About

Hello everyone!

Mind Yer Time has been developed by the Screen Savers – a team of children and young people who are passionate about social media, screen time and the positive impact it can have on all our lives.

We are made up of MCPs (Members of the Children’s Parliament) and MSYPs (Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament) and we were also joined by some other children and young people who were interested in this issue. We have consulted with committed children and young people from all over Scotland to find out what they want to know, and what ideas they have, about how we can all use screens and social media in healthy ways.

Positivity

We know that not all social media and screen time is positive. So, we have been working on this exciting digital site called Mind yer Time that provides positive tips, stories and information from children and young people, for children and young people, on how we can use screens and social media in ways that protect our health and wellbeing.

We think that ‘healthy use’ is about finding a balance in life – spending time on screens and social media, and spending time doing lots of other things without screens too, but we know that ‘healthy use’ may be different for everyone.

When we started developing this website, we met regularly and talked about the positive and negative impacts that screens and social media can have on children and young people (and adults too!). With these things in mind, the Screen Savers from the Scottish Youth Parliament then designed a national survey which reached young people across all of Scotland’s local authorities to further gather the views of young people and hear what issues are important to them. During the first year of development, the Screen Savers from Children’s Parliament worked with 100 children from three local authorities to hear their views, experience and ideas about how we make a website that they would want to use.

All the Screen Savers from Children’s Parliament and Scottish Youth Parliament held a Discussion Day, with other children and young people from across Scotland, where all participants could share their stories and ideas for this new exciting website.

Since then, we have continued to work with different groups of children and young people around Scotland to create new and exciting content to help promote healthy use of screen time.

Accessibility

It is important to us that the Mind Yer Time website is accessible for everyone. We’ve added an accessibility toolbar to help with this, and Eilidh – one of the 2024-25 Screen Savers – explains this in a blog post:

A Valuable Journey

We have all been on a brilliant journey to develop this site and really feel we have been able to use what we have learned from the project in our own lives.

We wanted to make a change to how social media and screen use is viewed. It is such an important part of our lives, but understanding and finding a balance in how we use it is just as important.

Each section of the young person’s site contains written accounts of young people’s experiences and tips that could support others going through something similar. On each page of the children’s site, you’ll find top tips and quotes from children across Scotland.