Content-curated
Tight control of what. Much looser control of how long.
The position is that the hour is not the unit — the thing on the screen is. A carefully chosen library, no autoplay, no algorithmic feed, no advertising, and then considerably less anxiety about the clock than most households have. It maps onto the evidence better than a time limit does and it is more work up front, because someone has to do the curating.
Not what it promises
Every approach here works for the families it suits; the useful question is what it costs to run.
- Real effort choosing, and re-choosing as they grow out of things
- Fighting the platforms, which are built to defeat exactly this
- Holding the line on feeds and autoplay, which is where it actually breaks
How it gets misread
Read as permissive because the clock is loose. It is more controlling than a time budget, on the dimension that is harder to control.
Where it stands
Every position with the source it was read from, and the pale band is how much internal variation the approach genuinely tolerates. A wide band is not vagueness — it means the texts in this family really do disagree with each other about that axis.
Source: Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Source: Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Source: Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Source: Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Source: Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Source: Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Source: Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Source: Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Source: Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
What to read
Digital Media and Symptoms of ADHD — Jenny Radesky et al.
The empirical case that content and context predict more than duration.
Common Sense Media reviews — Common Sense Media
The practical tool this approach runs on.
Compared with
Sources for this row
Digital Media and Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Jenny Radesky et al. Used for the finding that what is on the screen and who is beside it predict more than how many minutes it ran, which is the empirical case for the content-curated and co-viewing rows.
Parenting for a Digital Future
Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross, Oxford University Press, 2020. The ethnography behind the "what screens are for" axis: families sort into embracing, balancing and resisting, largely by what they hope the future looks like.