At a year old you probably have a bit of freedom when it comes to feeding. How big is he? He'll probably be fine on what you're doing. With my girl, at 9 months old, I just drop in Discoids one at a time until she stops looking up at me for more. Then she'll usually go shove her face into her salad dish.
I handle mine all the time, basically whenever I'm not doing anything important and I'm in my room (assuming she's already pooped that day) she's with me. As far as what I do with her... generally I just let her do what she wants. Sometimes she'll just sit on me when I'm watching TV, other times she'll explore my room and clean out the cobwebs from under my dresser (she's so funny when she pops back out from running around with those all over her spikes lol).
The reason you hear so much contradictory stuff is because Bearded Dragons can handle a very wide range of interaction. If you want to be an extremely hands on owner then you can, if you want a pet you can feed and clean up after and just stare at once in a while (like a fish or something...) then you can do that too, as well as anything inbetween.