For a lot of kids, growing up in today's world means more time spent staring at screens than biking around the neighborhood with friends. This isn't a huge surprise considering the increase in affordable personal electronic devices. But it puts a difficult task on parents: How do you keep kids from engaging in too much screen time without getting tantrums or moody backlash?

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A 2015 study by Common Sense Media reported that kids aged eight to 18 in the U.S. spend an average of nine hours each dayusing media. It's become an addiction for many, but a new app called unGlue is here to make management easier. The app helps families agree on an amount of screen time kids will engage in, and then holds them to it.

Kids can see how much time they have left in the app.Credit: unglue

Alon Shwartz, unGlue co-founder and CEO, is the the father of a daughter and two sons aged 11 to 18 years old. He created the app as a bit of a reality check, and his kids have helped shape it.

"To be honest, kids are kids even if their dad happens to be the CEO and co-founder of unGlue, so they were not 'jumping from joy' when we started the unGlue journey a couple of years ago," said Shwartz.

But involving kids in the decision of how much time they should have on screens and letting them manage that time gives them agency. The chance to earn time by doing chores or to save time, rolling unused time to a new day, teaches valuable skills as well.

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"I don’t want to paint a perfect picture," said Shwartz. "Social media, videos, and games are still as addictive as ever, but unGlue is a way to bring awareness and appreciation of time back to their lives and stop those addictive apps and websites from controlling them."

The app was created specifically to be as family —and user — friendly as possible. It's set up in a way that lets a parent monitor the screen time of all family members from their own devices. In the kid's version of the app, each child can see exactly how much time they have left in each category, like social media and entertainment.

Parents can manage the whole family's time from one app.Credit: unglue

One problem with some of the parental control apps on the market is that they simply rely on an on/off switch. There are no lessons being taught, and kids don't learn how to manage their time. The most common result from these apps is a parent-child showdown.

Shwartz recognized this and has a message for parents.

"Involve your kids in the conversation before you set their limits. Forget 'parental control,' think kids-empowerment," said Shwartz."Yes, you did buy them the phone, that is not the point. You want to help them learn how to manage their own time. The more your kids are involved in the process, the less resistant they will be."

The free app was originally launched for iOS, but it recently added functionality for Android devices.

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TopicsApps & SoftwareiPhone