Before the pandemic, my son didn’t get much screen time. We didn’t own a television, and long days of school and work meant that dinner, homework, and bath time ate up most of our evenings. On weekend mornings, he would watch cartoons on the family iPad. I wasn’t zealously against screen time, but I did feel a vague smugness over how little my son got.
Then the first COVID-19 lockdown started midway through his third-grade year, and like for many kids, the hours he spent in front of a screen—both for school and for fun—increased dramatically. Under any other circumstances, I would have been eaten up with guilt. I’d read plenty of warnings about the dangers of screen time that correlated it with everything from sleep disturbances to aggressive behaviour to delays with communication and problem solving. But my brain was too consumed with just trying to make it through the day with my sanity intact.
