MetroFamily Magazine November 2020

The Scoop on Screen Time: Realistic family strategies

BY ERIN PAGE

If you feel your kids’ screen time has increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic, you’re not alone. The advocacy group Parents Together reports a 500 percent increase in kids’ screen time usage during the pandemic, with 85 percent of parents concerned about their kids’ time spent in front of screens. With many kids learning online, and many parents working from home succumbing to kids’ requests for more screen time to get their own work done, parent guilt over screens is also on the rise.

We asked pediatrician Dr. Natalia Tutak with SSM Health St. Anthony to weigh in on realistic strategies to manage kids’ screen time.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 2 hours or less of screen time for kids, but we know that during the pandemic kids’ screen time has soared. Is there a more realistic, individualized way to gauge how much screen time is appropriate for a child? Especially right now, there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer about kids and screen time. The key is tailoring screen time usage to your family’s needs and values. One great tool families can use is creating an individualized Family Media Use Plan through the American Academy of Pediatrics at HealthyChildren.org/MediaUsePlan. This tool allows families to think about how they want to use media and create goals and rules in line with their personal values. The plan includes a media time calculator you can set for each child by age. Then, you can calculate time away from media for sleep and recommended daily exercise, and you can add/subtract time for school, meals, family time, etc. to get a more realistic approach to how much screen time your child is getting.