Social media and gaming

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.