nothing to lose.
My kids are not fans, which means it’s pretty good. You can restrict hours of the day for use, as well as total hours of use per day total. Really easy to use, including from your phone. I think I paid something like $50 per year to cover 5 devices, but worth it in my opinion.
It won't completely stop them from playing, but you can moderate a bit.
When I was that age, I used to hog the phone line dialing bulletin boards. That was easy to control because my mom would just pick up the phone and mash the keypad until I got disconnected. Today, as much as I hate to say it, controlling network access is a more reliable way. Your home router probably has a guest network, or if you're really sneaky you can block steam IP addresses when they have to get homework done.
It's hard to say what's an "appropriate" level of screen time, especially now when their options for entertainment are limited. I'd use hard capping as a last resort when encouragement fails.
1. Wi-fi dead spots around the house- Mesh network with 3 nodes
2. Screen time monitoring, parental controls and content management for each device. Mobile app is very intuitive, and equally insightful. Astonished how much time my wife wastes on Facebook, for example. Whenever a new device hits wi-fi, I receive an alert on my iphone. I can then assign the device to a user and set up appropriate credentials. For example, my 14 year old has a profile with limited content access, and set screen time for each device. This has become a practical incentive tool for a kid during quarantine.
3. 3 Years of "free" firewall/anti-virus included with TPLink Homecare. The app includes a live weekly report listing any/all suspicious interactions, on which device, when, etc. This data is also interesting. Facebook is a scourge.
In your shoes, I would try to get him to:
play sports
have chores around the house
have a job
be active in Church community
volunteer for other organizations
If he is doing all those things and obeying his bed time, there really aren't enough hours in the day for him to be playing games too much. (I have friends who go to bed before their kids and they have the WiFi set up to go off at 11:00 PM)
I look at video games like I look at drinking: playing video games only becomes a problem when it interferes with more important responsibilities.
But that’s more of a pandemic issue than anything. He was supposed to be playing football and would have had an active summer camp but that of course was nixed. And we are in the City so it’s not as easy to just go outside and have a friend to play a sport with like it was for me growing up. When I’m around and can monitor it’s not as much an issue but hopefully some of the tips on here will work. I appreciate the ideas though.
As long as our high school boy played a sport, got good grades, and was involved in the church youth group, we didn't restrict his video game playing or screen time.
He'll take one look at the blue screen after boot up with the blinking cursor and find something else to do.
If you want additional entertainment, also give him an Atari 410 cassette drive with some sweet games on cassette. If he manages to suffer through the 10 minute game load times he'll have earned whatever screen time comes of it.
(Spoiler: he's probably not, err, "gaming" as much as you might think.)
Is it really “fast travel” if the two load screens take as long as the fucking drive?
Love that level of salt.
I can walk away and make lunch and it's still loading.
there is admin to make it happen though.