All posts tagged: wifi

relationships, online dating, raising a teenager, over 50, positive ageing

The simplest, most effective daily gift for you and your teenager

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How much screen time? According to the Washington Post in 2015, teenagers spend an average of 9 hours a day looking at screens. NINE HOURS. (Children aged 8-12 are on about 6 hours). It’s 2017, so I’d guess the times are slightly higher now. Adults are on approx 4 hours a day in their leisure time, but obviously more if they sit at a desk with computer in front of them. Here in Australia, we have a particularly high engagement with our smartphones; some estimates are up to 10 hours a day (Source: ABC News May 14 2016). It’s simple: switch off the wifi When my son was approaching his teens, and had been given his first smart-ish phone by his Dad’s family for Xmas (which I had no say in unfortunately), a wise friend with a son 7 years older than mine gave me this advice: no screens in the bedroom. Brilliant. Don’t let them lock themselves away with TVs or laptops plus smartphones; some kids text and message each other at 2am on a …

Medieval Toy Town?

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‘How long will it take us to get to Paddington?’ I asked my cousin ‘The G-Man’. To his answer of ‘An hour at most’, I added 45 minutes. Notorious is he for underestimating traffic, and I hate rushing when I’m travelling. Moving from place to place is stressful enough, never mind adding 2 x 18kg suitcases, recalcitrant teenager, precious small backpacks, AND a time deadline. Yes, we’re on the move. From the comfortable, 3 bedroom flat near Brixton where we’d first landed, laughing and talking with fav cousin G-man, down to his sister’s place in country Somerset (known as Toy Town in the family). Sister ‘C’ has 3 kids, and no TV; G-Man’s flat we’d christened ‘Wifi Heaven’. This is going to be interesting… First, a bus, two tubes, and [thankfully], several escalators. Then a fast train journey through autumn fields, speeding so much that the approach to every station seeps the smell of burning brakes. My son ‘15’ suddenly asks me to imagine a time when the countryside would have been full of horses, …