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Jess and Scott break down the nuanced reality of giving your kids screen time through personal experiences and research-backed insights about gaming, social media, and device use, offering practical guidance for parents.
Key takeaways include the importance of being present during screen time, understanding age-appropriate limits, and protecting children through clear boundaries rather than expecting them to self-regulate.
Whether you're struggling with screen time battles or trying to make informed decisions about devices and social media for your kids, this episode provides valuable perspective on finding balance in our digital world.
Get 10% OFF parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/] using the code ROBOTUNICORN.
Learn more about The Body Safety Toolkit here! [https://nurturedfirst.com/printables/the-body-safety-toolkit/]
We'd love to hear from you! Have questions you want us to answer on Robot Unicorn? Send us an email: podcast@robotunicorn.net.
Credits:
Editing by The Pod Cabin [https://thepodcabin.com/]
Artwork by Wallflower Studio [https://www.wallflowerstudio.co/]
Production by Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/]
Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn.
We are so glad that you are here.
As always, let's start the show with a question from Scott.
We are going to talk hello.
Screens today.
And screens seem to be one of those many controversial parenting topics, I think.
And I will say
It's probably kind of for good reason, but I do think the discussion needs a little bit more nuance than Instagram or TikTok accounts talking about how you should have
Literally zero screen time and I just think that's due to a lack of understanding of like child development
In my opinion, screens are not necessarily a bad thing, but it is our use of screens and our lack of boundaries around them, just essentially letting your kids be on screens all the time.
That is the problem.
So it has nothing to do with the screens themselves.
Some of the content, yes, that they can watch is a problem.
Anyways, we'll we'll get into this, but I think that's like end the episode right there.
Yeah.
So my question for you
Is is screen time as terrible as they, in quotes, they say.
Hm.
I think you already answered my question
In the fact that there needs to be a nuance that's brought to the discussion, right?
It's not is screen time terrible or not.
Okay, well then if you
Agree with me.
Yeah.
It's first time ever.
If you'll shocking.
Shocking, yeah.
If you agree with my statements there, then I think let's break it down into what makes screen time, let's say, quote unquote, bad
and what can make it good or better.
And should there be any rules or I don't know.
Let's go through it that way where we talk about.
If screen time takes away from a child's ability to have open-ended play and a child's ability to have time with you without the screen there, if the screen is replacing those two things
then screen time is a problem.
I think that's the nuance that needs to be brought in, right?
There's lots of people who will give their kids tons of time to
play, right?
Like let's say a Saturday.
Maybe they watch an hour of screen Saturday morning TV.
Then the whole rest of the day the kids are playing, they're outside, they're having fun, you're spending time with them, even doing household chores
And then, oh, it's six o'clock and we're gonna eat pizza and watch a movie together at night.
And then maybe we even watch a second movie and the kids go to bed.
Right?
In that scenario, screen time's not taking away from a child's chance to play, to learn, to explore the world, and it's not taking away from a child's time with you.
In fact, at night when you're watching the screen with your child, you're even spending more time together.
Right, so in that scenario it's not taking it away.
And the reverse, let's say you have a Saturday and your kids are just sitting in front of the TV the entire Saturday, all day.
Maybe they're playing games on their computer or their iPad or their d devices or they have your phone and they're scrolling through YouTube.
That would be a different story.
Not if it's once in a while, like you have a hard day, but if that's the consistent routine every single Saturday, they're just on screens all day, then we we might want to talk about that being a challenge.
Would you agree with that?
Yep
I think so.
And the research would agree with that as well.
So I in preparation for this, I looked into a bunch of news articles, research articles.
And I found some interesting articles.
Like one New York Post article I found talked about the Swedish government saying that children under two should not use screens at all.
And then from two to five it should be less than an hour or up to an hour.
From six to twelve it's less than or equal to two hours, so like they get a little bit more.
And
What they have been finding is that by the time kids are in the 13 to 16 year old range in Sweden
They're already on their devices.
After school time, like outside of school time, they're on their devices for six and a half hours a day.
Wow
And in the US, apparently, according to this New York Post article, kids in that same age range, so the thirteen to sixteen, are on their devices on average.
eight and a half hours outside of school time.
Yeah, so that's over a whole working day period of time.
So I think at first when we discussed
this topic and wanting to discuss it on the podcast.
I didn't really get it.
Like what the point of it is because it seems very foreign to me.
Like this seems like a normal thing.
You don't give your kids too much screen time.
And if you do, you should be present and
You should be knowing what they're watching.
But I can see why this is a discussion.
If this is truly the amount of hours that kids by that age are on their devices, I can see
huge negative effects from that.
Yeah, and I would say that's what I was trying to explain to you in our podcast prep meeting on this, because in our work as therapists, we see this a lot.
And we see a lot of parents feeling confused, feeling unsure, and really struggling because what happens is when you start allowing your child to take the reins on the screen time
they'll continue to want more and more and more.
Right.
Right.
And if you're not setting the boundaries with a child.
Like I was just talking to a friend of mine the other day.
My friend is
like very much on board with the style of parenting we teach here.
But she had given her six year old a Nintendo Switch and basically thought to herself he should be able to regulate the amount of time.
Like so she didn't put a boundary in place.
So on Saturdays and Sundays when he was home from school, she would say, Yep, on Saturdays and Sundays you can play the switch.
Well, her son couldn't regulate himself and she started to realize she has multiple kids and it kinda went unnoticed at first that every single time he had the switch it would be more and more and more time that he would play
to the point where he would never get off on his own terms.
It was always her.
Yeah.
And to the point where then the entire weekend all he's doing is asking to play the switch at six.
And she was like, I realized that if I didn't step in and intervene, this would just take over all of his spare time.
And that's at six.
And I think that's what a lot of parents are are facing and struggling with right now.
Yeah, which I understand.
