How can I manage my child’s screen time and make it in a fun way?
In a 2017 survey by the American non-profit Common Sense Media, 70 percent of parents said they’re concerned about the amount of time their kids spend using digital media.
The first step is to talk to your kids from a young age about balance and it’s not just in the context of screens, but in everything people do in life. But many parents need more than just a philosophical chat with their kids to ensure screen time doesn’t get out of hand. Here are some methods and tools recommended to make the daily screen time management easy & fun for your family:
Timetable
The activity consists of five different colors, and there are seven lines in each color. Your child’s daily technology usage time should be maximum one hour at a time. Therefore, each line represents one hour of technology usage. The result becomes negative according to the usage level upwards.
During the day, after your child’s technology usage of one hour, you have to cut a line starting from white, and you will continue to cut lines every 1 hour. Your child, whose only white part is missing, is on the right track.
Media Tokens
Media tokens are another effective method to track the technological device usage times of children. It is especially effective as it offers the opportunity to concertize for the small children who have difficulty understanding the concept of time. You need to create tokens for the duration of use that you determine according to your child’s age. Plastic bottle caps, ice cream sticks, small papers, or anything else you designate together will be your media token. For example, if you have set a 30-minute daily period, you will give your child 3 coins at the beginning of the day. Your child will return one token to you every 10 minutes of technology use. If s/he wants, s/he uses all the coins at the same time, or divides them into certain hours of the day. Leaving this decision to the child will provide control over the process and increase the chance of his/her collaborating with you.
Some helpful recommendations for parents:
· As parents, decide how long, in what time interval and in what part of the house your child will use technological devices, and always inform your child about this media plan. When implementing this plan, be careful to be clear and consistent.
· You can use the timer while setting the time your child spends in front of the screen. Hourglass, alarm or stopwatch are effective and simple ways to control the time. In this way, you can prevent conflicts between you and the child at the end of the period.
· Children become very busy during the use of technological devices and have difficulty understanding how time passes. Therefore, they have difficulty in returning / closing the technological device at the end of the period. It is necessary to remind children so that they realize the time and adjust themselves. It will be useful to inform the child 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 1 minute before the deadline.
· It should be noted that it is not technology that is harmful for children but the misuse of technology. Therefore, while determining the relationship of children with technology, their cognitive, emotional, social and physical development and needs must definitely be taken into consideration.
There are also some parental control apps that allow you to manage your child’s screen time on daily basis. Yubi is one of them and it allows you to set daily time limits & mandatory breaks for the video activity as well as managing precisely what your child will watch or search on Youtube. It also comes with “Instant Stop” or “Block Internet” features which may be very handy on certain times. You can find more about Yubi on www.yubi.live web site.