Screen Time

If you do a quick Google of “kids and screen time,” you’ll find a myriad articles telling you how much they’ve had this past year and all the things it is doing to them, as if we haven’t been with our children almost 24 hours a day and k…

This is a sponsored message on behalf of Google For most parents, balancing screen time has always been a challenge. But over this last year, the struggle became even more real, with three in five parents allowing an increase in time spe…

Over the last month, we've been getting bombarded with all sorts of posts about kids and screen time, from articles telling us that we've got a big problem on our hands to ways to feel okay about all the screen time . If you're like me, …

My son's just at the age he can start listening to stories on his own, but I'm not in a hurry to hand over my iPhone to keep him entertained. So I was intrigued to read about Toniebox , a cool screen-free content box for little kids. The…

With resolutions and goals for 2020 in mind, we know that a lot parents are thinking about technology and screen time. Wrangling screen time is a huge concern for many of you (and us), as well as the members of our Out Tech Your Kids Fac…

Raising kids in a digital age presents all sorts of parenting challenges. That’s one of the many reasons we started Cool Mom Tech, along with our new Out Tech Your Kids Facebook Group (OTYK). And we talk about it a lot on our Spawned Par…

This weekend, inspired by the Cool Mom Picks book club video chat about How to Break Up with Your Phone , I decided to try one of author Catherine Price's tips to help me be more mindful about my screen time, and more aware of how much I…

If you tend to stick to hard and fast time-limited screen time rules with your preschooler, it might actually be a good thing. According to a recent study at the University of Alberta , kids by the age of 5 who spent two hours or more lo…

If you haven't updated to the new iOS 12.2, it's worth it just to get the new Screen Time app feature that allows you to customize your child's downtime by the day. It's pretty easy to do once you have your phone running on the new iOS. …

You've probably already figured out how to use the Screen Time app on iPhone to help manage your child's screen time. Screen Time makes it easy to block and set limits on categories of apps, specific apps during Downtime, or just screen …

As part of our Ultimate Guide to Digital Parenting , answering parents' top questions about family technology, we're sharing the best services and tools to help you monitor your kids on their gadgets. While most routers, phones, tablets …

Next up in our Ultimate Guide to Digital Parenting , we tackle one of the biggest challenges parents face each day: screen time management. We know full well how hard it can be to decide how much is the right amount of time for our kids,…

As part of our Ultimate Guide to Digital Parenting , we know that a top question from parents is the best way to set screen time rules when we're at home. And we've got so many helpful approaches for you! Because bringing gadgets into yo…

Since reading Anya Kamenetz's interview with Jordan Shapiro on NPR , I've made some heavy shifts in how I'm approaching screen time with my kids. For the years that they've been on video games, tablets and most recently, their own phones…

After finally updating my son's iPhone SE to iOS 12 , I've been able to properly utilize the Screen Time app , which by the way, is where you'll find all the Restrictions you might be familiar with from previous iOS versions. If you've g…

We've been talking a lot about screen addiction and overuse here over the last few weeks (and well, years), including our Curb Your Screen Addiction series . Well, we recently chatted with author Jake Knapp on our Spawned podcast, who ha…

This week in our Curb Your Screen Addiction series, we're talking about how screen time monitoring apps can help you rein in your phone use. If you're like me, then you found yourself quite surprised by your screen time stats when Apple …

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-a…

Next up in our series on how to curb your screen addiction, we're tackling the issue of notifications. Back when I first got a smartphone, those little red numbers next to my apps filled me with excitement. Someone had messaged me! Or li…

As we continue our New Year's series on how to curb your screen addiction, I'm excited to share our next tip since it's been one that's been so helpful in managing my own tech habits. Plus, it's a change you can make in literally 5 minut…

Who else here is planning to curb your screen addiction in 2019? As parents, we often spend so much time worrying about our kids' screen time (and how to preserve my sanity during a 700th viewing of Cars 3), but everything I've heard and…

Sorry for the earworm, but the second I saw these IRL Glasses on Kickstarter , I couldn't stop singing Bohemian Rhapsody, because they seem pulled right out of a sci-fi movie or Black Mirror. If you think I'm exaggerating, you need to se…

A few weeks ago, my youngest was angry with me about losing her iPad privileges, and in her fit of rage yelled "I bet you couldn't be without your phone for 12 hours." We all know that the truth hurts, but to hear it out of the mouth of …

