Our Screen Time Conundrum
Being that Qeepsake is a services administered through text messages, I thought it befitting to talk about screen time. This hot button topic is increasingly more present as the generation that made screens the dominating force that they are today are raising children of their own. And just like any other question raised in parenting, answers are really hard to come by.
This is my favorite topic to discuss with other parents. I have two young ones at home — soon to be 8 and 5 years old. They love screens. If they sense the presence of a screen anywhere near them, they instantly drop what they are doing and flock to it like pigeons to an old man with bread scraps. Their eyes glass over as if they’re staring into the ark of the covenant. Any focus their little bodies contain is squarely undivided onto whatever is being projected at them. As a parent, this is concerning.
When I grew up, my sister and I would just turn the TV on and hope for something good. This was the late 90s/early 00s when there were hundreds of channels, but nothing on demand. If we didn’t find something we honestly enjoyed, we would flip through the myriad of channels, eventually landing on something bordering satisfactory. My parents gave strong suggestions that we should turn the TV off and go outside, but we didn’t really have staunch permission policy like my wife and I have in our home. This wild west approach also does not seem particularly healthy for developing minds.
Is requiring permission and limiting time the right way to go about watching TV or playing on the computer? I have absolutely no idea.
I would say though that growing up with that sort of freedom, or lack of policing, made screens normal (if not undesirable) by the time I was a teenager. Although Playstation and Xbox still reigned supreme, friends in the outdoors was a far more compelling call. Granted, this was before social media when friendships existed solely outside of the internet, so we did have that going for us. With that thought in mind, maybe I should just let the kids have at it. Consume what you will, little sponge-like brains!
No..that doesn’t seem right either.
My wife and I often wonder if they have such a severe response to phones, tablets, and the like because we have very limited screen time in our own home. We have a TV, but no cable, so things like Netflix and Amazon are very deliberate. We need to set it up and navigate through the TV menu to get to the desired destination. It’s a process that we hold the keys to. We’ve experimented with more freedom or time with shows and tv, and although they do eventually become bored and restless, it seems to come after multiple hours. It’s also not a boredom or restlessness that inspires creativity or explorations. It’s almost a numbness.
Furthermore, there is a hypocritical element to this approach. As a writer, I spend most of my day in front of a laptop. How do I tell a child that too much time in front of screens is not good for them, when they frequently see me entrenched in one myself? As we know, children and the great hypocrisy whistle-blowers of the world.
Are we being too worrisome? Are we creating future TV and internet junkies by not allowing them to explore and find their own rhythm?
I’ve read plenty of “Studies show” articles though every other one seems to come to a different conclusion. The problem is not as severe as we think, or it seems to whole heartedly be the end of days.
So we are left to throw our hand in the air and say, “Screw it. We’re wingin it!”. Our new idea is that we’ll still keep screen time limited, but we as parents will watch along with them. We’ll not treat it as a babysitter, but as a treat for the WHOLE family and we pick movies and shows as a team. We’ve noticed that the kids seem to be watching more deliberately as well. They are excited to share the time with us, and rather than being in a trance, they’re paying attention to the plot, character arcs, and what makes the scene sad or happy. They’re actually experiencing a story, rather than just a barrage of color and noise. Later on in the day, we’ll find the stories they watched on TV seep into their imaginative play. It seems as though their entertainment is not informed by screens, but supplemented by them.
This is how we’ve found empathy and engagement in an age of distraction. For now, this seems okay. I’ll probably never find the answers I seek, but as long as they’re getting SOMETHING useful out of screen time, no matter how small, I’ll consider it a win.
