The battle of restricting kids’ screen time
Published:Friday | October 10, 2025 | 12:06 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
Just this weekend, my son and I had a full-blown argument over his endless scrolling versus his non-existent CSEC study time. My wife supports phones because she wants to keep them connected (and honestly, I get it – she just needs to know they’re safe), while I fall back on the “these gadgets are learning and research tools” justification. But here’s the thing: nobody warns you about the sheer exhaustion of playing tech police. You take the phones away, they rebel. You lecture, they zone out. You hide the devices, they suddenly channel their inner Billy Ocean’s heist team to locate them. And then somehow, you’re the villain—for trying to enforce rules that didn’t even exist when we were kids.
I remember when screen time meant one hour of cartoons – on holidays – if we were lucky. Now? It’s a 24/7 negotiation. But here’s what we’ve yet to collectively learn: confiscating phones doesn’t solve anything. It just pushes the battle underground. The silent treatments start. The secret accounts multiply. The late-night “just one more video” sessions happen under blankets with the brightness turned down. We might win the skirmish by taking the device, but we lose the war when they learn to hide, lie, or resent the very boundaries we’re trying to set.
The real work is harder of course: teaching them why balance matters – not just because we said so, but because their focus, sleep, and even happiness depend on it. It’s about showing them how to self-regulate (a skill many adults still struggle with) and –yes – modelling the behaviour we expect (which, let’s be honest, is the hardest part of all). How can we tell them to put their phones down when, for the most part, we’re also glued to ours?
This isn’t about winning a power struggle. It’s about raising kids who can make conscious choices about their screen use – before their screens start making choices for them: controlling their attention spans, dictating their moods, and shaping their futures. That starts with us showing them how.
CLIFTON MARTIN