sensory environments, and helping them stay calm and focused. Video games, in particular, give a controlled space where children can escape overwhelming stimuli, and define what inputs are coming in. And the right kind of games - like Minecraft - that involve planning, organisation, and problem-solving, can help ND kids improve their executive functioning, too - particularly in children with ADHD. And because those games require a high level of attention, and engage children at that level, they help improve attention spans - which can spill over into non-digital areas of life. Also, ND kids often find online communities and forums an easier place to build connections, so they can get into a community space focused on lego or robotics or gaming or whatever and build quality friendships and share ideas.
And, of course, let’s not forget how fun technology can be - how accessible entertainment is, how often we see things that make us laugh, or move us, how easy it is to share those positive things with other people, how many opportunities there are for learning, and growing, and creative expression. How many platforms and channels there are that can help us grow our skills, and careers - or even become our careers. We must not underestimate how much positive value technology has brought to our lives, the way in which it can help us develop and grow, and the doors that it can open for us.
PHEW. That was a lot, and I could keep that exploration of the good and the bad going for literally hours. But I won’t, because I think we have enough to work with.
In some ways, it might feel like we’re still at square one. There are a stack of negatives associated with tech and screens. But there are a lot of positives, too. So where does that leave us?
And that’s what I want to focus the second half of this episode on. Taking all this and using it to create a non-prescriptive framework for how you can decide the role screens and technology will play in your home educating lifestyle.
<BREAK>
Ok, hopefully you’re still with me after all that. Let’s now take this foundation we’ve built through pulling all that research together, and look at the different things we can build on top of it to create something that works for us. And to do this I’ll use a mix of the research I’ve spent the last few weeks in, the experiences of my wife and I as home educating parents of four children, and my professional experience working in the software and tech industry for - what did I say earlier - 17 years now. I want to look at four things: creating screen-free boundaries, modelling the right behaviour, quality over quantity and consumption vs creation, and then a high level look at how Kate and I personally handle screens and technology in our home.
One caveat before we start is that if you have neurodivergent children, you’ll need to adapt this accordingly. For example, I’ll suggest things like not letting your child sit on a cellphone while you’re shopping for food at the super market. I’ll suggest getting them involved. But for your child, they might find that environment completely overwhelming, and way too stimulating, and need to plug in with headphones on to manage it. If that’s the case, that’s what you should do.
So if there are things in here that don’t quite fit who your children are, from that perspective, adjust them. Mould them. I don’t have enough personal experience with neurodivergence to speak with authority on it, so I’m not going to try. I know that’s probably disappointing to hear, but I believe it would be irresponsible. What I will try and do at some stage is invite a guest on for an episode that’s dedicated to screens and tech in a neurodivergent context. But for now, I think there’ll still be plenty you can take away from this.
I also need to state what this - let’s call it a framework - is trying to do. We need to move past purely thinking about ‘time on screens’, and trying to limit that. The research very clearly shows that not all screen time is created equal, and we HAVE to stop lumping it all in together. It’s not helpful. You could have a situation where a child is using screens for two hours a day in a really unhealthy way, and a child who is using them for five hours a day in a really productive, positive way. So I just want to be clear that what I’m about to take you through won’t be about solving the ‘time on screens’ problem, because time on screens is not necessarily the problem. It’s about getting our children using them in ways that actually help them grow. Or relax. Or connect. Or whatever the goal happens to be. But just bringing much more intention to this way-too-broad concept of ‘screen time’. And it’s about making sure there’s balance in their life, and space for other things.
So - the first thing I believe we should be doing is creating very clear screen-free zones and times. Not arbitrary limits, but considered ones. And if we get this right - which can take same time, and testing - but if we get this right it actually starts solving a lot of the issues parents are struggling with around technology. Not all of them, but this is going to get you feeling more in control and balanced right off the bat.
So what does that look like? We have three clear non-negotiables in our home. No screens in bedrooms, no screens in bathrooms, no screens at the dinner table.
Sounds simple, but that has just removed a whole bunch of unintentional filler time on screens. The stuff I personally want my kids to keep down really low. It means there’s never a temptation to pick up a phone or iPad at bedtime, because it’s never in their bedroom. It means there’s no temptation to check a device over night, or wake up, roll over, switch it on, and get lost in short form dopamine content first thing in the morning. It means there’s no chance of someone playing video games until 2 in the morning, because there’s no computer sitting there as a gateway to it.
It also means connection is the focus of family mealtime, not distraction. No one I ever knew did deep, serious work on a screen while eating a meal. If you’re on an iPad or a phone while you’re eating, you’ve probably flicked to something light. Something that does little more than fill the space. So that’s gone. There is a huge amount of time available in a homeschooling child’s day. They do not need a device in front of them at mealtimes. Plenty of other time for that.
