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How To Manage Family Time At Home And Help Families Find The Right Balance

We have all seen those tech-engrossed families that often stare at their phones more than they do at each other. When we go to malls, restaurants, or even amusement parks, we see families spend more time on their phones rather than talking to each other. This is a hindrance to strengthening family life because the family becomes more engrossed in social media rather than each other. They cannot involve themselves in the family’s lives and end up living with strangers.

Because of this, many parents see this as a concerning issue since many families want to find the right balance between screen time and family wellness. They read a book containing advice for a happy, healthy family in search of ideas on how to help their families bond with each other rather than stay on their phones for the whole day to protect children from the unending doom scrolling on phones.

Why We Need To Find A Balance Between Screen Time and Family Wellness

Maintaining positive connections and fostering general well-being requires balancing screen time and family wellness.  In addition to mental health problems like elevated stress or anxiety, excessive screen time can cause physical health problems, including eye strain, bad posture, and irregular sleep cycles.

Additionally, when people become more absorbed in their electronics and spend less time with one another, family interactions may suffer which is why we need to find a balance. Families can encourage deeper connections, offer chances for physical activity, and ensure that everyone has time to relax and interact with one another by imposing screen usage limits. Achieving this balance enhances each family member’s mental and emotional health and fosters a more tranquil environment.

Managing Screen Time for Families

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Be Realistic

It is essential to find the right time for you to be able to put screens away when they cannot be. This is the most important part when balancing screen time and family wellness. In some situations, screen time is necessary or can improve the condition of something to be better or faster. For example, studying could involve screen time as visual learners may prefer looking at pictures or infographics to help them understand concepts better and how the system works.

Another good example would be watching a movie together and talking about what you learned from it afterward. This shows that screen time can be paired with other experiences as well to make it more enriching for children to reflect on what they have learned.

Explore The Outdoors

Setting down your phone to go for a walk or play outside releases more endorphins, which give you a happy feeling in your brain. This improves your physical and emotional well-being and can help in healthy screen habits for families by regulating the amount of time people spend on their phones. It is important because it will help give children an alternative to online or phone games, engage them with other people, and balance screen time and family wellness.

Establish Guidelines and Be Consistent

Parents should still establish guidelines and try to follow them in order to establish a pattern, even though outright banning screen time is an overreaction. Children who have rules from their parents are less likely to have problematic relationships with their media use.

For example, you could establish a media-watching schedule and determine when and how long your children will spend using screens. By doing that, you may be more proactive in guiding children toward better relationships with their phones and family time.

Set An Example

Family Playing A Board Game l Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Children are at least as interested in what adults do as they are in what we say. In addition to making it easier for you to enforce your screen time guidelines, developing healthy screen use habits yourself will encourage your child to follow suit. 

You might explain to your teenager, for instance, “I don’t keep a TV in my room because it gets in the way of sleep, which is important for my physical health and my mental health. Having the same rule for you as I do for myself is an important part of how I take care of you.”

Key Thoughts

More screens than ever before are in front of children, exposing them to  laptops, gaming consoles, cellphones, tablets, and televisions even at a young age. When screens are used at home, at daycare, or at school, the amount of time spent using them can quickly mount up.

Your child will frequently miss out on opportunities to learn in real time when they spend time on screens instead of connecting with others, playing outside, or creating or enjoying social “downtime” with family. Would you like to take the first step to becoming a happy, healthy family? Read The Happy, Healthy Revolution: The Working Parent’s Guide to Achieve Wellness as a Family Unit now!