Ditching screen time guilt could help families connect, psychologist says

"We grew up in this era where screen time was this great evil," Andrew said.

"There's all the stories about Silicon Valley executives who refused to let their kids anywhere near the technology they were working on."

But that idea was flipped on its head when their eight-year-old son, Jordan, was diagnosed with autism and reports of "disruptive behaviour" at school began trickling home.

"We saw a kid who was shut down, barely there," Andrew said.

"It was like he was just checked out.

"This was not the boy that we know, this was someone entirely different."

Andrew and Maggie tried home education, but Jordan would not engage.

Desperate to cut through, they turned to the one solid trick they had up their sleeve — screen time.

When Andrew became a dad, he assumed his son would one day be a happy, well-adjusted kid at school.

Instead, he and Jordan typically spend large chunks of what should be school days on the couch playing video games.

"Thank god for Minecraft," Andrew said.

"A lot of the past year has been about sitting beside him and co-regulating by playing Minecraft.

"It allowed us to meet him where he was, which was a very restricted place."

It didn't come without parental guilt and anxiety.

But to their surprise, playing Minecraft on a split-screen beside their child became a rich experience.

"We found early on that autistic kids find screens regulating. It's a way to help themselves calm down," Andrew said.

"Introducing limits to that is really counterproductive."

It's a message British clinical psychologist Naomi Fisher has been conveying to desperate parents across the world in webinars.

Dr Fisher said screen-time limits put unnecessary pressure on families. She said playing with children without watching the clock was a more effective way of parenting.

"It's about meeting children where they are rather than trying to get them to come to where we are," she said.

Dr Fisher said while the unlimited time approach applied to all children, positive outcomes were most noticeable for neurodivergent youth.

"Often for [autistic] children they don't have friends in the outside world and they can interact with people online," she said.

"I hear the most amazing conversations going on when they are playing, say Minecraft together, amazing negotiations and planning.

"If this was anything else other than in a video game, we would all be like 'this is amazing'."

Dr Fisher said parents often asked for ways to engage their child.

"I always say, 'What does your child enjoy doing? Can you join them in that?'" she said.

"Even if you think it's a waste of time, can you value it because they find value in it?"

Mum-of-three Heidi Ryan said she also imposed time limits for devices at her home on the Mornington Peninsula, but changed her mind after her children were diagnosed with varying forms of neurodivergence.

"The more I understood my kids and how their brains worked and how they decompressed and how they engaged with the world, the more I let go of those expectations," she said.

She said she noticed her children were less anxious when socialising with friends online than in person and helped her children — two who are now adults — connect at home as well.

"It brings them conversations when they emerge from their rooms. There are dinner-table conversations around games or anime or the K-pop music that they're into at the moment," Ms Ryan said.

Approaching screen time without judgment meant Ms Ryan's children felt they could talk to her more freely about what they enjoyed online and what they struggled with.

She said the family has "really open discussions" about screen usage and overuse.

"They're self-correcting. They're understanding for themselves what does and doesn't work."

Dr Fisher said in some instances, the best way to find out what interests children was to join them on their devices.

"If there's a child who's really interested in sports or reading or boardgames and you said to their parent, 'oh tell me about their interest' and they said, 'I have no idea, I don't get involved', you'd think that's strange.

"But when it's on a screen, people are proud of that response."

But the research is not so clear-cut.

American clinical psychologist and autism researcher Michelle Menezes has led two studies on the mental health impact of screen time on autistic children and teenagers.

Her research found that while neurotypical children and adolescents were more likely to experience depression and anxiety with increased screen exposure, it wasn't true for those with autism.

"The relationship doesn't seem to be quite so simple for autistic youth," Dr Menezes said.

"We found that there wasn't an association between anxiety and depression and screen time for autistic youth."

One of her studies showed increased screen time did lead to an increase in behaviour issues though.

"Autistic youth engage with their interests with more intensity than neurotypical youth," she said.

"So, if an autistic child has a special interest in screen media, they may have a larger reaction than a typically developing peer to screen access restrictions."

When it came to Jordan's screen time, Andrew said he was seeing the benefits not just in connection, but education and self-regulation.

"I'm very anti-YouTube," he said.

"I'm really distrustful about the way it's set up, the algorithm, to keep you watching.

"But [Jordan's] ability to pick things to watch has improved and I've seen him coming away with knowledge which is really very impressive, stuff that you would think would come from school.

"There are times when you go 'he's just wasting his day', but then he'll come away from that with this amazing creative project which is inspired by something he's seen and he's off and away for days building stuff."