Caught in the middle: how a parent juggles a child’s screen-time and friendships

The phone is never just a phone in Kokila Basanthi Neelamegan’s house; it is a ticking clock.When the 30-to-40-minute limit expires on the screen, eight-year-old Jeremy Floyd’s shoulders drop. The device goes dark. And then, the evening unfolds into a familiar, heavy tug-of-war, “I won’t go to school. I won’t eat. I won’t do my homework.”(Sign up for THEdge, The Hindu’s weekly education newsletter.)For Kokila, a working professional in Chennai, the hardest part of parenting a Class 3 student isn’t figuring out app settings or parental controls. It is standing her ground against the sudden, sharp storm of a tantrum. When she refuses to hand over the phone, the living room fills with shouting and absolute refusal. She navigates it with a quiet, exhausted patience — sometimes trading screen time for a favorite home-cooked snack, sometimes offering television instead, and on harder days, raising her voice just to cut through the noise and steer him back toward his books.Join THEdge LinkedIn groupThe science behind itBehind those daily household battles lies a concrete neuroscientific explanation. In a 2026 study titled “The association between screen time and cognitive function in children: The partially mediating role of putamen volume”, published in Acta Psychologica, researchers analysed data from nearly 10,000 nine- and ten-year-olds in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study and uncovered a direct link between high screen time and subtle structural changes in the brain.The researchers focused on a deep subcortical brain structure called the putamen — essentially the brain’s internal traffic controller, responsible for regulating rewards, language, processing speed, and executive function. The study revealed that excessive daily screen time correlates with reduced putamen volume, which in turn impairs a child’s ability to focus, process information quickly, and control sudden impulses.In simple terms, fast-paced digital screens flood young brains with continuous reward signals. When the phone is abruptly switched off, the brain’s internal gear-shifter struggles to adjust to the quiet real world, triggering an emotional meltdown that feels less like deliberate misbehaviour and more like an involuntary physiological shock.Back to Jeremy’s worldTo bridge the gap when the screen goes black, Kokila shifts her strategy from restriction to connection. “Of course I will feel bad when he is upset,” Kokila reflects, watching the frustration wash over him. She sits down to play physical card games or marble games with him, or redirects his energy by promising a weekend trip to the beach or a park, or setting up a playdate. It is a delicate daily negotiation: replacing virtual isolation with tactile, real-world engagement.Yet, the tension in that living room does not start with a dying battery or a locked screen. It starts in a third-grade classroom.During school hours, the conversation among the boys does not dwell on traditional games or schoolyard chalk. It revolves around Roblox avatars, virtual worlds, and anime. Out of an entire classroom, Jeremy and just one other classmate sit outside that circle. When Jeremy comes home and looks up at his mother with the question that pierces through her daily resolve — “Mommy, all the other boys in my class play Roblox, why can’t I?”—the true modern dilemma reveals itself.Multiply Kokila’s living room by millions across urban India, and you find a generation of parents walking a tightrope. They are trying to raise children in an era where digital life starts before the second grade, caught between the desire to protect a child’s developing mind and the crushing fear of leaving them behind.Inside Kokila’s home, the rules are drawn with precise boundaries. Jeremy is allowed to plug the phone in to charge by himself, snap photos, or flip through the wallpaper gallery. Under strict supervision, he can use web tools to look up general knowledge, break down complex abstract vocabulary, or play logic puzzles like Sudoku. What is banned entirely is unguided digital wandering. “Homework is done with paper and human guidance, never via digital shortcuts,” she says.Kokila holds the line because she sees no real cognitive value in open-world gaming platforms, dismissing them as random, repetitive jumping. But holding that line means watching her young son absorb the sharp, early sting of social isolation. It forces a working parent into an impossible internal audit: Is protecting a child’s attention span worth making them feel like a stranger among their peers?The cost of belongingTo experts studying technology and society, this home conflict illustrates a fundamental dilemma of modern parenting.“Value and risk travel together in both scenarios,” says Krishnan Narayanan, co-founder of the technology think tank Itihaasa. “Digital abstinence may protect attention but risk social exclusion, while unrestricted digital immersion may strengthen peer connections at the cost of focus and wellbeing.”The deeper issue, Narayanan points out, is whether parents risk impoverishing a child’s sense of social belonging in their effort to safeguard their attention. The practical answer, he argues, is not blanket abstinence, but guided digital participation.According to Narayanan, children need controlled opportunities to understand the digital cultures shaping their peers’ lives without having to adopt every gaming habit. For parents, that means pairing screen boundaries with active offline friendships. For schools, it means ensuring that classroom belonging never hinges on whether a child plays a specific online game.“The real measure of success,” Narayanan says, “is whether children can protect their attention without losing their sense of belonging.”(Nivedhika Krishnan is a freelance journalist based in Coimbatore)