Image Source: Pexels / Daria Shevtsova

It seems like everywhere you look, everyone's eyes are glued to screens and this includes children. Although new technology can be a great thing, it can also be unhealthy, especially during the holidays. The holidays are a time for families to connect with one another and make wonderful long-lasting memories.

Luckily, there are smart family devices like Circle Home ($99) that can help with screen time management and content for all members of your family and their individual devices. This incredibly useful product created by Disney pairs with your Wi-Fi router and allows you to manage and monitor every device in your network. Circle Home has many amazing features that can benefit your child and your family this holiday season:

• OffTime Circle Home has a great feature called OffTime, which completely turns off the Internet during scheduled times of your choosing. You can program OffTime to take affect during Thanksgiving dinner for example. By disconnecting, your family can connect better with one another as you enjoy a delicious feast together, because there will be no text messages, email notifications, or game updates to distract anyone.
• Time Limits Circle Home allows you to set time limits for your child If you do not want your child to spend their entire Christmas break playing Clash Royale for example, you can set a daily time limit for that specific game. Once the time limit has been reached, your child will be blocked from the game for the rest of the day.
• Pause I feel like Circle Home had the holidays in mind when they came up with this fantastic feature. If a child is on their device and they are using an app they have a time limit for and your relatives comes over for a visit, you are able to pause the Internet for them. That way, they won’t have a meltdown about not getting their allowed time and Grandma will be happy to see her grandchild’s smiling face engaged with them instead of glued to a screen.
• BedTime In order to help your child not throw their sleep cycle off and get a good night’s sleep during the holidays, Kristen Seymour, a board certified Adult Health Clinical Nurse Specialist recommends turning off devices 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime. The light from the screen suppresses melatonin, a naturally occurring hormone in our bodies that helps control your daily sleep-wake cycles. With Circle Home, you are able to set a bedtime on your child's device, which will shut off the Internet at the time you desire.

Circle Home also offers superb filtering and monitoring features. You are able to filter the apps and platforms your child is able to view with age presets: Pre-K, Kid, Teen, and Adult. You can even block specific categories and websites. Parents are also able to monitor their child’s entire web history, which is broken down in one complete timeline for the entire day. If a child tried to access a blocked app or website, you will know about that too.