AIBU- screens/kids . Feel like giving up

I think only allowing a 15 year old to watch 2 hours of TV a day, or having to split between being able to message their friends or watch TV for an hour, is unfair. Particularly in the summer holidays. Screen time limits for teenagers are important, as well as content limits and observation, but limiting it so much is just going to make it more attractive for them.

NHS doesn’t have recommendations for teenagers it’s for younger children.
However, considering the needs of your children, you can only do what you think is right for them and for you.

Well that’s certainly a drip feed

There isn’t an NHS recommended max for teens fyi

Well yeah that’s obviously a fairly massive drip feed.

There is precious little research showing screen time is bad for children per se

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9d0l40v551o

even the blue light being bad for eyes/sleep/ brains is a myth. The only really relevant research is the possible link between depression and social media. However as the author of the article says, ‘Ice cream does inot cause skin burn ’. In other words so many parents are jumping to conclusions about screen time without real evidence.
My own son loved tv. He also loved reading. He watched a lot of tv with us. In general fairly worthy stuff. He went to a fairly average comp and on to do Natural Sciences at Cambridge. Back in the nineties and noughties, tv was basic and restricted to a few channels. I think he gave himself an education watching BBC bitesize.
i watched parents denying their children access to so much good stuff on the internet. Little children not allowed to watch the extensive educational resource that is CBeebies and CBBC.
OP how much research have you actually done into the bogieman screen time. Inevitably, work in the future will involve significant involvement with screens. Will you censor the jobs they can have? Are you not going to allow them to go to university.
it does seem remarkably short sighted. Like Jehovah’s Witness children being pulled out of lessons that include an extract from BBC bitesize on River Meanders.
Clearly it is important for children to be outside and socialising but to arbitrarily restrict access to such an important educational tool seems bizarre.

🤪 like you’re going to stay up all night every night until 3-4am when you have a teenager on summer hols after GCSEs /A levels

but you have to get up at 6am for work.

2hrs including TV is ridiculously low! It's the summer holidays, they are teenagers, how are they supposed to stay in touch with their friends etc. As others have said content restrictions are much more important than time restrictions

Sounds really healthy all round. Everyone lying. But at least there will be no screens!

TV isn’t the same as phones/SM/gaming so remove that from the limits but I think 2hrs for the rest is plenty

We have 13,10, 6. We have no screen time Monday to Thursday. Then about 1.5 hours of screens on the weekend. We are a bit more relaxed when it's shared family TV. For example they might have been playing switch or something but we can all watch a movie on Saturday night still.
The eldest uses a home mobile phone so he can text and what's app but that is kept in a public space. He doesn't have seperate social media access.
In the holidays we have a binge day.

We keep shared shows PG. We also don't pay for any streaming services.
We are stricter about it then I thought we would be. But we are a busy family so the lack of screens isn't that noticeable.

Do you have older teenage children?

I also spent my youth drunk in a field. Dh was doing god knows what. We weren’t on phones or gaming because they didn’t exist then. If they did we would have been at home on our phones or gaming.

Then get them to turn them on once they get back late and prove their phones died.....

My husband was a gamer when young, I was very social (we met at 24), he spent a fair bit of his teenage years gaming with pals and writing computer games and just being a big geek. I spent my teenage years drinking in fields with pals and other social teenager pass times. We're both grand, well educated and sociable adults but he recently pointed the difference in our teen years out to me when I worried about our 7 year olds love of gaming. He's incredibly good at all things tech related and my husband has had him doing minor programming and things and he completes Zelda games and goes back and does challenges and aims to 100% the game etc. It's not at all mindless, it's strategizing etc and he talks to us endlessly about how it works and how he's going to approach a plan. He's neurodivergent and it's something that he's good at and helps his self esteem. He also swims, runs, does gymnastics and is starting a drama class soon but he gets a couple of hours a day to game and honestly life's too short to restrict it in our eyes.

Great idea! Will inspire them to turn off their phones and say they died when they don’t want to be home by curfew…

Turn the Internet off and say it's broken.

I agree that hours of mindless scrolling isn’t great. But teens use their screens to communicate with each other - you must have noticed that long gone are the days of racking up a huge phone bill yapping to your mates. They chat, they game together- they even do homework on screens. They listen to music, watch films and TV, play games.

There is a difference between 2 hours on all screens and 24/7.

Your children are younger. You will have to adapt to their needs and wants when they become older teenagers. Parents have to change when their children do. Op said the children are rude because she polices their screens, I’m not saying it’s right but it’s also not surprising because she’s set a limit which people set for 4 year olds not 15 year olds. You might hate screens but they are a part of life now. Monitor their activity by all means to keep them safe and give them other activities and experiences but orheriwse they should be allowed to watch tv or contact their friends.

I don't police the screen time of my two the same age. There are content restrictions, yes. I do police the screen time of my 7 year old obviously!

As long as my older ones do lots of other stuff as well, what they choose to do with their downtime is up to them really. They're both busy and active, so fine by me.

Are you still going to limit it to 3 hours when he’s 15? Or drop it down to 2?
You have an 8 year old, it’s not the same as having a 15 year old or 13 year old. parents have to adapt when their children grow up and that includes tv and phones.

Agree with others that that seems like a very low screen time for children of that age. No excuse for their rudeness though...

I also think 2 hours is very low for this age especially during summer holidays and if it is to include TV. Honestly I really admire you for trying but I’m not surprised you’re finding it an uphill battle!

I also think if you are going to impose such strict limits on screen time, it will help if there are adequately enticing alternatives on offer such as spending time at a theatre summer school etc. if that’s what they’re into, taking them to theme parks etc etc.

Like others, I have decided to pick my battles and consider screen content and what else my teen is doing (is homework
still getting done, does he see friends, exercise, get outdoors, explore other interests or attend clubs etc) more than how many hours of screen time he is getting, especially when it comes to TV rather than doom scrolling etc.