Family screen use contracts are a powerful tool in the management of digital devices for families.
Managing screen time in families presents a challenge. How do you balance your desire not to have your kid become an internet Borg, hopelessly melded to a digitial hive, with your desire to have your child be able to enjoy all of the terrific things available in the digital universe?
The good news is that we don’t have to become Luddites to achieve this balance. All we need is boundaries.
In the first article (This is part 2 of the series. Read Part 1.), I shared the idea of screen audit and a form to complete it on.
After the Audit
Once the audit is complete, it’s time to set boundaries in the form of a screen contract. Before you draft the contract, there are a few things to consider.
It’s about the family.
The contract’s purpose is to make sure that screen use aligns with the goals of the family, not to punish. Because of this, we must take the time to understand and explain why it’s important to us as a family to establish boundaries for screens.
This means for the grown-ups, too. We can’t be hypocrites, not even looking up from our own phones to tell our kids to get off of the Xbox.
Where do the problems lie?
Looking at the audit, you can see device by device, where any issues of greater-than-desirable-use lie.
For example, if someone is on a laptop 22 hours a week, but 20 of those hours are for study purposes, then cutting back to 15 hours may not be helpful.
There’s at least one exception to this, however. Sometimes, the work on the laptop should take far less time than it does, but it’s frequently interrupted by visits to social media sites (etc….). If this is the case, you may need to use one of the many available apps that block other apps in order to make the time more productive.
Back down slowly
To avoid mutiny, contention, and a host of other undesirable consequences, move slowly towards optimal use.
If a child has been using a device for 12 hours a week, and a use of 2 hours a week is more appropriate, move backwards slowly to ll, then 10, then 9, etc.
In addition to overall time, consider times that no devices are allowed to be used. What is the curfew for the phone? The iPad?
What doesn’t count?
When my kids would lose computer privileges, one of their work-arounds was to watch their brothers play (I only have sons.). Yeah, no dice. In our family, the eyes have it, not the fingers, so the time counts if you are watching someone else play.
You may decided differently for your family.
If you ask a child to perform a task on a device, perhaps that shouldn’t count against time.
Monitoring
How time is monitored should be considered. Will you set timers? If so, when do the timers start? What about saving time? Who hasn’t heard the wail, “But I can’t save!”? Ugh. That is not an accident – it’s video game designer mischief.
Location
Part of the boundaries of device usage is the location of the device. Where are they allowed to be? We didn’t allow kids to have devices with internet connectivity anywhere but the common areas of the house until they were seniors in high school. It sounds crazy, but it was important to us that there be no hiding for their own protection.
Always, Sometimes, Never
Which sites are kids allowed to access anytime (teachers’ websites, etc.), sometimes (games, etc.), and never (porn, hate speech, etc.)?
Spell this out clearly.
Prep work
I am firmly against allowing kids to gain more screen time by doing things the parent sees as desirable (such as reading). The reason for this is that it sends the message that screen time is the best thing ever! It’s definitely something better than reading. That’s the wrong message.
It’s important to establish what must be done before recreational screens come on, however. You may have allocated 45 minutes to gaming on school days, but that time is conditional on the important things’ being done first.
What are those things? Homework? Care for pets? Citizen of the Household tasks (that’s what we call chores)?
Passwords
Many parents are unaware that companies like Facebook will not give you access to your child’s account. If you don’t have the password, that’s too bad.
Because of this, password policies need to be established in families.
One simple solution is to have a password for each child that they use on any account (you can usually have one that works for even the stingiest of websites by having a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and other characters). These passwords can be kept in a document that the parents have access to.
Consequences
What will happen as a result of violation? While it’s important to discuss all of this as a family, this one is particularly important to be crowdsourced.
Keep in mind that kids may decide deliberately to violate the contract if they know exactly what the consequence will be, so make sure you change up the consequences. Keep ’em guessing…
Read the fine print
Like any contract worth its salt, this one has fine print. The fine print here keeps you firmly in your role as the parent. You trump everything when the need arises. Just beware of superceding the contract too often or it loses its legitimacy.
Good luck!
I hope this is useful to you. If you’re a teacher, it may be helpful to share this with parents if you think it may benefit them.
Remember, if you haven’t read the first article, you may wish to do that.
I just stumbled upon this posting about whether or not to have IQ testing on young children and the many comments and questions parents have on the subject.
I would like to relate my experience in the hope of bringing something to the discussion.
When our son was 4.5, we took him for IQ testing. We observed that his skills appeared to be well above those of this peers and we were encouraged to do so by the early childhood educators who knew him.
We took him to a facility that was recommended by a prestigious private school that does the testing for them.
We did not tell him that it was testing, nor did we suggest it was to see about his intellect. Rather we said that he was going to meet someone who would play games with him and who would help us decide the best kind of teacher for him. He had the best time and had a great outcome…he scored over 140.
Our rational for the testing was to learn what we were dealing with and how to become the best advocate for him in school.
We also received great suggestions on how to stimulate his love of learning outside of school. We played lots of card games, encouraged his love of numbers, started him on his first instrument at age 7 and spent time exploring whatever interested him.
The testing met our needs and because we were armed with the knowledge of his potential we could speak with confidence about his academic placements.
Fast forward almost 40 years…
Our son graduated from our local HS, as valedictorian.
He traveled the world during the summers of his high school years with a youth orchestra.
He went to a top university on a academic scholarship.
He is extremely well-rounded but never
wavered in his love of numbers and is in a profession that uses those skills.
Would the outcome have been any different had we not taken him for testing? Probably not. But as new parents, it gave us the confidence that we needed to nurture his gift and feed his intellect.