Establishing clear guidelines for screen time at home can benefit your child’s long-term health and success. To do this, the first step is understanding:

• how often your child is using a screen
• where they are using a screen
• what screens they are using
• when they are using a screen.

Knowing this can help you set boundaries and limit their usage. Guidelines to consider may include:

• keeping screen time in line with the recommendations for your child’s age group
• limiting screen time viewing to programs the whole family can watch
• turning off the television or computer when the program finishes
• limiting recreational screen time.

Having children involved in the decision-making will help create joint family agreement and ownership. 

Monitor your child's overall weekly time in front of screens. If your child exceeds the recommended guidelines, set some clear expectations in line with the recommendations. This may include limiting recreational television watching, surfing the net or playing computer games, and replacing these with other activities that your child enjoys.

As a family, you can discuss and decide which areas of the home should be screen-free. This could include places like bedrooms, as screens before bedtime can delay sleep and negatively impact sleep quality. You could set expectations around screens only being used in shared family areas to assist in monitoring screen use.

Scheduling set times during the day when screens can be used helps:

• manage your child’s expectations
• maximise time for physical activity
• limit excess screen time
• reduce the content that your child may consume. 

Once your child begins school, it can be useful to discuss as a family how to best utilise screens. This will help reduce excessive use and help set boundaries for personal use, downtime use and the requirements of education and schoolwork.

Monitor what your child is accessing to ensure it is safe and appropriate. It is important to be open and honest about monitoring screen use and ensure this isn’t done in secret. Depending on your child’s age, this may include:

• sitting with your child and watching what they are watching
• testing mobile applications yourself before allowing your child to use them
• checking the TV, video game or movie ratings of your child’s content to ensure they are age-appropriate
• asking your child to explain what they are watching or playing, such as what the objective of the game is, what the TV show is about or how it is making them feel.

You can use this as an opportunity to educate your child about online safety, what appropriate behaviour looks like and how much time they should spend in front of a screen. As your child gets older, they will want more freedom from this. With proper early education, they will have the right tools to navigate the online world and sometimes even self-regulate the amount of screen time they have each day.

See Online safety for more information.

Like most parenting decisions, it is important to model the preferred behaviour to your children. While screens are part of everyday life, the less you use one as a parent, the less likely your child will want to replicate that behaviour.

Being engaged with your children and giving them your full attention through face-to-face interactions will help create better expectations around screens in the home.

When children are bored, they crave stimulation, company, communication or opportunities to develop and grow. However, children often turn to screens first out of habit. 

It is a good idea to schedule time to put down the screen and get active as a family. You can offer your children some choices about what activities, games or sports they want to play. This may make them more likely to participate if they get a choice.

Children won't think twice about their devices by getting outside regularly on weekends and after school. They will be too busy having fun with you!

When your child is bored, it isn’t always the worst thing as it can generate creativity and innovation. Try to guide your child towards screen-free activities that can foster your child’s creative side. These could include:

• drawing
• painting
• puzzles
• board games
• dancing
• reading
• imagination.

Screens are now part of our everyday life, whether we grew up with them or not. Going for a zero-tolerance policy to screen use is rarely realistic or reasonable for older children. If your child exceeds the recommended daily screen time limit, it's best to try to reduce this slowly over time and get them on board.