AIBU- screens/kids . Feel like giving up

[Biggadyboom]

I try so bloody hard to explain that we have limits/boundaries for their sake of their health.

Our rules - They have two hours a day, sometimes more if we’re having a family movie night or on Friday or Saturday nights. They are 13 and 15

and they are constantly asking for more. Constantly sneaking more. Constantly looking at their phones, turning on the telly.

i feel like i do nothing but police their addictions. They are so foul to me because of it .

aibu for just giving up? But then I can’t do that can I? They have developing brains and bodies, I can’t surrender them to screen addiction

just want to fucking throw all the screens away, feel like they are ruling/ruining our lives.

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.

Turn the Internet off and say it's broken.

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

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.

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

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.

Do you have older teenage children?

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.

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

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

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

🤪 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.

Not wanting to drip feed, but both my kids have learning disabilities, which is probably relevant. They cannot read or write, they aren’t messaging friends as they don’t really have any, they aren’t doing g coursework as they at that level. My 15 year old is mainly watching fireman Sam on you tube or scrolling crappy reels. My 13 year old either Netflix baby stuff or crappy AI you tube reels.

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.

Anyway interesting to know you all think it is low . It’s the nhs recommended maximum for teenagers.

but yeah maybe I need to relax and leave them to it . Certainly makes an easier life

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

There isn’t an NHS recommended max for teens fyi

Well that’s certainly a drip feed

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.

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.

Yeah sorry. Only occurred to me when reading replies that a lot weren’t’ relevant to my situation.

Oh, well yeah that’s a massive drip feed

It’s kinda a weird one because they are teenagers in lots of ways. Hormonally certainly. But the not in others

13 and 11 year olds here. DH has set limits on their iPads of 2 hrs gaming per day during the hols. TV we’re more relaxed about but they both have to do some form of physical activity every day. 13 yr old has her phone but no SM other than what’s app which she uses to call/text her mates. 11 yr old only has his phone for travelling to from school for now.

when I google screen time teenagers most places say 2hours

but it does feel like a losing battle tbh

they do have content restrictions. It’s mainly you tube and Netflix they are watching . It’s the mindless reel scrolling I worry about the most. It’s just brain rot.