Common Sense Media recently published a blog post about the concept of giving your children a digital/virtual allowance. The concept gives parents a way to help balance the amount of time students/children spend on digital media while also teaching them the concept of money management. Basically, if your child receives an allowance he or she must decide how to manage their money in order to gain access to their digital media time. While that's not for everybody it is one idea that might work at your house with consistent enforcement.
Just don't forget video games can be good for students too and truly great video games can help your kids grow in ways you never thought possible. Here's more on that concept. So it's a balancing act and one we need to address as a community of educators and parents. These games and tools aren't going away so we need to stay informed as to what to look for, how best to support the growth of our children through these tools and how to balance it all to nurture well-rounded students.
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