Katherine's Tips To Limit Online Time Delineating tech---free zones in our home - such as the kitchen and bedrooms. Designate an area where you cannot use a device – cell phone or computer! Scheduling family time offline – If it’s a Saturday night and you’re going to watch a movie with the family, or play a board game, make it clear that devices need to be off! Mandate daily blackout hours – No one, parent or child, should be checking their phones after a certain hour! Whether it’s a late-night notification or an email, it can wait till the morning! Taking a day or even a month offline – If you’re on vacation with your family, or just spending quality family time on a Sunday – take the day offline! You’d be surprised at how much better it feels when you’re not all constantly connected. The quality of the time spent with your family will be much higher! Pre-defining schedules for checking email rather than continuously being online – Instead of looking at your phone every 10 minutes to see if that email came in yet, set a scheduled time where you can check your phone, and don’t look otherwise! Even if you make your schedule every hour, it’s better than anxiously checking every few minutes. Use tools to monitor your internet time and cut your off when you’ve exceeded specified amounts of time on sites such as Facebook – There’s an app known as Page addict, and it monitors the time you spend on certain apps. This tracking allows you to see what you’re doing and how often you’re doing it. You can also apply this to your children, that way you’re able to see what they’re doing on their phones and better identify what they’re "addicted" too.
