My kids---5 and 3--are normally very well behaved. If I let them watch TV for an hour and then I say "ok, it's time to turn it off", they occasionally grumble a

My kids---5 and 3--are normally very well behaved. If I let them watch TV for an hour and then I say "ok, it's time to turn it off", they occasionally grumble a little bit, but they do it and then happily trot off to do something else. When they were playing games on an iPad, even silly little "bubble popping" sort of apps, announcing the end time would immediately launch into screaming, crying, etc. Cartoons and games like Super Mario are episodic. There is finality to completing the episode/level. Most modern games are explicitly designed to be addictive, so they eschew levels and opt for open-world or continuous play formats. For passive content, they have a similar response (though not quite as pronounced) to turning off the TV in the middle of a movie. I don't blame them, though. It's really shitty to have to stop a movie in the middle. But continuous-play games have no middle or end, so there is no chance for a graceful exit. So the Nintendo 2DS was an experiment to test the aformentioned theory of episodic content. It worked. I can let the kids play the games for an hour and at the end of the hour there isn't any wailing or gnashing of teeth. We're not super-strict about screen time, but we're also not lassaiz-faire about it. We try to model appropriate consumption habits: 1-hour max on a "school night" (and almost never on consequitive nights), frequently a movie on Friday nights, sometimes Saturday morning cartoon binge if we don't already have plans for the day. We let our kids watch TV to let them enjoy the programs they are watching. I'm not going to deny them a pleasure that I also enjoy. I'm also relatively strict on myself concerning media consumption. We're are just not using TV to park them so we can work.