We do it by paying attention to how the kid's doing with it, and going through a cycle. He'll periodically get sucked too far into the YouTube (or ...) swamp, a

We do it by paying attention to how the kid's doing with it, and going through a cycle. He'll periodically get sucked too far into the YouTube (or ...) swamp, and we'll notice that he's more difficult to deal with, less interested in other pursuits, and is moodier and just generally having a harder time. We'll have a tough conversation where we lay out the situation, he'll melt down but will eventually accept that it's not working out, and we'll impose temporary restrictions until it feels like things are more under control. He'll quickly realize that going halfway is way too hard, and will regulate himself to a level much stricter than what we imposed. Then there's a fairly long honeymoon period where he's getting some exposure but not too much. Eventually the beast slowly takes over again, and we repeat. It's not fun, it's ugly to watch, it's hard to do, but it feels like it's working. As in, I truly believe he's learning better self regulation than I've ever had, and for better reasons. I'm just thankful my wife is both aware enough and enough of a hardass to pull it off; on my own, I'd do things too late and too extreme, and we'd just be two monkeys reacting to each other.