Managing Screen Time with Kids of Different Ages

For decades, parents have worried they are letting their children watch too much TV. Pediatric studies tend to back up these fears, calling out excessive screen-time as a chief culprit for everything from preschool couch potatoes to insomniac teens. And then came tablets and smart phones, and things got really complicated.

Within just the last couple of years, portable devices moved from high-tech toys to ubiquitous aspects of daily life. Tablets are perfect for little hands too small to hold a mouse or remote control, but easily able to touch a screen. So, where it used to be just television shows and video games, there are now easily accessible YouTube clips, video chats with long-distance family members, and hundreds of preschooler apps. With more activities than ever before, how much screen time is acceptable?

If you’re under the age of two, the Canadian Paediatric Society says the answer is “none at all.”  When we had our first child, we decided this would be the advice we would try to follow. Holding off any screen time until our daughter reached her second birthday was a strategy that worked within our own little ecosystem. But then we had a second child and realized things would likely go quite differently this time around.

Keeping our eldest away from the screen was easy in the sense she had no idea what she was missing—we rarely had a TV on when she was awake and I became pretty good about surreptitiously checking my Twitter timelines on the tablet. My son, however, is already pretty aware there’s something magical happening in the car seat next to his when we head out to visit the grandparents.

Every family—and every child—is different. Keeping in mind the general warnings is a good idea, but you need to use your own judgment to develop strategies.

Our daughter often borrows our tablets for medium-length road trips. She’ll get 15 to 30 minutes to watch her favourite downloaded show or play a few of her games. My wife and I have curated our touchscreens to display carefully chosen apps that are fun and cool-looking, but secretly strive to improve memory, vocabulary, or hand-eye co-ordination. Also, they stave off boredom in traffic gridlock.

Our youngest’s rear-facing car seat design prevents his wandering, wondering eyes, but it’s a different matter when we’re back at home. Babies are drawn to the glow of the screen, so when his big sister is being a virtual veterinarian or watching polar princesses reaffirm their friendship, he’ll contort his body to see what excitement he’s missing. He’s still only five months old, so it’ll be quite some time before he’s ready to gently sit with an iPad, but it seems pretty impossible we’ll hold out until he turns two.

If we let our son watch before is recommended, we won’t be alone. In 2011, the American Academy of Pediatrics cited a survey showing 90 per cent of parents said their under-two children had watched some form of electronic media. And this was three years back—a lifetime ago when it comes to tech. According to a 2013 report by Common Sense Media, children younger than eight have tripled the time they spend on mobile devices each day—about 15 minutes to play games, use educational apps, and watch videos. The question remains whether this is cause for concern or just a reflection of how new technology impacts our lives.

It is also important to remember every family—and every child—is different. Keeping in mind the general warnings is a good idea, but you need to use your own judgment to develop strategies for how your kids interact with something that will forever be part of their life. And those strategies will likely keep evolving.

In the meantime, we’ll keep trying to delay the inevitable by having our daughter watch or play apps whenever her younger brother’s not awake in the room. And if she does lead to him navigating a tablet while he’s still a toddler, well, that’s what older siblings are for.

Do you have kids of different ages at home? How do you manage screen-time recommendations?