Since forever, the rule is 5 minutes of screentime per life-year per day (and the budget is updated weekly). Thus 45 minutes for a 9-year-old. We talk a lot about this in our family council as the kids try to renegotiate this. One change we did ~4 years ago is that there are different types of media time comparable to yours:
Pure reading, educational games don’t count.
Highly creative, collaborative, real-life-like, or physical games count half.
“Normal” games count normal.
Addictive, solitary, violent, or artificial games count double.
Which games fall into which category was determined by the kids agreeing on how much each game counted on five dimensions and then grouping the results accordingly. This led to buy-in from the kids into the scheme, and we have been using that since then. It takes some effort to track this. It still amounts to higher screentime than for your kids but as far as I see lower than most of their classmates.
Benefits from screentime that I see are
They picked up a lot of English language from videos. I think a lot of today’s kids’ English language skills come from video and very little from school except for formal grammar. Including singing. This contributes to today’s teens all speaking in the same international accent (see Tweet by Paul Graham).
I learn this only by talking with them. I ask what they found interesting or funny or how happy they are with their screentime (on a scale of 0-10) or which fraction of their screentime they see as fun/consumption vs. learning and productive (“40%”). I send them YT links, and they send me links back. I help with the network, and they help each other with Teams and Minecraft.
What’s your definition thereof? I suspect it’s different than what mine, because the games I play that are actually quasi-useful[1] I think would tend to fall into both categories[2].
My thoughts on screentime.
Since forever, the rule is 5 minutes of screentime per life-year per day (and the budget is updated weekly). Thus 45 minutes for a 9-year-old. We talk a lot about this in our family council as the kids try to renegotiate this. One change we did ~4 years ago is that there are different types of media time comparable to yours:
Pure reading, educational games don’t count.
Highly creative, collaborative, real-life-like, or physical games count half.
“Normal” games count normal.
Addictive, solitary, violent, or artificial games count double.
Which games fall into which category was determined by the kids agreeing on how much each game counted on five dimensions and then grouping the results accordingly. This led to buy-in from the kids into the scheme, and we have been using that since then. It takes some effort to track this. It still amounts to higher screentime than for your kids but as far as I see lower than most of their classmates.
Benefits from screentime that I see are
They picked up a lot of English language from videos. I think a lot of today’s kids’ English language skills come from video and very little from school except for formal grammar. Including singing. This contributes to today’s teens all speaking in the same international accent (see Tweet by Paul Graham).
General knowledge of many kinds, from practical to theoretical and from technical to political. My kids have interests in fashion and follow popular YouTubers, but they also learn math songs, tell me TikTok is bad, know fun facts about human biology, tell me how to use internet tools, or compare different views on vaccination mandates.
I learn this only by talking with them. I ask what they found interesting or funny or how happy they are with their screentime (on a scale of 0-10) or which fraction of their screentime they see as fun/consumption vs. learning and productive (“40%”). I send them YT links, and they send me links back. I help with the network, and they help each other with Teams and Minecraft.
What’s your definition thereof? I suspect it’s different than what mine, because the games I play that are actually quasi-useful[1] I think would tend to fall into both categories[2].
(arguably)
Opus Magnum, Factorio, shapez.io, etc.