In a world immersed in technology, it can seem nearly impossible to escape digital distraction. With recommendations from experts including the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics, parents, caregivers, and educators have begun establishing limits to help to promote healthy screen time habits for children. Even tech moguls like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are known for setting screen time boundaries in their own families!

According to Nir Eyal, Stanford psychology expert and author of Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, establishing these limits is essential for safeguarding children from the lure of digital distraction. Eyal predicts that in the future, there will be two kinds of people in the world: those whose attention is easily shifted by outside influences and those who are “indistractable.”

Eyal urges that indistractability is the most important skill for the 21st century. In order to help support and develop this skill, he encourages parents to empower their children with the autonomy to control their own time, providing them opportunities to learn to practice monitoring their own behavior and learning how to manage their own time and attention.

Here are Four Tips for Helping Children Become Indistractable:

Introduce the idea of time management at a young age.

Use simple language to help young children understand that there is only so much time in the day. Explain that spending too much time watching television or playing video games means less time for other fun activities like riding their bike, swimming, going to the park, making an art project, or spending time with family and friends.

Explain the motives of technology companies to children old enough to understand.

For elementary-aged and adolescent children, explain the motivation of tech companies to keep children spending time watching or playing on screens. Help them understand that although these games, apps, and videos were designed to be fun and engaging, they also generate a profit from someone’s time and attention.

Involve children in the decision making about screen time limits.

Provide children with sufficient autonomy, seeking their input on the amount of time per day they believe is appropriate to spend on screen time. Ask questions about how they will hold themselves accountable for respecting the limits they have helped establish. Devise a plan for how parents or caregivers might step in when they recognize the limits are not being respected.

Find tools and strategies to remove parents as the enforcer.

When possible, help children rely on outside tools to enforce the limits they have set. Perhaps a sleep timer is set on the television that shuts the screen off after an established period of time or a kitchen timer signals when a screen time period has come to an end. Not only does this remove the need for parents to enforce the limits, it also eliminates the possibility for a power struggle to ensue.

According to Eyal, “It’s only when kids can monitor their own behavior that they learn the skills they need to be indistractable—even when their parents aren’t around.” As technology continues to become more inescapable, parents need to be very intentional with their children about establishing screen time limits in ways that empower them with the autonomy to control their own time and the belief in themselves that they are capable of being indistractable.