Screentime and Boundaries
How implementing this skill will make parenting easier and your kids healthier!
H/t to Patrick Kleplek of CrossPlay and his article “Uh Oh Are We Doing Screentime Wrong?” for inspiring this post! Exciting news! We are offering three 1-month subscriptions to CrossPlay. Scroll to the end of this post to learn how you can win a subscription!
Our kids’ reactions to screens and especially to being told it is time to stop using the screen can result in epic tantrums. So are our kids addicted to screens if they always have a tantrum when we tell them to turn the screen off? No, they are kids being told that they can't do or use the really fun thing! You see the same behavior when leaving the playground or a friend’s house. screens are just there so much more available and ever-present that these tantrums happen more often. Kids hate being told no, and demanding to get to do the fun thing is just them doing their job as kids. The unfortunate and challenging part is that it is our job as parents to enforce these boundaries and be the one to say no, when it is appropriate.
Before diving into the details, I want to share my own experience that I had the other day. My 6yo kiddo just got back from a visit with his grandma where he got unlimited but supervised YouTube time. In our house, he can only watch YouTube (and specifically YouTube Kids) once per day. It’s one of the few screen-related restrictions we have. Since he was no longer in the habit of that rule, when I insisted that he turn it off, he lost it at me. I’m talking about an hour and 20 minutes that included scream crying, stealing and hiding my notebook I use for work, running outside with safety scissors threatening to literally cut the power line (which he couldn’t find and had no idea what to look for), bargaining, threats, and kicking and climbing on me. It was an exhausting struggle. It all ended with him defiantly screaming that he would bring his bunny lovey downstairs and watch his current Netflix obsession, Sonic Prime. (Also note all of this fighting was over not getting to watch YouTube-- any other screen use was fine and always on the table!)
What are Boundaries?
Boundaries or “setting boundaries” refers to instances in which a parent (in this case) attempts to regulate a child’s behavior by enforcing certain rules or standards. And if implemented properly, boundaries can serve to promote developmental and cognitive growth (Lassi 2025). In his book, Punishment-Free Parenting, Jon Fogel likens boundary setting to a well-designed playground. This playground would have a fence to make sure children can’t wander into the street (or be located very far away from any road), it would include well-maintained equipment appropriate to our child’s age with appropriately soft ground for children to fall on. When you can find playgrounds like this, as a parent you can let your kid have a lot of freedom within the boundaries of the playground. Similarly, we need to establish boundaries for our children that define a space where they can make their own choices and play freely within that space.
Setting boundaries and then letting your kid have autonomy – the ability to make their own choices – can be scary. Cue parenting panic attack. The goal of the boundaries is to define a space where the inevitable mistakes and bad choices your kid will make do not have life-altering consequences. Kids learn through making decisions and mistakes. Our job as parents is to provide them a safe place to do that.
What can these boundaries look like in regards to technology? The specifics of the boundaries will change as our kids develop more skills and get older. Maya has 2 and 3 year old girls. Boundaries for her kids will look much different than boundaries for my 6 year old. As kids develop, you may choose to weave in more opportunities for negotiation. Currently, for my 6 year old:
We control what technology he can access. He doesn’t have his own tablet or phone and we don’t have a bunch of games for him to play on our phones. In certain situations, we have let him play games on our phones, most notably when stuck waiting at urgent care for over an hour. Sometimes we’ll also let our kid play with us when we are playing mobile games on our phones. He does have his own Nintendo Switch because we were fortunate enough to have an old one. We also know and can have some control over every game he plays and have made sure he knows how to properly take care of his Switch.
We put in protections about what he can watch. He has a kids profile on all the streaming platforms with the restrictions those include. If he ever wants access to something he can’t get through that profile, he knows to ask me and as long as I’m ok with what he wants to watch or listen to, I give him access. We have autoplay turned off on all of the platforms, so an algorithm is not deciding what he’ll get next. It’s still controlling what gets recommended to him, but he’s less likely to slip into areas of the internet where we don’t want him to be. Importantly, he can watch whatever he wants within these restrictions. Some of his favorite YouTubers are the worst, yelling in obnoxious voices while doing stupid things. But they are kid appropriate. We’ll sometimes try to suggest things, like “that video looks cool” to anything that isn’t those YouTubers, but he can also ignore our suggestions.
We help him identify when he needs a break. We realized that when he watches YouTube Kids, he gets sucked in and loses track of himself and anything around him. If we let him, he would watch it all the time. Recognizing this, we have a rule that he can watch it one time per day (he usually watches in the morning while we’re all getting ready). We’ve explained the problems we see when we let him watch more YouTube than that and he generally accepts this rule, but he’s also at an age where he’s learning he can sneak things that we won’t notice (totally developmentally appropriate – he’s learning Theory of Mind!) and putting on YouTube as soon as I leave the room is one of his favorites (but I’m catching on too!). For other screen use, we don’t have a time limit or number of times per day limit, but we do have him check in with his body and when we see him start to get dysregulated, we step in. Sometimes the dysregulation is him getting frustrated and angry at the game he’s playing, sometimes it’s his inability to sit still or he can’t find anything he wants to watch or play because he needs to move his body. We help him identify how he’s feeling, why he’s feeling that way, and what he can do about it.
How do I know I’m setting the right boundaries?
