What's your family media plan?
Creating a family media use plan can protect your child from overusing electronic devices and harming physical and mental health. Cook Children's pediatric experts have tips to help you set healthy boundaries around your child's screen time and social media use
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How to create your family media plan
Media use can be a great source of learning and entertainment for kids, but adults need to monitor it. Setting rules can prevent screen time from taking away from other activities, including sleeping, exercising and playing with friends.
Use these tips to help create a media use plan for your family:
- Don't allow your child to accept friend requests or exchange messages with strangers.
- Encourage your child to practice kindness online.
- Know which apps and websites your child is using.
- Model healthy behavior by limiting your own screen time.
- Prohibit your child from sharing personal information online.
- Set a daily screen time limit.
- Set parental controls to help manage your child's screen time.
Wait until you think your child is mature enough to handle social media before allowing them to sign up. You can determine whether they're ready based, in part, on how well they interact with other kids or handle criticism.
'Go' big and watch out for 'whoa'
The Cook Children's 5210+ Every Day program provides easy-to-remember advice to help families make healthy lifestyle choices. For screen time, the program categorizes various activities as "Go" activities (active, social and beneficial for health) and "Whoa" activities (less active, done alone and best limited to no more than two hours per day).
Go activities
According to Cook Children's community health team, examples of Go activities include playing hide and seek or video games that feature physical activity with other people.
Whoa activities
Whoa activities are things like watching TV alone or playing a solo video game, scrolling through online content.
Did you know?
Parents and caregivers are imperative in teaching and demonstrating healthy choices for children and adolescents. The "5-2-1-0+ Every Day" approach is a public health initiative aimed at promoting healthy lifestyles among children and families.
More resources
- Family Fun and Activities Resources | Cook Children's
- Meals and Snacks Resources |Cook Children's
- Family Fitness and Nutrition Resources | Cook Children's
- Sleep and Screen Time | Cook Children's