We have a new house rule: No scary movies for Alex after noon (he’s five). Otherwise, we all suffer. Trust me. It’s the same screen version of my own “No caffeine after 3 pm” rule. It may feel so good going down, but you’re gonna pay for it later. And we all need a good night’s sleep. So for now, we’re all agreed. Harry Potter is confined to morning in our house.

I just read a transcription of a brilliant speech given at this year’s Web 2.0 conference by Clay Shirkyon, author of Here Comes Everybody. He speaks of our societal ”cognitive surplus,” the mental time freed up as we’ve moved from physically taxing work and long hours to a more balanced, cognitive work and lifestyle. When the industrial revolution took hold in the early 1900s, people dealt with the new urban life by drinking. (Skirkyon calls it a collective bender.) In the 1960s, people dealt with the new suburban life by…

We recently ran into one of Alex’s preschool buddies and his mom at Target. Alex couldn’t resist announcing to his friend that he was buying a Ben 10 toy. “Ooh,” the mom said to him, “you’re lucky. My kids don’t get to watch that show.” (Translation: “We’re more responsible about limits than in your house.”) And I doubt my protest, “Oh, he hardly ever watches it. I don’t even know what channel it’s on,” rang true. For the uninitiated, Ben 10 is on Cartoon Network and

Check out the Wall Street Journal today for a great article about how younger and younger kids are asking for electronics this holiday season. One really useful piece of information in the story is a graph illustrating the average a child begins using various devices – phones, computers, audio players, etc. And, even better, the graph compares that age with the average age in 2005. I like this graph because when I’m trying to make my own decisions about whether my child is old enough for something, I…