Many families want to set ground rules to help them reduce their screen time - and have time to connect with each other, without devices.

But it can be difficult to know where to start and how to make a plan that suits your family.

First, look at your own screen time

Before telling children to "hop off the tech", it's important parents understand how much they are using screens themselves.

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Globally, the average person spends an average of six hours and 58 minutes on screens each day. This has increased by 13 percent, or 49 minutes, since 2013.

Parents who report high screen time use tend to see this filtering down to the children in their family too. Two-thirds of primary school-aged children in Australia have their own mobile screen-based device.

Australia's screen time guidelines recommended children aged five to 17 years have no more than two hours of sedentary screen time (excluding homework) each day.

For those aged two to five years, it's no more than one hour a day. And the guidelines recommend no screen time at all for children under two.

Yet the majority of children, across age groups, exceed these maximums.

A new Australian study released this week found the average three-year-old is exposed to two hours and 52 minutes of screen time a day.

Some screen time is OK, too much increases risks

Technology has profoundly impacted children's lives, offering both opportunities and challenges.

On one hand, it provides access to educational resources, can develop creativity, facilitates communication with peers and family members, and allows students to seek out new information.

On the other hand, excessive screen use can result in too much time being sedentary, delays in developmental milestones, disrupted sleep and daytime drowsiness.

Too much screen time can affect social skills, as it replaces time spent in face-to-face social interactions. This is where children learn verbal and non-verbal communication, develop empathy, learn patience and how to take turns.

Many families also worry about how to maintain a positive relationship with their children when so much of their time is spent glued to screens.

What about when we're all on devices?

When families are all using devices simultaneously, it results in less face-to-face interactions, reducing communication and resulting in a shift in family dynamics.

The increased use of wireless technology enables families to easily tune out from each other by putting in earphones, reducing the opportunity for conversation.

Family members wearing earphones during shared activities or meals creates a physical barrier and encourages people to retreat into their own digital worlds.

Wearing earphones for long periods may also reduce connection to, and closeness with, family members.

Research from video gaming, for instance, found excessive gaming increases feelings of isolation, loneliness and the displacement of real-world social interactions, alongside weakened relationships with peers and family members.

How can I set screen time limits?

Start by sitting down as a family and discussing what limits you all feel would be appropriate when using TVs, phones and gaming - and when is an appropriate time to use them.

• Have set rules around family time - for example, no devices at the dinner table - so you can connect through face-to-face interactions.
• Consider locking your phone or devices away at certain periods throughout the week, such as after 9pm (or within an hour of bedtime for younger children).
• Seek out opportunities to balance your days with physical activities, such kicking a footy at the park or going on a family bush walk.
• Parents can model healthy behaviour by regulating and setting limits on their own screen time. This might mean limiting your social media scrolling to 15 or 30 minutes a day and keeping your phone in the next room when you're not using it.

When establishing appropriate boundaries and ensuring children's safety, it is crucial for parents and guardians to engage in open communication about technology use.

This includes teaching critical thinking skills to navigate online content safely and employing parental control tools and privacy settings.

Parents can foster a supportive and trusting relationship with children from an early age so children feel comfortable discussing their online experiences and sharing their fears or concerns.

• First published in The Conversation
• Elise Waghorn is a lecturer at the School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne

We live for stories.

Favorite TV shows and movies, prized comics, bedtime harangues, hoary old fairy tales, crooned lullabies, beloved novels and well-thumbed picture books; these are often among our first and most deeply loved memories.

In the vast tapestry of human experience, stories act as an enduring thread, interweaving memories, feelings, and hopes.

They are more than mere tales — they are the patterns etched into the fabric of our lives, guiding our growth and aspirations.

For many of us, narrative is how we learn; what we live for, why we smile.

I believe the impetus we have to succeed and grow in life - to aspire, nurture and act - can be sourced from the pools of lore and myth we swim in as children.

For those of us with children of our own, we find delight in observing them embrace their own narratives. As a parent of teenagers, I delight in gently reminding the offspring of who they used to be, as they grow into who they are becoming.

Part of that journey, for them, is working through what parts of their origin story make sense to them, and distancing themselves from the stuff that may be holding them back from being happy and healthy.

We humans are not singular entities

Watching your children gradually grow into independent individuals can be daunting.

My wife and I grapple with this transition, finding ourselves torn between the innate desire to protect and the imperative to let go; valuing them as their own people.

That's as it should be.

It's a cycle repeated without end. And this cycle, as perpetual as it is universal, sees each generation wrestling with the same challenge — how to discover, craft, and share their own unique stories.

In that process, it's crucial to recognize that humans are not singular entities.

While we share a common origin as human beings, and we're all the same as people, we are also all different as individuals; we're hewn from the same block of bipedal life, shaped by nature, nurture and culture.

As Homo sapiens, we all share a common paradox — we are individuals yearning for distinct identities, yet we remain an integral part of the collective human narrative; it applies to us all, however much we may see ourselves as unique, or growl misanthropically at our fellow humans in our Western desire for individuality.

