Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?

My son will be 4 in March. We don't have a tv, so the only screen time he's had is about an hour a day of watching a few children's shows through Amazon or Hulu. It's been mostly good, because the shows are educational and we talk to him daily about what he's seeing. It's really interesting to here what conclusions he draws from some of these shows, and it's amazing what he picks up from shows like Wild Kratts.

We recently got an ipad mini for travel. It was great while traveling; he starting using some apps about the human body, one that let him build robots and guide them through a maze, etc. But now that we're done traveling for a bit, he keeps wanting to use the ipad. I want him to continue gaining exposure to devices like an ipad, but I also don't want him to have excessive screen time. He complains loudly for about a minute when we tell him we're finished with the ipad, but then quickly finds something interesting to do in the house.

What do HN parents of kids around this age do? At what age did you start setting specific time limits for screen time? At what age did you start your kids on projects specifically related to programming? (I have no need to push programming, but I certainly want to expose him to the concepts. He's already pretending to program the computer he watches videos on, and physical objects that he pretends are robots.)

1. Blocked youtube on all iOS devices. This has been the most significant, positive action. She was rabid and unhappy whenever she used youtube, even for 20 minutes. The mental unbalance would sometimes last for hours.

2. NO live TV (no ads), unless we're watching a special event, e.g. a tennis tournament or other major cultural happenings (usually via BBC/VPN). The TV screen is hooked to a Mac mini, with XBMC and an account for the parents and another one for our daughter.

3. Weekly budget. She has a few cards which she can use in a given week (refill each Monday morning): 3 for documentaries (mostly nature, 45-60' each), and 1 for a weekend movie (animated or musical). Initially she had 2 documentary-cards, which we increased when she turned 4, and we added the movie card when she turned 5. She's much happier and specific about what she wants to watch with her own budget control. She has made a fake mickey mouse club card (she had discovered it through youtube), but we've never honored it. She also made a joker card to enable herself to watch anything she wants as many times as she wants; never accepted that one either... I highly recommend all the BBC Natural World shows.

4. Purchased a few iOS apps for her enjoyment: first animal pictures and sounds; next Doodle; and in the last couple of years several Montessori apps. She loves them all, and usually after an initial obsessive [edit: 1 hour over a] day or two with a new app she'll only return to the iPad for much shorter, infrequent sessions (maybe twice a week). I buy a new app maybe once every 2-3 months. I've turned on restrictions in all devices, to prevent in-app purchases and installing+deleting apps; if a (rare) free app keeps popping up advertisement when she's using it we delete it and explain to her it was broken.

Last year she inherited my old, sim-less iPhone 4 which she can use as an iPod to listen to audiobooks and her favorite music. She loves that, especially Roald Dahl stories. I've only recently installed on it one of the apps I had purchased (via the iOS/iCloud family feature). And this week she discovered Siri ("the computer speaks to me!") by accident.

hth