1. Take charge of your feed by making active choices.

Make a clear choice about what you want to see on your social feed. If you enjoy cooking videos, great. If looking at old black-and-white films brings you joy, fab. If you want interior design, cool. Just make a clear choice about what you want your digital diet to be. Block, unfollow, or don’t interact with anything else.

2. Actively interact only with things you want in your digital diet.

When you like or save something, you are training the machine (algorithm) that populates your feed. When you ignore or block something, you are training it as well. Dedicate half an hour a week for a few weeks to training the machine learning by finding content that you want to see—content that you are passionate about or that makes you feel good. Intentionally search for things you like. 

3. Actively direct your attention.

Not every piece of content that is fed to you deserves your time and attention. Your time and attention are money (literally, your time and preferences are being sold to advertisers), so be discerning and intentional about what you want to give your attention to. Don’t watch uninteresting or uninspiring content, or content that makes you feel bad. Quickly move past it. And do not like, share, or comment on things that don’t fit into your new healthy digital diet.  

4. Follow people who empower you.

Don’t engage with accounts that make you feel bad or self-conscious. For example, unfollow an underwear model who makes you feel bad about your body or someone who makes you feel outraged about something. Instead, choose to follow people who inspire and energize you. 

Building healthy digital diets is one of the best things you can do for your kids. Here are some tips to take a more qualitative approach to curating screentime that is as emotionally and intellectually nutritious as possible for their growing brains.

1. For younger children, time off screens is generally better than on.

When we do use screens, I encourage my own children to watch children’s live TV in regulated spaces like TVO, as this provides diversity of content curated by a children’s programmer. Lots of time and advocacy has gone into producing it.

2. Prioritize active and engaged viewing over passive viewing.

This means content that encourages creativity and discussion. This supports active brain engagement, learning, and communication skills. It’s often better to opt for collective over solitary viewing, which can act as a springboard for discussion and build critical thinking and social engagement skills.

3. Speak to teens about what they want their digital diet to look like.

Together, dedicate half an hour a week to training the machine learning by actively searching for positive content—content that they are passionate about or that makes them feel good. Don’t watch uninteresting, uninspiring content or content that makes them (or you) feel bad. Quickly move past it. And teach them not to like, share, or comment on things they don’t enjoy. Even commenting on something you don’t like counts as engagement, meaning you may get more of it.

4. Set boundaries and time limits.

As families or as households, we can think about our own collective boundaries. Make rules about times and places that are screen-free. That might mean when you come home from work, at meals, or in the bedroom. It’s also worth considering a phone-free day during the weekend to carve out time when phones are out of sight. Building the habit of a day a week off screens will enhance focus and concentration.  

When you do need to be on screens at home, make active choices and communicate. Actively articulate what you are doing, why, and for how long. If you have to respond to something on your phone that should take five minutes, stick to those five minutes. You might say to your family members, “I’m just doing this email for work and then I’m going to be back and focusing on you.” Setting a time boundary can prevent you from slipping into the inevitable checking of texts and then sliding onto Instagram, which means the five-minute activity has turned into a 40-minute session scrolling on your phone.

5. Talk about what you see.

Seed the idea from an early age that if kids see things on screens that make them feel bad (or funny in their tummy), you are here to talk. Break open the idea that screen consumption is private. Share what you see and how you feel about it regularly to build trust.