I have a PC hooked up via HDMI to our TV, so my kid and I share our media. We can use the monitor, but we generally don’t.
We watch videos together, as we generally have the same interests. His video-watching preferences include science, robotics, and video games. I’m okay with anything educational and/or thought-provoking.
He doesn’t have any personal devices, so no phone or iPad or anything like that. I feel that anything portable that can be used privately is not great for a kid (for my kid, anyhow), but he doesn’t mind.
He plays games on the Switch & Steam, but usually I’ll require chores to be done & a certain amount of reading to be done for equivalent screen time (unless there’s a limited-time in-game event or something). He’s a very smart and lovely boy, and he rarely ever gripes over it.
It’s in any parent’s best interest to not only know what their kid likes, but also for them to participate. I’ve learned to play Splatoon, Minecraft, Enter the Gungeon, watched youTube channels, and learned all kinds of things about the content & mechanics in order to determine if it’s okay for him to be playing/watching those particular things.
Seriously: get to truly know what your kid likes.
It greatly depends on the age.
For under 10’s. I highly recommend the small tablets with educational games and videos. I had the homepage on the webbrowser set to PBS kids. Any other website was locked by parental controls. I also had Netflix with a kids account back when they had everything. For the games they wanted to play, I had to preview before they were installed.
The hardest age is 9-12. This is when they act all grown up but absolutely should not be online unsupervised. This is when they need room to explore what they are interested in. I open up the restrictions and allow them more of the world but routinely check to see what they are up too (an make sure they see what I am doing).
After 13, it’s all about education, not control. There is no fucking way to stop a determined teenager from accessing places they shouldn’t. The totally “locked down” school chromebooks are a great example. I am constantly impressed with the ingenuity to circumvent the controls. At this point, open discussions on all the issues online are key. They need to know about what criminals and perverts are up too. It’s no longer blocking them, it’s learning how to identify, avoid, and report them.
I also spend a few hours hanging out while they are gaming with my teenagers. It’s let’s me know what they are playing and showcase my incredible skill to their mocking.
My kids are 7 and 9. We do unlimited screen time. There is some reasoning behind it: (1) they are both autistic and it helps them form language and some limited reading; (2) we need parenting breaks; (3) video games help with fine motor (an issue with one of the kids); and (4) we keep them focused on educational content. Probably not the best parenting out there but we are just trying to survive. 🙂
I’ve always been pretty liberal about video time. We get out and we do stuff, but when at home, they can be on videos and there’s governance but it’s limited.
Here are some rules that were put in place at the start of it:
] I can see what they’re doing at any time
] they come to me for bad content and swearing
] we discuss swearing and bad content. the conversations drag on if it appears concealed
That’s it. Go have fun. I check in from time to time. Son and daughter. Here’s what I’ve learned.
Cursing will work it’s way into their stream. We talk about how cursing isn’t mature and these people use it to try to seem cool. We talk about why they want to seem cool. We talk about monetization and views and clicks. We talk about “the viewer as a product.”
Mature topics come up. Discussed intelligently and why they’re inappropriate. Who you can talk about these things with and who will be offended/embarrassed. Why it’s not generally brought up.
They now have their own niches of interest and share them freely with me. I am learning more history and odd facts than I expected. After the novelty of watching the repetitive content wears off, the education content that interests them begins to dominate their streams. Reptile hatching. Presidential history and wars. Art and music. I got asked what cum is. Better to get a real answer from a parent then schoolyard gossip. Issue covered, here’s why it’s not discussed, now go have fun.
I feel it’s been a good experiment. When I was younger, the fight was over what books I should read. What music I could hear. Now it’s about what content kids should see. I see it as an argument about whether you should parent now, or let them just discover it all when they’re out of the house. I felt it was better to cover it while they can get my perspective, and it seems to be working. caveat emptor.
1 hour each of TV time and game time, per day, 3 hours on non-school days.
TV consists of YouTube Kids, Disney Kids, Hulu Kids, or our own Plex library.
Game time consists of pretty much just the Nintendo Switch. Occasionally, he’ll play Steam games, but together with me or my wife.
He gets unlimited time with his Kindle.
Really tough question since it’s been a while and I don’t have kids today (man that would suck in the age of TikTok and handing the kid an iPad for a reprieve) but what my parents did was limit computer time to 1 hour in a day until middle school ish so I had to make decisions.
Handhelds had to be downstairs and off at night, and (ideally) one hour before bedtime so no late night shenanigans.
I guess there’s also starting lower tech like flip phones, PDA’s but that’s because I’m more of a nerd and it’ll be my “uphill both ways” equivalent esp. since i’m not ready for unlimited web access and all that entails
