The golden age of guilt-free screen time
We're living in it!!!
This was sent in from a friend and I am leaving it exactly as he typed it because I think that says a lot:
i want to find out how much screen time people are actually doing. Like a real number. i would say my kids have about 3 hours a day at this point. this doesnt include class zooms/online school work. i want to know that there are worse parents than me
We are all better and we are all worse in our own way, aren’t we?
“I flip flop regularly between glad my 14 year old has this means of staying connected to her friends and horror at the sheer amount of hours she is on her phone. I have no solutions and a ton of agita about it in general.”
“Pre-pandemic, we set daily time limits for screens, but that just isn’t realistic now. It is the way they can be in touch with friends and I am not going to limit that. We do require an hour of reading, 30 minutes of exercise and practicing their instruments before they can start screens for the day. Combined with teen sleeping patterns this usually means it’s at least after noon before they get on screens.”
“My kids are into the Terraria video game which I actually really like for them. And they set up FaceTime with their cousin to all play together so it’s their main social time of the day too. That being said, they have started to get obsessed, it’s all they talk about and if they don’t get their ‘standard’ 2 hours I usually give them a day they are crushed and cry about it. So I have mixed feelings but continue to allow it because so much else sucks right now. I have a little checklist of physical activity and reading that must be done before screens turn on. And it’s a bonus if I let them watch a movie or something but they mostly just want video games, which I keep at 2 hours max.”
“There's no way through this, within this structure, without some screen time, and it's going to be more than you'd like. I need to work. And I need time for my brain to get a break. I try to make it till noon before there are screens, but sometimes it doesn't happen. This is one of those things that I'm shutting my brain down on because I can't fix it.”
“The only attempts I have made to limit screen time are occasionally enticing my son with a cooking, crafting, or gardening project, and telling him when he needs to turn off the TV because I can’t take anymore ‘Forensic Files,’ ‘Kitchen Nightmares,’ or grown-ass men yelling about computer games. I also tell him when he has to let me have the TV for an hour.”
“My kids don’t watch that much TV during the week and maybe play 30 minutes tops of a game BUT two of the three of them also don’t read at all, so it’s not like making them better geniuses or something. I often think, “Why can’t they just watch TV for six hours and stop fighting?” But no, they choose the play/fight combo.”
“I'm not working, and my kids are little with no schoolwork, and we have a yard and woods and an empty-for-now college campus, so my kids are having less screen time than before. They watch one show in the morning and one before bedtime. Right when lockdown started I just kind of stopped offering shows at random times and thought to myself, ‘We'll see how long this lasts. It's turned out to have lasted, but I recognize that my situation is not typical or doable for many.”
“During the school year, we couldn’t figure out how to homeschool the 6 year old and do our own jobs without putting the toddler on Netflix for 2-3 hours a day, sometimes more. Now that it’s summer AND I basically stopped working for a few months, we’re limiting it to an hour for the older one when the little naps, plus an episode or two of a show before dinner. It’s much better, I see them reading more, exploring outside more and re-finding their independent play skills and that is all awesome. But note the part where I essentially QUIT MY JOB to achieve this. Being able to have minimal screen time during a pandemic (or really ever) is absolutely a privilege thing.”
“We have no limits at all because there is no way we could get through this with both of us working if we did--but we do make them mix it up so that they're not just watching YouTube (which they can do for hours). They play video games (instead of just watching people play them on YouTube) or watch semi-educational shows, and sign them up for regular online classes so that they're learning/making something at least once a day, even if it involves a screen. I have found that by not worrying about how much they're on screens and forcing them to do something else, they actually do turn them off and do something else every once in a while because even their dumb brains know they need to. And right now, having some small faith in that is far preferable to the screaming fights and stress and distraction of making them turn them off.”
“We were out of control for a while, but I've locked it down. It is a much more effective bribe this way.”
“At some point, what else is there to do? ‘Come on kids! let's take another pointless walk around the neighborhood and check out that squirrel carcass. Let me read to you until I lose my voice trying to do Elmo and Grover. Let's drive around cool things but not get out of the car, because the city had to close all the parks, playgrounds, and pools again.’”
“We TRY so hard to go screen-free until noon. If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. We'll deal with it later.”
“Screen time?! WTF ELSE ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO DO IF WE ARE WORKING AND CANNOT BE EVEN VAGUELY AWARE OF WHAT THEY ARE DOING WE LIVE IN THE CITY AND HAVE NO SUBURBAN BACKYARD
BUT ALSO TOO MUCH SCREEN TIME MAKES THEM ALL ZOMBIE ASSHOLES
NOT TO MENTION WE NEED BANDWIDTH TO WFH BECAUSE AT THIS RATE WE WILL NEVER SEE OUR OFFICES AGAIN
ALSO THEY ARE SO GODDAMNED LONELY AND SORRY THEY ARE AT AGES WHERE THEY AREN’T PLAYMATES AND THAT STUPID FUCKING FORTNITE IS THE ONLY TIME THEY GET TO (SCREAM AT) TALK TO THEIR FRIENDS
My reality is that they are all on handheld devices 1-2 hours most days, and that doesn’t count TV cartoons over lunch. Some days it’s less but to stay at that level requires at least one parent to do some sort of supervising and usually confiscating of said handheld devices. We try to tie a little school work, chores, and exercise to the screen time - they are supposed to have all their jobs done before they can play games.”
“I read somewhere that the battle between screen time/offline is over. Screens won. Full stop.”
“The only time things are peaceful at our house is while they are on screens.”
If you are one of those parents trying to find non-screen ways to entertain your kiddos I suppose you can always try a bag of flour.
End credits
I hope you enjoyed this issue of Evil Witches, a newsletter for people who happen to be mothers. You can also follow us and talk to us on Twitter here or follow us on Instagram. Please pass it along, if you know someone who'd like this sort of thing in their inbox a couple times a week. If you have been enjoying it but haven’t yet joined the paid subscribers, I hope you do so: it’s just $30 for the whole year!
One witchy thing
