Want to cut screen time at your house? Here are some good ideas. Gary Crawford has the story.

PARTICIPANTS: Gary Crawford and Kansas State University Extension Child Development Specialist.

Transcript

Surveys show the average American adult spends about seven hours a day looking at the screens of various electronic devices.

And American children age 8 to 18 spend even more time, seven and a half hours.

Research also shows there are significant negative effects of screen time.

Kansas State University Child Development Specialist Bradford Wiles can produce a long list of effects from behavioral problems in young children to more serious physical, mental and emotional effects in teens and adults.

So Wiles says obviously it would be a good idea to cut screen time down from that seven hour average down to the recommended one to two hours.

But that of course is a big lift.

Set your goals in a tiered manner so that you're not going cold turkey, you're able to wean off of things.

So be realistic about them.

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

But this first idea may seem like a sprint.

It may be considered a pretty radical thing to do in many homes today.

It's simply this.

No phones or screens at dinner, at meals.

Mealtime is really, really important for physical health, mental health.

Family mealtime is really critical.

And so you completely diminish that if you're all sitting around watching the TV.

Wiles also suggests setting up no screen places in other parts of the house.

That helps again reinforce that those common areas, typically those are common areas, so that when you're there, you're engaging with your family.

Oh, and yes, Wiles says this is not all about banning screens and devices such as video games.

In fact, playing video games together with your child can be OK.

Again, limit the screen time to the hour for overall for your child.

But if you want to do something together, that's OK.

As long as the technology is just an excuse for your own engagement.

And that's the whole idea behind cutting screen time in the first place.

Replace screen time with engagement.

But Wiles says do it, as he said before, gradually.

Start slow.

Don't try to just say, OK, no more screen time at all forever.

But, you know, really taper that down to the point where the child is getting little or none and replace it with engaging with that child.

And if you need some good practical ideas for reducing screen time for you and your family, the Mayo Clinic has an online program that's really neat.

It's called Slim Your Screen Time.

So spend some of your screen time to find out how to slim it down later.

Just go online, search Slim Your Screen Time.

Gary Crawford for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.