Back to School

The kids have been home all summer and now it's time to head back to school. Whether they've got full schedules of sports and after-school activities, or they come straight home, children and teens need help learning to manage their time and priorities.

The transition from the summer to the school year provides a good opportunity to make changes in your home. Kids’ schedules are already changing dramatically, so altering their media use environment may be easier to do now than at other times of the year.

CMCH recommends warning them ahead of time that the rules will change once they head back to school. Read on to learn about ways to help your family manage media use in ways that will optimize their health and their school performance.

Change Where Media Are Used
Research has shown that when kids have media in their bedrooms, they are more likely to be overweight, have worse sleeping habits, and do poorly in school. Research has also shown that kids with computers and Internet access in their rooms sleep less and are more likely to use the Internet in unsafe or unhealthy ways.

Consider starting the school year by removing televisions and computers from your childrens' bedrooms. By placing them in family areas, parents can keep a better eye on how much and what kind of media they are using.

Create Weeknight vs Weekend Rules
During the summer, schedules become relaxed and parents often aren't as strict about what happens on weeknights. But when it's time to head back to school, parents may want to create guidelines about how much media their kids can use on schoolnights vs on the weekends.

For example, parents might decide that children can use screen media during the weekends but not during the week, or they might limit all media use to one hour on schoolnights. On the weekends, kids may be allowed to use media more liberally. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a maximum of 1-2 hours of screen media per day.

Encourage Them to Participate in Other Activities
If you are worried about how much media your kids use, encourage them to become involved in after-school activities or programs. The more time they spend at piano lessons, scouts, or sports practice, the less time they’ll have between 3:00 and 6:00, when many kids are unsupervised and turn to media to entertain themselves.

By the time kids have attended to all of their primary responsibilities such as doing homework, exercising, walking the dog, and eating dinner with family, they may not have much time left to use media. While over-scheduling the lives of children and adolescents can be a problem, a few after-school activities a week will keep your children engaged socially, help prevent extensive media use, and shouldn’t wear them out too much.


See other tips for media use