This is an interesting interview with Richard Culatta, author of Digital for Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World. They discuss how to help kids bridge the gap between physical and digital spaces, how to model good technology behavior, and more. This is such a good point:

By focusing on screen time we miss the far more important concept that we should be teaching our kids; screen value. Some digital activities are just not a good use of a kid’s time (eg. playing a repetitive, luck-based game) while others provide much greater value (eg. editing a movie, creative writing, FaceTiming with a grandparent, etc.) And context is important to consider too. Digital activities that are appropriate on a long car-ride will likely be different than those on a beautiful spring day when friends are around, or the day before a large school project is due.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that is something that not only kids need to learn. We can all benefit from this lesson:

The most important lesson we can teach young kids is to recognize that some digital activities provide more value at some times than others. This means evaluating each digital activity on its own merit based on the circumstances.

We should probably also remember that controlling children’s behavior with screen time leads to more screen time:

Researchers investigated the impact of parenting practices on the amount of time young children spend in front of screens. They found a majority of parents use screen time to control behavior, especially on weekends. This results in children spending an average of 20 minutes more a day on weekends in front of a screen. Researchers say this is likely because using it as a reward or punishment heightens a child’s attraction to the activity.