By the way, in one study nearly half of teens (46%) say their parent is at least sometimes distracted by their phone when they’re trying to talk to them. Often, during mealtimes. And in another study, a third of parents said their family members we’re often absorbed in their devices rather than participating in collective family activities. So both teenagers and parents are saying that devices are significantly overshadowing healthy family interactions. To me, this is a big issue, and so in our home we have fully removed that mealtime dynamic. When we come together around food, we connect.
There are other obvious benefits to these three really simple rules, too. We heard the research about the impact of devices on sleep. That research is watertight. No devices in bedrooms, no risk of bedtime use, no disruption to sleep.
It also helps promote mindful eating. There’s nothing distracting you. You’re in tune with your body, and its cues around hunger, and feeling full. Sounds simple, but actually really important.
And, these boundaries help build self-regulation. Children learn them very quickly, and become more autonomous about putting devices down because they’re learning what the absence of tech feels like. They don’t have the constant pressure of a device. There’s contrast. Humans learn a lot from contrast.
So we have these three physical spaces where devices do not follow us - bedrooms, bathrooms, and the dinner table.
But we also need to layer over some tech-free times. And again, these are not arbitrary limits thrown out there in a desperate attempt to try and reduce screen time. They are conscious decisions, based on what we’ve learned from the research, that will help our children build more healthy relationships with technology, and use their time on devices and screens more intentionally.
So for our younger two children - who are 5 and 9 - we have no screens after dinner. Again, there is a huge amount of time during the day for a 5 and a 9 year old to get what they need out of technology. After dinner, it’s all analogue.
But for our older two - who are 14 and 17 - we recognise that evenings are a pretty social time for them. And because some of their friends go to school, the evenings are a key time of connection. So to create a blanket no-screens-after-dinner rule for the whole family would be silly. It would knock out a really important, valuable use of technology for our teenagers. So, there’s no after dinner cut out for them. BUT. They know it’s a two-way street. They know if they stand up from the dinner table and walk to their device leaving a kitchen that looks like a hurricane has blown through, that’s not going to work. Because that creates a negative cost of their evening tech use that gets put on someone else - namely, Kate and I having to clean the kitchen after we’ve both worked hard all day. So to keep that privilege, to keep things balanced, our teenage boys know that they’re on cleanup. Every day. And not a rushed one. A proper, clean slate kitchen ready for tomorrow. And I can tell you with 100% honesty that our two boys do it with a smile on their face now. It’s part of their rhythm. They feel good about it. And when they sit down to connect with their friends over some gaming right after it, they feel even better about that time. Because they’ve contributed. They’ve put in some hard work, and made a difference to the running of the home. And you should never let anybody tell you that teenagers don’t care about that stuff. If they don’t, they just haven’t had enough of an opportunity to feel it, and build that muscle. Because while it’s been a journey to get there, and there was absolutely resistance early on, our boys are living proof that contributing to the home is a big part of developing autonomy, and independence as a teenager.
So they can get on their tech in the evenings. BUT. It’s not a free-for-all. It’s not go as late you as want every day. It has an end time. Which, generally, is 8pm. Why? Because it gives them enough time to go deep with their friends, but it also gives them time and space to wind down for bedtime, and to read a book.
And this is probably a good moment to segue, just briefly, into one of the big traps of tech that research has again categorically shown. And that’s this concept of displacement. That is, where time spent on devices displaces - or, replaces - other things in a child’s life. Things that might have been important to that child, but have been overshadowed.
Because, remember, it’s not always a fair fight with technology. In fact, it’s a heavily weighted one, which we’ll get to in a moment.
In studies, an uncomfortable number of young people - almost 30% - have stated they feel completely unable to control their time spent online, a figure that actually stays stable across different demographics – boys, girls, children, teenagers. So that’s a really reliable, guiding figure.
And then, even more damning, almost 20% of children have given up a sport or regular exercise in favour of playing video games, watching TV, or using social media. Now, maybe you think that’s ok. And if you do, that’s fine. But as always in this podcast, I’m here to share my opinion based on my experiences. And I personally think that’s tragic. I just cannot imagine someone later in life looking back and saying, wow, I’m really glad I gave up that sport I loved, or that healthy exercise habit I used to have, to spend more time on TikTok. To me, this is just not ok. And, by the way, we should picture this like an iceberg - that 20% who have actively given up those healthy physical things are the part we see above the water line. But what hasn’t been measured is the percentage of children and teenagers who haven’t tried something, or started something new, in the first place, because the time they’re spending on devices hasn’t given them space to. I think we can draw an inference to that being quite a scary number of kids and teenagers. I have NO doubt that a lot of this current generation are going to look back later in life and feel like a huge amount of their time was taken from them and wasted.
I have another statistic from another study that reinforces this - 90% of teenagers in this particular study said they often use their phone just to pass the time. Almost all of them.
Now, I have absolutely nothing against down time. Chilling out, recharging our batteries, taking it slow sometimes. Rest is important. But the problem with using devices to do that, at least too often, is that - like I mentioned earlier - being in control of when you put it back down again isn’t a fair fight.
