As a father of three young kids (ages eight, 10, and 14), and as a person who is passionate about technology, kids, and education, I want to make sure that my kids grow up to be good digital citizens. This means embracing a balanced approach to technology which can be a little tricky. Here are the guidelines that are set out in my house.

1. TV: Limited to only watching in the family room. Never on while eating and limited to movies when guests are over and it’s movie time and not play time.
2. Xbox One: On weekends, the kids can play classic games such as Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly and Scrabble – the Hasbro Family Fun pack but no first-person-shooters. This past Christmas, we signed up for the Xbox live membership (great deal at $1 for the 1st month) and then cancelled it when the holidays were over. Will repeat that for the summer holidays for sure, as the kids liked the free games (especially a game called Knight’s Squad). We may experiment with EA Access this summer too; same idea – get it for a month and cancel after. Xbox One recently introduced screen time controls so will implement them in the summer when we have EA Access and XBox Live going.
3. Android Devices: This is what they use the most and what I am most concerned about. Their tablets and phone (only oldest has a phone) have screen time and safe browsing parental controls – (I use Boomerang Parental Control). They get 30 minutes per weekday and 1 hour on weekends to play games (Clash Royale is the favorite right now) and then, the cool thing is, that I can encourage good content that does not count towards the screen time. For example,: my youngest won the city’s grade 3 chess competition since his Chess app is exempt from the screen time counter. The other great thing about Boomerang is that their phones turn into bricks at bedtime., and that SPIN Safe Browser (which comes with the app) keeps them safe from inappropriate content.
4. Computers: We have two shared computers in public areas of the house that they can use for homework, assignments, and learning to code. This will surely change in the future as they get older and end up getting their own notebooks, at which point some research will need to be done regarding parental controls on their new technologies.