3 Tips to Manage Your Children’s Screen Addiction

Zainab Hashem, a Lebanese blogger and an Industrial and Management Engineering student at the American University of Beirut, has shed light on a very important issue we’re facing nowadays. Through her post, Give Them Back Their Castles, Zainab addresses the issue of how children today are only attached and addicted to their iPad’s screen. She highlights the difference between children before; how their playtime was all about Barbie, Batman, Lego house, and crayons, and children nowadays having “a group of electric wires and plugs, a laptop on the desk, a set of DVDs where the stories and books should be instead, chargers and cables”. Indeed, it’s every parent’s concern to break and stop their children’s screen addiction. Here are 3 tips on how to manage that.

1. Be functional. Have your children engaged in daily activities that would divert them from using their iPads. Take them to the park each afternoon. Teach them how to ride the bicycle. Teach them how to play chess so that they can be more creative, use both sides of the brain, and improve their memory and problem-solving skills. Tell them what you used to do when you were their age.
2. Make an agreement with your children. Set a deal with your children about the times they are allowed to use their devices. It is very important that you set the conditions and guidelines together. You have to take into consideration that their opinion matters and you shouldn’t use “my way or nothing” method with them because they need to be convinced that this is for their own good.
3. Set up iPad-free zones. Prepare cardboards and hang them on places and areas where you think the children aren’t allowed to use their iPads and devices, For instance, according to the dining etiquette, nobody should use his or her device while eating. Another example would be that they shouldn’t use their devices after 6 or 7 PM because they must be preparing themselves to sleep.

Do you have other tips that you think might help parents in breaking their children’s screen addiction? Share them in the comments below.