Whether you love Turkey and cranberries, family get-togethers, or online shopping sprees, this weekend promises to be an exciting one. With companies gearing up for online and in-store sales, and people of all generations getting ready to celebrate, Thanksgiving weekend is one of the most anticipated of the year.

Amidst all the hype, at FamilyKeeper our main concern is that your family enjoys this time period, without any fears or worries. More time at home often means more screen time - and more screen time comes with a host of other problems. We all know that there is a lot of unsolicited content available online, and spending excessive amounts of time on a screen isn’t particularly healthy.

However, you can definitely direct the excess screen time towards being educational, beneficial, and productive. FamilyKeeper has rounded up the top apps to help you and your kids enhance Thanksgiving.

## Issa’s Edible Adventures

This cute app follows the adventures of Issa as she discovers the ingredients from around the world, to make exciting new meals. Free from in-app purchases and in-app advertisements, and suitable for ages 6 and above, this app contains cooking games, as well as inspiration for yummy new dishes for you to try this Thanksgiving.

## Zoom or FaceTime

It’s not always possible to be together on holidays. Make use of video-calling apps, such as Zoom or FaceTime, to speak to loved ones who are far away. Being able to video chat people from afar, when you can’t be with them in person, is one of the best uses of modern technology that has been made available to the masses. So whether your kids want to speak to their grandparents, cousins or friends abroad, using a video-calling app is a great way to enable this.

## Canva

Are you inviting people for Thanksgiving dinner? Have you got great photos from the weekend? Canva is a simple-to-use graphic design program that kids and adults can enjoy using, in order to create professional-looking invitations, enhance photos, and experiment with designs. 

## Just Dance Now 

These days, you don’t have to be a couch potato just because a screen is on - get involved with a dance app such as Just Dance Now and enjoy some great cardio after all that heavy turkey and stuffing!  The whole family can get involved as well, which is always fun.

So this Thanksgiving, you can let your kids enjoy some screen time in a safe environment. But be sure to make time for other activities as well. Play a game of football in the park, meet up with friends, pick a family board game - yes a family movie in the evening is also great to snuggle up to, just make sure there isn’t screen time overload! 

And if you are worried about your family's screen time schedule, there’s always the FamilyKeeper parental control app, powered by [ReasonLabs](https://reasonlabs.com), to help you effectively plan your family’s screen time for the day, block dangerous apps and sites, and get alerts that your kids are always somewhere safe!

Happy Thanksgiving!

FamilyKeeper has rounded up the top apps to help you and your kids enhance Thanksgiving.

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Top Apps To Enhance This Year’s Thanksgiving With Your Kids

Memorial Day Weekend is coming up! Whether you are planning an outing with family, BBQ with friends, or spending the weekend chilling on the beach – we all know celebrations are lovely, but they’re also a disruption of routine. As fun as national holidays are, they usually entail later nights, and sometimes even earlier wake-up calls as kids are so excited for a day of fun ahead!

Additionally, while sometimes there’s nothing better than having a day off work or school and slumping on the couch with an electronic device – be it a tablet, phone, or good ol’ television – is this actually a great way to ‘switch off’, or are we doing more damage than good?

It’s a pretty well-known fact by now that the blue light from screens is unhealthy for our retinas. Staring at the light from screens also affects our circadian rhythms, which in turn affects our sleep patterns. The light blocks our bodies from producing melatonin, the ‘sleep hormone’ – making a decent night’s sleep harder to come by.

As adults, we may have trained ourselves to function on less sleep – but try reasoning with an overtired toddler or a moody teenager and you may well be on a mission to lessen screen time, and create a more serene bedtime experience for your family!

How can we do this?

**1 Set family schedules:** Start preparing for bedtime in advance – give you and your kids some downtime to unwind, and let them know when bedtime is approaching. With the FamilyKeeper parental control app, you and your kids can plan a healthy schedule together to know how long they can spend on screens and what time all electronic devices should be turned off and put away.

