Summer vacation brings sunshine, family adventures and a familiar challenge for parents: finding the right balance of screen time. But with the right tools and a little creativity, a few minutes online can inspire activities, arouse curiosity and get the whole family to do more together – offline.
Here are three ways to use Google and YouTube tools to build healthy digital habits with fun, creative learning activities all summer long.
1. Set the ground rules with simple parental controls.
Screen time during the summer should be a helpful tool—not a distraction. That is why it is important to establish digital guardrails.
Parental controls make it easy for parents to manage their child’s screen time and find the balance between having fun online and offline. With on-device parental controls now rolling out to all Android devices — located in Android Settings and protected by an easy-to-set PIN — you can set up screen time limits, schedule downtime to lock your child’s device at night, and control app usage. Android Parental Controls also provide a direct way to set up Google Family Link, offering more options including school hours, location alerts, and more.
On YouTube, parents can set the time limit for the Shorts feed, bedtime reminders and “take a break” messages. Summer is also a good time to review your children’s content settings. For kids under 13, there’s YouTube Kids: a stand-alone app with a higher bar for safer, family-friendly content. For older children, there are supervised child and teen accounts on the YouTube platform, each with suggested content settings and age-appropriate experiences.
See more tips for managing summer screen time — like building a ‘family media contract’ — from YouTube’s global head of health, Dr. Garth Graham.
2. Keep learning and exploring new topics.
Who says learning has to pause when school is out? Summer is a great time for kids to delve deeper into their favorite subjects.
AI Quests is a game-based experience that lets kids step into the shoes of real-world scientists, using applied AI expertise to tackle global challenges like flood forecasting and brain mapping. Quests are available in eight languages, with more launching later this year.
Use guided learning in Gemini to explore a summer wonder with your child – like how a slide works. It provides step-by-step support for topics like math, science and more, making it easy for you to navigate the experience and build their core problem-solving skills together.
With kids, parents and teachers turning to YouTube for education, check out educational creators from Pretlettertjes in the Netherlands to Silly School in the UK for content that brings learning to life.
3. Turn digital inspiration into real-world adventure.
Video can be a strong starting point for offline playback. Use YouTube Kids to learn how to build an indoor fort or look up a step-by-step paper airplane tutorial. Watch the video together for a few minutes to learn the design, then put the units away and see whose plane can fly the furthest.
Plus, Camp YouTube, our weekly holiday playlists for kids, curates the very best of our content to help kids develop new hobbies, learn about the natural world and be inspired to stay active.
Stuck indoors on a rainy day? Or do you need creative inspiration for an outdoor activity? Think of Gemini as your personal summer brainstorming partner. Parents can use Gemini to create a scavenger hunt, identify plants and insects on a family hike, or generate a kid-friendly slime experiment using ingredients you already have—turning a quick inquiry into an afternoon of hands-on science.