And I think most people don't actually understand the fact that social media
let's say Nintendo Switch, whatever, or other gaming systems of all kinds are legitimately designed to reward you
for playing or using them.
Mm-hmm.
They use what is it, intermittent reinforcement.
So you're not always getting it at the same time.
Like social media is
legitimately the best example of that.
If you post something and something goes viral and you get a whole bunch of likes and comments and whatever, like you get tons of engagement, but it doesn't happen all the time.
You're gonna be searching out that feeling constantly for I want this to happen.
I want to show people things so that I get this and it's
Like in the end, those things are kind of meaningless, but it it's gamified even social media.
And the reason they say it's gamified is because games are similar.
Like some of the games that I've played on
the Nintendo.
You can tell that they have designed them so that you want to search out things and spend more time playing the game and being immersed in the world.
And you don't always get cool items when you're playing.
Mm-hmm.
You will get them intermittently.
It reinforces your brain to be like, Oh, I want
I need to check this thing out, even though I know in reality there's probably nothing there that's of value to me in this game.
I need to check it out because what if it's a good thing?
There is something.
Yeah.
And then if you get that something, then it's that hit of like, ooh, okay, now we want to find more.
Yeah.
So I think it's an uh misunderstanding of parents, both of thinking
These companies have our best interest, like a family's best interest at heart.
The reality is a social media company, they want to make their billions of dollars.
Yeah.
They are going to play within whatever limits they have set out for them.
And if there are no limits, then they're going to truly any social media company that comes out and says, we're limiting
The amount of time that a teen spends on our account, I think that is this form of virtue signaling, and I don't truly think that they care that much.
They want to look better, but truthfully the best thing that they could do is say no one under this certain age should have it.
Should be even allowed on here because it's so addicting.
Yeah.
And
That's for all screens.
Like that's how a lot of content is created.
So we have to, as parents, be wary of what is out there.
and try and monitor what our kids are even up to like later teens as well.
I I truly think that you can't rely on a child who's still developing, even if they seem older and they're acting more like an adult.
Like
These companies are, let's say, hacking our brains, what we know about developmental psychology, to
Get your kid hooked.
Not even your kids, but us.
So if if we as parents have a hard time getting off of it, how can we expect our child?
That's what I was just thinking the whole time you're talking.
I was thinking about
We've talked about this in previous podcasts, but I wouldn't say that you had like a gaming addiction, but when you I probably did at one point.
Oh yeah, so maybe.
I mean that's up to you to say or not.
But
when you were gaming, it would be very hard for you to get off of it.
Even in adulthood, right?
You would feel like I have to get back on it.
And then it would kind of consume all the things.
And that's you as an adult, right?
And it'd be like, hey Scott, like really we should go to bed.
Right.
And it'd be hard to oh, just one more game where I just want to finish this level or I just want to do this.
And I think about that for our kids and a lot of kids, youth, teens, preteens, they're they're playing games and I don't think all games are
terrible and evil, but I can see that in even in kids that we've observed that it pulls you in.
And I think as parents we can say, well, it's
It's their social time because their friends are on there or they're talking to other people while they're playing their game.
And I think it's easy for us, and I'm not saying this to shame parents, but just to
like help us understand, right?
It's like easy for us to be like, oh well there's reasons why they play this or they don't like other things.
And I think we have to sometimes take a step back and really look like, is this helping our child long term
I think it's a both and type situation where both the companies that put these products out there, they are trying to maximize the amount of money that they're making.
For their shareholders, for themselves.
And we as parents need to also at the same time understand that that's their goal.
So then we have to be a little more cautious, I think, of
how we use all the different devices, all the different games and I think it's an important thing.
We have to be just wary of it and constantly be thinking, does this help my child?
Is this gonna help my child in the long run
Doing this or do we need to make a change?
Yeah.
So I think it's a both and situation where both the company is trying to draw
You in and your children in, and also we as parents need to fight back against that.
Yeah.
I really had this word in my head.
I was
telling you about this earlier, Scott, of protect.
And it's my word for myself for the new year and also my word for what I want to do and help parents do with their kids.
And I think when it comes to screens and games and all that kind of stuff, social media, we really need to protect our kids.
And we need to know that our kids all the way up to being teens, like they are going to want more screens
That's exactly what the screens are designed to do.
That's what we've been saying, right?
And so our job as parents is to like note that they're gonna want that, but we need to create the rules.
And we need to decide what's appropriate, what's not appropriate, sometimes with our kids' input and take the lead on that and not put our kids in that leadership position 'cause
If we put the kids in the lead, it's way too much responsibility for them.
And also they're probably gonna choose more screens.
Like even with our daughter, our eight year old.
Yeah.
I know that she would always choose more screens.
She loves screens.
And it's one of those things that I disagree with you slightly on, the whole concept of it's too much responsibility for them.
Yeah.
Like
They're too young for that even to be a concept in my mind.
They don't get that responsibility yet.
You slowly allow them to wade into the the waters of responsibility, but
It's not even a questi it shouldn't be a question of, I don't know, our eight-year-old being responsible being responsible for anything in her life at this point, really.
Yes, there are certain things that she's slowly learning to be responsible for, like getting herself dressed and making sure that she's brushing her teeth.
But even that, it's a slight inconvenience for her day, so we're gonna have to
Remind her.
So we're still the responsible ones.
So that is something that I know you say it's too much of responsibility for them.
But I just think
It shouldn't even be in anyone's mind that it's too much responsibility for them because they're too young to even have that.
Responsibility.
I actually fully agree with you.
I think
I think you're just saying it in a nice way.
I'm just saying it in a nicer way.
But in when I was at the conference with Dr.
Gordon Newfeld and w he was talking a little bit about screens, the conversation came up amongst all the therapists there and what we were saying is like
We assume that at like eight, nine, like our kids should take on some of this responsibility, like exactly what you're saying.
But our kids need us to be fully in charge, right?