Tech companies are just way too good at making sure you don’t. And we need to be very clear that they’re not working hard to protect your child’s time or mental health. They have their own interests and profits in mind, and invest a HUGE amount of time, energy, money, and technical skill in hooking your child into as much engagement, repeated engagement, as possible. And most of them are not doing that with some malicious intent. They’re doing that because that’s how their company survives and grows. One of the key metrics their internal teams will measure and obsess over will be time spent in the app. If that’s high, and their users are engaged, their company is literally worth more. I’m not going to labour this point too much - if you don’t have much personal experience or awareness of any of this, then make some time to learn more about it. That documentary called The Social Dilemma is a good place to start. It might seem a bit dramatic, and it is slightly over done, but based on my own lived experiences it’s pretty accurate.
So, to wrap up this brief segue, we have this displacement thing. Where it’s very easy for a young person to give their time to a device over other things. And, for reasons discussed, very hard for them to drag themselves back out of that space.
Now, jumping back to where we were with our 8pm nightly cutoff point for our teenagers, we will not let reading be displaced. We will not let good bedtime routines, and wind down times, and healthy rhythms, be displaced. We will not let sleep be displaced. And, of course, if our children wanted to push aside anything they have in the evenings - like karate, or music practice, or drama class, whatever sessions they’ve got on - it’s an absolute no. Again - there is PLENTY of time in a homeschooler’s day to hit tech. And Kate and I refuse to let something that only happens once or twice a week - like a sports practice, or chess club, or whatever it is - be displaced by that. So just to be clear - if we have karate at 6pm, right after dinner, and we’re not home until 7:30, our teenagers have 30 minutes online. That’s it. We don’t have some sliding scale where they replace that time they otherwise would have got, because that bending of things - for us, at least - is a recipe for everyone to get too loose and confused about where the lines are. So for us, we have that hard limit. That hard line. And you know what? Outside the occasional gripe, no one really complains about it.
So we have these two time cutoffs. Dinner time for our young girls, 8pm for our older boys.
We also have different rules in the morning. Our two girls often put on the TV when they first get up, because they’re usually not ready for breakfast right away and they love acting out scenes from movies or shows. They often start their day like that. Knowing that they won’t be on tech a huge amount during the day, we’re not worried by that at all. And it’s actually pretty active time. They’re jumping around, they’re changing their costumes and outfits. Go for it. But for our teenagers - nope, don’t pick up your device yet. Because their time spent on screens tends to be much more sedentary. So they need to start with some movement. Tidy up their rooms, make their beds, have some breakfast, get the dog out for a walk down to the river. Come back, tidy up the kitchen, have a chat to us about their plans for the day. THEN, if they need to, hit the tech. Because THEN it’s intentional. They have a plan. They’re sitting down to a device for a reason, not just flopping onto the couch in their pyjamas and doom scrolling.
Before we move on, a few quick-fire examples of other times and spaces where we limit tech. The library. When we’re there, we’re not sitting on phones or iPads. We’re engaging with books. With those little colouring in stations they often have. With the boardgames they make available. With the librarians themselves. When we’re in the car. When we’re driving somewhere, our heads are up, looking out the window. There’s probably music, there’s probably talking, and questions, and back and forward. The caveat here is a really long trip - if we’re driving for hours on end, there’ll be device use on that journey for sure. But a 6 year old does not need an iPad in their lap just to survive a 10 minute drive to grandma’s house. And a teenager does not need to have their head down in just one more TikTok session to make it through a 15 minute drive to the supermarket.
Speaking of shopping, we don’t let our teenagers walk around stores with their heads down, scrolling on a phone, and we don’t sit our younger children in a trolley with an iPad. We engage them in helping us shop. We engage them in the real world so they can learn how it works. And I know a lot of parents are tired, and stressed, and just want to be able to think in those moments without having their top pulled at and a million questions being thrown at them. But in our experience it’s a slippery slope. Children associate things very quickly. And between you wanting that space to think, and your child knowing that if they ask for it enough you’ll probably throw them that iPad, it will just become the way it’s done. And, back to the displacement concept, there will be no more questions from them around the supermarket. That might feel like a win in the moment, but it’s not.
So for us, again, we draw a hard line there. No bending. And through a bunch of small places and times where we have these lines, they add up to something quite significant. Especially when you add up those minutes and hours across a week, or a month. It’s a lot more clear headspace back in their lives. It’s a lot more involvement in how life works. And it’s a lot less of that passive, unintentional time we’re trying to reduce.
Look - if you’re feeling like your children are spending too much of their day on screens, and you’re uncomfortable about it, you have to find ways to get that control back. And it’s often small things like this that make a big difference. You will struggle to feel like you’re in control if you don’t set - and stick to - clear boundaries and rules. Not arbitrary limits, but clear, reasonable boundaries and guidelines that you can rationally justify. And often, it’s those small things like removing tech from shopping trolleys, and short car rides, that start to make you feel like you’re getting some balance back.
