If you have kids, particularly teens, you know the scenario. Your child just has to go on the computer. It’ll only be for an hour. Two hours later and she is still on-line, and can’t stop now because she’s in the middle of a quest with three other players, and, and…
You can see there’s real social value in what she is doing. Developing social and team skills. It’s one of the ways kids interact. The new social media, and all that malarkey. But, oh, if only they’d stick to the agreed computer time, we’d all be happier! I’d like to share a solution that I found recently.
My son (12 years old) is very into World of Warcraft, but only gets to play during school holidays. Fortunately for him, his WoW account and online characters remain on the system from the previous holiday, so he can pick up where he left off. In the run up to the recent holidays, I was anticipating the usual “battle of the computer” and ways to persuade him to stop playing and do some school revision work. It occurred to me that there must be thousands of parents out there with the same need. Someone must have thought of this before and produced some software that would help control computer usage.
So I did a search and came up with a few promising hits. After looking at these I narrowed it down to one particular piece of software called TimesUpKidz. It’s only available for Windows (XP, Vista, 7). The ratings for the software were very positive, apart from a couple that were obviously written by kids in households that use the software and had reacted somewhat negatively to it. TUK is available for 30-day free trial, so I decided to give it a try in the upcoming school holiday.
I downloaded and installed the software and was pleased to see it could be configured very easily. The user interface is straightforward and intuitive. Usage rules are set per Windows user account. These include
- weekday and weekend daily limits
- hours of the day when access is permitted
- maximum usage time before a break is required and the length of each break
- weekly total limit
These limits are all optional, so there’s a lot of freedom for tailoring the app to suit you child’s needs, and your own. Individual days can be adjusted to have different usage parameters if necessary, e.g. if your child is doing school work at home.
Before using TUK, my wife and I had never told our son his Windows logon password, as a means of controlling his time on the computer. With TUK installed, my son knows his password and can log on unassisted! This is a major plus in his opinion, particularly when he has friends round. In fact, this probably went a long way to convincing my son that TUK was a good idea, and he can see that the software is there to make our lives (his, included) less stressful.
At the start of the 30-day trial I had one or two questions about the software and contacted the developer, Justin Magaram. He was always quick to reply and very helpful. It’s obvious that TUK is in active development (unlike some software that seems to be static and sees few updates) and Justin is keen to respond to customer queries and suggestions.
Well, the school holidays have passed now and, I’m pleased to say, TUK really made a difference. The 30-day trial is about to end and I have just purchased a licence. It’s a bargain, at $29.95 USD.
Finally, I’d just like to say that I have no financial interest in the product. It’s just very good at what it does and I wanted to share that.
