Family & Tech: A Two-Week Program to Get Your Kids Ready for School --- Bad screen-time habits can be broken in a few straightforward steps

"Cameron and Madison Louie had such a packed school year that when summer arrived, the siblings didn't want to do anything.

Even though the Northern California-based Louie family has been in Hawaii all summer, 13-year-old Cameron and 12-year-old Madison have been spending most of their time sleeping in, playing videogames and watching TV. Cameron took accelerated math, played club soccer and basketball, as well as ran cross-country during the school year.

"I wanted to catch up on sleep and start relaxing," he said.

The Louie kids are like many who had gotten used to a slower pace during the pandemic's remote-school days, only to be thrust back into a whirlwind of extracurriculars when in-class instruction resumed. A lot of kids -- experiencing varying degrees of stress -- put their foot down this summer about camps and other scheduled activities. Parents, sensing the need for downtime, largely agreed.

Madison's mom tried to motivate her by offering various day camps, and heard a lot of "no" in reply. "I do nudge them to go outside," said Eunice Louie, who works remotely for a tech company, "but for the most part, I've been letting it go."

Parents who haven't been enforcing their usual screen-time rules now worry about how they'll get their kids off the couch and ready for a new school year. By following the steps below, children can scale back their summertime tech habits and ease into a school-friendly schedule in two weeks.

Shift bedtime earlier

There's probably nothing more important to kicking off the school year successfully than getting adequate sleep, say psychologists and educators. Many kids stay up late and sleep in during the summer. Two weeks before school begins, start moving bedtimes back by about 20 minutes a night until kids go to sleep at a reasonable hour.

Teens need around nine hours of sleep a night, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while younger children require that at the very minimum.

To make sure kids aren't looking at phones if they wake up in the middle of the night, keep all devices out of their bedrooms and buy them an alarm clock.

New York PR executive Sandra Glading said she has been lax with her two sons this summer, but plans to get the 5- and 8-year-old to bed earlier before school starts. She recently began playing bedtime stories from the Calm app to help her older son wind down.

Set screen goals

Having intentional goals for screen use can help motivate kids to change their habits, said Jacqueline Nesi, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University who studies social media's impact on teens.

She suggests talking to kids about what they want to achieve in school. If kids want to do well academically or excel at sports, frame the screen discussion that way, so they understand reducing recreational screen time will drive their success.

Ask your kids which digital activities distract them the most and use that to establish specific goals, such as not checking TikTok while doing homework or not playing videogames until after school assignments are completed. Goals can include how much time and what time of day to spend on specific apps or online activities. Families can set goals together and create a bedtime for all devices.

Slowly reduce screen time

A new study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry found that more than four hours a day of screen use is associated with a higher prevalence of behavioral disorders among 9- to 11-year-olds.

Fareedah Shaheed, who teaches families how to be safe online, suggests kids track screen time with their devices, and reduce use a bit each day over two weeks, or until they reach their new goal.

Create the environment

To set your kids up for success, it's important to create a conducive environment. If kids know they get easily distracted by TikTok while doing homework, they can leave their phone in another room, pause the app's notifications, set time limits for the app or put their phone on "Do Not Disturb" during homework hours. Much of this can be done from the settings on your child's device, or even from your own if you use Apple Family Sharing or Google Family Link.

Switch up the type of screen time

Developing new screen habits can be easier for kids when they change the content they consume rather than stress over losing device time. Nicole Rawson, founder of the Screen Time Clinic, a network of digital-health coaches, suggests swapping out some of the time spent scrolling social media on the phone with watching movies on a big TV screen as a way to train kids' brains for the slower pace of school.

"Focusing on the long plot of a movie is more mundane than the quick pace of social media or gaming content," she said. "Even though kids look relaxed on screens," she added, "their brains are stimulated and it decreases their focus."

Cull the social feeds

Now is a good time to declutter social-media feeds. Ms. Shaheed suggests teens take a Marie Kondo approach to social media and ask themselves whether each person or account they follow brings them joy. "If not, stop following them," she said.

Make a schedule

A summer spent without routine can make jumping back into the structure of school difficult for kids. Setting a schedule for the last two weeks of summer can help. Ms. Rawson suggests creating blocks of time that mirror those of the school day, allocating 30 to 50 minutes for an activity, depending on the child's age, along with a set lunch time.

Kids should have a say in deciding how to fill the day's time blocks. The activities can involve anything but screens. Ms. Rawson offers a free downloadable sample schedule and other resources for parents.

Elizabeth Milovidov, a digital-parenting coach, created five categories of activities she wants her two sons, ages 12 and 15, to do in the weeks before school. These include reconnecting with friends and getting organized for the classroom. She lets the boys decide how to do those things.

"I created the structured time," she said. "It's up to them to fill it."” [1]

1.  Family & Tech: A Two-Week Program to Get Your Kids Ready for School --- Bad screen-time habits can be broken in a few straightforward steps
Jargon, Julie. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 01 Aug 2022: A.11.