Back to School Means Less Screen Time

Along with beaches, ice pops, and swimming pools, you can add screen time to the list of stuff kids relish during those long summer vacations. But as September looms, it's time to lay down the law.

Studies show that most parents actually have rules limiting TV, video game, and online chatting time but they have trouble enforcing those rules. Over the years there have been a number of products that limit the number of hours your kids can play video games or be online. Most of them require software on your PC or a service hosted by a company.

Newcomer BOB (no relationship to Microsoft's attempt to build a friendly user interface with the same name) is a hardware solution. It's a simple box that sits between your kid's game machine/TV/PC and the electrical power. It cuts off the power to the device based on your instructions. That could be a time of day or after a certain number of hours of play. As the parent, you have a password that allows you to set up limits for six other accounts. The best part is that BOB spits out a report telling parents what their kids have been up to while on the screen.

Since it shuts down power from the outlet, BOB won't work with notebook computers or handheld game machines. And remember technology is not a replacement for parental supervision.

That said, I'm thinking that I could use one of these devices with some set limits on my screen time, too!