How Smart Media Can Help Kids and Parents

Parents often talk to me about screen time, sharing how they feel society judges them for their choices in media use for their kids. When searching for “screen time for children” online, results varied wildly and included headlines such as Screen time takes a toll on child health and Don’t worry, they’ll be fine. Not very helpful or consistent for us parents!

Thinking of media as good or bad in this one-size-fits-all way isn’t empowering to most families I know. Instead of feeling guilty over their child’s media use, I encourage parents to be the judge of which types of media fit their kids best. Parents have the power to find the shows, games and apps that help them as a parent and don’t make life as a parent harder. Here are some benefits to look for in media and apps, what traits of media to avoid, and some tips to help use media.

Good media engages kids’ minds and makes them think even harder or grow a new skill. It respects our kids’ brains and doesn’t just feed them repetitive tasks followed by cheers, confetti and balloons. For example, when I see a stressed out family in my office, I recommend that they watch the “Elmo Belly Breathe” video, or look at what Daniel Tiger does with big emotions in his Grr-ific Feelings app.

Media is most helpful when it provides insight about parenting — or about our kids’ minds and behaviors — that might not have occurred to our busy, exhausted parent brains. Parenting is always easier when we know the motivation or mental state that is behind our child’s behavior.

Smart media also tries to help children discover something new. It can be something social or emotional: an Arthur episode explained germophobia to my eight-year-old much better than I, a doctor, did — I gave way too many facts. Or it can be something STEM-related: my five-year-old started adding up the tater tots on his plate last night after watching Odd Squad, which I thought was pretty cool.

Good media design can also be a starting point for families to play in the real world, and it doesn’t just grab kids’ attention for longer and longer stretches of time. Curious George gives parents ideas for easy science activities that build off of George’s experience, and this makes it easier to transition away from the TV. On the other hand, autoplay, now a common design feature that shows a countdown clock until the next episode starts, creates pressure for kids to keep their attention on the screen, not the world around them. While autoplay can be helpful for parents who don’t want their kids to use remote controls yet, there is a recent study linking it with more transition tantrums. If transitions are tough for your little one, try turning off the autoplay feature on those apps.

So what are the design features that don’t feel as helpful to parents? I mostly hear frustration from parents with not being able to 1) get their child to hand over the tablet or remote, or 2) get their child to do other, non-tech activities such as art, reading or playing. Apps, games and programs are now often designed with lots of “persuasive” features intended to make the child return to the app or program again and again, or play longer and longer. These features include lots of rewards (praise, balloons, stickers, candy, coins, etc.), the inability to save or pause the game (for example, to look up when a parent calls the child’s name), auto-advance, and attention-grabbing visual and sound effects. Because children’s attention and critical thinking skills are still developing, they aren’t yet aware when this persuasive design is affecting their behavior — so it’s a parents’ job to help them.

Here are some overall tips to guide you in using media as a family:

• Use media together. That way, parents can monitor and point out advertising or design that seems tricky or manipulative. I sometimes quiz my eight-year-old about why we get certain ads on YouTube.
• Talk about how it can be frustrating when kids can’t get parents’ attention while using a device, and vice versa. What are the traits of apps that grab this level of attention?
• To build time-awareness, try making your child (age four and up is realistic) in charge of turning off the TV or tablet. I make an “honor code” with my kids about how many episodes they can watch, and if I don’t have to remind them to turn it off, then they’ve earned the same amount of media the next day.
• Uninstall the apps that you find are hard to interact with your kids around, or your child has the most problems transitioning from. Parents have the power to find media that helps them and should use that power.

Parents can learn more about media from websites like Common Sense Media and the 5 Rights Framework.