Skip to content
Hey Minie Logo

Guide

Screen time alternatives for kids

Practical swaps for the hour that usually becomes a phone. For parents of children aged 3 to 10, without a made-up limit that fits every child.

Parents ask for an alternative because the current hour already has a shape: the phone comes out, the next video starts, and stopping feels like a fight you will lose. An alternative has to fit that same hour. A lecture about the future does not. A basket of crafts you hate setting up does not, either, after a long day.

Start from the hour you actually have

Write down the slot, not a personality. It might be the car, the wait for dinner, the moment after homework, or the last twenty minutes in bed. Each slot needs a different swap. Hey Minie is built for the story slot: a voice, a beginning and an end, questions a child can ask out loud. It is a poor swap for a cousin's dance video or a school concert. Leave those as video, on purpose, and then close the app.

Public guidance for young children points toward less sedentary screen time, more sleep, and an adult nearby. The WHO has said that for children under 5, less sedentary screen time is better, and that 2- to 4-year-olds should not sit with a screen for more than an hour a day. Older children are not that guideline. Read the current note from the WHO or the Indian Academy of Pediatrics yourself before you turn any number into a house rule. This page will not invent a personalised number.

Swaps that survive a weekday

  1. A finished story in English, Hindi, Telugu or Kannada. One. Then the device goes.
  2. A retell to a person in the house. This costs nothing and it is often the part the child remembers.
  3. A walk to the gate or the terrace if the air allows. Not a moral. Just a change of room.
  4. A job with a start and a stop: watering a pot, laying spoons, packing the bag. Stop when it is done.
  5. If a video is part of the hour, name that one video before it starts. 'The cousin's dance, then we stop' is a plan. An unnamed feed is not.

Where Minie fits, and where Scrolley does

Scrolley is the character in Minie's world who pushes addictive reels. Minie is the brown myna who stops at the story. The app does not block other apps on the phone. You still have to take the phone. Kurma, the fingerprint-locked parent section, is where a parent can ask about TV watched or new words. A child-lock mode can keep the session inside Hey Minie until a parent unlocks it with a fingerprint or password. That is not a promise to police every other app on the phone.

Age changes the fight. Read ages 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 10 before you use the same speech on a 4-year-old and a 10-year-old. The India screen-time essay is the longer version of the weekday problem.

Questions parents ask

Is a voice story still screen time?

The screen may be on while the story plays, especially on a TV paired by QR code. The aim is that the child is listening and talking, not feeding a queue. If the phone stays in their hands and autoplay continues, you have not made the swap.

What if they refuse every alternative?

Shrink it. One song, one page, one question. A refused 40-minute plan teaches them that the plan is fiction. A finished three minutes can be repeated tomorrow.