And
fully be the leader and I think that's something that is maybe a belief that a lot of people have is like they seem older.
Like even our daughter seems older.
Like oh she should be able to like handle this now
Or like my friend with her six year old, like, oh I thought he would just be able to regulate himself.
But like we need to remember th who we're dealing with.
Yeah.
To me, I don't know, I d have a hard time understanding how that
Is the case.
Like I get it.
You our expectations of them are, hey, this is the real world, you have to figure this out.
But again, they are never in charge of
screens because or games because they would literally spend the whole day and if me as an adult would probably do the same thing if I had the level of responsibility that they had.
Yeah.
I feel like you just say it how it is.
I'm trying to like say things nicely, but I think that's a good idea.
No, that takes so much longer to discuss.
You can choose to consume it from my angle or Scott's angle, but we're saying the exact same thing, which is children should not
We put in charge of screens.
Yeah, and in my opinion, screens are, and this is every type of screen, are only bad if
They aren't monitored by parents and they're used all the time.
It's both of those things.
If they are monitored by parents and they're not used constantly, like they actually spend time playing outside.
and reading books, like doing other things that allow their brains to not be consumed by something that it feels almost feels like you're being productive.
Like let's say for me, if I go on Reddit and I'm looking at 3D printing stuff or Formula One stuff, it almost makes my brain feel productive.
But I know that it's not actually productive for me.
If there's a certain reason for me to go on there, like I'm setting up this home automation system and I need to know how this specific peripheral device integrates with the rest of it and how to program it.
Then yeah, it's useful.
But otherwise I'm just like consuming information for no real reason.
And I think that is the problem with screens of all kinds.
Is it's it's not monitored by parents and you're allowing your kids kind of untethered access to everything for pretty much as long as they want, then yes, screens are a problem and you shouldn't let your kids use it.
And I think that's where a lot of the people on social media talk about you shouldn't let your kids under two be on screens.
Like yeah, of course.
You shouldn't if you're just going to use it as your TV babysitter
Exactly.
And I mean I feel like there's this like fantasy ideal world where yeah we never use a screen and everything is sepia toned and the kids always play and
And I feel like that's a lot of what's on social media right now, right?
Like I just saw a post legitimately, like this morning
It was like, my kids play for five straight hours without whining and crying because I taught them how to not use a screen.
It's like, okay, so that might be true
And I think we need to have compassion for parents who are like, no, I do use a screen with my three year old sometimes and find that balance, like you said, the and.
So can you paint a picture or can you kind of show
how you would use screens with our girls in a way that feels healthy to you?
I think it's pretty much mostly the way we use it now.
Sometimes w of course we're not we're not perfect, so we're using it probably more than we should at times.
But I think for the most part.
What we do is it's structured so they get home from school.
They're not allowed to be on screens right away.
And they're only allowed for a certain period before we have dinner.
And it's very structured.
And we know exactly what they're watching.
Like I'm not even a fan of them watching YouTube because literally anything can pop up and I I just don't like the idea of it playing the next thing and you as a parent You don't know if you're not there
But I mean lately they've been into the show Gabby's Dollhouse, which I think is from what I understand quite popular.
Yeah, a lot of people watch it
Which, hey, makes sense.
It's very well designed show.
They love cats, so then the whole show is has a bunch of random cats with dumb names, but all three girls are obsessed with kitty cats, so I feel like it's a very it's a pretty positive uplifting
Show in general.
And the main actress on it, like she seems to be also positive and uplifting the whole time and
I don't have a problem with that, but we've already vetted that show.
And if there is any time that we don't spend with them watching it, it's on that.
So it's on a show that we've already pre-vetted that we're okay with.
So even sometimes we'll throw on Mr.
Rogers instead.
Which just because of nostalgic reasons, we love to watch that too.
Yeah, we like that one
But I also think like slower pace shows.
So things that we typically like the shows that are, I don't know, teach them a craft or
To have like a slow lesson.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not changing shots constantly, so every like two to three seconds like Coco Melon does.
Mm-hmm.
Coco Melon was a show that we had to cut out.
Yeah.
Yeah, we realized that
Oh, it puts them into a trance when they're watching it.
Yeah, our middle daughter, it was put on by a babysitter and she got into it and she would just ask for it like constantly.
And she was in a trance and she would watch it and she was only two and we're just like, you know what, we don't like how this impacts you, so we're gonna cut this show out.
And I think that's our job again as parents, like
Okay, we're noticing that when you watch this show, you're not the best version of yourself before or after.
That's our job to be like, okay, no more cocoa melon.
And then deal with the consequences of her being mad about that, which was a lot of taste.
But like we try to make it as educational as possible too, when we can.
Not always.
Of course.
Like again, we're not we're not perfect.
We're not trying to say this as though like we're doing things exactly the way they should be.
And we have screen time in our house.
It's not we definitely are not the family that's no screens, right?
I think one thing that we do well in the last year or so
And that I would suggest to parents do is we have like little rituals around a lot of the screens that they watch, right?
Like the after school, it's like come home, do your homework, empty your lunch bag, have a snack.
Okay, and then a certain amount of time before dinner you can watch your show.
Well and they're usually playing a bit first and then after they've played played with the dolls and all that for a bit, then we put on the show.
You can get dinner ready and all that, right?
Oftentimes they're not even finished the episode before it's time to
To have dinner.
Yeah.
And then before our littlest goes to bed and she goes to bed pretty late.
She has a nap still.
She'll watch a little calm show before bed.
Yeah.
And then on Friday nights we have movie night
And we will order takeout.
Often we throw a huge sheet on the floor in our living room and we all sit and have like a picnic dinner and watch a movie.
And Saturday nights usually same thing
Right, so there's some ritual around it, which I think is good that the kids know when to expect to watch TV.
Mm-hmm.
Another thing I would say that I am very
focused on is I never turn the TV on to regulate the kids' emotions.
