Plugged-In Kids: Monday Mention February 1, 2010
Photo: quinn.anya, Flickr
Sometimes I worry that my kids (ages 6 and 9) spend too much time plugged in. You know, playing computer games, watching TV, clicking away on their DS gadgets and flicking around that Wii remote. But when I read in a New York Times article that a new Kaiser Family Foundation study reveals that kids 8 to 18 spend more than 7.5 hours a day with such devices, I realize we’re doing just fine in our house. WOW, 7.5 hours a day. I can confidently say we will never reach that number. The Times has a whole lot more to report on this, well, let’s just call it an pretty big problem. Read more here.
We used ‘TV tickets.’ They worked fairly well for us. You allot the kids so many TV tickets per week. Using them as they see fit, they would be able to watch 2 hours or so per week of commercial TV. (Public TV was unlimited. And we didn’t have cable….why torture them with unlimited channels they can’t watch?) I remember my son, at 6 or 7, telling someone how much he enjoyed TV….you learn so much. He actually thought that was its purpose. True, we found out years later that the kids had cheated around the edges a little….they’d found a way to counterfeit the tickets or whatever, but even so, it’s a policy I’d repeat in a heartbeat.
Tom, thanks so much for your great comment. I’ll share this idea in a post one day soon!