Screen Time and Summer

As we welcome the more relaxed days of summer, all that unstructured time creates new worry for parents. Will the kids expect to log a lot more hours playing Minecraft or going down a TikTok rabbit hole? And will the household turn into a war zone over screen time?

To make sure that doesn’t happen, it’s important to step back and assess your approach to your kids’ tech use. It’s useful for families to think of a few basic principles when planning a summer screen time strategy.

• Know your risks. What harms do you want to avoid?
• Think about wellness. What do you want your kids to do for their health and well-being over the summer?
• Focus on your values. What will make you feel, at the end of the summer, that your kids have had the experiences you would hope for them?
• Make a practical plan. What concrete steps can you take so you won’t have daily battles over screen time or feel that you are doing something wrong as a parent?

Because of the intense national conversation about the effect of screens on youth development and mental health, it’s easy to be confused, as a parent, about what to do about screens. Luckily, research has given us some answers. Knowing what the science says about the risks around screens enables you to have a practical, not a panic-based, approach.

When considering the amount of time a child or teen spends on screens, the research often refers to a Goldilocks hypothesis: that moderate amounts of screen time may be better than excessive amounts or no time at all. There is definite evidence that spending more than a few hours a day on screens can have a negative effect on a child’s or teen’s well-being — not necessarily because what they’re doing on the screens is intrinsically harmful but because that level of screen activity is interfering with key developmental tasks. Those could  include physical exercise, face-to-face time with friends or family, and activities that promote learning. A moderate amount of time spent on screens can be a source of relaxation, entertainment, or social connection, but when screen time becomes excessive, it can displace important daily or social routines.

Not all screen time is created equal. It matters where you spend your time on screens and who you spend it with. Kids watching TV in the living room, kids on tablets or computers in common area of the house — these are less worrisome because we can monitor the sound that’s coming from the screen and perhaps get at least a glimpse of what they are seeing and doing, who they are interacting with, and what content they are being exposed to.

When kids are spending time on screens alone in their rooms, those are more often the instances when they might get into something where a parent later says, “I wish I could roll that back.” It’s important for parents to talk through what you feel is okay for kids to be doing when spending time on screens alone and set boundaries for when you are not present to monitor.

So things like letting kids watch a movie or have some TV time to give you an opportunity to cook dinner shouldn’t be as much of a concern. As much as possible, we want to decrease parental guilt a bit about these kinds of activities, conserving energy for boundary-setting when it is more important. 

In previous generations, parents were often concerned about games focused on violence. What kinds of activities are the characters doing, and does playing those games normalize those activities?  But the research linking violent games to aggressive behavior on the part of gamers is quite mixed. For parents today, concerns often center less on video game content and more on chat functions and the potential for contact with strangers.

Obviously, we don’t necessarily want young kids to be playing violent video games, but the bigger worry now is the fact that lots of the video games for kids have chat functions that kids don’t understand. These chats, both within and outside of video games, can be a cesspool for cyberbullying, contact with strangers, and predatory behavior. It’s immensely important to teach kids about privacy settings, how to ensure they are connecting with friends and not strangers, and how to reach out for support if they find themselves harassed or bullied in these spaces.

We want to be mindful of the fact that teens are more likely, no matter when or how they’re spending time on screens, to be exposed to disturbing or offensive content or content that is promoting unhealthy attitudes or practices. With social media algorithms being as sensitive they are, the longer a teen watches a video or peruses certain types of content, the more that content might be pushed to their feeds. Additionally, false information is everywhere online, and it is important that we teach kids and teens to be critical consumers of what they read and watch in an age of AI, conspiracy theories, deepfakes, and more.  

One more thing that I emphasize to parents is that if your child has mental health vulnerabilities, the risk factors above are even more deserving of careful consideration. Children and teens with ADHD or behavioral challenges may be less able to avoid impulsive behavior or to set appropriate limits for themselves with screens. Kids who are prone to anxiety may be more likely to seek out content that feeds rather than soothes their worries. And teens who are vulnerable to depression or already experiencing concerns about body image can find that their symptoms worsen when screens cannibalize the time they would have spent on more mood-boosting activities or leave them comparing themselves to unrealistic online body ideals.  

