Photo Credit: Toa Heftiba
During the 2017 Summer Holidays, Groupon predicted that the average child would watch around 60 movies and play 150 hours of video games. This may sound like a lot, but with children ages 5-16 spending an average of 6.5hrs a day in front of a screen, it’s easy to see how it would all add up.
It may be too late to change the fate of Summer 2017, but the fate of the Christmas Holidays is still in our hands – we’ve heard Santa wants them to be as screen-free as possible!
Christmas may not seem the time to start bringing in new rules and limitations. However, the many distractions in the form of visitors, events and activities make it easy to slowly and subtly implement screen restrictions without causing too much bother.
Fancy giving it a go?Here are 5 easy ways you can reduce screen time this Christmas, festive season, and beyond!
- Get a screen time monitoring app
Kids have a LOT of free time during the Christmas Holidays, and it’s perfectly ok for them to spend some time on screens. The important thing is to prevent minutes from slipping into hours…and hours…and hours on end.
Whilst the kids may have little to do, us parents sure have a lot – screen time monitoring isn’t exactly top priority when there’s pigs in blankets to prepare. That’s where a screen time app comes in. Screen Time Labs provides an easy, customisable and versatile solution, allowing you to limit and monitor how much time your little ones are spending online each day.
- Get the kids involved in festive activities
We get it – it’s often much easier (and quicker) to get the Christmas Lunch prep done alone. This year, however, we challenge you to allow the kids to get involved too. They’ll be so engrossed in being your little chef, they won’t give their iPad a second thought!
- Swap one screen for another
There’s something so antisocial about tablets and phones. TV, however, can actually be a lovely way bring people together, especially over Christmas when all you want to do is snuggle up.
With a whole array of Christmas films shown over the holidays, there’s no real reason for anyone to be locking themselves away to play on Angry Bird. Swap these antisocial screens and allocate screen time for family movie nights instead.
- Change the Wi-Fi code
If you want to get serious about screen time, why not change the Wi-Fi code this Christmas? Making it a strictly no-internet time of year can be both fun and surprisingly revelatory for the whole family.
- Play with your kids
It may sound obvious, but playing with your kids is one of the easiest ways to limit their screen time. Interaction is an excellent substitute for the over-stimulation screens provide, and also helps reassure them their reduced screen time isn’t a punishment – instead of being left alone to amuse themselves, with their beloved games taken away from them, you’re rewarding them with extra Mummy and Daddy time.
For more ways to reduce screen time, visit experthometips.com
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