Yes.
Because that's a very easy thing to do.
Like here, here's an iPad or something like that.
And sometimes you want to, right?
Like we joke.
Oh, I know she would stop crying if I just threw on Gabby's dollhouse for a minute.
But that's very important to us to make sure that
We are helping them regulate.
We help them get back to a state of calm-ish.
Like maybe they're not like they're so tired.
They're not 100% calm.
But when they ask for the TV to calm themselves down
The answer is always no.
Yeah, I don't even think that's an expectation from them at this point.
No.
No.
I think they know that we're never gonna put the the TV on now if they're crying or upset or whatever.
Yeah.
And maybe I would have times I'm just thinking back to like when we had a newborn baby and a toddler.
And that's the other thing I want to say about screens too.
Like listen, I'm pretty sure my oldest watched Frozen 2 every single day for an entire year.
Yep.
At least once.
And that was COVID and we had a second baby.
And she still had time for playing, she still had time with me, you know, so don't
guilt yourself if your kid's watching a movie a day because that's the season of life and that's the only way you can get your baby down for a nap, right?
Like that's where the nuance comes in.
Yeah.
I think the key is and like I read a
A lit review on the effects of excessive screen time on child development.
And of course, it's all the things that we've talked about, there's lots of negative impacts.
for excessive screen time.
It's not as though any screen time is bad.
It's just excessive screen time.
So the guidelines that I was explaining before that the Swedish government put in place like
Children under two shouldn't use screens.
From two to five you can have maybe up to an hour, from six to twelve up to two hours.
Those are just guidelines.
Mm-hmm.
But like it's all about using some reasoning and logic to figure out like yeah, if you're noticing your kid is more irritable or aggressive
or the negative impacts that watching too much screens or playing too many video games does, then okay, let's limit more than what we're doing right now.
And each kid might have different tolerance, right?
Like you have a sensitive kid and they're watching a show with like tons of bells and whistles and things are like the coconut with our sensitive kid, you might notice that that show doesn't work for them
Right.
Well, and because of that, it's kind of the I don't know the lowest common denominator.
I don't know if that's the right term, but I think we base the amount of screen time on the child with the least tolerance.
So they all get the same amount of screen time, but whoever has the least amount of tolerance, that's who we base it on.
Yeah.
Two things I guess that they said in this lit review, because I don't want to paint
screens as all bad.
But basically what they said is there are significant educational benefits if parents monitor what's being consumed.
So there are actual benefits to using screens and they can aid in language development and emotional regulation and like a lot of different things, but
Again, it has to be through you as a parent or caregiver monitoring what your child is actually consuming, limiting too much of it, too much of a good thing.
I think that a lot of debates on social media are around that specific fact.
Like on one side people are like, screen times are great.
My child watched such and such a show and they know the whole alphabet and they can count to 100
And then people on the other side will be like, yeah, that's great, but can your child get themselves off a screen?
Do they still have time to play?
Do they still have time w to be with you?
So I think that fact is where there's a lot of polarization
And again, it's the nuance.
Like, yes, learning facts is great, but if your toddler then doesn't have a chance to play and spend quality time with you and be outside.
It's not so great, right?
So again, it's the balance.
Right.
And I think there's a misunderstanding of again the development of humans.
In general.
Like truthfully, being an engineer, you would think that I would want our children to know how to count super high or be able to do math right away at a super young age.
But in conversations with you and trying to
understand better the development of humans, it's actually not better that they do that.
It ends up likely making them less creative, which is a huge skill.
and likely making them less emotionally intelligent.
Mm-hmm.
I always say I'm like, I'm less impressed that your toddler can count to 50 than I am the fact that your toddler can
make up imaginary worlds and pretend to be a kitty cat and play and Or say to you, I'm feeling sad.
Yeah, or say to you, I'm feeling sad, or come to you for a giant hug when they do feel sad, right?
Those are the things that
I'm like, okay, this is good.
Because the counting and reading and all that kind of stuff, that will come.
Yeah.
It's not as though they'll be behind because they don't.
And like, yeah, they might be ahead for a little while, but then other kids are gonna catch up too
Yeah, and I think parents feel this pressure of like, oh my goodness, there's all these options for me to teach my kids how to learn to count to fifty and my toddler could do it, so they should.
Yep.
Right?
And like take that pressure off yourself.
You don't have to put your child on a screen so they can learn how to count to fifty.
If that's the reason that you're putting them on a screen because you're like, oh, I want them to be able to learn to keep up with my friend who has a toddler who counts to one hundred or whatever, right?
Yeah.
That's not what toddlerhood is about.
And there's a lot of people that will put out shows and content and stuff like that to teach your kids all these things and sure they can learn it.
But like you said
will that take away from their ability to be creative and play and like do the things that actually are the job of the toddler years.
Or like we've talked about, learning, say, natural consequences.
So you go out and you run too fast in your yard and you fall and you scrape your knee or something like that.
You've learned something in that.
You've gotten physical exercise because you're outside playing in the outdoors, but you've also learned something about oh
In this area of the yard, maybe uh there's a hole in the yard and I don't want to run there or something like that.
Or like you're learning things as you're doing that too.
Yeah.
As kids get older.
There's lots of
schoolwork that they're gonna have to do.
So they're gonna catch up on that.
Not even catch up.
They're gonna I see that in our preschooler who's in JK right now, right?
She we didn't didn't really prioritize teaching her math or no or numbers or anything like that before going to JK.
We really prioritized like free play with her.
But she's catching on to it so quick.
And she can already do basic math.
And it didn't take long, right?
And so yeah, maybe some of her peers knew those things before going in
but they end up all kind of being at the same spot, right?
So don't stress yourself out over that.
And I would say to parents, like still see that as a show.
Right?
Just 'cause it's educational doesn't mean it's like, okay, now they can watch it for four hours.
Right.
Right?
