Gaming: Do children spend too much time gaming? Tips for monitoring screentime and safety

According to the children’s commissioner, around 93% of children in the UK play video games.

Transcript

00:00and in terms of for parents specifically um to help their children stay safe online and

00:06particularly when they're gaming is to play together um one of the things that is really

00:11important for parents when they're feeling a bit overwhelmed about potentially what they

00:14children might be exposed to online is to really think about and be aware of what are those games

00:19that they're they're playing why they're playing it why they enjoy them and as you kind of play

00:24together as you explore with your child you can see those potential risks whether it may be the

00:29the chat functions that are available to them and how they could potentially be approached by

00:34strangers whether it be the types of games and how that may be impacting their mood or their

00:39emotional well-being so that's the first really important thing for parents to kind of do with

00:43their child to kind of have that understanding the second thing is to be able to teach a child how to

00:48kind of manage their safety so when it comes to exposing maybe coming across a risk or seeing

00:53something that they don't know how to deal with just being able to report it um and to block anything

00:59that might be something that may be you know causing harm um so being able to know where

01:03navigating where to kind of find those tools or those features within that game um which is really

01:09really important if they are playing on platforms where there are multi-players there's a whole bunch

01:14of people that they may not know i think that's one thing that we would advise to do choosing safe

01:19usernames and being mindful of in-game chats are also recommended like having and these different

01:25things that children can move on to and different hobbies that they can be excited for when they come

01:30off the game is that the kind of thing that parents can lean towards when they try and to implement

01:34screen time rules absolutely all of those apply to all children that that really work and i think

01:40in addition to that is maybe putting some boundaries for um all the families so you can sit down together

01:45and agree okay well can we create some screen free zones in the home so that you can you know if it's a

01:50dinner table when you're all together you're you know you want that to be a better family time or

01:55screen free days if you're really really into that so you can kind of put the devices down and kind of

02:01do activities offline and actually helping them to find the balance between what they absolutely need

02:06to do offline versus what the online world can bring to them so for example if your child like

02:12we're coming up to may where a lot of children will be doing exams particularly if they're in the

02:15older years in secondary school um so ultimately readjusting what that screen time looks like

02:20based on what they're actually having to kind of concentrate on is really important versus when

02:24it's coming to some holidays where they're going to have a plenty of time to kind of play

02:28and then readjusting that accordingly