How Limiting Screen Time Can Limit Our Learning

Do you use the screen time feature on your phone and other devices? I used to. At the end of every week, I received a report telling me how much time I’d spent on my iPhone and iPad and how I’d used that time. When I saw the number of hours I’d spent on my devices, I felt guilty. How could I have let myself sit in front of my screens for so long? Each week, I told myself I had to do better. I should show more self-control. Reduce my screen hours.

But then one day I realised that I couldn’t reduce my screen time: I need to use my devices.

I use my phone, iPad and laptop for a diverse range of activities which are all good: writing, blogging, editing podcasts, video and photo editing, learning new skills from my Skillshare courses, reading books from Kindle and my BorrowBox library, creating graphics, drawing using Procreate, reading the daily Mass readings, watching spiritual and other videos, exchanging emails, posting here in my unschooling community, getting involved with valuable online conversations, researching questions.

I decided that the amount of time we spend on our screens doesn’t tell the whole story. Instead of counting hours, perhaps it’s more helpful to think about this question: are we doing the things that are important to us? Or are we letting ourselves be distracted by our screens? For example, when I was writing my unschooling books, Curious Unschoolers and Radical Unschool Love, I often opened my social media apps instead of getting down to work. I was putting off the moment when I’d have to concentrate and think more deeply. Eventually, I faced the fact that social media was distracting me away from doing good work, and so I deleted all my accounts.

I also deactivated the screen time counting feature on my devices. I didn’t want it to distract me away from all the good things I’m doing on my screens.

Screen time limits sound sensible but could they be limiting? If we reduce the number of hours that our children or we are allowed to use our devices, will we also reduce the amount of valuable work we could accomplish?

I guess the next big question is: how do we define valuable work? Aren’t kids just wasting time on their screens? Before giving an answer, maybe we ought to ask ourselves the same question.

I regard my work as important. I’m learning and achieving things that I consider are good. If my kids are also doing things that are important to them, why shouldn’t their work be regarded as valuable as well?

We can learn a lot by looking at ourselves, can’t we? If we are involved with the same things as our kids, or willing to try them out, we can gain insight into their learning experiences.

So, our family isn’t limiting our learning by limiting our screen time. That doesn’t mean we spend every available hour on our computers. There are many offscreen things we want to do too. But that’s another story!

Photos

Even though everyone in our family spends a lot of time on their devices (doing good work!), we do other things too. We have to. If Sophie and I don’t go on any photography outings, we won’t have anything to edit when we open Lightroom on our laptops. And when I closed my computer after writing and publishing my unschooling books, I still needed to let everyone know about them. Taking some photos helped spread the word!