Am I bad parent for using a screen?
The screen time confession nobody wants to make
I arrive at soccer practice and spot a girl sitting on the sidelines with a laptop. My son immediately beelines straight for her, plonks himself down way too close, and stares at the screen like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.
Her mum glances at me, apologetic, with that familiar mix of embarrassment and insecurity only parents know too well. “Sorry,” she says. “She has to do her homework. It’s all online now.”
Honestly? Totally normal to me. I try to reassure her. “We do the same thing.” Meanwhile, my child is demonstrating his raging screen obsession by magnetising himself to any device in a 20-metre radius. Very helpful, darling. Thank you for your contribution to the social nuance of this moment.
Nearby, a group of mums are deep in conversation about the evils of screen time. “Why does everything have to be on a device now?” “What happened to worksheets?” “I just think kids need to be bored again.” Heads nod in solidarity. A few parents add their two cents, mostly, I suspect, so they won’t get cast out of the tribe.
Then someone says it: “Oh, we don’t allow screens in our house. Absolutely not.”
And there it is. The moment.
Do I admit the truth? That we use screens? A lot? Both the “good” kind and the “bad” kind? That sometimes the iPad is educational, and sometimes it is just there so I can cook dinner without someone climbing my body like a distressed possum?
Or do I nod, purse my lips in fake concern, and pray no one asks my child about his Mario Kart ranking? Because the stakes feel weirdly high. Confessing could cost us play dates. Or worse, banishment from the mums’ WhatsApp group.
So I nod. I tut. I briefly consider reinventing myself as a screen-free parent. No screens unless the kids are sick. And even then, only wholesome cooking shows, nature documentaries, or Country Calendar. That’ll make me a good parent, right?
Of course, the moment you whisper the truth privately to another parent, the floodgates open. “Oh thank God. We do too.” Suddenly the guilt lifts, the validation flows, and everyone relaxes. You realise the great screen-time moral panic is being upheld by a group of exhausted parents who are mostly just afraid of being judged by each other.
Which is both comforting and completely ridiculous.
Because honestly, what are we doing? Parenting already comes with enough guilt. Do we really need to add a secret shame economy around Bluey, Minecraft, Roblox, school portals, and the emergency iPad deployment that happens when dinner is burning and everyone has lost the plot?
Parenting now sometimes feels less like raising children and more like competing in the Olympics of moral superiority. There is always a new rule book: no sugar, no plastic toys, no processed snacks, no screens, no yelling, no bribery, no packet lunches, no saying “because I said so,” even when “because I said so” is the only sentence left between you and a full nervous collapse.
And heaven forbid your child repeats something they saw on YouTube at school. Suddenly you’re that parent. The one who clearly lets their children rot their brains in front of a glowing rectangle while everyone else’s child is apparently hand-whittling wooden toys and journaling about gratitude.
The truth is less dramatic. Most of us are doing our best with what we’ve got. Screens sneak in because they are practical. Sometimes they are useful. Sometimes they are required. Sometimes they are genuinely creative or social or educational. And yes, sometimes they are a lifeline for a parent who just wants to drink their coffee while it is still hot.
That does not make us bad parents. It makes us parents living in the actual world. And the actual world has screens in it.
A lot of them.
The research on screens is complicated, which is deeply annoying because I would personally enjoy a single clear rule that made me feel morally superior and calm. But it is not that simple. Too much passive, unbounded screen use can affect sleep, mood, attention, and behaviour. That matters. We should not pretend it doesn’t. But screens can also support learning, creativity, connection, communication, accessibility, and play. That matters too.
The same screen can mean very different things depending on what is happening around it. A child disappearing into endless videos alone in their room is not the same as a family movie night where everyone laughs together. A game played for hours in a foggy rage is not the same as a child building an entire Minecraft village with friends and explaining, in intense detail, the architectural strategy behind every block. Online homework is not the same as algorithmic sludge. A video call with grandparents is not the same as watching a stranger unwrap plastic toys for 47 minutes.
Context matters. Connection matters. Content matters. The child matters. And so does the adult sitting nearby, trying to figure out whether this is fine, terrible, or simply Tuesday.
I think that is where the conversation needs to shift. Not “screens are good” or “screens are bad.” That is too simple. The better question is: what kind of relationship with technology are we helping our children build?
Because screens are not going away. They are stitched into school, friendships, creativity, family life, work, and the way the world now functions. We do not get to raise our kids in the world we wish existed. We have to prepare them for the one they are actually growing up in.
That means boundaries. It means parental controls. It means noticing what they are watching, playing, clicking, and absorbing. It means saying no sometimes, and saying yes sometimes too. It means helping them understand why one kind of screen time leaves them calm and another leaves them feral.
It also means being honest that adults are not exactly nailing this either. Nothing humbles you faster than telling your child to get off the iPad while you are scrolling Instagram with the haunted posture of a Victorian ghost.
This is the part I keep coming back to: our kids do not just need less technology. They need better technology, and better guidance.
They need tools that support family life instead of pulling everyone into separate little worlds. They need chances to use technology actively, creatively, and socially, not just passively. And they need adults who are willing to talk about the messy middle instead of pretending the only good parent is the one whose child has never touched a screen and spends weekends weaving baskets out of ethically sourced reeds.
That is one of the ideas behind Loomia too, but I want to be careful here, because the answer to screen guilt is obviously not “surprise, here is another screen.” That would be ridiculous. Also, not very self-aware.
The question we are interested in is different: could technology in the home be less about consumption and more about participation? Could a shared screen help a family coordinate life without dragging every parent back into their phone? Could kids interact with technology in a way that helps them contribute, understand routines, and feel part of the household, rather than disappear into a private feed?
That is the bit I care about. Not more screen time. Better screen time. Not technology as a babysitter, but technology as scaffolding. Something that helps the family function, then gets out of the way.
Because the real goal is not to win the screen-time purity contest. The real goal is to raise children who can live well with technology. Children who can enjoy it, question it, use it creatively, step away from it, and recognise when it is no longer serving them.
And to do that, we probably need to stop lying to each other at soccer practice.
We need fewer performances of perfect parenting and more honest conversations that sound like: yes, we use screens. Yes, sometimes too much. Yes, we are working on it. Yes, Minecraft is strangely impressive. Yes, I also panic when another parent says they do zero screens. No, I do not want my child watching unboxing videos until their soul leaves their body. And yes, sometimes the iPad buys me 20 minutes of peace, and I am no longer pretending that makes me a monster.
Parenting is messy enough without turning every screen into a moral referendum. Some days we will set beautiful boundaries and hold them with calm authority. Other days the wheels will fall off, the pasta will boil over, someone will cry about socks, and a screen will appear so everyone can survive the next half hour.
That is not failure. That is family life.
What matters is that we keep paying attention. That we stay close enough to guide. That we build homes where technology has a place, but not the whole place.
And maybe, next time we see another parent letting their child finish online homework on the sidelines, we can skip the judgement and offer something more useful.
A smile. A bit of solidarity. Maybe even the truth.
“We do the same thing.”