How Much Screen Time is Too Much?

Here's what years of spending time around boys have taught me about screens: the number on the timer matters far less than whether your son will come and tell you when something goes wrong online.

We've been sold the idea that good digital parenting is mostly about limits (hours, apps, locks). Limits have their place. But you cannot out-restrict the internet, and the harder we lean on control alone, the more a boy learns to hide rather than disclose.

The teenager who's seen something that scared him, been asked for a photo, or stumbled into a corner of the Manosphere doesn't need a parent who'll confiscate the phone...

...He needs one he trusts enough to tell.

So the work isn't to become the screen police. It's to stay the person he'll turn to when the screen throws him something he can't handle. That's a relationship job, not a settings job, and it's one you're already equipped for.

The reframe takes the pressure off the impossible task (controlling the whole internet) and puts it on the achievable one: keeping the door open.

This is where the field has landed too.

• Justin Coulson argues the real game isn't screen time at all but digital trust, the influence you keep when the device is on.

• Maggie Dent's approach to gaming is a negotiated, written agreement rather than a unilateral ban.

Different voices, same shift; relationships matter so much more than restrictions.