**2 Find alternative activities:** As bedtime approaches, enjoy activities other than a screen that will get your kids in the mood for bed. A bubble bath is always an optimum choice! You can also get out a good bedtime story to snuggle up with.

**3 Avoid pre-bedtime stimulants:** This one is a little harder when you may have been feasting on ice cream, s’mores or other popular treats over the holiday period – but it’s important to avoid substances like caffeine and sugar before bedtime, as these can over-stimulate the body and make falling asleep far more difficult.

**4 Bedtime battles beware:** Don’t let bedtime descend into a battle. Often, chatting just before bed is the best time to unwind and talk over the day. Be present for your kid – whatever age they are at, if they are feeling relaxed before bed, this may well be the time they want to open up and speak to you about any worries or concerns.  

So this Memorial Day, make sure your family enjoys some screen-free time, and experiences the relaxing night’s sleep you all deserve!

For more information on the FamilyKeeper parental control app, check out www.familykeeper.reasonlabs.com. 

As adults, we may have trained ourselves to function on less sleep – but try reasoning with an overtired toddler or a moody teenager and you may well be on a mission to lessen screen time, and create a more serene bedtime experience for your family!

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Put Those Screens Away! 4 Ways To Make Bedtime Easier

Social media platforms, chatrooms, WhatsApp and text messaging, online gaming – the advent of web-based connections is affecting our ability to form face-to-face relationships with people.

Generation Alpha, growing up in this digital world, is being affected the most. Kids don’t make friends like they used to. They use emojis instead of searching for descriptive words. They don’t build relationships like we used to because instead of organically letting natural friendships form, they have the option to stare at a screen from their bedroom. They ‘play’ games with friends online, rather than meeting in person. Previous generations used to get shouted at to come in from playing outside – now parents are urging kids to drop the screen and go outside to play!

You may be questioning: why is this even a problem? As long as kids are happily occupied on a screen, do we need to interfere? Is the quality of a friendship dependent on what medium you are using to connect?

In actual fact, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tests show that 80% of communication is physically looking into another person’s face. Consider the percentage of the brain that is taking part in the act: when you communicate via screens, you use no more than 14% of your ’communication brain.’ In other words, it is a totally different way to communicate, and a poorer communication into the bargain.

Of course, a lot of this is a result of two years of quarantine and lockdown periods, when we became thankful that we could at least manage to interact with others through a digital device. But will it cause long-term harm in the future? Too much screen time is already creating chasms in the family dynamic. Are families spending too much time staring at screens, rather than spending quality time together? 

While the ability to connect with everyone around the world is no doubt one of the internet’s biggest assets, online communication poses a host of other problems. When Facebook invented the ‘Like’ option in the early days of social media, the intention was to add more love to the world – creators never dreamt that not getting enough ‘Likes’ would lead to the shocking stories of self-harm and suicide that have been making headlines all over the world, as teens succumb to the pressures of social media and cyberbullying.

Alerts and notifications have a similar effect. Our brains receive a rush of dopamine, and we reach a state of nervous anticipation. In the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail, the protagonist famously describes the ping of an email:

‘I turn on my computer. I wait impatiently as it connects. I go online, and my breath catches in my chest until I hear three little words: ‘You’ve got mail’.’

People today feel the same anticipation when checking out the number of followers, the number of likes, loves, reactions, and responses to messages – there’s a rush of adrenaline that people enjoy, induced by online social media activity.

But unfortunately, this need to be ‘Liked’ has escalated so much in the last 10-15 years that it has led to more anxiety and more self-doubt – especially among kids. The ‘Like’ culture implies that if you don’t get enough Likes, your actions, thoughts and pictures are ‘worthless’.

More time spent on screens has also led child psychologists to research how this is affecting kids’ sleep. Kids dream about what they watch on the screen – and if they’re dreaming of something disturbing, they can have distressing nightmares. The way in which images from the media penetrate into your subconscious is sometimes called “signing”, and is considered to be one of the reasons that children suffer from anxieties. 

