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Screentime during Covid-19 has gone through the roof. As I said in my segment on Sunrise, that is to be expected. So, forget your usual screen time rules because these won’t work. Instead shift your focus to healthy screen use. This will work much better because doesn’t only focus on how much time we use technology but on other factors as well- important factors that often get missed.
✅Is screen quality in check? This means thinking about what our kids (and ourselves) and actually doing on the screen. Too much passive viewing is not good, nor is too much content that’s not suitable for their age. Balance out the content that your kids are engaging with on their devices.
💡some entertainment and some educational,
💡some of it gets them to use their imagination,
💡some of it helps them to develop new interests,
💡some of it gets them to problem solve or to make things,
💡some of it inspire new ideas for playing with their toys. These are all ways to work out it something is good quality screen content. Avoid those apps that seem to be all about gimmicky ways to get kids to buy in -app purchases, or that only focus on popular movies or food products. These have only usually been designed to sell more products.
✅Are screen buddies in check? Being alone on your device by yourself for hours everyday is no good for anyone- including our kids. healthy screen use is also about mixing up who we use a device with. Sometimes by ourselves, sometimes with someone sitting right next to you and sometimes hanging out with someone virtually. Help your kids and ourselves mix it up socially when using a device.
✅Other fun things to do. Keeping screen time healthy also means making sure that there are other things to do apart from using your technology. And these might change. In my family we had a week of making ice-cream, then we shifted to a big jigsaw puzzle (that one didn’t really work for us as a family), and now we are onto gardening and making a new hidey-house for the cat. Try non-technology things to do as a family, alone, with another family member of friend to keep it fresh and interesting.
For more advice on parenting go to https://www.joanneorlando.com.au/
For digital wellbeing course for students go to https://www.techclever.education/courses/techclever-students
For courses for parent to better manage children’s technology use https://www.techclever.education/courses/techclever-parents
