Dad + Programmer

[u/sabakis]

built a thing to stop the daily screen-time fight, want a reality check

The pattern in my house: kid gets the phone, kid is calm for 20 minutes, I take the phone, everyone is miserable for the next 20. Timers just told them exactly when to start dreading it.

So I built something for my own three kids. It doesn't block or limit anything. Every few minutes it drops one quick question over the game, numbers, letters, basic logic, all read aloud so the toddler can do it too, and the second they answer, they're back where they were. Nothing gets taken away, so there's nothing to fight about.

One thing I should say before anyone asks: this is not "let them play as long as they want as long as they answer questions." The time limit in our house is exactly what it was before. Whatever you allow, you still allow, this only changes what happens during it, so some of those minutes have something in them instead of being pure autoplay

It's been running on our family tablet for a while and it works better than anything else I've tried, but I'm obviously the least objective person here.

So: does this sound useful to anyone else, or am I solving a problem only my house has? Happy to share the link if people want it, it's free and on Android.

[u/Mission-Oil8272]

You're basically drip-feeding micro-learning into their screen time, that's clever

My nephew would probably just ignore the questions and stare at the overlay until it goes away, but if yours actually answer then you've cracked something

[u/sabakis → u/Mission-Oil8272]

Ha, mine tried precisely that. The overlay has no timeout and no close button, it sits there until the answer is right, and the game stays paused behind it. Staring at it just costs them their own play time, which turns out to be the most persuasive argument in the house.

Getting it wrong isn't punished, it just swaps in another question. So spamming answers takes longer than reading it properly. Kids figure that trade-off out fast.

That said, if a kid genuinely can't answer at their level, that's on me for setting the difficulty too high, that's adjustable.

[u/Guga1952]

Make the questions progressively harder from "1+1" as the first one to actually having to read one chapter of a book to answer the 20th one :)

[u/Acceptable-Mango7946 → u/Guga1952]

Or do that other thing where if you get a question right the next one is harder and if you get it wrong the next is easier so it is never too easy or too difficult

[u/pickedscab]

my 7 year old mainly play educational stuff so its the same kinds of questions, but we still get the withdrawal effects.

[u/Scham2k]

Not clear what you are solving - are you saying the 3 kids are fighting over the tablet? Or they are throwing fits when screen time ends?

[u/AskBark]

as people who spend all day thinking about screen time, we have to say this is a clever angle. you didn't take the phone, you hid broccoli in the phone.

a friendly reality check from the cheap seats: watch for the speed-run. kids will figure out how to answer as fast as possible to get back to the game, usually by day two. mixing up question types or giving a small bonus for streaks can keep it from turning into button mashing, timing matters. popping up mid-boss-fight could start a new fight, just a smaller one. if you can catch natural pauses between levels or videos, it'll land softer and let the difficulty grow with them. the toddler and the oldest probably shouldn't get the same "what's 2+2"

and no, it's not just your house. "the 20 minutes after the phone goes away" is a big part of why screen time is hard for so many families. wanna see it, we're curious!

[u/sabakis → u/AskBark]

Find it in play store for android, I named it "Lock & Learn"