What do we leave behind?

The journey towards becoming a self-aware adult capable of sharing their story harmoniously without overemphasizing or underestimating their individuality is a Herculean task.

"Getting there", being a grown-up who knows themselves and can share their story with others through times of conflict and accord, without losing the self or over-valuing it; that's the hard bit.

At the tender age of 55, I hope to get there myself one day.

We, as individuals, inevitably reflect on our legacy.

Irrespective of who we are, how we love, what we do, why we act and where we spend our energy, we are all bound to one intergenerational consideration: what do we leave behind?

This wrestling with story is writ large in shared existence.

Consider the bizarrely sustained international spat about the "spirit of cricket" and the dismissal of English wicketkeeper Johnny Bairstow, and the convenient editing of stories; Bairstow and the English forget that he has himself conducted and attempted the same form of "sharp" dismissal.

More significantly, what of a deeper and more blooded struggle - the lurching progress towards instituting the Voice of Indigenous Australians as a part of our national parliamentary forum?

The opposition demonstrated by certain conservatives towards the proposed change rejects the profound influence of a people's stories.

It dismisses the harrowing experiences and testimonies of dispossession, rape, and genocide.

This stance is an abrogation of compassion, displaying a shared evasion that ignores the continuing effects of colonization. What do we tell our kids? What do we tell each other? Who do we listen to?

When a group of an individual loses touch with its lodestone - the weave between memory and story - the result is a loss of identity and spiritual connection with the truth of that person or persons.

You cannot exist (or face your demons) without stories

At my weakest, lowest point in an earlier version of me that seems lifetimes ago, a few days after a painful and life-forging separation in my 30th year, I found myself on the phone asking my late mother an unexpected question, 'Who am I?'

In the psychic shock of a poisonous relationship, I had lost myself. I was unmoored, floating away from both a toxic relationship and self-belief. I had lost the plot.

It was in my mother's gentle reassurance, her sharing of childhood stories as illustrations of love, that I started, slowly, to believe in myself again.

Through stories, she taught me I was a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend, a person whose life was worth living.

I was someone who looked for the light. Somebody who believed; who cared and fought.

You can't exist, let alone face down your demons, without stories.

You can't build a just, cohesive society - a confederation of respectful communities, families, clans and coalitions - without sharing your yarns and embracing the truths of others.

No-one gets through life on their own, and the journey to spiritual maturity and intellectual honesty is perilous enough without the loss of the stories that enable, that enhance its progress.

Who tells your story when you are gone?

Pop culture offers a compelling example in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton.

Audiences around the world have been entertained and moved by the re-telling of US founding father Alexander Hamilton; the "book, music and lyrics" of Lin-Manuel Miranda have made productions of Hamilton a must-see giant of the stage.

The drive and ambition of the eponymous rebel comes down to his desire to take his shot and leave his mark.

Let me tell you what I wish I'd known

When I was young and dreamed of glory

You have no control

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

And when you're gone, who remembers your name?

Who keeps your flame?

Who tells your story?

His story poses a profound question relevant to us all: who tells your story when you're gone?

That question is true for all of us. In the end, our story, our legacy, is crafted not in isolation, but in the crucible of community, family, and relationships.

It is here that belief meets action, that our individual stories join the grand, enduring human narrative.

This is our shared journey — discovering, shaping, and sharing our unique stories, contributing to the ever-evolving human saga. Read more

• Barry Gittins is a writer in Melbourne Australia.
• Published by La Croix International. Republished with permission.

A cousin bragged once that he'd snuck into the garden when no one was looking, and got away with a banana. A whole banana!

It was green, and made him sick, and when Grandad found out, he got a boot up the backside.

Growing bananas as far south of the equator as Auckland is no mean feat. But, if anyone was up for it, it was Hughie Douglas.

He was born in 1928 (Ngati Raukawa, Te Arawa and Ngati Tangata), and grew up in Opoutere. He was the potiki, the youngest of the whanau, and the only son.

On the 28th Maori Battalion website, where Grandad's service in the J Force is documented, his occupation is listed simply as "farmer". It seems such an inadequate word to describe the talent that lay within him.

In those days, everybody lived off the land. Potatoes, marrow, pumpkin, silverbeet, rhubarb — all of it came from your own garden. But, for Grandad, turning the soil and knowing how to read the seasons wasn't just about sustaining life.

It was about nurturing the beauty of nature for its own sake. He loved flowers. The more colourful and unusual the better. And cactus. He cultivated more varieties of cactus in his lifetime than you'd find in an encyclopedia.

Grandad inherited the green eyes of his Scottish grandfather. They were like a magnet, those eyes, but there was only one girl for him. That was Iritana Kairau, my nan.

She was one of 14 children from Dargaville, of Ngapuhi and Ngati Hine whakapapa. They met at a dance in Mangakino after the war. When she smiled, she lit up the whole room. Continue reading

• Nadine Millar writes for E-Tangata, a Maori and Pasifika Sunday magazine.