How much time spent looking at a screen?...

[ClaraOnTheMoon]

Hi all!

I have a 9yo daughter and a 6yo son. My daughter takes after a couple of very nerdy parents and loves to learn about anything science related. We often spend time looking up facts in books or online and I'm thinking of getting an iPad, which will make that even easier.

I guess my question is how much time do you let your kids spend staring at screens, be they iPhones, computers, TVs, iPads, eReaders etc? Do you try to keep track of how much time is spent on educational material, as opposed to mindless games? Or do you think setting a limit on ALL time spent staring at a screen is a good idea?

My grandma always joked that now it's "stop playing computer games and read a book" but when my dad was a kid it was "stop reading that book and go play outside!"

-Clara

 

[cybele]

I dont have a 'limit' on how much time my kids looking at screens, simply because we dont have enough screens for them to spend much time looking at, if that were not the case, I guess I would be more worried.

All of my kids have hobbies outside of technology, they all participate in some kind of 'extra curricular' activity, be it sports or music. My husband is a librarian, so as a result we have lots of books and all of my kids are readers (they definetly dont get that from me, in the time it takes me to read one book, my kids have gone though a maxed out library card's worth, they all take after their Dad with that one)

I actually do have an issue with the amount of time my 12 and 10yr old spend on the computers at school, everything ends up being a computer project and Sunny seems to be coming home from school with a headache quite often, weve taken her to have her eyes tested and her vision is fine, but the optometrist mentioned that its most likely from squinting at the brightness of the computer screens, we brought it up with the school and they showed Sunny how to dim the brightness on the screens, but really, I dont think it would hurt them (actually, I think it would do them some good, would work on their penmanship, do we care about penmanship anymore?) to just handwrite their work every now and then.