"But I Want to Use My iPad Toooo!”

What to do when you visit friends or family who have different ways of managing screens.

TGIF, everyone. I’m excited to tackle a reader question today that I discovered is quite common after raising it with friends and hearing their loud chorus of “OMG YES!!!” Here’s the question:

What do you do when you're visiting family or friends who have very different screen time rules/habits than your family does? I've encountered this with my sister's family — we come visit and there are NO rules and limits, so my kid just assumes there are no rules and limits for anyone, in part because I don't want to speak up and imply that my sister is not setting good boundaries...  and also if I did try to enforce stricter rules for my kids, that feels unfair! And while I know it's fine for my kids to be on screens all the time for a week and I know I can rein it in when we get home, I get really sad that the cousins aren't even spending quality time together because they're just on separate screens 24/7. Help!

I wasn’t sure how to answer this, so I called up someone who does: Brown University psychologist Jacqueline Nesi, who studies what parents can do to manage kids’ relationship with technology. She writes the excellent Substack Techno Sapiens. Here’s our short Q&A, which I think is SO helpful.