By Leslie Campos
Are you a parent concerned about how screen time impacts your children? If so, you are certainly not alone in those contemplations. Even experts are torn over whether spending time using screens is good or bad for children, but the answer may be more about balance than restriction, especially since screens are becoming essential to education and everyday life as time goes by.
You can use these helpful tips and insights to keep tech from throwing your family’s budget off balance.
Buying New Tech on a Budget
Before you start downloading the latest educational apps and games for your children, you may need to invest in new devices that can run those programs with no problems. Of course, if you are trying to stick to a family budget buying new technology can feel like a major burden on your finances. However, that doesn’t have to be the case.
Lenovo is known for making low-cost yet high-quality PC’s and tablets, and you can usually find promotional codes and discounts when you shop for those devices via savings sites. Rakuten, for instance, offers cashback deals on Lenovo purchases and tech from other major retailers, which can help keep your kids’ new devices from putting a major dent in your family’s budget. Some other ways to save on tech for children can include buying refurbished devices and ensuring you invest in age-appropriate products.
Downloading Low-Cost Apps
By investing in budget-friendly tablets or laptops for your children, you can open their world up to many new educational opportunities. That can help your children be better prepared for school and even future career possibilities, but you also need to know how to determine which apps and programs are most beneficial for your kids’ development and education.
Reputable programs and organizations like NASA and PBS offer free apps that engage young minds while helping them to learn about essential subjects like math and science. If you are also attempting to determine which apps are most comfortable for your budget, you will be happy to know that there are plenty of free educational apps that make it easy for your children to turn screen time into learning time. Since even little brains need a break every now and then, you may also want to look into free games and apps that will allow your kids to have fun.
Creating Healthy Screen Habits
Helping your children have healthy relationships with technology is all about creating boundaries and routines. As mentioned at the beginning of this guide, one of the most important rules you can set around screen usage is at bedtime. While other effects are still very much up for debate, Verywell Health says research indicates that the blue light from screens can disrupt the processes in our brains that promote deep and restful sleep. So if you want your children to get the sleep they need to thrive, keep screens out of the bedroom. You can also follow the recommended limits to ensure safe screen usage for your youngsters.
Using screens at certain times, like right before bed, may not be the best habit, but laptops and tablets are increasingly used in classrooms across the world. Rather than trying to nix screens altogether, we can focus on helping children develop a healthy connection to technology.
Embracing Technology in Education
A smart school management system is designed to make your life easier. It is the nervous system for schools around which other technologies are incorporated. It is not only a master plan to regulate administrative operations in a consolidated, integrated, efficient and smooth way to increase the productivity of schools.
If you are an educator or school administrator still looking for a system that will work well for your school's operations, you can contact LittleLives to see how we can help!