But the real key to these limits - these rules, these guidelines - is that you don’t get to come up with them on your own and then tell your children what they’re going to be. This is really important. You have to involve them in the discussions. You have to involve them in the planning. You have to involve them in the final decisions you make. And then - perhaps the hardest part of all - you’re going to have to model healthy adherence to a lot of these yourself.
But let’s leave that scary bit for later - I’ll to get to it in a moment. Let’s start with that first part - involving them. I can tell you that from both personal experience and research that a top-down approach to rule-making will almost certainly backfire. Implementing your rules will almost certainly become a stressful battle. But when you talk about all this with your children - hey, screen-free meal times are good for that - it opens things up and makes it a discussion. It gives you a chance to give context to what you’re suggesting. It gives your children, teenagers especially, a chance to say their side. That’s very healthy. And it gives you a chance to come back to what they’re saying with clear, rational answers that make sense. With points that make it clear that this is all part of a plan to keep everyone healthy, and well, and balanced. Maybe you even adjust the rules you first had in mind based on what happens in that discussion. Maybe you make some concessions. But the point is that by the end of it, you’ve worked together to find a common ground of understanding on screens, and technology, and the place all that has - and doesn’t have - in your home and lives.
Remember, children thrive on autonomy. Involve them in your thinking and decisions and boundary setting, and they are far more likely to lean into them. They are far more likely to engage with them.
By the way, research shows a very strong link between engaged parenting and digital wellbeing. And actually, believe it or not, overall wellbeing.
There is a raft of data showing that open and transparent dialogue between children and parents about their tech use, and about their online experiences, is directly linked to higher wellbeing scores across the board. When parents are involved and open and talk to children about what they’re doing online, when, and how, and discuss all that regularly, those children report higher positive emotional index scores across the board. And children whose parents don’t engage in these kinds of conversations report higher negative index scores for pretty much all aspects of wellbeing.
If there is only one thing you take away from today’s episode, let it be this. Putting your head in the sand about what you’re children are using technology for, and why, and when, will hurt their development. But leaning into it, being open, and supportive, and encouraging, and guiding, and firm, will actively help it.
So if you have teenagers, or even just older children, ask them questions while you’re setting your boundaries. You could say - “Hey, what feels healthier to you, genuinely, as a person - 6 straight hours of gaming every day, or maybe 2 hours and then some exercise, and a run around with the dog, and then helping in the kitchen with dinner, and spending some time in a good book?”
You could say - “Hey, teenager - do you really feel that good about doomscrolling Tiktok in bed instead of winding your brain down into a healthy sleep state with a good book? Does it really make you feel happy, and motivated, and good about yourself?”
Statistically, the odds are heavily weighted towards them saying it doesn’t.
And you can discuss the research, and present those findings to them, and ask them what they think.
What you’ll find is that most kids and teenagers will give you pretty balanced, reasonable answers. And most will actually have a solid feel for what feels right, and what feels wobbly. Don’t forget that they want what’s best for their development, too. They just need your help to see it sometimes.
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Right, so we’ve set some limits on times and physical spaces, and we’ve done it as a team.
Now, as promised, the scary bit. You, modelling all this.
Nearly half of all teenagers say their parent is at least sometimes distracted by their phone when they’re trying to talk to them. Let that sink in. What’s that telling them?
Do you look at your phone during meal times? Do you mindlessly scroll social media when you’re sitting in the car on a 10 minute drive? Do you take your phone to bed? Is it the first thing you look at when you wake up? Do you have your head in it while you’re on the sideline at your child’s sports practice or game? Do you put the TV on during mealtimes? Do you have your phone out while your kids are playing at the playground, or skate park? Do you check your phone’s notifications during family movie night? Do you use your phone to kill time while waiting in a line at the supermarket? Do you binge-watch Netflix late every night, and carry tiredness into the next morning and throughout the day? This list could be a thousand things long, but you get the point. And if this feels confronting, it should. How can we expect our children and teenagers to develop healthy relationships and boundaries with technology if we’re modelling the exact opposite.
The same goes for any aspect of family life, right? If you don’t make your bed every morning and keep your bedroom tidy, you can’t expect your children to. If you don’t eat of plenty of vegetables, you can’t expect your children to. If you don’t brush your teeth regularly, or read books, or exercise, or use manners, or apologise when you’re wrong, how can you ever expect your children to do any of those things? They would literally have to push against decades of research in psychology to do so.
Ever since Albert Bandura started bringing scientific process and empirical evidence to Social Learning Theory in the 60s and 70s, we have known this. The saying ‘actions speak louder than words’ is not a throwaway statement. It’s backed by scientific investigation. And while there’s nuance to Social Learning Theory, as there is with everything, the important thing to know is your children are watching you, and they are using your actions as one of the major inputs into their own decision making.
Of course, I don’t think we need science to tell us that our actions are important. I think most of us understand that. But I do think it’s useful to remind ourselves that if you say one thing to your children around tech use, and then continually do the opposite yourself, you’re not going to get anywhere.
And, as an aside, your use of tech will send a very powerful message about how important—or unimportant—real-life interactions and being present actually are.
