Articles

Our generation of parents were the first guinea pigs for social media and smartphones: no training, no research, random results. Now our kids are standing where we stood, but this time there's a handbook.

The Norwegian Media Authority has studied how 1,753 children and teenagers actually use social media, and the verdict is blunt: the design, not the kids, sets the pattern. The TikTok users in the study watched 200 to 400 videos a day.

When your child actually needs one, not when the pressure says it's time. And the first phone doesn't have to be a smartphone. Three questions that matter more than any age.

Ask it to, with a standing instruction it remembers. Here's the text to paste in, and where it goes in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and the rest.

Language researchers at the University of Oslo followed 1,442 Norwegian toddlers: the two year olds with more daily screen time knew fewer words, and the children who were read to a lot knew more. A British study points the same way. Best of all, the strongest move is also the cosiest one.

Half an hour to an hour a day at most, says the Norwegian Directorate of Health, ideally less and ideally with you on the sofa. But what kind of screen matters more than the minutes: made for kids, no ads, no autoplay. The numbers, the criteria and what I learnt from two runs through the toddler years.

51 per cent of Norwegian 9 and 10-year-olds use social media, according to the Norwegian Media Authority's report 'Fanget i feeden'. The age limit is 13. That gap between rule and reality isn't proof of lazy parenting. It's the dilemma every parent is standing in.

Among the kids who use AI to talk about feelings, one in four says it understands them better than most people do. Not because the chatbot is wise, but because it's awake while you sleep and never gets hurt. Here are the numbers, and how to make yourself easier to come to.

Four Christian Democrat (KrF) MPs proposed that nobody under 13 should be able to buy a smartphone in Norway. On 12 June parliament said no, with only KrF voting in favour. Here's what the proposal actually said, and why the majority decided it aimed at the wrong target.

Be consistent. A child who learns that nagging never works gradually grows into smarter questions and better arguments. Here are the strategies I use at home to keep the nagging and whining down.

Hold the line, but listen: your child isn't really asking for an app, they're asking not to be left out. You can say no to Snapchat and still take that seriously. Here's how to do both.

Rarely the way you hope. Confiscating the phone ends tonight's battle, but it doesn't teach your child to put the phone down on their own. What works better: limits that live in the system and agreements made in peacetime.

A counter that resets when you take a day off is loss aversion by design, and the mechanic doesn't care whether the content is vocabulary or selfies. How streaks work, what they do to kids and three moves against the counters.

No, wait a little longer. The age limit is 13, and it's there for a reason. Here's what sits behind it and what to say when the arguing starts.