Balancing Screen Time And Family Time: A Complete Guide For You, Your Child, And Your Family

Situation 1

While playing chess with his 9-year-old daughter, Ravi hears a beep. It’s his Diwali day off, but he’s receiving emails from his clients in London. He figures that sending a quick reply wouldn’t take too long and starts typing on his phone. “Papa, look here!” his daughter calls out. She’s waiting for him to make his next move. Distracted, he moves his pawn, even as he receives another notification. By the time he looks up again, his daughter’s gone …

Situation 2

Upon logging off for the day, Sandhya steps out of her home office and braces herself for her second work shift. She has to prepare dinner, get her children to eat, and put them in bed. She also has a deadline to meet—she promised herself she would finish her work after the children have gone to bed. She selects some videos on the iPad and allows her children to watch them, while she tackles her pending tasks.

Situation 3

Sam is exhausted by the time the Zoom meeting marathon is over. All he wants to do is relax. He plonks himself down on the couch and looks for some mindless entertainment on TV. His wife and his teenage sons are huddled over their high-speed Wi-Fi devices, eating dinner and watching their favorite shows in the comfort of their own bedrooms. It’s close to midnight and Sam has watched a few episodes of ‘The Family Man.’ He’s tempted to watch just one more episode ...

Welcome to family life in the age of technology. Nothing has reshaped our communication, relationships, and lives more than technology in the 21st century.

On the one hand, research warns us about the harmful effects of gadget overuse on our children and our relationships. On the other hand, we cannot imagine our world without these gadgets. While technology is a great enabler, it can also disable us. The cost of being able to connect with anyone in the world is that we might not be fully present with the person physically next to us. And this is exactly why we need balance.

Let’s look at how we can balance screen time and family time so that we can benefit from technology while avoiding the negative impact of tech overuse, even in this new normal.

What you can do as an individual

In situation 1, Ravi’s emails and notifications are distracting him to the point where his daughter realizes that he’s not focusing on their game—and she leaves. Here’s what you can do to keep your focus on your child whenever you’re playing or spending time with them.

Turn off notifications. Studies show that push notifications, with their accompanying ping sounds, are habit-forming. As an article on kidsburgh.org says: “They align an external trigger (the ping) with an internal trigger (e.g., a feeling of boredom, uncertainty or insecurity).”

Speaking to ParentCircle, Blake Snow, author of Log Off: How to Stay Connected after Disconnecting, says: “I turn off all audible notifications unless I get a call or text from my wife or children. The only visual alerts I have are little bubbles for text messages. If I want to see what’s there, I decide when and where I look at them. It’s liberating and time-creating!”

• Disable auto-play. Auto-play is the feature that makes videos on sites like YouTube and Netflix continue to stream even after you’re done watching them. It’s known as the “bottomless bowl” phenomenon due to the binge-watching it leads to. Turning off the auto-play function on all your streaming services gives you a breather and makes the decision to keep watching a conscious one.
• Make an effort pact. “An effort pact prevents distraction by making unwanted behaviors more difficult to do,” says Nir Eyal, author of The New York Times bestseller, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, in a conversation with ParentCircle. Making an effort pact with your device could include installing an app—such as SelfControl—that can block your access to social media websites for a specified period of time. Turning off the Wi-Fi at home at 10 p.m. every night is another effort pact. You have to make an effort to turn it back on again.
• Reclaim your life. When you take short breaks, do you check your phone or do you meditate, take deep breaths or practice other ways of self-care? What’s the first thing you do in the morning—check your phone or roll over and cuddle with your partner? On weekends, do you prefer to stay in and binge-watch Netflix, or do you make an effort to connect with friends and family face-to-face? Nurturing yourself, your marriage and your important relationships is a crucial step in achieving balance in your life.

What you can do with your child

In situation 2, Sandhya uses the iPad as a babysitter because she is exhausted after the day’s work and wants to cook dinner in peace. Here’s what you can do if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Do activities that don’t involve screens. Simply telling your child to get off their phone or computer doesn’t engage them in a positive activity. Take a little bit of time each day to interact and communicate with your child. Get your child to help you with chores. Give them other activities to keep them occupied. Here is a list of activities you can do with your child when you return home from work.