I’m sorry to say, but it starts with us, parents. The way we model, the example we give, is going to go a looooong way towards whether or not your children find balance with technology.
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Ok, next thing we need to talk about is quality over quantity. About intentional use. Because, as we’ve seen from the research, not all screen time is created equal, not all screen time is bad, not all screen time is good. So rather than setting limits that are based on the time we’re spending in that space, let’s create guidelines based on what we’re using them for.
And the way I personally like to think about this is splitting our use of technology into two camps - consumption and creation. Generally, the creation side is where I want my children spending the bulk of their time. There’s value in the consumption side to, at times, but I like that the creation side is action-oriented, it’s progress-oriented, and so we prefer to keep pure consumption down much lower.
So let me dig into this a little more, and share some frankly terrifying statistics, just so you really understand what I’m getting at here.
Consumption is things like scrolling a social media feed, watching videos or tv, playing certain types of videos games - not all, though - browsing discussion forums like Reddit without ever engaging, scrolling news sites, or watching live streams. It’s actually not a very long list, but it accounts for a huge amount of our global population’s device, technology, and internet use. There are all sorts of research-backed statistics to support this. Did you know - and this will scare you, I think, it scares me - that the average teenager now spends 8 hours and 39 minutes looking at screens every day? That’s about half of a teenager’s waking hours, and that’s the average. And by the way, that measure, from that study, does not include any time they’re using screens for school or homework. That is not bundled in there. This is screen time outside of that. For tweens - the 8-12 age range - that figure is lower but still over 5 hours a day.
So what are they doing in that time? Well, they’re consuming. And this is the really scary bit, to me. The largest piece of that screen time pie for both teens and tweens, is watching TV or videos. Then there’s video games, social media, browsing the internet, and on down the line. Would you like to know how much of the pie is taken up by time spent creating? For teenagers, 3%. So of those almost 9 hours a day, 15 minutes are invested in creating something. For tweens, it’s 2%. So not quite 7 minutes of their day.
If there is anything that illustrates the challenge we’re facing with technology as parents, this is it. It’s not that it’s not useful, and important, and powerful, and connecting. It’s that we’re just not using it in those ways. We’re not making the most of it.
And of course consumption is ok. It’s fun to watch Youtube videos, and Netflix series, and check in on what those people you look up to have posted on social media. The problem is the sheer volume of time we’re spending on those activities rather than on growing ourselves.
Going back to that concept of displacement I spoke about earlier, would you like to know - in and among all those massive amounts of hours spent on screens - how many of our kids are making the time to read each day? It’s a third of tweens, and only one in five teenagers. And even of those that do, the average time invested in books is only about 30 minutes a day.
All of this is why I think we need to put to bed this concept of screen time, or time on screens. That is not the problem. The real issue is what they’re using their devices for.
We don’t need fancy science and research to tell us that if you’re spending huge amounts of time consuming, you’re going to have a lot less time available to explore, practice, and master what you’re good at. And that, to me, is unacceptable. Because as homeschoolers we talk a lot about all this time we get back into our lives. Time to explore who we are, what we’re interested in, what we might be good at, and what we might want to do with our lives as we grow. We have this opportunity to not be where a lot of us were when we left school as 17 or 18 year olds - myself included - where we had no real idea of what we wanted to do with our lives.
But, if our tweens and teens are only investing 2 or 3% of their time into creating…that’s never going to happen.
And this is where you need to sit down and talk to your kids about this stuff. Share these statistics. Grab the links from my show notes and explore some of them together - especially the Common Sense Media research, because it’s super visual and user-friendly - and then make a plan for being more intentional. Get scientific about it, if you want. That’s what we did with our two teenagers a while ago. We got them to use a timer when they were doing certain things throughout their day - using tech, helping around the home, reading, exercising, whatever - and then we looked at the breakdown after a week or so, and it was SUPER enlightening. Because it’s one thing for Kate and I as parents to say ‘hey, guys, your balance is off’, but it’s a whole other thing to have them see it clearly in hard data they’ve recorded themselves.
And we’ve since done that from time-to-time, to re-check our balance. Not to make them feel guilty. But to help them build that self-awareness. To help them course-correct themselves.
So talk about it. And then set some limits. Not for time spent on devices, but for time consuming. Maybe as a family you all agree that two hours a day consuming content feels pretty fair. It’s not too restricted, but it’s not going to blow out the whole day either. Maybe you decide on less, maybe more. The point is knowing what that limit is, and sticking to it, so there’s space for everything else.
And this is where I want to give you our current set of guidelines, that we’re working from with our kids, so you can get a feel for how you might slice all this yourself. I’m going to go through our four children, from eldest to youngest, and break down their tech use each day. Keep in mind this is just focused on the tech aspect - not all the other things in their day.
