Mother in Law: The screen time debate

As someone very much in the trenches, I thought I would weigh in on the screens and social media debate. Finally, a subject on which I have specialist knowledge. 

Firstly I think we need to establish what we mean by screens. The big screen probably horrified our great-great-grandparents, the medium-sized screen horrified our great-grandparents, and now it seems people our parents’ age are horrified at our children using the small and very small screens. Is there any difference? I can certainly confirm, despite the medium-sized screen offering 90% of the entertainment in my house growing up, that my eyes remain a normal eye shape and did not, in fact, go square. And as someone who dragged their family to the Magic Faraway Tree over Easter, it was only as wholesome as staring silently at a screen can get. 

Of course, it isn’t about the size of the screen but what is being shown. I suppose one of the reasons the TV became more acceptable was the big-budget boxset, from the West Wing onwards. This sort of TV has integrity, makes you think, and gives you something to talk about. Whilst on the subject of integrity, and getting back to children, I would have paid my licence fee 10 times over just for CBeebies. The BBC, as we all know, has a charter to serve the public interest - to provide both education and entertainment. It really is wonderful. I do not see a problem in children of any age watching CBeebies, particularly (and this was touched on in the recent report on screentime) if an adult sits with the child and watches it too.

Because, when you get to the small and very small screens, the chances are it becomes a solitary activity and much more two-dimensional. You aren’t joining in, or debriefing. You are less likely to know what they are watching, and the content on the online platforms is, shall we say, often less educational. Watching Italian Brain Rot on your mum’s phone is entirely different to watching Mr Tumble with your mum. 

But even Italian Brain Rot and the like has a place, in my opinion, for the following reasons:

1. Because you are looking after these children 24/7, sometimes you really just need a minute. This might be to phone the dentist to make an appointment, or it might be that you haven’t slept in weeks and want to drink a cup of tea while it is hot. Shorts/reels/TikToks weren’t really a thing when my kids were tiny, but videos of a lady with fancy nails opening Kinder Eggs were like crack to them.
2. I strongly believe that the vast majority of kids should be allowed to understand and appreciate pop culture. They need to at least be given the opportunity to have an opinion on which Olivia they prefer (Dean or Rodrigo). And yes, their brain cells probably are rotting, but they need to be able to join in with their friends by making a weighing-up gesture with their hands when someone says the words 'six' and 'seven' in the same sentence, or whatever the new thing is by the time this article gets published.
3. Because young people don’t drink or smoke any more, I can genuinely say that 'the influencers' have actually had a good influence on my children. All they have been influenced into doing is making acai bowls and really good heatless curls.

Social media brings an additional set of challenges, of course. I would welcome an Australian style ban, and if it were to happen I can imagine us talking about these dark days, akin to when I couldn’t go in the school toilets without leaving stinking of cigarette smoke. It is really tough and toxic, and the ramifications of 'getting it wrong' are potentially major and very public. But as things stand, social media is an embedded part of our older children’s lives. In fact, it is the infrastructure of their lives. Deceptively Angelic Child no. 1’s friends only use Snapchat to message each other; they don’t even have each others’ numbers. I’m not exaggerating when I say I would be stopping DALC1 from having friends if I took away Snapchat. Sure, it would be better if they spoke to each other, but who speaks to each other these days? Twenty odd years ago I only had the courage to ask my husband out by text. At least it doesn’t cost them 12p a go now. DALC1 has a Snap Streak of 400 odd days with a boy from her primary school and even though (shall we say) he’s not as sensible as her, he’s a good kid and I like that for at least a few seconds each day they are thinking about each other.

So, I guess I’m saying that there is no such thing as perfect parenting, partly because it’s bloody hard and partly because muddling through and making mistakes with all this stuff is genuinely better for your kids than any 'perfect' Enid Blyton-esque regime. The rules we had in place when our kids got phones are still there - I have the PINs, they aren’t allowed to post pictures of their faces, the phones don’t go in their rooms at night and so on.

As ever, I think 'everything in moderation' is the answer. These kids work hard all day at school and need to decompress afterwards. I don’t think you should stick an iPad in front of a kid every time you sit down in a restaurant, but perhaps it is fine if the meal is taking ages to arrive (ie every meal ever at Center Parcs) or the other people around the table are insistent on talking about boring adult subjects.

I think, as parents, we have two challenges - one is to entice kids away from the little screens with an offering of quality time together (which, by the way, also involves you being off your phone), and the other is to keep abreast of the technology as best we can, because not all kids are savvy and sensible. DALC1’s former friend, just turned 13, keeps posting TikToks of her with her hand on her waist (to make it look small), and the camera angled somehow so that her lips and eyelashes all look unnaturally large. Another vague friend recently told some outrageous lies on her Instagram story and she is now being mocked en masse. As parents we need to be on top of this stuff. I saw a really useful infographic recently that showed the biggest risk of each platform (eg disappearing messages on Snapchat means it lends itself to bullying) but continually working on having an open, trusting relationship with them is the most important thing so that they will come to you first when they, inevitably, make their mistakes.

Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article