Clear, practical advice on kids and screens.
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Irritation rests on an expectation, anger on a demand. The best advice I've ever been given, and what the research says you can actually expect of a child at four, nine and fourteen.
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.
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.
You've probably heard you should dim the lights and put the screens away an hour before bed. But did you know it matters just as much to bring your core body temperature down, and that the shower that helps is a warm one, not a cold one? Why We Sleep by sleep scientist Matthew Walker is one of the most interesting books I've read, packed with useful science for better sleep.
Your brain has a network of its own that wakes up only when you're not doing anything in particular. The research makes a strong case that boredom is underrated, and there's one concrete step you can take today.
Nir Eyal wrote Hooked, the book about how apps get us hooked. Then he wrote the book about taking your focus back. On notifications that treat everything as equally urgent, and the one move that makes your phone a tool again.
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.
One good talk loses to a thousand repetitions from the feed and their friends. Why repetition works, according to the research, and how to nag so the message actually sticks.
Trigger, action, variable reward, investment: the four-step loop from the book Hooked is the recipe behind the apps that are hardest to put down. This is how each step works, with the apps your kids use as the examples.
Text strips away everything that makes a conversation safe: the voice, the eyes, the chance to clear things up. What can take text and what deserves a real conversation, the two questions to ask before anything is sent, and the door that has to stay open when something goes wrong.
Kids who are told why a rule exists take it with them when they leave the room. Kids who just obey leave it at the door. The research behind one of my principles: no rule without a reason the child gets to hear.
Two big challenges with AI are ones you can do something about yourself. The chatbot is awake at 23:40, hasn't had a bad day, and mostly tells you you're right. Stanford researchers measured how much more often than people do: 49 per cent. And students who have the answers served up by AI learn less. Here are the moves that stop the chatbot becoming a short-term disservice to your child.
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.
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.
Eight in ten Norwegian kids between 9 and 12 are on Roblox, and in October 2026 the Norwegian Media Authority published a report on the platform itself: pressure to spend, loot boxes and a feed that looks like TikTok. This guide explains what Roblox actually is, what deserves your attention, what you can relax about, and the settings that do the work.
Be consistent. A child who learns that nagging never works gradually grows into smarter questions and better arguments. Here is the mechanism that keeps the nagging alive, and the strategies I use at home to keep nagging and whining down.
The Norwegian Directorate of Health's screen time ceilings for every age: no screens under 2, at most an hour for ages 2 to 5, an hour and a half for 6 to 12 and one and a half to three hours for teenagers. Just as important: why the limits exist and how to be your child's guide without the constant nagging.
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.
What the research actually says about kids and social media, a quick tour of the apps they'll ask for, from Snapchat to Roblox, and the one principle that protects better than any age limit.
86 per cent of Norwegian kids game, and the research on gaming's ups and downs is more honest than the debate: plenty that does them good, some things that go wrong and very little of it decided by hours played. This guide gives you the three questions that matter more than playing time: what kind of game, with whom and where.
59 per cent of Norwegian kids between 9 and 16 use generative AI, and 85 per cent say their parents let them use it whenever they like. Here are the age limits that actually apply, the three ways AI gets things wrong, what the research says about homework and the settings that matter most.
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.
The Shorts feed has been given a daily time limit of its own on supervised accounts, and since March that limit can be set to zero. Norwegian media watchdog Barnevakten retested it in September, and this time it holds.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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