The key to boundaries is that it’s giving your child more autonomy, more freedom within a safe context. If you have a whole bunch of rules and especially if you have rules without clear, explicit reasons, you probably aren’t setting boundaries. If your kid gets upset about the boundaries, they’re just doing their job. Kids need to test limits, especially new limits, but they should be able to adjust to these new rules. How long that’ll take will depend on your kid and the boundary, but my kid usually gets there within a week. If they aren’t adjusting, it could be that you are not always enforcing the boundary, so they are trying to figure out how to get around it. Remember the boundaries are meant to keep them in a safe space, so they need to be consistent. It may be that the boundary isn’t quite appropriate and you need to have a discussion with your kid where you identify the problem, the thing you are trying to protect them from and brainstorm with your kid about what rules would make sense to protect them. Even fairly young kids can surprise you with the great suggestions they give or they may realize that yours really is the best solution and learn to accept it.
It’s also completely normal to have to reestablish these boundaries after any kind of change in routine. Whether the change is from the school year to summer or getting home from a vacation or even being sick and staying home, once a kid’s routine gets interrupted, they’ll need help getting back into their routine. As adults we can be the same way, reluctant to return to work, laundry, and the other mundane aspects of our lives after we’ve gotten a break.
For example, Maya’s daughter is getting in the habit of asking to watch a show in the wee hours of the morning between 5 and 6 am in bed (a habit she picked up on vacation). When Maya obliges and lets her watch for 10 minutes, her daughter is inevitably reluctant to stop after 10 minutes. She kicks and screams when they tell her that screen time is over. What Maya eventually realized was that her daughter being up since 5am played a role here--she was tired. Her being tired made it even harder to keep track of time and have the ability to shift focus to something new after being told to stop watching. What they are doing now is telling her she cannot watch in bed but if she gets up, they can go downstairs, figure out breakfast, and then watch something on the couch if time permits. Getting up and moving first allowed her to wake up, making her more cognizant of where Netflix fits in during the morning rush.
Boundaries are also not a one time decision. Once you set them, you should keep using them as long as they are working and seem appropriate to your kid’s abilities. Another great example from Jon Fogel is the freedom of playing outside. When your kid is 3 years old, you probably don’t want them to be unsupervised for any amount of time in your yard. A 6 year old who is clear on safety rules might be fine to play in the yard alone. A 12 year old might be fine to walk to a friend’s house alone, as long as they let you know where they’re going. Similarly, when our kid was 3, we selected what he could watch or play and gave him specific options. At 6, he can watch or play anything he has access to, but he doesn’t have access to any games that are played online. As he gets older, he will be able to access the internet and we’ll need to examine new boundaries, probably relying on some of the parental controls on different platforms like Roblox.
This seems like a lot of work
Setting up new boundaries is a lot of work, but there are several benefits to doing it. First and foremost, it does actually make your job as a parent easier. When you have a bunch of unrelated and possibly random rules, you need to constantly police your kid’s behavior (and remember all those rules!). Even if you remember all the rules, if there isn’t a systematic reason behind the rules or your kid doesn’t know the reasoning, then it will be very hard for them to remember all the rules. With appropriate boundaries, you just have to keep an eye or ear out to make sure they don’t go outside those boundaries. You don’t have to be constantly on guard for possible rulebreaking and your kid doesn’t have to constantly worry about their behavior and whether they might be breaking a rule. A lack of consistent boundaries leaves a kid not knowing what is and isn’t safe and they learn to closely monitor their behavior (Vanwoerden et al., 2017). Kids who experience this uncertainty and the lack of safety that creates are more likely to develop anxiety and depression.
The research shows that kids learn best through experience and having the freedom to make their own decisions. Boundaries allow them to make these decisions while protecting them from any decisions with dire consequences. This will also increase the trust you both have in each other, which makes our kids more likely to come to us when they run into big problems (Erickson et al., 2016). Our kids seeing and learning from us how to set appropriate boundaries also offers them critical protections. Kids who know how to set and hold their own boundaries are less likely to be arrested or to use illicit substances (Lassi 2025). Learning to set boundaries is also a key skill many adults have missed out on and are struggling to learn in adulthood. Setting boundaries is difficult, but the work is important and worth it for both parents and children.
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References
Erickson, L. B., Wisniewski, P., Xu, H., Carroll, J. M., Rosson, M. B., & Perkins, D. F. (2016). The boundaries between: Parental involvement in a teen’s online world. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(6), 1384–1403. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23450
Fogel, J. (2025). Punishment-Free Parenting. Convergent Books. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/751238/punishment-free-parenting-by-jon-fogel/
Lassi, N. (2025). Boundary Parenting: A Framework for Reducing Deviance Among Young People. Youth Justice, 14732254251316861. https://doi.org/10.1177/14732254251316861
Scott Hoffman, M., Hanson, B. J., Brotherson, S. E., & Zehnacker, G. (2021). Boundaries: A Boundary Setting and Social Competence Program for Parents and Youth. Journal of Human Sciences and Extension. https://doi.org/10.54718/jsxi4975
Vanwoerden, S., Kalpakci, A., & Sharp, C. (2017). The relations between inadequate parent-child boundaries and borderline personality disorder in adolescence. Psychiatry Research, 257, 462–471. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2017.08.015