Additionally, studies have shown that screen time overload, combined with the sedentary lifestyle that staring at a screen offers, has resulted in kids having less resilience than they used to. Spending too much time in a 2-D environment gives kids less time to spend in a warm nurturing environment – which in turn affects how kids will approach problems or deal with struggles. They will miss out on building the life skills they need. Screen time also detracts from time spent doing physical activity, which is a huge factor in a person’s wellness, and mental well-being.

## Building your Identity

If you are aged twenty and above, you may already have a more developed sense of self, having navigated your formative years without platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat. 

But where younger kids are concerned, we are seeing their self-confidence tied into the ‘mirror effect’, or spotlight effect – you give of yourself on social media and watch how people react. There’s a lot of social pressure to have certain accounts or to try different hacks found online. 

Ultimately, it’s not easy to say no – but you always pay a price. Challenges such as the Cinnamon Challenge, Skull Breaker Challenge and Benadryl Challenge have all resulted in serious injury. Teaching our kids to have the courage not to feel pressured into joining in with something that doesn’t feel safe is an important skill for life.

Social media, with its myriad of possibilities regarding fake profiles and names, is also affecting our ability to self-reflect – people can bully or troll anonymously, and hiding behind a screen means we don’t empathize with the pain we can inflict on others by simply typing a few words.

## Dangerous Exposure

One of the challenges of parenting today is that it’s possible to have literally no idea what our children are watching – and they are able to access all kinds of content at an increasingly younger age. Let’s set the scene: Your teenager has a tablet – they access Netflix – they choose to watch Squid Games – their little brother climbs up onto the sofa next to them and watches alongside … it’s just so easy for kids to access all kinds of inappropriate content, right under our noses.

Squid Games in particular garnered much notoriety, with critics pointing out that the utter lack of human empathy is extremely disturbing. One could also add that violent video games, which many parents have long objected to, offer similarly worrying content. Studies amongst psychologists today show that too much exposure to this kind of content will affect our children’s ability to empathize and be sensitive. 

Access to these violent and brutal plots and images messes with people’s heads – young, impressionable people in particular.  Without the benefits of life experience, it’s frightening to think that the younger generation will become desensitized to violent content if they’re subjected to too much of it. It also blurs the lines between right and wrong, real and unreal, natural and unnatural.

Then there’s the added social pressure – even if your child isn’t inclined to watch this style of show, if their classmates are talking about it, they will want to join in the conversation. In the past, it was easier to control exposure. Families would have one screen at home if that – and that screen would be for the whole family. Children would ask their parents before watching television. If there were new releases, the cinemas offered ‘parental controls’ so parents would know whether or not movies were age-appropriate.

If a youngster wanted to access porn, he would need to invest time and energy to procure it: he needed to save his pocket money, go out, find a shop, buy a magazine, convince the shopkeeper he wasn’t under-age … It was a whole performance! Nowadays, it’s available at the click of a button.

## Lack of morality?

We find ourselves questioning: Is it a lack of morality that’s driving more and more shocking material online? When huge conglomerates fail to safeguard users: is this the modern-day equivalent of ‘the banality of evil’, whereby entertainment and tech corporations will prioritize financial profit over the well-being of young users? Kids imitate without realizing they are doing it. We don’t even realize how much evil is out there – our challenge is to help eradicate a percentage of that from our kids’ lives.

Recently, due to pressure from governing bodies, we’ve seen more companies take responsibility and add parental controls to their platforms. For example, Instagram has launched parental controls, as has Facebook, after a whistleblower accused them of being more interested in profits than safety. However, while various companies are now trying to change at least one aspect for users e.g. location or screen time, the FamilyKeeper parental control app aims to encompass all aspects, in order to help combat social bullying, mental health issues and online dangers.

## Why do your kids need YOU?

The frontal part of the brain starts to develop around nine years old and finishes around the age of twenty-five. During this time, we learn, we perceive, we’re impressionable, and we’re engaged.

A parental control app such as FamilyKeeper gives parents time to teach their children how to live in this world. It gives them values from a young age. Even if as a teen they decide they don’t want you to have parental access, you’ll have started them off with the right tools in life.

