How much screen time do your children have a day?

[RedRobyn24]

I have young children, a 1yo and a 5yo for context

I’m just struggling a lot lately and I’m very strict about screen time, just wondering what others are doing and if maybe I should relax a bit more

Thinking giving them screen time will help you relax is a fool's game. In my experience, and I don't understand what sits behind it, screens make kids really frazzled and bad tempered. I used to give my DD at 2 yrs old a screen whilst I showered so she wouldn't go through doors etc. The explosive moods that emerged from that were horrendous - literal addict. The iPad 'broke' and after 2-3 days she was suddenly normal again and perfectly happy with fluffy toys / some little books. I think we will see within the next few years a radical move away from screens in kids. The research evidence is overwhelmingly against them given the impacts they have on kids' attention and brain development

If you look at the other comments I think there has been movement away from screens. Most people I know IRL definitely watch quite a bit of telly and use tablets

My 1yo has no screen time my 5yo has max 25-30 minutes a day of tv but often chooses to do something else, however I know they use a tv at school to support some things they’re teaching them and I don’t know how much they do that, they say not a lot but I don’t know.

The last 2 weekends we have watched a film, but this is very recent, her friends were all talking about Frozen and she wanted to see it. She’s quite behind on the Disney princess stuff compared to a lot of children her age

Same

It varies so much, I’d struggle to give a reasonable answer I think. DS is 4 and DD is only a baby. No tablets in our house and definitely no phone time, so this is just based on tv use.
Most days between none and 45 minutes, probably, but some days he may want to watch a film which is obviously 1.5 hours or so, and some days, if someone is ill usually, we vegetate in front of the tv at length 😂 I’m not too rigid about it, and go with the flow within reason. He’s an incredibly active, sporty little thing so I can’t think for a second a Sunday spent watching a film (or two 😂) if he wants to will make any difference at all. Of course, chance would be a fine thing, having time 😅

All of ours have their own tablets, and access to a TV 24/7 so to speak. Because we don't restrict, it doesn't become like forbidden fruit. They self regulate. They'll go on for maybe 45 minutes and do some Minecraft, then it gets put back in the drawer because suddenly they all want to play outside. Some days are screen heavy. Some days they don't touch them. They have quite a healthy attitude to tech.

We have no screentime mon-friday. They probably watch an hour or so at weekends but we are super busy after Saturday mornings.

We do allow unlimited audiobooks so if they're tired from school they tend to take themselves off to listen to various audiobooks while they do Lego or craft.

We find when we do allow screentime during the week it actually just is more hassle than it's worth for 20 mins peace.

Just under 1, maybe 15-30 mins a day watching a kid's TV show. Sometimes Ms. Rachel is used in a "break glass in case of emergency" fashion - I swear that woman is a wizard of some kind.

Speaking as a teacher, there's a big difference between letting kids watch TV and letting them scroll through brain rot on YouTube. I find a lot of teens now don't even have the attention span to watch an hour of TV.

Just coming back to my thread to ask what you all think about the updates in government advice about screen time?

We have two boys, 9 and 11. Outside holidays we limit the screen time to an hour during the week and 2 hours on the weekend, not including the time we watch a bit of TV as a family after dinner. We also allow computer games only on the weekend, which helped a lot to reduce the arguing when we request to turn screens off, especially on school days. We use an App called TimeTilly to keep track of the screen time for each kid. It also allows us to easily ‘reward’ them with some extra minutes if they have been super helpful. And if they push the boundaries too far, we can also reduce the screen time or suspend screen time completely for a day (aka the”nuclear” option 😆). But usually, just mentioning that they might loose precious screen time works wonders!

4 & 6 year old, they each get to pick a show on the tv to watch for 20 minutes per day. Sometimes they will watch each others show too so on those days they get 40 minutes of television. We don't allow television after dinner and we don't allow tablets or phones.

Currently pregnant and during first trimester I was sick all day, everyday and so the television was on a lot and so we also don't worry about there being too much screen time if a parent or child is unwell.

I’m fairly relaxed
Age 8&9

weekdays:
30 min iPad time
unlimited tv (it’s usually about 1 hour max as the evenings fly with dinner activities homework reading etc)

weekends:
iPad time- probably 2 hours split up over the day
unlimited tv- again not tonnes as they play outside, Lego and toys still.