Digital Play: Toy Story 5

Woody and Buzz have a new quest: to wrestle with the explosion of digital play. It seems they are not alone in this mission, with 24% of parents of 3‑ to 5‑year‑olds finding it hard to control their child’s screen time. How much screen time is too much? And how can you support healthy habits in your family? With the new Toy Story movie out today, playing in cinemas around the world, we wanted to share some thoughts about play in the digital age.

Rights

Every child has a right to play, and that means the freedom, time, and space to choose their play. Many children choose to play on digital devices when given the option. Digital play can also help disabled children and young people to play and socialise in online spaces that are welcoming and accessible. There is also a sense of community to be found in digital play for LGBT children and young people.

Responsibilities

However, it is important to remember that with rights come responsibilities. As adults, it is our responsibility to support and extend play opportunities. That means setting boundaries and creating and encouraging a wide variety of high-quality play opportunities.

Considerations

As adults, we should support children and young people to have safe and responsible use of digital play and screentime. Consider CAT:

Content: What are children accessing? Is it age appropriate? Are there safety tools in place to make sure they don’t access things they should not?
Active engagement: Is this zone out zombie screen time or is it a fun, interactive, digital play session? Try to make sure the use of screens is not passive, or in combination with other activities. Ask questions, or encourage active engagement to support higher quality digital play
Time: During digital play, time can fly by. Set clear boundaries and use tools like timers to limit time spent on devices.

Tips

Lead by example: children learn in lots of different ways, one is by mimicking behaviour that they see around them. Why not put your phone away at mealtimes, on the school run or during family time?

Set boundaries: this might look like no devices at the table, in bedrooms, or in the bathroom. Or only 30 minutes at a time, using sand timers or other tools to show this visually. You can use digital wellbeing tools on most devices to set up timers for certain apps.

Get playing: the best way to put down a device is to do something fun! Go play outside or set up some fun indoor play provocations. There are lots of fun ways to have fun without spending any money.