If your child’s life has included a Minecraft phase, you know what I’m talking about. There’s the beginner level of the game that you play, walking from place to place collecting resources for survival, and there are the deeper levels, that can include creating entire neighborhoods to programming your own action sequences and building tools that you make available to other players.
In other words, you can play in passive mode or you can juice up your creative powers and be a contributing participant in an innovating Minecraft community.
When I get online, I can waste a lot of time alongside the best of them…browsing, falling down an internet rabbit hole in the name of research, tuning out other obligations I don’t want to face in the moment. I look up, and it’s hours later. Sound familiar?
And then there are those incredible screen time opportunities — finding inspiration in a favorite blog, discovering the exact piece of research data I was missing, laughing uncontrollably with the whole family at a funny movie scene we’ll recall for years, gathering momentum and notes for my next project.
Screen life is full of contradictions:
Consume (“I’m going shopping!”) or create (“Wow, you shot and edited that film on your ipad?”)
Connect (“that’s just what I was thinking?”) or disengage (“if I look busy, no one will bother me”)
Discover (“that gives me a great idea!”) or distract (“I just need to ‘veg out’ for a while”)
Recognizing these differences means we don’t treat all screen time as the same; we know it’s more complex than that and consider that reality when creating screen time rules with our family.
Learn more about showing our movies in your school or community!
Join Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD for our latest Podcast
Learn more about our Screen-Free Sleep campaign at the website!
Our movie made for parents and educators of younger kids
Learn more about showing our movies in your school or community!
Register your interest in bringing our new movie to your school or community
Learn more about showing our movies in your school or community!
Join Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD for our latest Podcast
Learn more about our Screen-Free Sleep campaign at the website!
Our movie made for parents and educators of younger kids
Join Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston MD for our latest Podcast
Register your interest in bringing our new movie to your school or community
As we’re about to celebrate 10 years of Screenagers, we want to hear what’s been most helpful and what you’d like to see next.
Please click here to share your thoughts with us in our community survey. It only takes 5–10 minutes, and everyone who completes it will be entered to win one of five $50 Amazon vouchers.
If your child’s life has included a Minecraft phase, you know what I’m talking about. There’s the beginner level of the game that you play, walking from place to place collecting resources for survival, and there are the deeper levels, that can include creating entire neighborhoods to programming your own action sequences and building tools that you make available to other players.
In other words, you can play in passive mode or you can juice up your creative powers and be a contributing participant in an innovating Minecraft community.
When I get online, I can waste a lot of time alongside the best of them…browsing, falling down an internet rabbit hole in the name of research, tuning out other obligations I don’t want to face in the moment. I look up, and it’s hours later. Sound familiar?
And then there are those incredible screen time opportunities — finding inspiration in a favorite blog, discovering the exact piece of research data I was missing, laughing uncontrollably with the whole family at a funny movie scene we’ll recall for years, gathering momentum and notes for my next project.
Screen life is full of contradictions:
Consume (“I’m going shopping!”) or create (“Wow, you shot and edited that film on your ipad?”)
Connect (“that’s just what I was thinking?”) or disengage (“if I look busy, no one will bother me”)
Discover (“that gives me a great idea!”) or distract (“I just need to ‘veg out’ for a while”)
Recognizing these differences means we don’t treat all screen time as the same; we know it’s more complex than that and consider that reality when creating screen time rules with our family.
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If your child’s life has included a Minecraft phase, you know what I’m talking about. There’s the beginner level of the game that you play, walking from place to place collecting resources for survival, and there are the deeper levels, that can include creating entire neighborhoods to programming your own action sequences and building tools that you make available to other players.
In other words, you can play in passive mode or you can juice up your creative powers and be a contributing participant in an innovating Minecraft community.
When I get online, I can waste a lot of time alongside the best of them…browsing, falling down an internet rabbit hole in the name of research, tuning out other obligations I don’t want to face in the moment. I look up, and it’s hours later. Sound familiar?
And then there are those incredible screen time opportunities — finding inspiration in a favorite blog, discovering the exact piece of research data I was missing, laughing uncontrollably with the whole family at a funny movie scene we’ll recall for years, gathering momentum and notes for my next project.
Screen life is full of contradictions:
Consume (“I’m going shopping!”) or create (“Wow, you shot and edited that film on your ipad?”)
Connect (“that’s just what I was thinking?”) or disengage (“if I look busy, no one will bother me”)
Discover (“that gives me a great idea!”) or distract (“I just need to ‘veg out’ for a while”)
Recognizing these differences means we don’t treat all screen time as the same; we know it’s more complex than that and consider that reality when creating screen time rules with our family.
Hobbies offer benefits at every age, from helping children build a sense of self to giving retirees a renewed sense of purpose. The word traces back to the 1400s as a nickname for a small horse, later evolving into today's meaning of a pastime pursued for its own sake. Parents can spark interest by sharing their own hobby histories, building a family-history hobby list, and trying new activities together. Summer is an ideal time to lean into offline hobbies as an antidote to screen saturation.
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When kids break a rule, most parents default to handing down a consequence. But research on autonomy-supportive parenting shows that inviting kids to help decide the consequence leads to deeper learning, stronger accountability, and even kinder behavior toward others. Younger kids tend to overpunish themselves while teens often go easy, and both create natural openings for parents to guide the conversation. The goal isn't softer consequences. It's consequences that actually teach.
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Kids with ADHD benefit most when parents provide support at the exact moment behavior happens, a science-backed approach called "point of performance." Abruptly shifting from high-stimulation screen time to demanding tasks creates a "dopamine cliff," a brain chemistry drop that often shows up as resistance and conflict. Understanding both concepts helps parents smooth those transitions and build real skills and confidence in their kids over time.
READ MORE >for more like this, DR. DELANEY RUSTON'S NEW BOOK, PARENTING IN THE SCREEN AGE, IS THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE FOR TODAY’S PARENTS. WITH INSIGHTS ON SCREEN TIME FROM RESEARCHERS, INPUT FROM KIDS & TEENS, THIS BOOK IS PACKED WITH SOLUTIONS FOR HOW TO START AND SUSTAIN PRODUCTIVE FAMILY TALKS ABOUT TECHNOLOGY AND IT’S IMPACT ON OUR MENTAL WELLBEING.