Like it's still a show.
what we would do is like if I needed to put a show on, I would do a lot of like baby sign language for our toddler.
And so that was educational.
She learned how to do sign language, which was pretty cool.
But I still viewed that as a show
Right.
So there were still limits on how long she watched it, how I was watching it with her, all of those things.
Yeah.
So the last thing I will say about the research that I found on this is the three main things that that you should look out for as a parent are
the context in which you're watching something.
Mm-hmm.
So again, you don't necessarily want to use it as something to help regulate their emotion.
I also think like this is also you're going to a restaurant, you don't give your child an iPad when you're at the restaurant to keep them calm
Like they're a child, so I think expecting normal child behaviors in a restaurant.
Which is like a greater societal issue, I feel like, in Canada and the US.
Like we don't expect kids to act like kids in restaurants here.
Yeah.
Whereas I feel like when we went to Europe, or like Portugal and the Netherlands, like
they expect children to be kids in restaurants and they have like little play spots for them.
I think a lot of the reasons that we give kids iPads in restaurants is cause we like of this greater pressure.
Kind of like quiet.
Yeah
Exactly.
I would agree with that.
The second thing is the quality of the content that the child is consuming, which the only way for you to know is for you as a parent or caregiver to actually watch with them and understand what they're watching.
So I think that also means that you cannot give them untethered like they shouldn't be allowed to watch whatever YouTube shorts they want.
Right?
That's not something that they should be allowed to ever do.
Or go on TikTok and scroll TikTok on their own.
You can't know what they're watching if they're doing that.
So I I just think based on this, you shouldn't be allowing that because you don't know the quality of the content that they're watching
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Can I ask you a question that might be a can of worms so we can cut this?
Sure.
What do you think about like shooter games for kids?
Because I know a lot of kids are playing that.
Shooter games?
Yeah, like games where there's like shooting and it probably depends on the type.
So I would say
Like I played Call of Duty, uh was I a kid at that point or was I?
I feel like you started as a kid, maybe.
Or like I can't remember.
Older
I was like older when I started playing that.
Oh no, on one hand I love those kind of games.
But I don't play them anymore because That's why I'm asking, yeah.
So I don't play them anymore, mostly because they made me far more aggressive when I was playing them.
Because I would, for whatever reason, it feels like it's high stakes when you're playing it.
Yeah
Because you're adrenaline pumping.
Yeah.
I just became a more aggressive version of myself, so it was not a good thing for me to play.
So even into the pandemic, I was playing and I was using it as like social time with friends
But I would leave the night playing the game, feeling pissed off, rather than having had fun.
I remember looking at you like, how is this decompression, right?
But I'm just thinking about that for our kids.
I was like talking to someone whose son plays that kind of game and they were asking me like what you would think about it.
What I would think?
Yeah.
So yeah, based on even being an adult playing it and feeling that aggressive feeling, I would have a hard time allowing our girls to do it.
So yeah, I would
Probably not recommend it.
Yeah.
Just based on how I know it makes me feel when I play it.
I just get so engrossed in the game and it feels so high stakes and yeah, the adrenaline
is pumping through my veins, my heart's racing when I'm playing it, and then I just I end up getting pissed off because I I mean I'm getting older so my reflexes are worse.
Yeah.
Do you think that there's like a piece for that type of game or like fighting games or shooting games of like normalizing kind of the aggression in the games?
Like I remember
I can't remember what I read, but like kids who play games or like watch that kind of show have seen like X amount of deaths by the time they're thirteen or something like I mean what do you think about that?
I have a hard time seeing that.
Because when you're playing the game, it's not as though it feels real
Right.
Do you feel like you can differentiate that between real life?
Even something as realistic looking as Call of Duty is now.
I'm not going in there thinking, yeah, I just shot like ten people or
Ten people shot me and it's like a real death that's occurring.
Like it's it's a game.
I don't know.
I think and it's so gamified and like every aspect of it.
You're just looking at the points and you're
your ratio to see how well you're playing the game.
So for that reason, I personally don't see that.
But the aggression.
But the aggression just because of how it gets your adrenaline pumping.
You're like, let's say in the one game
It's a huge open world.
You're in there with potentially 150 other people, and you're kind of sneaking around.
It's like a game of you could be playing a game of Capture the Flag or something like that
with 150 other people.
Yeah.
So you're you have to try and sneak around the map without being seen or and only to see other people and then you get into a whatever
a fire fight in the game with someone else, you are trying to sneak around, so your heart is racing.
Seeing this person pop out from a building or something like that, and then you have to get them and then they turn around and get you instead and then it
pisses you off because being like a twelve year old boy playing that without like a limit on how long you're playing that, right?
And then you're supposed to get off and like go to school the next day.
So that's why I would say for myself, I would not recommend it for
For kids.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think that that's that's valid.
I feel like you speak from not only having done the research, but from your own experience.
Yeah, just knowing how it makes me feel.
I think if you go back to like the word protect, like it is really protecting your kids to set those limits even if they're mad about it, right?
Yeah, right.
I don't think your kids gonna someday be like
Oh, I wish you let me play more of Call of Duty when I was ten.
But they might, if you don't have that boundary, be like, I couldn't regulate myself on Call of Duty and I needed someone to help me out with that.
Or YouTube Shorts or TikTok or whatever it is.
Right.
Yeah, and I w will say like with our oldest daughter.
And starting with our middle daughter as well.
There are times where I'll play video games with our oldest daughter for two hours.
But I'm sitting right next to her and we're playing Mario Brothers
And we're trying to we're talking the entire time about how we're gonna get to the end of the level together and there's connection there.
Yeah.
She's like snuggled up against me and we're playing with each other and we're talking the whole time
So I think that's a different it's not high stakes.
It's Super Mario, yeah.
Yeah, it's not like either of us have our adrenaline running through our blood.
Like
And there's that that connection piece, right?