So any practical plan we create for the summer involves some monitoring of time, some monitoring of content, some monitoring of behavior online, and some monitoring of where and when kids are on those screens. To build out that plan a bit more, parents can consider a few basic notes on wellness practices and reflect on their own values in seeking family balance this summer.

When creating a plan for tech use, we want to make sure that screen time is not encroaching on basic things kids need to be healthy.

The digital age doesn’t make it easier for anyone — kids or adults — to get the sleep they need. Yes, it’s okay to be a little more relaxed about bedtime during the summer. Yes, kids might sleep in a little bit more than they would if they were going to school. But we want to encourage parents to think about how to make sure kids are getting the amount of sleep they need and that screens are not interfering.

I see a lot of families who dock all devices to charge outside of bedrooms at night, and that is absolutely something I encourage whenever possible with kids and teens. But other parents will say, “My kid uses this to fall asleep. They listen to books on tape or music as they go to sleep.” Or “I want my kid to listen to a meditation or mindfulness recording while they’re going to sleep.” I think that’s perfectly fine as long as we can truly place limits on what a child or teen would have access to past certain hours. And in that case, it can be effective to use an app or screen time limits that lock down anything beyond what might be helpful in promoting sleep.

Globally, we’re seeing physical activity decrease among youth. There are a variety of reasons for that, and screens aren’t the only driving factor. But the good news is that summer is a great time to catch up. So the other major wellness habit that is good for parents to be thinking about is: How are we making sure that moving their bodies is prioritized over sedentary screen use?

The most straightforward trade-off for kids who might not be attending camps or might not have access to a lot of structured recreational summer experiences is just to reserve a portion of each day for play outside, playdates with peers, walks through the neighborhood, trips to a local park, or even a walk around town to do an errand or two. These can be no-screen times, ideally happening before the portion of the day when kids might be engaged in screen-time activities, with an understanding that moving our bodies should come first. Even if kids need to be indoors on a rainy day or because that’s where an adult can watch them, we can use things like dance videos or guided yoga routines to get kids invested in movement before they might take some time to sit down with screens.

When I ask this question, many parents say that what they value over the summer is unstructured time — opportunities to spend time outside, do enjoyable activities with their kids that they don’t get to do during the school year, or spend more time with neighbors, friends, or family. And when we ask parents what they want their kids to do with that time, we hear parents say they want their kids to explore, to be creative, to maybe be bored a bit of the time, and to have unique experiences.

As kids move into adolescence, parents often say they want to see their teens broaden their interests, invest more in their passions, do community service, gain work experience, or otherwise build character through new experiences. And there there is always that specter of learning loss lurking in parents’ minds — how do we make sure that our kids exercise their brains a bit over the summer in the same way we want them to exercise their muscles?

No parent can do all of the above, so it’s important to reflect on your values and to approach them incrementally (e.g., small steps) and with some self-compassion. Take just one or two of the suggestions above — or your own alternatives — and consider how you might be able to create space for our kids to have these experiences. It’s better to conserve your energy and invest in making moments count than trying to hold yourself to an ideal of parental perfectionism all the time.

Many of the non-screen activities parents say they want their kids to do over the summer are done roughly during what would be school hours. So the most frequent times that screens are an issue for parents during the summer often remain the unstructured hours in the afternoon up through bedtime.

If you go through the rough checklist outlined above, you may find it leads to considerably less worry about the time your kids are spending on screens. If you have taken steps to ensure that kids are getting sleep they need, getting their bodies active, and engaging in activities that you see as critical to their summer experiences, then you can feel better about the screen time they are enjoying.

When you have decided what activities you’re okay with, where in the house you’re okay with them, what times of day you’re okay with those things happening, you can take the threat level down and feel a little bit more confident that it’s not the Summer of Screens. This will enable you to give your kids what can be a reasonable dose of screens during the times when you need it most to stay sane, care for yourself, and care for the family as a parent.