POLLY AND THE SCREEN TIME OVERLOAD
By Betsy Childs Howard
Crossway. 40 pages. £10.99
ISBN 978 1 433 577 888
‘Can I have some more screen time?’ is surely a question familiar to most (if not all) families with children. This book helps us think through this question with our children.
Polly and the Screen Time Overload begins with a quote from 1 Corinthians 10:23: ‘“All things are lawful”, but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful”, but not all things build up.’ This helps frame the content of the book well. The story tells of a girl who forsakes time with her family and the animals on her grandparents’ farm for time on her new iTab, even when the games she is playing bear surprisingly similarity to what she could enjoy in real life.
The book works best for adults and children to read together, with the story acting as a springboard to talk about screen time in their own situation. The book has useful discussion points at the back, to help families see how Bible ideas like self-control apply in connection with children’s screen time.
The focus is on thinking about screen time limits and the book doesn’t cover other related considerations, such as helping children be aware of potential dangers when online, or sharing of personal information. However, starting conversations about how technology can be both helpful and unhelpful is certainly appropriate to begin with the younger audience of this book, allowing for future conversations as time goes on and the child develops.
The book is not legalistic in suggesting or applying particular time constraints to children’s screen time, but leaves it open for families to work out what is appropriate in their own situation: it would be easy to fall into moralism in this area and the book does a good job of avoiding this. Whilst the book is marketed as suitable for 3–7s, it is worth considering that there is a lot of text on each page for younger children and they might struggle to relate the story to their own experience.
However, the book is beautifully illustrated and certainly one I would recommend to other families as they chat with their children about screen time.