Like I think of the other thing about gaming specifically.
Like and all screens, especially if your child's maybe just watching it on an iPad or your phone by themselves
Is it can be like an isolation as well.
That feels like connection because they're seeing something on the screen, someone's talking to them, but it it's fake connection.
Yeah.
And it's not gonna get your child's need
for connected time met and it might wire them to seek the screens as a way to get that need filled
Instead of seeking you.
So it just that's another thing we just want to be mindful of.
Yeah, and that was one of the key items in that literature review or research review that I read.
Was that screens can
make language skills in children like younger children worse unless they watch or do whatever they're doing on the screen
with the caregiver next to them.
And I think it's important to differentiate.
Like sometimes when we're bad at that, where we'll allow the kids to watch and then
We'll both be on our phones.
What are we doing?
We're scrolling on our own phones.
So then that doesn't count.
That's like they're not watching with an adult.
So what it was what the research says is that it can actually improve language skills
If you're sitting with your child watching a show and you're discussing it together, you're helping them understand what's going on.
And I hadn't even read this yet when I was watching uh a show with our youngest.
And I was noticing that even I was just sitting with her in the chair.
We were watching the show and I was talking to her about it and I was like, what what do you think that's gonna be?
And then she would guess what it is, like something on the screen.
And we're chatting back and forth and I realized she understands quite a bit about the show
Yeah.
But we just never discuss the show.
Oh I was doing the same thing last night.
That is one thing.
Like again, it's not all bad.
That can actually be a great way of
Doing two things, connecting and improving language skills, or understanding the emotions of others.
I noticed our middle child
is really doing that lately.
She's drawing pictures of faces and different emotions and she's really recognizing emotions.
And she's starting to recognize that on
TV if we're watching it too.
Remember how I said I watched Frozen 2 every day for a year?
And it was like my only downtime basically.
And I remember I would just like lay there nursing the baby and the oldest, that's the only thing she wanted to watch
But I would often say things to her like, Oh, do you notice Anna's face right now?
Like is she smiling?
What is she doing?
Or, Oh, do you see Elsa?
How do you think she feels?
And I actually taught her a lot about emotions just through co-watching Frozen 2 with her.
And I feel like she really got to understand emotions and what different people say and think because I would just kind of narrate out the show while she was watching.
So
There can be opportunity there too if you're like, I need to have my TV time for a break.
Right.
Like maybe there's some ways that you can build in that connection time as you watch it.
What in doubt put an episode of Mr.
Rogers on.
Yeah.
I talked to our oldest about Frozen, like a little while ago
She's like, Mom, I hate Frozen, it's so boring.
And I was like, Kay, because her sisters wanted to watch it all the time now.
I said, What if you thought about it as remember how we watched it every day together for a year?
What if you thought about it as like
Oh, I remember watching that with mom and it was so fun and cozy and maybe your sisters want to have that same opportunity.
And she was like
Oh, I guess I could think about Frozen different.
And then the next time she was watching Frozen, she like snuggled up next to me.
And then I said to her, I'm like, I betcha anything when you go off to university, if you're feeling sad or lonely one night
You're gonna pop on Frozen 2 and and think about mom.
Yeah.
Right?
She was like, I think I'd like that.
And so I think that she will be like that.
There can be like memories made and bonding time through shows too, right?
And
Same, like I betcha when she's off someday on her own, she'll be like reminiscing on playing Super Mario with you and and maybe she'll want to bring that to school and play that with her friends as a way to feel connected to home, right?
So it's not
all created equal.
It's not all bad.
There's good things about it.
It's just it involves like I was talking about, the research says context, quality, and parental involvement.
Those are the three main things that make screen time good?
Yeah.
If you don't have those things, then it's more likely that it will be a negative.
Yeah.
And remember, you're in charge, like Scott said so bluntly.
I think about kids who want phones and they want iPads, their own, and they want to have a screen in their bedroom and they want you to not look at what they're doing, right?
All of these things kids are going to want.
They're not bad for wanting it.
But you have to take the lead on saying, you know what?
The only screen we have is our family computer that's in the kitchen.
Yeah.
Right?
So you can go on that, but we're gonna be around, we're gonna be seeing what you're doing
Alright, I have a part two though.
Okay.
So th this is kind of related to that.
Okay.
So I'm going to assume that if you're listening to this episode right now
You probably mostly agree with what we're saying.
Maybe not.
If not, let us know.
We have no problem with that.
But let's just assume that if you're listening, you agree.
I think the number one question that people will have is, okay.
That's all wonderful, but what if other parents have different rules or other kids have to abide by completely different rules and your kids are around these other kids?
So like let's say our oldest sits next to someone on the bus who is allowed a phone
Yeah.
They're in grade three and they have a phone, which is a whole separate topic and is completely ridiculous to me that someone of that age has a phone.
But
It's common.
It is becoming more common.
So what should we as parents do if our kids are hanging out with or just in the presence of another child?
who's young, who doesn't really know how to regulate themselves, and they have complete access to a mobile device like that.
Without any parental involvement or anything.
I think there's a few layers of protection.
Like if we can, I was talking to someone about this and they were like I had to stop sending my kid to their friend's house because I know when they go there
their friend has a computer in their room and they're just on it the entire time and my child told me that they were watching stuff with swearing and bad words and just bad things and I don't feel comfortable sending them there so now we're the house
So there's that.
And I think it's okay that is a healthy boundary.
And also something that that person did really well is she had those conversations with her kids before they ever went to a friend's house.
So they had conversations about like
You know, I want you to tell me if when you go to your friend's house, if you guys are watching YouTube or if you see anything with bad words or anything that has people that are not wearing clothes or
Games where you're shooting people like I want you to let me know.
Even if you play them, you won't be in trouble, but I want to be able to talk about that with you
And her child was able to have that conversation with her.
Yep.
