Ask HN: How do you teach your kids to regulate screen time / games?

I give them as much screen time as they like as long as they can discipline themselves.

Daddy gets to look at the phone all night? Well, yeah, daddy also gets up and showers earlier than everyone else.

If the kids are able to finish their homework, clean up, shower, eat, wash dishes, go to bed, they get unlimited screen time. Also they have to behave. My two year old son is surprisingly the neatest of the bunch... until he has access to YouTube, then nothing makes him satisfied.

So screen time changes. We've settled on no screen time after 7 PM, unlimited on weekends. Sometimes my eldest slips on homework, so no screen time on weekdays, and before 7 PM on weekends. No YouTube for the toddler, except every few days, and it's over when he misbehaves.

One goal here is to build immunity to all the crap on the internet too. I had a friend in college who never touched games until he was in college. He'd disappear for long periods of times on gaming binges and neglect everything else. So you want to slowly dose them to clickbait and freemium games and such.

Kis are 9 and 10. For the past few years, they are allowed 1hour of screen time on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. They are required to eat and do their homeworks before playing. Screen time can be anything, so they either watch series, play games, create spreadsheets, etc. Since they have discovered Minecraft, they play a lot together, it's great to see!

They are expected to control their screen time by themselves and globally they respect it. The younger one does sometimes "forget" for how long he's been playing, in that case we make him immediately stop, that's effective but heart breaking.

We also watch movies on : - Tuesdays nights can be anything they want, especially re-watch. They decide by voting, or random choice, or negotiate - Fridays nights: it must be a movie they haven't seen yet We've discovered quite a lot of great movies that way!

Computers and switch are on free access, but they are forbidden to sleep with it. Our first born started watch it at nights during a few weeks, so we now control more closely where the computers are...

For now it's enough!

I use Family Link for the phone, and wifi parental controls to kill the wifi to the TVs overnight.

She's usually pretty good about it, then realized if she woke up at 4 or 5AM she could watch TV without being bothered, but then be tired and cranky all day. That was the reason for the TV filters.

Mine are still quiet small and we bought a couple of colored hour glass where you can choose between 5,15 and 30min. I ask them to be mindful and put it away. Of course I come in after a while to check but quiet often they are fair and put it away. I like to still have a bit analog and that we “talk”.