Lockdown Screentime: Ditch the guilt!

Feeling guilty about the increased time your child is spending on screens during the nationwide lockdown is about as useful as a lace face mask. We are all in the lockdown boat together and being a full-time teacher, homemaker, entertainer, cleaning service and chef is no picnic. Additionally, maintaining a career whilst children are running amuck has even the most militant anti-tech moms reaching for the iPad.

For some time, media researches have been advocating the shift from screen time to screen content in measuring healthy digital consumption in children. High quality content, such as learning how to play a musical instrument through an app or chatting to a family member on Skype, cannot be placed on par with playing Fortnite or binge-watching You. Similarly, an hour spent socialising on WhatsApp is different to an hour spent drawing comparisons on Instagram. Children gain differently from using various forms of digital media.

If the lockdown has highlighted one aspect of our children’s lives it is the value they place on socialising. And although they are spending more time watching TikTok videos, they are also spending more time building relationships with their classmates whether it is through virtual playdates or Zoom chats. Obviously face-to-face socialisation is healthier, but connecting with friends digitally in the meantime will improve our children’s mental state.

In the current climate children should be given a little more rope than usual, provided the quality of the content they are consuming is topnotch. In other words, it needs to be uplifting, positive and adding to a healthy state of mind.

How can you as parent make the best of their increased screen time? We have developed 4 B’s to get you and your digital native safely on the other side of the lockdown.

1. Be involved: Being involved in your child’s online life means watching TikTok videos with them or playing a game of Fortnite (and losing, much to their delight). Consuming the media alongside your child not only provides common ground, but it also gives you first-hand knowledge of the people they might be speaking to, the harmful content they may be exposed to and the influencers shaping their opinions.
2. Break the Box: Putting your own spin on something or creating something new from scratch is an imaginative outlet. Creativity and problem-solving skills are two of the most sought-out qualities in prospective job applicants today. Breaking the box could be anything from teaching tweens how to write simple code to allowing your 4-year-old to collect ovals around the house by snapping photos on your smartphone as part of a lesson in shapes.
3. Bring context in: Educating children as to the wider context around the media they are consuming can add greatly to their learning via screens. Let’s use the movie Moana as an example. Asking EQ-boosting questions such as: “How did Moana feel when…” or “Have you ever felt as angry as that?” improves their emotive vocabulary and allows them to freely express themselves in future interactions. Additionally, the wider context of the movie can be used to teach them general knowledge. e.g. “Did you know Moana is a Pacific islander? Where is the Pacific? Show me on the map.”
4. Balance: As ever, we advocate a healthy balance. Exercise and sunlight are still excellent cures for the “lockdown blues” children are experiencing at the moment. So make sure that everything, even healthy content, is consumed in balance with other activities.

Sassy Llama would like to implore parents to cut themselves some slack during the COVID19 pandemic. With so many economic, social and health pressures upon us we need not add guilt to the load.