Parental control apps also help parents to understand their kids – what do your kids like to watch, to play, to listen to?  Screens have become the ultimate toy – toy companies just can’t compete anymore with the allure of a screen.

To that end, as parents we may need to adopt an ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ policy. We may not be able to rid the world of screens, but we can certainly make the experience of using them a safer one. An app like FamilyKeeper opens the shutters – it keeps the lines of communication open between parent and child.

Social media platforms, chatrooms, WhatsApp and text messaging, online gaming – the advent of web-based connections is affecting our ability to form face-to-face relationships with people.

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Too Much Screen Time? Risks, Dangers, and What We Can Do to Help

In a world with an abundance of screens and electronic devices, parents are increasingly urging their children to read more and stare at screens less!

The previous generation was told they would get “square eyes” from watching too much television – but it was far easier to switch off the family TV and hide the remote control than it is to remove every phone, tablet, and computer screen out of sight – especially when we rely on these devices for communication, school work and business on a daily basis.

In an effort to get more kids reading, devices such as the Kindle, Nook, Kobo and Likebook Mars E-Reader do at least offer us the option to explore the wide world of literature.

This International Children’s Book Day, whether your child is holding a tablet or a physical book, it’s time to explore the world of children’s literature. They say that ‘Art reflects Life’ – living as we are in the digital world, let’s see what we can learn from these classic children’s books about how to stay cyber safe in 2022. Happy Reading!

**_Winnie-the-Pooh_ – by A. A. Milne**

This much-loved bear and his friends have delighted children and adults alike since his inception in 1922.  Piglet notably takes his security extremely seriously, having adopted the broken ‘Trespassers Will’ sign and making it his own.

What do we learn? Be aware of your surroundings! And if you don’t know who is at the door – or on the other end of an anonymous chat message – don’t let them in!

**_Peter Rabbit _– by Beatrix Potter**

The protagonist of this story is actually a very naughty bunny! Crossing Mr. MacGregor’s security breaches and stealing vegetables from his garden is pretty unacceptable. He ends up getting in trouble with his mother and having a stomach ache, which just goes to show – stealing (or for our purposes, ‘hacking’), will catch up with you in the end!

**_Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_ – by Lewis Carroll**

Alice’s fall down a rabbit hole into a whimsical world of fantasy is somewhat similar to the state we enter after staring at a screen too long, or scrolling through social media until we reach a vegetative state. Too much screen time can affect your dreams and sleep patterns – use a parental control app (we recommend FamilyKeeper) and curb the amount of screen time your kids are having.

**_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ – by Arthur Conan Doyle**

Victorian England’s detective would be a wonderful cybersecurity expert in 2022 – with an incredible eye for remembering intricate details, Sherlock would be great at sifting through data and finding cyber threats such as  Trojans! 

We may just have to rely on a great antivirus instead.

**_The Little Mermaid_ – by Hans Christian Andersen**

The original story by Hans Christian Andersen is much darker than the Disney classic. What can we learn? Be careful who you make deals with, especially through dodgy online sites and pop-ups – if it’s too good to be true, it usually is!

**_Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ – by Roald Dahl**

Teens in particular pin too much of their confidence on their social media accounts, and online gratification. Roald Dahl’s children’s book teaches the true meaning of being happy – and life lessons surrounding greed and morality.

**_Peter Pan_ – by J. M. Barrie**

Peter Pan loses control over his shadow and it gets him into trouble – be careful how much of yourself and your digital footprint you let loose over the internet.

And piracy is never a good idea, as can be seen from Captain Hook’s unfortunate end – so be careful not to download pirated movies or cracked games!

If you are looking for inspiration regarding limiting screen time, setting family schedules, and removing screens from the bedtime ritual, the FamilyKeeper parental control app is just what you’ve been looking for. Thousands of families around the world are using FamilyKeeper to help their children make time for other activities, and enjoy time away from screens.

For more information, see www.familykeeper.reasonlabs.com. 

This International Children’s Book Day, whether your child is holding a tablet or a physical book, it’s time to explore the world of children’s literature.

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#Screen Time