4 approaches to handling screen time for kids

4 approaches to handling screen time for kids.

At some point in your journey as a dad, you’re going to bump into the question of—what’s allowed in terms of media? Maybe it’s TV shows, movies, YouTube videos—you’re going to start to bump into this issue really quickly.

Here’s the million-dollar question: how do you decide the rules?

I want to point you to Scripture. I’ll do two posts on this idea. This post focuses on the high-level principles you need to consider. We’ll do a quick audit of what you watch. We’ll look at where we are on the permission spectrum. Let’s let 1 John 2:15 govern us here:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Much of what we’re consuming in media is of the world. We may watch great pastor videos and other things. But man, a lot of TV shows and movies have an agenda behind them. They are in the world. We have to be careful in this media-saturated culture that we don’t fall in love with the world.

I think there are four basic approaches we can take as dads in this area. They go from not so good to really good. Let’s cover them in order and discuss the tradeoffs as we go.

Approach #1: The Wild, Wild West.

Here’s the way I’d describe this approach: this dad is the “anything goes—there are no rules” dad. Now, I’m not gonna lie—this approach is crazy. If this is your approach, you’re gonna pay for it later!

Here’s the challenge. If you were to take this same approach with your child’s safety, think about it: if you would let your 2-year old wander out into traffic, no one would call you “progressive” and “really wise” for “letting your kid’s experiment”. No, you’d get arrested for doing that!

The first phase is accepting that your kids are wandering out into a digital highway with cars zipping past! We’ve got to make sure we’re governing something. So, let’s talk about how we govern.

Approach #2: The experts know best.

The second approach is when you basically cede control. You know there’s gotta be some governing. But,  you leave it to the experts. Maybe you do the Plugged-In movie review—which I’m a huge fan of. Love Plugged-In. But, you read the reviews for other,s and then you simply do what they say.

You abdicate your decision making in your home to an expert outside your home. It’s an author. It’s a pastor. It’s a doctor of psychology. Fine. But, the challenge with this approach is, eventually, the “expert” will fail you. Or, what happens when you disagree with that person? Well, then, you have to find a different expert! Things become moving targets. This approach isn’t horrible. But, let’s be honest, it’s not ideal. Let’s look at the next approach.

Approach #3: House rules.

The third approach is you have house rules. So, you go look around the Evans house and you’ll notice there are no R-rated movies. There’s no explicit music. For example, one of our house rules is that—before lunch— ur kids can only listen to Christian music. Why before lunch? Well, you can talk to me and my wife about that over coffee. But, the point is, we want our kids to start their day in a more worshipful mindset. I’m not telling you to adopt that rule. I’m just saying, we’ve got some house rules in the Evans house around R-rated movies and explicit music—they’re all out of bounds.

The challenge in this area becomes—every now and then—you have a house rule where you say, “There are no R-rated movies.” But, what about The Passion of the Christ? It’s an R-rated movie. At some point, your kids might need to watch it—then what do you do? Here’s the deal: house rules will only get you so far. They’re great. But, it’s like a football team trying to score a touchdown. The house rules will get you down into the red zone. It’s a great march downfield—you’re on the 20-yard line. But, to score, you need to get to a place where you have Bible filters.

Approach #4: Bible filters.

This is the approach you want to be using. You want to be using Bible filters. We want to be able to arm our kids with the skills they need to handle media on their own. We want our kids to not only do the right thing, but we also want them to do the right thing without us!

Let’s give our kids a set of ways to process media that will endure after they leave for college. The other three approaches we’ve talked about won’t get you to this lace.  Next week, we’ll talk about some really great Bible filters. But for now, let’s pause, take a moment, and dive into this week’s mission.

Your mission for handling screen time for kids.

For this mission, I’m giving you some simple questions to assess yourself. Evaluate where you sit today on the spectrum. Take a look at the spectrum, answer the following questions, and decide which approach you’ve been using.

Where are you on the spectrum today?

Assessment questions:

#1: How many hours a day are my kids in front of a screen (TV, computer, iPad, iPhone, etc.)?

#2: What are our go-to TV shows? What are my kids’ go-to shows? (include YouTube, etc.)

#3: What movies are my family watching? Do I have any guidelines in place?