Our eldest, 17, is a digital creator. He makes his own animations, and writes scripts, and does all the art and the editing and the production. So, the time he spends on his let’s call it professional growth and development is heavily screen-based. Which means, within the context of balancing that with things like physical health, exercise, reading, helping around the home, and doing all his extracurricular style clubs and activities - we don’t really need to think too much about the time he’s spending in that space. What we DO need to make sure of, though, is that he doesn’t wrap up a three hour editing session and then sit on the couch with his phone to watch Youtube. Because then screens are becoming too dominant. And what I really mean there is sedentary behaviour is becoming too dominant. And you don’t have to listen to too many episodes of this podcast to know we’re big on physical health, and movement. So he knows when he surfaces from a big session like that, he’s off for a run, or a workout in the garage, or some basketball, or some work around the house. And he’s very physically healthy. He runs every morning, he works out every day, he’s started lifting weights, he walks the dog three times a day, he’s very active and involved around the home. Both our boys are like that, actually, sans the weights for Mr 14 - he’s not quite allowed to hit those yet.
Speaking of Mr 14, let’s move on to him. He is not a digital creator. He does still like to dabble with coding, and music production, but generally when he’s on tech it tends to be more consumption based. Which, again, is fine, but that is time we want to limit. Again, a couple of hours a day, no problem. But any more than that and we know it will start to displace the areas he’s trying to develop himself in - namely, cooking, baking, and music. We know that any more than a couple of hours a day consuming, and he gets more distracted, less energetic, and tends to drift a lot more. We’ve observed, tested, and measured this stuff, as well as making sure he sees it too, so we can talk about objectively. Don’t forget that fact I shared earlier about the connection between parents who are engaged in a child’s digital world, and decisions, and their overall wellbeing.
So to break it down, our eldest probably spends on average 6 hours a day on his screens, and I would say that 80% of that is creating. His brother, probably only spends about 3, but it would be more like 40% of that time is creating. Maybe even less. So you can see how a blanket rule in our house about ‘screen time’ - inverted commas - just wouldn’t work. But how we can set a limit on consumption time.
In terms of video games, we generally keep that to being a weekend activity only. So late Friday afternoon, through to about 8 at night, go for it. Same for Saturday. Big, fun, blocks of gaming - hours and hours and hours of it, usually online with friends. Very rarely is it just them individually playing on their own. So does that mean, on a Friday, our eldest hits his 6 hour average and THEN rolls into video games that evening? Yes. Because it’s not screen time we’re thinking about. It’s the use of them. It’s a very freeing mindset.
I mentioned video games briefly much earlier when I was talking through the research, and I want to quantify what I said about some games falling into the wrong side of that consumption-heavy time. Because not all games are created equal. Has anyone played, or seen their kids play, games like Cookie Clicker? Aside from some very minor thinking on where you want to spend your resources, that kind of game is completely passive. What about games like Temple Run or Subway Surfers or Minion Rush - seen those? Aside from a bit of reflex benefit, that sort of game is highly repetitive. There’s no real engagement or strategy, and there’s no real brain activity going on there. How about Candy Crush, or Bejewelled, or Crossy Road, or the million and one virtual pet games out there? These are all repetitive, passive experiences with almost zero value other than passing time. These kinds of games are completely off the table in our home. Why? Because they’re addictive. They hit the same areas of the brain a slot machine in a casino does. And anything that is built to be as addictive as possible to a child without giving them anything positive in return is not going anywhere near our children.
So what games don’t fall into that passive consumption side? Perfect example is Minecraft. It’s a sandbox environment. Which means - if you’ve never heard that term before - you’re given a digital space and some tools, but you’re the one who is going to have to make decisions on what happens. On what plays out. You’re in control. And you’re going to have to think at almost every step along the way. You’re going to explore, and plan, and build, and create, and get stuck, and fail, and overcome. And that is a highly positive cognitive space to be in. There are loads of games out there like that. Another great genre are those games that have rich, deep, story lines, with characters you need to develop, and level up, and take through to some kind of ending - a lot of those games are wonderful experiences. My eldest has been playing a game called Elden Ring, and while I’m personally not a fan of it at all I can see why he is. And I can see he gets a lot out of it.
But what about those first person shooters all the teenage boys are into? Well, if they’re playing them socially, there’s actually a lot of good stuff in there. Hand eye co-ordination and reflexes (if you’ve ever played one of those games, you’ll realise they’re a world away from those simple, tappy games on that front), communication and strategy with your teammates, spacial memory, coping with failure and building resilience, social connection…there’s a lot to like. But, depending on your child, there might be plenty not to like as well. The research is actually all over the place on this, so I’m not going to cite any of it because it’s just too confusing and contradictory. But what I will say is that I know a lot of parents observe more stress and aggression in their teenagers when they get off games like that, and a lot that don’t. So ignore the idea of blanket rules, again, and tailor your decisions on access to games like that based on who your teenager is, and how they respond to playing them. Notice I’m saying teenager here - I don’t believe young children should be playing first person shooters, full stop.
