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Comment by shijie | Hacker News Reader

So for parents of phone-using-age kids, what is your tactic for healthily limiting screen time? Behavioral, technological, etc… As the father of a 2 1/2 year-old, I’d love to hear suggestions, even though this scenario for me is a few years down the road.

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I actually get a lot of mileage out of screen time for parenting. The system I've used (I say I because if it were up to my spouse, we'd have no system) is x minutes after meals, where x has increased as they've gotten older. This started as a way to get them to eat moderately healthy at regular intervals. So the weekly schedule is 3x minutes on weekend days, and 2x minutes on week days. The effect I'm going for is "put in the work, then enjoy the reward" as a general approach to life. Using screen time in this way let's me do it in a calm, non confrontational way.

This has a lot of consequences. Like they willingly get out of bed, get dressed, and eat breakfast so they can have screen time before school. After school it's finish homework, bathe, etc. In our house screen time is basically a given unless they do something to lose it. Sometimes when they argue constantly I'll say "No screen time, you can earn it back when I've heard you each say 5 nice things to the other" or something to that effect.

Our kids are accustomed to this, I've been super consistent since they were little. I do sometimes wonder if there are unforseen side effects that may be detrimental. Otherwise they seem to have done really well. Edit to add; ours don't have phones yet, I'll probably be leaning on iOS parental controls.

I tried to be like this, but consistency went out the door during COVID and daycare shutdown days when both of us also had to work.

The only detrimental effect I can think of is your kids not being accustomed to regulating their own behavior as they grow older (like say, turning 18 and going off to college if you don’t loosen the control before hand). But that is a normal parenting problem.

If you're having to use technological means to block, rather than your authority, then you've already lost I think.

it's wild to me that so many people frame discussions about their kids in terms of "opponents that have to be defeated"

It's not a subject I'm terribly interested or familiar with, but parenting strategies from a distance sound extremely barbaric

Kids don't believe in authority.

Ehh... technology keeps getting more addictive, smaller, and always-online, but authority is roughly the same it always was.

I don't think we can be expected to fight a one-sided race forever. At some point you simply have to block the mind-virus games and websites which have been perfectly tailored to infect young minds.

I think there's a slight difference between 'I have to regulate their daytime use to the minute' or 'I'll shut off access after midnight because I see they are only staying up to do whatever online' - but as I don't have kids I only remember my own teenage self and maybe I was grown up enough to only go to bed slightly later and still got kinda enough sleep. My parents never had to use any technological measures, but they've also not used 'authority' a lot, per se.

Xfinity has an app that lets you create profiles (for each individual in your family, for example) and associate them with devices. You can set time boundaries and limits on the profiles. This is the smaller, tactical side of a bigger strategy which is…

Discuss boundaries with your kids. Explain why healthy balance of screen time is important. Enable them to take responsibility for their own time. This is a long-term play ;)

First you have to establish what "healthy screen time" even means - something I imagine isn't quite so simple. The tactics for limiting screen usage to 1 hour a day seem likely to be different than limiting it to something like 5 hours a day.

Just don't give them phones or tablets if possible until they are 16 or older. If you do, no Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok or anything that has a social aspect to it. Curate their internet experience with a Pihole. If they must use Youtube, make sure the account is in your control so you can view what they watch for correction.

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