The Effect of Screen Time on my children

As a child, screen time consisted of watching tv. However, my parents did not allow us to watch very much tv. My mom hated it, and I believe that if she had the choice she would just have gotten rid of it. The only tv we really watched

was when my dad was home, and then we watched what he wanted. Back then there was no other screen options, so we were forced to find other things to do.

I hated it. I wished that we could watch more tv. I would even wake my baby brother up from his nap so that we could watch Sesame Street because at least then we were watching something.

When I went to college, I spent all of my free time in the tv room of my dorm. Now that I didn’t have anybody telling me that I couldn’t watch tv, I watched it all the time. I became addicted to soap operas, and I would zone out, even when there really wasn’t anything on.

Too Much Screen Time turned me into a Zombie

One Sunday I was in the dorm basement, in the tv room, from 8 AM to 10 PM. Since there were no windows in that room, when I exited my eyesight actually had to readjust, and I realized that I had lost an entire day of my life doing nothing of consequence. I had missed my life.

From then on, I decided that I was not going to do that anymore. I still enjoy watching tv with my husband, or putting in a good movie to watch, but I also can make the choice to turn it off.

When Super Stuffy was born, my husband and I agreed that we would limit our children’s “screen time”. When he was a baby, we would spend time listening to music, playing, dancing, and experimenting with life.

Of course, this was before the days of ereaders and personal tablets. Our first experience with a tablet was at a Verizon store. The clerk at the store let my children use her tablet to work on a puzzle while I took care of my business. It was so cool! I actually didn’t know that that stuff existed.

There Are Educational Benefits to Screen Time!

I could immediately see the educational benefits of these things. They could learn using technology! Shortly thereafter, I decided to get an ereader so that I could order and read books on a tablet instead of carrying books wherever I went. I also got my first smartphone that had the ability to download apps.

Our first real experience with video game apps was Angry Birds. We would spend hours together playing Angry Birds on my smartphone. It was new, a novelty, and we all got into it.

Then along came Minecraft. Stuffy had learned about Minecraft before me and wanted to get it. I did a lot of research on it and discovered that here was a game that truly had educational possibilities. So I paid the $6.99 to get Minecraft PE on my tablet and the kids would both sit on either side of me and just watch me play.

As the kids were learning to read, I thought it would be great if they could have their own tablets to read their own books on, not to mention the ability to research on the internet. So after Stuffy had started to read I bought them both their own tablets.

they brought a double edged sword. They learned how to download games and apps, how to search for things on the internet that they wanted to find out more about, but more and more of their time was consumed with watching youtube and playing video games.

I still had limits on their screen time, but soon it became easier to say “yes” when they asked to play a game. They weren’t fighting when they were engrossed in their screen time. It gave me time to get my own work done.

When I started my unschooling experiment, so much of what I read said that kids would learn how to self regulate when it came to screen time. It made sense to me. I thought back to my Sunday when I realized that watching all that tv was an incredible waste of time. I also knew that I used screens for research and for fun, and that someone can learn from screen time. I truly believed that my kids would learn to self regulate when they realized how much life they were truly missing.

It didn’t work out that way. My kids did not self regulate. They went in the completely opposite direction. They began to lose the ability to make any choice besides screen time. I vacillated between two views. One day, I would think about how beneficial the screen time was because I saw them learn science, history, reading, and math from what they watched. The next day all I would see was that they were watching other people live their lives and not living life for themselves. Their brains had no chance to think about anything else.

Too Much Screen Time for Super Stuffy Caused a Shift in my Thinking

On one particular occasion Stuffy was playing Splatoon on our Wii U. He loved the ability to play with others online and as he played he gained territory and rank. Since his score was based on how someone else performed, when he lost he completely lost control. He slammed down the controller and focused on venting his rage on the nearest victim. I intervened and commanded him to go upstairs. A few minutes later I went upstairs after him and we talked things through.

He had calmed down by then and felt awful. We reconciled our hearts and discussed ways to help him stay calm. The trouble is, when you are that angry, you physically feel as if you are going to explode. All of that pressure needs release, and it is almost impossible to release it by breathing deeply and counting to ten. Even stomping up the stairs, slamming the door, and punching a pillow is difficult, because the need for release is so immediate.

I knew that something needed to change, but I didn’t know what to change. All I knew was that I had to do something different to help my son.

In my next post I will explain what I have learned from the screen time that my kids participate in.