The main point I want to make about video games is that, like all of the screen time debate, it should be less about the time spent playing them and more about what they’re playing. Get that decision right, and the overall time becomes less important again. I’d personally rather my boys spent three hours in Minecraft than 30 minutes playing some tappy, passive thing. Though, I will say, you will probably need to help your kids find balance with games - they are designed to keep them very very engaged, and disconnecting yourself from deep in that space can be hard. For us, that’s why we generally limit them to those big, open, weekend blocks. Otherwise, they can dominate the day - not just in time, but in waiting for them. We went through a slightly bumpy patch while we adjusted to that a few years ago, but if you hold that boundary it smooths out soon enough.
Now, moving on to their sister, who is 9. I’ve talked in a previous episode about how she loves to make movies, and that actually hasn’t died off. I wouldn’t say she’s making them every day like she was back then, but definitely most days. She uses her iPad to do that, and sometimes it can be an hour, even two hours, of straight video making. But MOST of that time is highly active. It’s shooting clips. It’s setting up her iPad on different angles, recording, checking it’s what she wants, then moving on to the next shot. Usually, she’s outside, running around all doing all sorts of crazy things. The actual sedentary editing part is only about 20% of her overall movie making time. She also quite naturally moves on from it herself, so there’s not a lot of management or involvement needed there from us. That’s inverted commas screen time that we don’t have to give a second thought.
What can become an issue, though, is after all the filming, after the editing, she opens Youtube. She has a bunch of channels she’s subscribed to that we’ve checked out, and that she’s allowed to watch. And that’s her trap. Because if we’re not across that, she’ll lose herself for hours in total consumption mode and come out the other side with much lower energy. She’s into sports, and right now she’s got tennis, cricket, and karate on her plate, and we’ve observed that when she consumes for too long it’s the practice of those things that get wiped out first. I haven’t pushed into any areas of research to back this up, because I don’t need to. I’ve seen it in my own children, and in myself, time and time again. When you combine a long period of not moving your body, with a totally consumption based head-space, your energy flatlines. Your motivation drops. You start yawning. Your body’s not moving, your brain’s not really working, everything winds down. So we know we have to protect her from too much of that, or she’ll disappear into it. So we’ll help her shift gears out of that space, maybe after one or two Youtube videos about slime making or whatever else she’s into at the time, and into something completely removed from the iPad. Just to fully disconnect her eyes and headspace from that. She’ll use it again during the day, for sure, including - probably - some more consumption. But we’ll help her keep that pretty low.
Right now she’s using Synthesis as a math tutor - which, if you haven’t seen, is an AI tutoring platform and it’s awesome. It’s like having a tutor, but one that’s ready to take you through a session at whatever time you want them to, and one who always stays at your pace. It’s really neat - AI is going to disrupt formal education in huge ways over the next few years, already is. So she spends ~30 minutes a day on that. I’ll leave a link to Synthesis in the show notes, by the way - I’m not sure if they have a referral program or not, but I’ll look into that, so if you’re interested please do check the show notes on my website and click the link from there to help support my work.
So I would say, in total, Miss 9 probably spends around 4 hours a day on screens, with comfortably more than half of that in creation or learning mode.
And now last but not least is miss 5 year old, who - as it should be, in my opinion, spends less time on screens than any of her three older siblings. Though I would have to say that the weighting of her screen time each day is more heavily towards the consumption end than the other three. Just because she has less need for tech in the way she’s developing herself. So, like I said earlier, the two sisters love to start their day acting something out while it plays. Sometimes that’s just an episode of something, sometimes it’s an entire movie, and either way we don’t have a problem with it. That might be 90 minutes of the TV being on first thing in the morning. But they’re fully engaged, moving, creative, probably dressing up and swapping outfits along the way, and it’s awesome. And then it goes off. She uses a laptop or an iPad for art - she’s a big fan of Art for Kids Hub - but she’s not doing art on a device digitally, she’s watching tutorials, and following along, with her own paper and pens. Sometimes, she stars in her sisters movies, and watches over her shoulder while she’s editing those scenes. And then, a couple of times throughout the day, between all the free play and movement 5 year old’s are so good at when you give them that space, there’ll be some more consumption of whatever series they’re currently into, or Youtube channel, or whatever. And that’s pretty much it for her. We’ve used a few educational apps, here and there, but I don’t love them for this age group. A lot of them are too simplistic, too dopamine-spike heavy, and again - having been really engaged with those, watching them, watching my girls use them and respond to them, I’m not convinced they’re getting enough from them to justify what often feels like pretty passive time. There are good educational apps out there, don’t get me wrong, but I just don’t think my 5 year old really needs any of them in her life just yet.
So what does that put her at - maybe, 3 hours all up per day, with the majority of it still heavily movement based.