We often get asked the best way for parents to manage their kid's screen time, and while we have our own opinions about screen time management, we never miss an opportunity to get another expert's opinion. That's exactly what Kristen did…

A few years ago, we featured the Kickstarter campaign for The Light Phone , a gadget that was designed to help people separate themselves from their smartphones. Well, they've recently launched The Light Phone 2 and it's blowing up Indie…

If you've been concerned about the amount of screen time your teens might be consuming, you've actually got some cause. According to a new study, teens who spent more time on their devices were less happy than those who invested more tim…

My internet at home has been so slow lately, so I recently upgraded to the top-of-the-line WiFi option our cable company offers. Even still, our service can get spotty when 6 people all arrive home, and want to get online at the same tim…

My youngest child loves watching movies on our family iPad, but if your kids are like her, they can't help tapping and touching the screen which then requires you to rewind, fast forward, or turn it back on 400 times. So when I found out…

If you're like me, then you do your best to manage screen time using myriad methods. In our house, I've done The Marble Jar to read for screens, and pretty much everything in between. And still, there are tantrums and arguments when it's…

If you're like us, then your kids having been begging for screen time the second they got out of school. But hey, just because you're home more doesn't necessarily mean you get more time on your screens, kids. So, to help you manage the …

When it comes to smart phone addiction , we've done our own experiments with putting away our phones around our kids here at Cool Mom Tech. We've even used various techniques to manage screen time for our own kids and tweens. That's why …

Just when you thought you needed to worry about your kid's screen time, it turns out that the amount of time you spend on your phone could be affecting your child's behavior. According to a new study conducted at the University of Michig…

If you've got toddlers on screens during the day, a new study out of England suggests it could be cutting into their sleep at night. And as we parents know, sleep is a precious commodity. Looking at data from about 700 British families, …

My kids are master negotiators when it comes to screen time, which is why we've never been successful with cookie-cutter methods to manage it. Sorry, Marble Jar . So that's why I'm excited about the free unGlue app (iOS and Android ), wh…

We've found that managing screen time is one of the most common across-the-board challenges parents in this digital age face. And hey, with six kids between us, we understand how difficult it can be, especially when just going gadget-fre…

It's hard enough to juggle the after-school routine of dinner, signing homework folders, and making sure the laundry is done for tomorrow, not to mention screen time management. But lately I've been using the free Screen Time Manager app…

With kids out of school and summer officially here, I'm pretty sure most parents are struggling to figure out how to manage their kids' screen time. We've featured lots of screen time management ideas here on Cool Mom Tech, as well as sm…

Over the course of the year on Cool Mom Tech, we’ve put together so many helpful tech tips and tricks, many of which are answers to reader questions we get via email, over Twitter , on Facebook , and heck, even from our friends and famil…

Watching our kids maneuver their way through all this new tech is a joy. It's just so cool to see how much they're doing and learning on these glowing gadgets. But the other side of that is trying to stay on top of what they're watching,…

I've often wondered if I've had a bit of a smartphone addiction, seeing as how my iPhone often functions as my third arm. Or second brain. As a busy work-at-home-mom who runs her own business, my smartphone allows me freedoms that I woul…

We are so excited about (and kind of in awe of) so many of the things that computers are doing for our kids, but the reality is, sometimes we need help managing their screen time. So many readers have written to us thanking us for tips l…

Over the course of this year, we've put together lots of helpful tech tips and tricks, so many of them from your own questions to us. (We love answering reader questions!) Here, 11 of our very favorite tech tips of the year (including lo…

Just this week my 5-year-old son busted me for using my iPhone at the breakfast table. It's a no-no in our house, but I was reading something important . (It was a post ranking the Hot Guys of World Cup. See? Important.) Turns out, this …

With my kids officially out of school, I, along with lots other parents I'm sure, am gearing up for loads of free time. And that means trying to figure out how to manage screen time for the kids. Over the last few months, I've put togeth…

If you hadn't already figure it out, we here at Cool Mom Tech are huge advocates of talking to your kids about technology early and often, and that's exactly what our Editor Kristen told the Christian Science Monitor for their cover stor…

With a second grader in the house who is increasingly reliant on the computer for homework and projects, I'm finding myself becoming much more vigilant about what he's doing when online, and researching ways to be better about monitoring…