Connect with your child. Dr Laura Markham, the author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, says: “Connection is 80% of our parenting.” Spend some time every day to connect with your child. Call it 'Special Time', wherein you hand over the reins to your child and do whatever your child wants you both to do (for, say, 10–15 minutes).

Ensure that there are no interruptions during this time. Phones are on silent mode and put away, and your full attention is on your child. Avoid directing the play in a manner you deem right. Shine your utmost love on your child while they lead the play. This strategy helps a child feel safe and fully accepted—and will make them more cooperative. Speaking to ParentCircle, Dr Markham said: “What’s so special about special time? It transforms our relationship with our children. And since that relationship is 90% of our parenting, you can’t get more special than that!”

Other strategies you could use:

Co-view. Co-viewing refers to parents and children watching media together; it allows interaction and discussion. Children learn better from media, educational shows, and videos when they are co-viewed and there is parent-child interaction while watching. Similarly, playing video games and using apps with a parent, termed co-playing, enables children to learn better from media, helps parents stay connected with their child, and allows parents to have a better sense of how their child is spending their time.

Become media-literate. Understand TV show and game ratings, educational versus non-educational content, and high-quality versus low-quality programs. Ensure that your child has access to high-quality, age-appropriate, and safe content. Understand that not all screen time is the same. Sitting and watching television for two hours is not the same as playing a learn-to-read game on a tablet, which is not the same as killing zombies on a game console.

Educate your child. You can even talk to young children about how too much screen time is harmful to their eyes, concentration, brain, and language development. A HuffPost article says that features such as app notifications, auto-play, and 'likes' are “scientifically proven to compel us to watch or check in or respond right now or feel that we’re missing something really important.”

So, talk about the addictive potential of gadgets with your children and teens. Talk about the influence of advertisements that pop up on the sites we visit, their impact on our thoughts and behaviors, and how they fuel a consumerist culture. Talk about cyberbullying.

Promote self-regulation. Encourage your child to find effective ways to self-regulate their device use. Encourage them to reflect on the impact of their daily gadget use on their personal, academic, and extracurricular goals. For example, could their goal be to cut down 15 minutes of social media scrolling every day? Encourage them to think of judicious use of the time saved by staying away from gadgets—ask them if they would like to learn a new skill or pursue an activity like sketching.

Establish a phone contract. When you do decide to give your child their own smartphone (which should be avoided till 14–16 years of age anyway, recommends Mr Snow), establish a phone contract first. It’s a contract between a child and parent that lays out the terms of using the device and the consequences of breaking the rules. For example, it lets your child know how much time they can spend on the phone every day, what happens if they break or misplace their gadget, and what content they can access.

Limit time. Access to gadgets should be viewed as an earned privilege, not an automatic right. It’s good to limit your child’s gadget usage to 60–90 minutes per day. This, of course, excludes the time spent on online classes or online homework. You can also negotiate with your child on when they can use gadgets every day, for example, after they clean their room and complete their homework.

Talk to your child about good digital hygiene. Basic hygiene steps include keeping devices updated, using antivirus software, and keeping your passwords safe. Ask your teen to spring-clean their social media friend list every once in a while—if they can’t remember who a person is or if they have never met the person in real life, or if they have never once had written communication with this person, chances are this person shouldn’t be on their friend list.

Install parental control apps. Regulate how your child uses a device by installing a parental control app, which limits the duration of usage and restricts access to specific websites. These parental control apps filter content and block access to social media or games during homework time.

Encourage face-to-face interactions. Help your child develop friendships across many sources—school clubs, youth groups or programs, sports teams, school holiday camps, and more. Help them prioritize relationships with people they know over faceless, electronic ones.

What you can do as a family

In situation 3, Sam and his family appear “alone together” or disconnected from each other. Here’s what family members can do instead of being huddled over their gadgets all the time.

Do a screen time audit. As a family, examine your relationship with screens. Start by asking each family member questions about their screen use:

How much time do you spend watching TV per day?

How much time do you spend on your laptop or computer per day for study/work?

How much time do you spend on mobile devices per day? Is it different on weekdays and weekends?

How much leisure time do you spend online versus offline?

What are the different things you do on your computer, tablet, or smartphone? How much time do you spend on each activity?

Have each family member note down their responses to these questions and identify the times of the day when they use screens. You can also use apps that help log the duration and type of screen time. Once a screen audit is completed, you can develop your Family Media Plan (FMP).

Develop a Family Media Plan. This plan needs to be made for each family member, depending on their responses to the screen audit.

• Set gadget-free zones: Decide the areas of your house where gadgets (TV, mobiles, laptops, or gaming consoles) are not allowed. Examples include bedroom, kitchen, and dining room. Also, everyone can charge their phones at a designated spot outside the bedrooms at night.

Set family gadget-free time: Your family could also mutually decide to set aside specific gadget-free time for everyone. It could be:

• Mealtime and when at the dinner table
• Turn off all gadgets one hour before bedtime
• During family time, when family members want to talk to each other or do activities together
• One or two hours on weekends
• Have tech-free evenings (maybe once a week) or tech-free days such as a few days during holidays or vacations

Set limits: Decide how much time your child is allowed to use gadgets and technology, other than for online classes and homework. Remember, you can be flexible about when your child uses the gadgets, provided it’s not during the family gadget-free time.

• How much time on a weekday?
• How much time on weekends?
• How much time on holidays and vacations?
• How much time when visiting people?
• What time should all gadgets be turned off every night?

Decide on consequences: The Family Media Plan should also mention the consequences of breaking the mutually decided family rules—such as cutting gadget use time the next day or the next week if extra time is used on a particular day.

Make sleep a priority in your family. Adults require 7–8 hours, while children require 9–11 hours of sleep every day. Dr Anisha Abraham, a clinical psychologist at the American Mission Hospital, Bahrain, says: “Follow a fixed bedtime routine. Set appropriate and consistent bedtimes for everyone in the family and stick to them.”

Be a good digital role model. “As parents, it’s extremely important for us to demonstrate healthy screen-viewing habits to our children,” adds Dr Abraham. Research corroborates the importance of setting a good example—65% of children whose parents have an electronic device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) in their bedroom also have one device in their own bedroom. Children are also acutely aware of their parents’ disengagement from each other. They observe what happens when parents are talking about something important and one parent answers a call mid-conversation.

For you

To maintain a balance between screen and family time, here’s what you can do with your gadget use:

• Turn off audible notifications so that you’re not tempted to respond to every ping and ding.
• Turn off auto-play from your streaming apps, so that you make the decision to keep watching videos or shows a conscious one.
• Make an effort to stop unwanted behaviors (such as by installing a distraction-proofing app, such as the SelfControl app, to block your access to social media sites when working).
• Nurture yourself and your relationships by practicing self-care and prioritizing family and friends over the screen.

For your child

To maintain a balance between screen and family time, here’s what you could do with your child’s gadget use:

• Do activities that don’t involve screens. Take a little bit of time each day to interact and communicate with your child. Get your child to help you with chores.
• Spend 'special time' with your child—give them 15–20 minutes of undivided attention each day, showering them with love and letting them lead the play.
• Watch media along with your child (called co-viewing)—this allows for interaction and discussion and enables your child to learn better from media.
• Talk about the addictive potential of gadgets with your child. Talk about how too much screen time is harmful to their eyes, concentration, brain, physical growth, and language development.
• Encourage your child to find effective ways to self-regulate their device use. Encourage them to reflect on the impact of their daily gadget use on their personal, academic, and extracurricular goals.
• Establish a phone contract when you do decide to give your child their own smartphone.
• Limit your child’s gadget usage to 60–90 minutes per day.
• To nurture meaningful friendships and relationships, encourage your child to have in-person conversations (rather than simply texting).

For your family

To maintain a balance between screen and family time, here’s what you can do as a family:

Develop a Family Media Plan wherein together as a family, you decide:

• What screen-free zones will be in your family (dining table, bedroom, etc.)
• What will be the screen-free times in your family (e.g., mornings before leaving for school, one hour before bedtime)
• Set limits on the duration of gadget use as well as the content that each member is allowed to access
• Pre-decide the consequences if any member breaks these rules/limits

Prioritize sleep in your family. Adults require 7–8 hours while children require anywhere between 9 and 11 hours of sleep per night.

And most of all, be a good digital role model by demonstrating healthy screen-viewing habits to your child.