So what about these two, do they play games? Yeah, totally. They both dip into Minecraft sometimes, they had a hilarious phase of Among Us a while back, which was the most adorable thing to listen to them doing, things like that. But it’s not a lot of time, and it’s not often. What they don’t play is ANY of those passive style games I spoke about before. They are 100% off limits for us. The analogy, for me, is loading up your pantry and fridge with highly addictive, sugary, unhealthy foods that do absolutely nothing good for you - in fact, they actively undermine your good health - and then wondering why your children keep pointing at them and asking for them. Wondering why they’re constantly distracted by the site of them, even just the thought of them. Wondering why your children are grumpy, and tired, and low energy after consuming them. If you don’t want that outcome, don’t have them in your home. And I encourage you to take that analogy to heart - because there is screen and tech use that will feed your children and help them grow, and there is screen and tech use that will undermine their health, both physically and mentally.
Now, before we wrap up this section on our personal approach, I must talk about social media. And, phone ownership, too, actually.
For us, your 15th birthday is the soonest you will get a phone. Not before. And even then, it’s based on us feeling confident that you’re ready to manage the responsibility. If there’s some pressing need earlier, like needing to communicate with us for whatever reason, it would be a dumb phone - you know, one with nothing beyond calling and texting. So this is our rule. 15 years old.
Social media, though, is effectively off limits until 18. Right now, our eldest - who is 17 - is the only one of our four children with a phone. His brother is fast approaching 15, he’ll be there in a few months, but not yet. But Mr 17 does not have Instagram, or Facebook. He is not allowed to use Tiktok. He uses Youtube, of course, but a good chunk of that is about creating his own work. And he uses Snapchat to talk to family and friends, but we’ve talked to him a lot about the potential pitfalls there. And you might say - wow, you guys are strict. You don’t let your 17 year old use Tiktok? Your 14 year old doesn’t even have a phone? But the thing is, because we’ve talked about this stuff so openly, and so often, our two teenagers are pretty much on the same page as us. They’re pretty much agree that we’re making a decision that has their best interests in mind. Our 14 year old doesn’t make a fuss about not having a phone. And our 17 year old is thankful that he hasn’t fallen into the trap of doom scrolling social media feeds like some of his friends have. He’s been able to watch the impact of that objectively. So my advice is - don’t be afraid to set boundaries. Don’t be afraid to not be the cool parent who gives their kids whatever device they want at whatever age they want, and let’s them sign up to whatever platform they want. Your kid’s friends might all think you’re awesome for doing that, but I strongly suspect that your children, when they’re older, will look back and feel like you gave them access to something they weren’t ready for.
Oh, and by the way, I would 100% recommend ignoring any age limits or guidelines the social media companies themselves set. On Tiktok, for example, you have to be at least 13 years old to create an account. But that doesn’t mean it’s ok to use that platform when you’re 13. It just means that’s the lowest number they were legally allowed to stamp on the box. It is not a number that is based on the best thing for your child’s mental health.
As I write this episode, a government lawsuit is unfolding against Tiktok in the US. A dozen state attorney generals have accused the company of harming children by using addictive product features. Would you believe that even Tiktok’s own internal research, which has begun slipping out around all this, found that - and I quote - “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety.” I don’t see them talking about that on their signup page. I don’t see any warnings about that when you go to create an account.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking their age guidelines are connected in any way to the brain being ready to handle that kind of experience.
<CLOSE>
Phew. Ok. We have dug into a lot today. Hopefully, you find enough across the research and our personal approach to take and mould to your own family. And hopefully it helps put to bed that nagging idea that what you need to do most of all is limit screens. I really hope it’s clear that time on screens is not our issue. And that thinking only in terms of reducing that figure is not the solution.
It’s what we’re using them for. It’s how we’re using them. It’s when we’re using them. If you focus on those things, the time spent on devices and technology will naturally start to shape into something that feels healthy and balanced. Stay away from blanket rules. Like all of my advice, start with your child - who they are, what they need, and how they respond to things. Let that guide you, and don’t be afraid to make those uncool decisions. I truly believe our children will grow up to thank us for them.
I also just want to say that you should never expect your rules, guidelines, and approach to all this to last forever. Or even, from year to year. As your children grow and change, so will the way they interact with technology. Don’t be afraid of that. Lean into your instinct, trust it, and help guide them through that journey in healthy ways. Keep them balanced. Keep them moving. Give them the best possible shot at good health - both physically and mentally.
And remember - as challenging as it can be to hear it, so much of this starts with you. With how deeply you engage with your children on all this. With how open you are to involving them in conversations and planning about the use of tech in their lives. With how you go about modelling healthy and balanced screen use. You are the key.
I know that often the kind of advice I’ve given here today can sound really useful, but then all come crashing down when you try and apply it in your own home. So with that in mind, I’m going to write up some deeper breakdowns into really specific scenarios based on questions parents ask my off the back of this episode. I know there’ll be lots of really interesting ones that come through, and - where I have permission to dig into them publicly - I’ll be posting some really specific advice on my website - starkravingdadblog.com.
Thank you so much for listening today, and for walking with me through what can feel like a tense, confronting, stressful space. But I really hope that by this point you’re feeling more informed, more equipped, and maybe a little bit more hopeful.
I’ll see you back here soon - bye for now.
