Like most
parents over the age of thirty – myself included – Adrian and his wife did not
spend a childhood in a social media-dominated universe. If you’d said “screen
time” to me anytime before the mid ‘aughts, I would have thought you were
talking about changing out storm windows for screens in the spring. But, as he
writes in Dad or Alive, rather
than throw their hands up in defeat, Adrian and his wife took on screen time,
app time, chat windows, with determination. They set reasonable, and
follow-able, ground rules for tech use. They’ve also found user-friendly
settings on Google, and on various apps, that help them enforce these rules.
It’s not
just a need to control. Adrian sees his responsibility as twofold: he wants to
make his kids’ online experiences safer, while at the same time encouraging
them to have a healthy relationship with technology.
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Three out
of Adrian’s four kids have become skilled and frequent tablet users. His
ten-year-old daughter avidly watches videos on Tik Tok, and he’s made use of
the “change settings” option to scale the app to creators her own age. In case
you don’t know, much of the Tik Tok universe, to put it mildly, is wildly
inappropriate for a ‘tween.
Adrian’s
main tool is the ingenious Google Family Link. With it, he can control which apps his kids use, and with what frequency. He
can set an internet shutdown time, so he knows the children aren’t using their
devices past a certain hour. It helps him too, showing him exactly how much
time he’s using email, YouTube, messages, and other apps.
Other tips
he offers on helping your child enjoy a healthy relationship with technology
include making them “earn the privilege” of using their tablets. And unless
they’re reading a book, they can’t use them before bed. If a child has a friend
over, they must interact and play, not just zone out on tablets. In
restaurants, tablets allowed until food comes. And absolutely no chat function
allowed on any app.
Tech isn’t
going anywhere, of course. Luckily, developers are finally taking beleaguered
parents into consideration, helping keep dependence under control.
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