Growing Up Catholic Parent Conversations Taming Technology Six Parent Small Group Sessions on Screen Time

Gather your parents for faith-sharing and conversation while their children are in faith formation classes!

These small group sessions for parents are about where the rubber meets the road: the challenges and joys of parenting today. Here is a great way your parish or school can accompany your parents as they fulfill their important vocation.  Help your parents enter into meaningful conversations about how their faith informs their parenting and way of life and connect with other parents. In our experience, when you gather parents to discuss issues such as these, it's hard to get them to stop talking!

View all parent session resources here.

The topic of technology and screen use is a huge one for families today. It is a health issue, a social issue, a family issue, and an academic issue. It is also a spiritual issue, which is one reason Pope Francis has talked about it on numerous occasions.

This topic becomes a larger concern for parents during the tween and teen years, as many children are receiving their own smart phones and increasing their technology use. These sessions speak of the challenges of those years, but this resource is also for parents of much younger children (who are using screens at younger and younger ages).

This resource can be used as a followup to a viewing of Screenagers or on its own.  The leader guide explains how this resource can best be used from one to six small group sessions.

The sessions include:

• Families and Screen Time - An overview to the challenges involved, a Catholic faith perspective, and how we might respond.
• People Over Screens - An exploration of how screens can get in the way of our relationships and what we can do about it.
• The Modern Time-Crunch - Insights into how technology has turned us into multi-taskers, and an argument for "the importance of boredom" so we can better care for our emotional, social, and spiritual lives.
• Video Games and Social Media - A review of these aspects of technology—and the associated effects—which tend to impact boys and girls quite differently.
• Setting Healthy Limits - An encouraging discussion of the importance of parents setting boundaries, and specific areas where these limits can be set around technology.
• Writing a Family Agreement - This session steps the group through a helpful process for writing an agreement with their child about technology use, sharing what has worked well for other families.