So I think a lot of like we can do proactive work and we are the ones having those discussions with our kids.
Even with our daughter with the peer on the bus who has the the phone and she told us
this peer would be Googling stuff on the bus ride.
I said to her, you know, if you can, try and avoid looking at the phone.
Uh you don't know what's gonna pop up and we just don't want you to see anything that's not gonna be safe for you to see
So I bought her a journal and I said, Why don't you try and do your own doodling and or read a book or something like that instead
It's gonna be hard.
Like she's still gonna be tempted, of course, to look and see.
But trying to equip them by having those conversations ahead of time is helpful.
And also trying to protect them if you can, right?
So if you know that this is going to be a situation that's not going to be safe for them, how can you as a parent step in and be like
Well then we're not gonna go there or we're not gonna do that or you're not gonna be alone with this person.
Yep.
That's your job, not your child's job to be like with a whole bunch of friends and be like
Oh, I guess we're watching this now 'cause I feel pressured because all my friends are watching it, right?
Yeah, and that's likely a conversation that you don't have just once.
You have it many times.
Yeah, we're at that age with our oldest now where we're
constantly having this screen time discussion, right?
And I know there'll be times where she does watch something that she shouldn't, because the temptation to watch it, if she has that opportunity, is gonna be so high.
It's gonna be hard for her to not
And truthfully, like I saw things when I was left unattended with my cousins.
I have vivid memories of things that I should not have seen.
And it's just because we're younger.
And that was a different era.
Yeah, I know.
That was completely different.
Like we might have had dial up at that time.
And like
That was on satellite TV.
So found some channels.
Found a channel that we shouldn't have and we saw things because we were left unattended for too long.
I never had anyone have that conversation with me about that kind of stuff.
Yeah
I did a post on that like not your experience, but just in general the other day and it was something about like we ask why are our kids watching porn and why are our kids looking at stuff that they shouldn't be?
And the question should be, why wouldn't they?
Yeah.
That's funny, because the last note I have in my book, is if we as parents don't put limits on screens, devices, routers, kids will see things.
Yeah
And we know that.
There is no doubt that kids will see things.
So that's why it's important to try and learn how and like understand what your children they're curious.
Devices are they know how to use them.
And they will find things.
Whether or not they mean to, they will end up finding something.
So it's important to not be, I guess, naive
And to make sure that you are actually setting limits even on the devices themselves.
And having the conversations like we were talking about, right?
Because for example, like our kids go on the bus.
The bus is like in the clients I've worked with
The bus is such a common place for kids to view porn for the first time.
Right.
Because it is unattended in the back.
It's kind of a free-for-all, right?
And a lot of people now have devices.
So do you not think that a part of that is
Like for us, yeah, maybe there were s people some people with cell phones when we were on the bus.
Maybe.
More like iPods.
Yeah, like they might have had an eye, but again, it wasn't as though you could access that kind of stuff on the bus.
No.
So
for us as parents, that's again, I'm thinking about it in like I talked about before.
It's hard for me to comprehend that these things are problems because
that's not the experience that I had.
So the experience has changed on the bus, for instance.
And we're still learning, right?
Like I feel like by the time our kids are parents, it'll be different, right?
So like we're still learning and thinking about this, like, oh yeah, all these teens and youth and kids have access to devices on the bus, right?
Yeah.
It's like up to us to how are we gonna protect our kids while they're on the bus or at a friend's house or at cousin's house in the basement, right?
Like we have to be the ones thinking about these things.
Right, but that's hard.
It's that situation where
You don't know what you don't know.
Yeah, maybe logically you should understand that.
Yeah.
But again, it's so different.
I did crazy shit on the bus.
But it's yeah, hard for me in my mind.
Now like it makes sense because we've talked about it.
But to pair, yes, there are devices now and we did crazy shit on the bus.
So now they're probably gonna do crazy shit on their phones on the bus.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well and again, like if we're not constant like I'm constantly thinking about this kind of stuff, right?
And but the average person has a million other things on their brain.
They're not constantly thinking about this stuff, right?
I'm only thinking about this all the time because it's also my job.
So I think parents like give yourself some grace if this is the first time you're kind of thinking like, oh crap, what is my child seeing on the bus?
Or
Oh, I did give my kid a tablet or a phone on the bus.
Like I'm that parent that gave my kid a phone on the bus and now I'm thinking about this.
Like I I think we should end it on a note for those parents because it's a lot of people
Right.
And this might be a lot of information and you're like, oh boy, I kind of have to change what I'm doing so that I can protect my kids.
And there's gonna be a lot of big feelings about that.
Yep.
And there will be.
Your kid might think you're the most uncool parent in the world because you've decided that you're gonna put some structure around screens or games in the home.
and know that that's okay.
You can try and get their involvement a little bit, be like, okay, like we're gonna make some changes.
There'll be some new rules and boundaries and stuff and and and work together with them.
But at the end of the day, they do need you to take the lead on that.
And you can validate the depth of the feeling that they have, because it will be hard.
Yeah, if that's the case, then you're reverting course.
You're changing what you've already decided on.
Which I can imagine would be very annoying.
Okay, we could probably talk on this for hours, so I'll ask you one more question related to that
So let's talk about slightly older kids.
If your child has a device, do you think it's okay to look at what they're looking at?
Yes, with a huge caveat that that is already agreed upon before they have the device.
Oh, okay.
All right.
So I would say I talked to a parents about this recently.
Their 14-year-old was given a phone
They decided one day to start looking through her text messages without telling her, read a whole bunch of stuff between like her and a boy.
They got all worried.
They got angry at her.
Well now she doesn't trust them.
Yep.
So what we wanna do is say yes, like when they get to that age and we're postponing how long it is until they have this.
Yep.
But like I'm gonna give you a phone.
But part of having this phone
is a contract.
Like I would actually make a contract up with your kid about how the phone will be used and the rules and the parameters around it.
