How I Tried A New Approach To Help Kids Use Tablets In A Healthy, Fun Way
The crumbs on the couch cushion were already an inch deep by 7 p.m. last Sunday, and my 8-year-old Milo didn’t even look up when I set a glass of lemonade down next to him. His 10-year-old sister Lila was hunched over her tablet two feet away, snapping at him for breathing too loud near her speaker. When my 45-minute screen time alarm went off five minutes later, Lila slammed her device down hard enough to make the coffee table rattle. “You never let us actually do anything fun with this thing,” she said, and stormed off to her room.
I’d tried every common trick to get tablet use on track at our house. Strict 45-minute daily limits, which just left them begging for 10 more minutes every night, counting down the seconds like it was a prison sentence. I’d loaded it up with “educational” math and reading apps, which they abandoned as soon as I left the room to sneak clips of gaming videos. As a 4th grade teacher, I know screen time isn’t some big evil, but I hated that our only interactions around tablets were me taking it away and them being mad about it. So when I saw a mom in a parent-teacher Facebook group mention swapping one afternoon of passive screen time a week for unstructured creation time, I figured I’d give it a shot.
I told the kids that starting that week, every Wednesday after homework, they’d have as much tablet time as they wanted until dinner. The only rule was they had to finish with something they made to share at the table. They thought it was a trick at first. Lila immediately asked if she could just watch her usual dance compilations, and I said she could watch any videos she wanted, as long as it was to help her make something. “No made-up school projects,” I said. “It can be stupid. It can be about our cat. It just has to be yours.”
Milo dug through his Lego bin first and decided he wanted to make a stop motion video of his space shuttle landing on Mars. He spent 20 minutes watching a kid-made tutorial, then spent the next hour and a half moving each tiny wheel one millimeter at a time, snapping a photo after every move. Lila, who’s obsessed with our cat Mochi’s habit of stealing all my socks, found a free drawing app and started making a little digital zine of Mochi’s greatest crimes. I stayed out of it – when they lost Lila’s stylus between the couch cushions, I helped them look, but I didn’t fix their arguments or tell them what to do next. By dinner, they both had something to show. Milo’s 12-second video was shaky, he’d accidentally cut off half the landing, and he laughed through the whole thing when we watched it. Lila’s zine had a full page dedicated to Mochi hiding my favorite running sock behind the dryer, and my husband laughed so hard he snort-laughed into his pasta.
The first thing I noticed was that the dynamic shifted the very next day. Before, they’d spend their 45 minutes of daily screen time mindlessly jumping from one 60-second video to the next, never really engaged, always left wanting more. Now, half the time they spend their daily 45 minutes looking up tips for the next Wednesday’s project. Last week, Lila spent her allotted time figuring out how to add page numbers to her zine, instead of scrolling. Milo spent his planning out a stop motion video about his dinosaur collection. I still keep the 45-minute limit on other days, but the begging for extra time almost stopped. They know they have a full block coming to work on their stuff, so they don’t panic when the alarm goes off – they just save what they’re doing and pick it up next week.
It’s not all perfect. Two weeks ago, they spent the first 45 minutes arguing over what to make, and ended up throwing together a 2-minute silly skit about me burning the toast that morning, filmed on Lila’s front camera. It was dumb, but it was still theirs, so we cheered anyway. Some weeks I get busy and forget it’s Wednesday, and they have to remind me. They still zone out and scroll mindlessly on long car rides or rainy weekends, and I don’t freak out about it anymore.
What I didn’t expect was how many skills they pick up that I never would have taught them with pre-made apps. When Milo’s photos kept coming out blurry, he figured out on his own to prop the tablet up on a stack of board books instead of holding it. When Lila wanted to send her zine to my mom for her birthday, she looked up a tutorial on how to export it as a PDF and sent it herself from my email. If they get stuck and ask for help, I just point them in the direction of the search bar – they learn more figuring it out on their own than I could ever tell them.
For anyone who wants to try this, you don’t need any fancy apps or expensive equipment. All the stuff my kids use is free. If your kid says they don’t know what to make, just tell them to watch three tutorials on anything that looks cool, then pick one to try. You don’t have to come up with ideas for them – that’s the point, it’s their project. I don’t judge it or grade it, I just clap when they show me.
Right now, Lila’s planning a whole series of Mochi zines, and Milo’s saving his allowance to buy a green construction paper sheet for his dinosaur stop motion. We still have the occasional screen time fight, but it’s nothing like it used to be. Tablets aren’t just this thing I have to police and take away anymore. They’re just a tool the kids use to make stuff they care about. I don’t know if they’ll still be into this in six months, or if they’ll move on to something else. But for now, it’s working better than any of the strict rules I tried before.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » How I Tried A New Approach To Help Kids Use Tablets In A Healthy, Fun Way