Before he left for his summer visitation with my ex, he asked to join the world of Instagram.  I addressed it in this post.

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Fast forward to the end of summer, he appeared to use the social media app fairly well, but when he returned home, I noticed the frequency with which he checked his account.  And I thought I was bad on Facebook.

We had a discussion about his use of the app, and he could not seem to curtail his use.  So, we stepped in for him.

Enter Disney’s Circle.

Remember, we have four boys between 11-15 in our blended household.  Between those four boys and the two adults, we have way too many iOS devices.  And since my wife and I cannot reasonably monitor all screen time, we enlisted some help from the Circle.

So far, the little device we plugged into our router has been great.  Expect more on this technology and associated issues in future posts.

Suffice to say, my son and I have discussed reasonable use of Instagram and he and I, together, decided to use Circle to limit his daily use to 15 minutes.  After his 15 minutes is up, I get a notification and his app quits working.  Pretty cool.

So, while he used the app appropriately, he also overused it.  And it also opened up a conversation for us to have about social media and how easy it is to lose yourself scrolling through other peoples’ lives.

I want to make sure he remembers to fully live his own.

Have you utilized any technology to help monitor electronics use at your home?  If so, how has it helped?  If not, why not?