Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 152 | How to Manage Screen Time with Toddlers

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Ep. 152 | How to Manage Screen Time with Toddlers · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  And I just think like, man, like there would be no Ed Sheeran if Ed Sheeran had an iPhone at age 12. Hey, guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Beth Key, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:30
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here for another 5-Minute Fatherhood. We know that one of the most difficult things to manage is screen time when you have toddlers because, man, you can hand them that little device. We called it the tranquilizer. You know, our kids just like...
• 0:45
  You know, we were like, oh, we have peace and quiet. And so it is like so tempting to overuse screens with kids. And so there's a perspective, I think, that's been really helpful for us to think about when we think about this topic. You guys probably have heard a lot of the research done about the dangers of screen times with kids. There's an article out by the New Zealand Herald called Smartphones, Tablets Causing Mental Health Issues in Kids as Young as Two.
• 1:15
  And they said just an hour a day staring at a screen can do enough to make, can be enough to make children more likely to be anxious or depressed. They had this research to talk about the zombie mode kids get into at nearly five hours a day, just looking at electronic devices. Research from San Diego State University and the University of Georgia say time spent on smartphones is a serious but avoidable cause of mental health issues. And so we are, our kids are living through an experiment of hyperbole,
• 1:43
  How much and how early can they really absorb all this screen time?
• 1:49
  And I think that obviously we can just talk about how bad that is, but that still leaves the question, like, what do we do with our kids? And so what did our parents do with us? And one of the things that I think is really important to sort of just expose here is that modern parents believe it's their responsibility to keep their kids entertained. They do not want to absorb the cost of...
• 2:15
  of having bored kids on their hands. And that is actually very recent. And it's important to, for a minute, lift up the value of boredom. One of my favorite quotes about boredom was by Albert Einstein, where he says, "'Creativity is the residue of time wasted.'" Or Neil Gaiman, an amazing author, he said, "'The best way to come up with new ideas "'is to get really bored.'"
• 2:44
  Or Steve Jobs, who gave us these nice devices, he liked to say, I'm a big believer in boredom. Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything. And so like what these guys are saying is that we need to actually not see boredom as a enemy in the family.
• 3:03
  What we want to see is we want to foster a spirit of creativity. The biggest problem with screens oftentimes is that it's a consuming device. It's a consumption. And so what we want our kids to be doing is creating. We want them to be exploring. We want them to be indulging their curiosity. But there's often a step that happens before that, and that is they have to get really bored. Right.
• 3:25
  And that's really hard for us to handle. And that's kind of created a cultural sort of angst about we have to keep kids entertained all the time. So, Jeff, what are your thoughts on this? Yeah, well, when you're talking, I'm thinking, I don't know where it is, but I remember reading an interview by Ed Sheeran, who's actually one of my favorite musicians. And he's not just a good singer and a guitar player, but he's like brilliantly creative and different with his like pedals and looping and all these kind of different ways, almost August Rush style. If you guys have seen that movie, August Rush, hard to say.
• 3:54
  Uh, but I remember reading an interview by him and someone just asked him like, you know, Hey, how are you so good at all this? And all this kind of different quirkiness about the guitar. And he literally just said, because my parents never let me have video games. Right. And that's like, and it's, it's, and he goes on to expand. He just goes like, he goes, I now look back and reflect on the fact that I just tinkered and messed around with the guitar in my room for like a decade because I just, I had nothing else to do. And I just think like, man, like there would be no Ed Sheeran if Ed Sheeran had an iPhone at age 12.
• 4:23
  There would be no Ed Sheeran if Ed Sheeran is playing Fortnite. That's crazy to think about that actually you're actually like completely deleting that person's future potential at some level. Now, of course, let me give the counter side of that because I don't want there to be any shame or guilt here at all. I think screens are there's a couple things I'll say and we can't we can't solve this problem in this this episode, but not all screens, not all screen time is created equal.
• 4:45
  Right. There's a difference between like a kid on an iPad in the corner who's like whiny and grumpy and doesn't want to be with the family and a family movie night. Those are two very different things and do very two very different things to family culture. There's a, you know, like, like, here's what you just create your own filter. That's what I'm saying. And, and know what you're pointing your family towards. And so we have, you know, we use screens, but we use them as tools for sickness when we're sick. It's just like watch 19 movies. We don't care. You're throwing up. I'm throwing up. Right. Planes where we're traveling.
• 5:13
  And then treats. So it's kind of like, it's like sickness, travel and treats is usually how we do it. And treats is kind of treated like a treat. I'm not going to give a cookie every single day, but it's a blessing. It's you love it here. You know, here's this. And our kids are now older past the two year age, which is when they kind of say that the brain is the first two years are really critical. I really suggest.
• 5:31
  And there's really no need up until a kid gets to they just kind of sit there and walk around and do nothing anyways. Right. They don't know what it is. If you don't tell them, they don't even know what it is. And so, yeah, so that's just what I would say. It's just be thoughtful about it. And like Jeremy said, they're totally fine. They're totally OK. But are you pushing your family culture towards creation or consumption? And that's the big question we have to answer.
• 5:52
  Hey guys, we know it's really challenging to try to build your family team when all the tools you've grown up with or seen essentially are aimed at only helping develop family members as a collection of individuals. That's why we launched familyteams.com, where you can find all the tools we've developed with tons of resources at different price points, free courses, videos, writings, etc. that help you build up and transform you and your family into a multi-generational team on mission. Check out all the resources we have over at familyteams.com.