Like if you're responsible enough to have a phone, then you need to have this contract in place
And part of those things might be like, it's not in your room.
We leave it on a counter to charge at night and by ten o'clock, you know, it's plugged in.
This is for the older kids, right?
And part of it is at any time I can go on and look at what you've been texting.
It doesn't mean I'm going to.
Like I I actually hopefully
won't do that, but I need to know that I can come in and But is that realistic not to?
I think we need to instill, hopefully by the time they're getting a phone, a bit of a sense of trust in the child.
Like they need to know that there is some trust there
And that we're not gonna be going on every night at like seven and scrolling through their messages.
Well I I guess uh I'm nodding to that, but why wouldn't you
You can.
Like you can do that.
But I do think that I mean kids are also smart if they know that you're gonna go through like I remember a peer of mine growing up, her mom would read her MSN messages every single night at seven
Well, I know exactly what she would do.
She would delete half of them every night before seven.
You know what I mean?
Like kids are smart.
If you're gonna have that routine around when you're looking at it
They're gonna always just be deleting things really, really quick.
Yeah.
Then you're creating the system where your kids like, Oh, I'll do stuff and I'm just gonna delete it.
You're better off to like intermittently check it and be like, okay, you know, let's do a phone check, let's look through it together, let's see what's on there, but doing it kind of at random times
I think would be better than being like every night at seven we're gonna go through your text together.
And I also think for the most part, and maybe part of your contract is like any apps that are downloaded, I need to approve.
Right.
Yeah, I mean a lot of that I think is taken care of by let's say we use iPhones.
So then if we get our our daughter an iPhone eventually, like there's a family parental guidance you can put on.
So y
You can have it so that if she wants to download something, sure she can hit that, but then it asks for our approval.
So our parents' approval before it can actually be downloaded.
And like for things like social media, you should be setting up
a parental guidance account that you have control over.
You shouldn't be giving them a full account.
And they shouldn't have it until they're like 16 or whatever the age actually is anyway.
Yeah, I'd say most leading experts are saying like just postpone it as long as you can.
And if you do need to get them a phone for whatever reason, like they actually need to have a phone.
Which I think we say they need to have a phone, often much earlier than they actually need to have a phone.
Yeah, for sure.
Get them a simple phone that doesn't have the ability to download all sorts of apps and stuff like that.
So you're saying they have to learn how to text with T9
Well that's how we learned how to text, right?
I think most most experts in the field are just saying prolong it as long as you can and when you do get them a phone, get them something simple.
Didn't uh Australia just ban kids sixteen and under something like that on social media?
I feel like I saw that.
Yeah.
And I do think that we will see that in the next few years.
Like I think more people are speaking up about the impact of screens and social media and all of this kind of stuff
I think we'll start to see more of a wave of like we need to pull back on how soon we give it.
But it's taken a while to kind of get to this point, but it makes sense 'cause it was so new, right?
And parents are trying to figure out how to handle it.
But yeah, I do think having some sort of contract in place when they do get a phone.
and them knowing that at any time you could go through it so that it's not a secret and that you're not invading on their privacy by randomly just checking it.
But that also keeps them accountable for the stuff that they're doing on their phone
Right, knowing that at any point mom and dad might come through and and look at what I'm doing.
I'll be honest, to me that sounds like in the perfect world, yeah, that works amazingly.
But I just I don't know.
I have a hard time seeing how like it's there's no perfect world.
Like I I truly think that's why by the time you give your child access to such things
There needs to be a trust built and a foundation of relationship built between you and them and conversations had about what's safe and unsafe on there.
Because really the minute you give them that device is the moment that you unlock all of these things for your children.
Yeah.
Anything.
Be so mindful as to when you give your child access to those things.
Because no matter how much you say I'm gonna check your phone or we're gonna have a limit of ten o'clock at night.
or whatever it is, you've given your child access to all the things in the world and it it's gonna be harder and harder to pull them off that and to rein it back in once they have it.
So I think that's why most of the experts are saying like
Wait, wait, wait.
Yeah, right.
Give 'em a simple phone.
And then slowly, like under your guidance, like any skill, like they're gonna need to learn how to
use it in a safe way.
And again I think I think about this for us, like comes to like modeling healthy behaviors around phones and stuff like that too.
Yeah, which we aren't necessarily the best models of either.
No, exactly.
Like we could
We could stand to work on that.
I think we talked about that in our New Year's podcast.
It's like that's one of our resolutions for the new year.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm sure we could talk more on this, but but Yeah, let us know if you want more.
I feel like scre
social media and like the older kids stuff, that's a whole podcast on its own too.
Yeah.
I know we have been asked by a certain social media company to allow one of their main directors of youth and whatever to come on
Yeah.
But I don't I don't know how valuable of a conversation that would actually be.
Yeah, Scott and I are a little unsure about bringing a guest on who's gonna try and talk about how social media is like
We're doing good things for teens.
Yeah.
No part of it is good unless you're going to fully fully ban teens.
Yeah, exactly.
So that's where we're at on that.
Anyways.
Anyway.
Thank you all for listening.
I hope that this helped.
I think this was a really valuable episode.
Hopefully we gave some decent tips on what to do and what not to do.
Sweet Scott, and I are gonna be getting called to talk to people about video games and screens and stuff.
What do you mean?
Called to talk like that.
Yeah, like I don't know.
I could see people wanting you to speak on this topic more.
Yeah, I mean if there's anything I could talk on with some level of expertise, it's probably video games.
Yeah, exactly.
Maybe three D printing, but I've don't feel like I'm an expert on that, so Yeah.
Maybe you get kids into three D printing instead of video games.
Alright
Thank you all for listening, and we'll talk to you again soon.
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
We are glad that you are here.
If you enjoyed today's episode and found it interesting, we'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a rating and a review.
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Thank you so much for listening and we can't wait to talk to you again next time.