Q: What are your feelings about technology and the impact on children? How much technology is enough?

A: When I surveyed 5,000 middle-school students and met with hundreds of them in focus groups, I asked about what they thought had changed most for them compared with their parents. Their unanimous response was technology.

It's not surprising that parents feel frustrated and even helpless in guiding children toward appropriate technology use. Technology is here to stay, but harder still is that technology changes continually and children are often well ahead of their parents in those changes.

The ground rules for setting technology boundaries can't be consistent or easy, as opportunities multiply and require new guidelines. Children's knowledge and skills in technology can lead to important learning and opportunities. They can also lead children to brain changes that are negative and to environments and worlds that are unhealthy and socially and ethically risky. The changes in technology that young people learn about sometimes allow them to feel more powerful and knowledgeable than their parents. Developmentally, that also causes problems for both parents and children. They assume they should make more early decisions about their lives than their parents. Parental experience and wisdom that can guide them with more safety is easily ignored or battled, and that can lead parents to too much punishing and negativity. I can provide some guidelines for parents for now, but you will need to expect revisions over time.

During the first two years of children's lives, screens and tablets should be minimal. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that there be absolutely no television. Children shouldn't have video game exposure during those early years, either. The greatest medical concern is that screens will lead to serious attention problems. Beyond age 2, some educational TV and some video games are acceptable and may even be helpful for teaching children skills and perceptual abilities. An hour a day has been found to be helpful. Three hours a day for video games has been found to be harmful to attention for children. Too much screen time has also been found to be harmful for children's understanding of emotions of others. For school-age children, no more than two hours daily of total screen time has been the typical recommendation emerging from research.

The expanding variety of screens that qualify as screen time makes it difficult to gather specific research on the effects. Texting by cellphone may not be included, but one hopes parents will take cellphones from children at bedtime to prevent texting from under the covers. Preferably, texting should also not be part of family dinners, but parents will have to be models for turning off their own phones. Television during family dinner adversely affects any family conversation, but considering that many families eat out in fast-food restaurants where walls are covered with TV screens, parents won't have much control when they are away from home.

Friending children on social sites can keep parents in the loop of the adolescents' communication. Parents should require all of children's passwords and check their computer histories to be sure they're not going to inappropriate websites. If children know that their parents are supervising from the start, they're less likely to feel as if their privacy is being invaded.

Even more important than the many rules and guidelines needed for today's children is a positive family environment with a balance of work and fun. Wholesome extracurricular activities can keep children engaged in positive, confidence-building programs that simply leave them less time for the ubiquitous technology screens.

Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or [email protected]. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.