Next up in our Curb Your Screen Addiction series, we’re featuring our easiest tip yet. This one comes from Kristen and Liz’s interview with The Art of Screen Time author and NPR commentator Anya Kamenetz, who offers some excellent, non-alarmist advice on how to handle the screen time issue with your kids.
If you haven’t heard this Spawned episode yet, you’ll definitely want to add it to your queue. In addition to giving healthy tech guidelines, she explores how technology can be a beneficial part of our kids’ lives, which I found very comforting as the mom of a toddler who just learned how to skip Youtube ads by himself.
It’s a brave new world.
That’s why I’m so grateful to have this tip which Anya borrowed from social media researcher Danah Boyd.
Related: Curb Your Screen Time Addiction series: Using grayscale on your smartphone
Tip 4: Narrate what you’re doing on your phone aloud.
Since kids use their phones primarily for recreation, like games and social media, they probably assume that’s also what you’re doing on your phone. Cluing kids in to the fact that you’re actually working, paying a bill, or checking on a sick friend helps them to understand that you’re not just scrolling through Twitter all day. Anya says this kind of transparency can help you model better screen time habits, which in turn helps your kids set better boundaries too.
However, if you’re aimlessly browsing Twitter, or scrolling through Instagram Stories for the 5th time today, saying it out loud can help you be more mindful and ask yourself if this is actually how you want to spend your time. Because being aware is half the battle.
Photo by William Iven on Unsplash
Other posts in our Curb Your Screen Time Addiction series:
