I'm that parent asking for exemptions from the school to opt my kids out of ed tech. My oldest only just turned 5, but we don't even have a television. We just watch the occasional movie with him on our laptop. And he watches movies with his cousins when he has sleepovers with them. Otherwise no screens. I have a flip phone, which I switched to a year ago for all the reasons you point out here. Modeling works. When I got rid of my smartphone, my son stopped asking me to "watch something." He is supposed to enter kindergarten in the fall and my district gives every kindergartner their own iPad. I spend the last year asking the district to share their reasons why they do this against mountains of evidence that support screen-free learning. It's been a battle and in a district of 25,000 students, I am continuously told that I am the only parent or one of only a very few who have ever asked to opt of of a 1:1 device. It's been a lonely road for sure, but reading this article made me feel validated and hopeful that there are others like me out there.
Glad to have read your comment. It may be a lonely road, but you’re making smart and informed decisions. Tech for children is not the answer. So much data supports that. From shorter attention spans, speech issues, diminished emotional well-being, inability to self-regulate, lack of grit to problem-solve, diminished creative impulses…. The list goes on. Keep doing what you’re doing. They will learn about their relationship to the world around them as they build their emotional, physical and cognitive abilities. There will be plenty of time for screens later in life after they developed the executive functioning skills to navigate the digital universe.
I got half way through. This feels like it was written by someone who has read a lot about having kids but doesn’t actually have them. Maybe very young kids, where you can still wax poetic about how you plan to parent as they grow older. Also there’s clearly immense privilege at work here. “All you need to give them is your time” is code for - at least one parent doesn’t work and does not have other responsibilities to tend to. Or “send them to overnight camp” -assumed a child willing and able t
o go (neurodivergence, anxiety, a host of other things can make that really challenging) and that a family has an extra 6-10k to provide this experience for their child. “Make a schedule for the day”- any parent who has ever tried this (probably every parent interested enough in Parenting strategies to read an article like this) knows that you put in all the work on the front end only for it to work for the first 20 minutes of the first day and that’s about it. How about a 24hr detox? A tech Shabbat. 30 days is so wildly unrealistic that I couldn’t finish reading
Lovely article and I’ll read the book and as a 100 percent single parent of a 27 year old, I suggest you leave off the platitudes re single parents and under-resourced overworked parents and parents who have no grandparents or little support to get a grandparent or a community or build one .
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to bring people like grandparents back from the dead to watch your kids and keep them off screens ? Or to suddenly beam a parent over from across the ocean to support you?
Do you have any idea how adept and skilled of a magician you must be to suddenly conjure a community network of support when every day you are just treading water to get the food on the table and get the $$ to pay the bills and get your family out of the mold infested
house or the dangerous neighborhood your kids are in?
I can’t tell you the countless parenting books I read that had amazing ideas and ways to parent but no possible way for me a single mom working and dealing with life’s other challenges to implement othem ? And the authors would add a paragraph just like you dutifully did about build the community get the grandparent over etc — it simply shows you are not underresourced and have had the good fortune through mostly as I see it the causes and conditions of life or simply put the luck of the draw to be able to do this for your kids and I’m glad for you but please no platitudes or tacked on not clearly thought out paragraph the rest of us. It just shows how clueless the author is in these other arenas of culture .
My kid now 27 has grown into a gentle, openhearted, strikingly handsome and surprising young man who is shaping his own life in ways that keep feeding him forward with wonder and $$ and connecting w amazing people that I cannot have imagined would come.
I plagued myself for all the things I could not do for him or be for him as a single mom but I forgot in large part due to cultural bias and my own class issues that I was utterly and absolutely a good enough parent and all I really did was I fiercely loved him and parented him despite
our family’s challenges — support and underresourced—love in the end is all you need it turns out that seems true. So for all the single parents and the like take heart your heart is enough even with the crazy of all the screens .
So author best to say the truth-I have no idea how underresourced or sick or single parents or those without networks could do this on their own and I’m sorry - don’t pretend to offer anything here . You are waaaaay out of your element .
The hardest part of doing a digital detox for us was re-learning how to use maps to get to remote camping spots...it was tough at first, but also a fun game!
Who cares if you get lost a little, or arrive late to the campsite?
It's about the journey, and each time my wife and I learn new lessons when we do a digital detox:
Exactly! Maps make you feel like you're on an adventure, and you actually then remember where you went after the fact. How long have you been trying to navigate without GPS? do you do it often?
So true. I have not used GPS for about a year now, ever since I switched to a flip phone. If I go somewhere new for the first time near-ish to where I live, I usually look it up the location on my laptop before I leave so I know where I'm going. If I'm going somewhere I'm totally unfamiliar with, I will print the directions to get there, like we used to do with map quest, and make mental notes of landmarks for turns. Then I challenge myself to mentally reverse the directions on the way back using those landmarks. If I get really lost, I phone a friend or my husband to look up directions for me. The hardest part is that real maps are difficult to come by, but they are truly the ideal thing to use! I try to pick them up at welcome centers on road trips. Gives you a much better sense of where you physically are, which makes me a more confident traveler.
This is all good/great advice, but is wickedly hard to do if both parents work.
If detoxing your kids is the goal, consider an overnight summer camp, device-free of course. Summer camp offers a large pool of “available” aka not-distracted-by-a-device peers, all the fun activities a kid or teen could want, tons of time in nature, and a proper nights sleep every night. Every state has a state camping association, here in Maine ours is mainecamps.org, where you can sort by session length, price, activity type, age etc.
Powerful article. such great advice! The Screenstrong Podcast also has many stories from families who have successfully done a digital detox. https://screenstrongfamilies.buzzsprout.com/
By the fourth century and into the medieval period, there was in some Christian communities segregation of the sexes, in part so men would not be tempted by being able to look at women. We would never do such a thing now with people but throwing phones out of life so we don't look at them is obeying the same false idea. First teach yourselves, parents, then your children, not to be obsessed with tech but to use it wisely and often. This is necessary for the blind and visually impaired of all ages for safety and information. Computers and phones now have built-in screen reading software and some third party software and, though app and Web site screen reader accessibility are often problematic, there are lots of accessible information sources and use of specialized AI apps has led to astounding abilities, such as orientation, visual interpretation, quick and accurate reading of mail, food packages and cooking/heating instructions, work and school handouts, books of all kinds, rendering PDF documents accessible or easier to read, with accessible mainstream apps for transportation, weather forecasts, watches, warnings and live condition notifications. Remember, many blind and visually impaired people cannot look at the sky or see the wind's effects. Think of what a day would be like for you who see without information. Sighted people can also gain from phone notifications, reading and TV. Please, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I love the idea behind an intentional shift in screen habits. Especially those that started off unintentional and become habit. But I think parents use of tech is equally (if not more) important. For our own mental health and for the tone it sets in the home 🧡
Digital detox reminds me of people drinking lemon water and paprika for weight loss. Nope. You have to change your habits, yes. But Detox is slang for internet quick fix.
From my experience, it's not the tv that's the problem, it's the always availability of streaming shows. When I did a 45 day detox with my kids one summer, getting rid of tv altogether made it easier for me because I didn't have to have the streaming battle.
Fair enough ... I mentally categorize TV (streaming and linear) in a different box than social media that has no addictive component to it, but this could be due to my being part of Gen X
We have found some balance by tying screen time to chores. Various chores are worth a certain number of tickets. Each child has their own color of paper carnival tickets I award for chores so we can keep track of them. I award more tickets for harder or messier chores and fewer for easy chores. Each ticket is worth 5 minutes of screen time.
By tying screen time to chores I’m not having to argue over screen time as much with my kids and I’m not spending my time trying to keep things fair with each child. If you want to play a video game or watch TV then turn in some tickets you have earned.
The nice bonus to this is that I have seen my kids are more likely to choose better-quality content when they realize they had to work to earn the time. They don’t want to waste their time on mindless screen usage. Since the chores themselves take time and more always needs to be done in a busy house with kids it is almost impossible for a child to get into excessive screen time territory when they have to earn it. Just price the chores fairly but conservatively. Kids feel in control because they can always earn more tickets; albeit with strong boundaries set by parents.
Little kids cannot do as many chores or as difficult chores as older kids, so by default they earn less and have fewer screen time opportunities.
I'm that parent asking for exemptions from the school to opt my kids out of ed tech. My oldest only just turned 5, but we don't even have a television. We just watch the occasional movie with him on our laptop. And he watches movies with his cousins when he has sleepovers with them. Otherwise no screens. I have a flip phone, which I switched to a year ago for all the reasons you point out here. Modeling works. When I got rid of my smartphone, my son stopped asking me to "watch something." He is supposed to enter kindergarten in the fall and my district gives every kindergartner their own iPad. I spend the last year asking the district to share their reasons why they do this against mountains of evidence that support screen-free learning. It's been a battle and in a district of 25,000 students, I am continuously told that I am the only parent or one of only a very few who have ever asked to opt of of a 1:1 device. It's been a lonely road for sure, but reading this article made me feel validated and hopeful that there are others like me out there.
Glad to have read your comment. It may be a lonely road, but you’re making smart and informed decisions. Tech for children is not the answer. So much data supports that. From shorter attention spans, speech issues, diminished emotional well-being, inability to self-regulate, lack of grit to problem-solve, diminished creative impulses…. The list goes on. Keep doing what you’re doing. They will learn about their relationship to the world around them as they build their emotional, physical and cognitive abilities. There will be plenty of time for screens later in life after they developed the executive functioning skills to navigate the digital universe.
Thank you. I think you have captured what I try to communicate to our district much more succinctly and clearly than I have been able to.
I got half way through. This feels like it was written by someone who has read a lot about having kids but doesn’t actually have them. Maybe very young kids, where you can still wax poetic about how you plan to parent as they grow older. Also there’s clearly immense privilege at work here. “All you need to give them is your time” is code for - at least one parent doesn’t work and does not have other responsibilities to tend to. Or “send them to overnight camp” -assumed a child willing and able t
o go (neurodivergence, anxiety, a host of other things can make that really challenging) and that a family has an extra 6-10k to provide this experience for their child. “Make a schedule for the day”- any parent who has ever tried this (probably every parent interested enough in Parenting strategies to read an article like this) knows that you put in all the work on the front end only for it to work for the first 20 minutes of the first day and that’s about it. How about a 24hr detox? A tech Shabbat. 30 days is so wildly unrealistic that I couldn’t finish reading
Lovely article and I’ll read the book and as a 100 percent single parent of a 27 year old, I suggest you leave off the platitudes re single parents and under-resourced overworked parents and parents who have no grandparents or little support to get a grandparent or a community or build one .
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to bring people like grandparents back from the dead to watch your kids and keep them off screens ? Or to suddenly beam a parent over from across the ocean to support you?
Do you have any idea how adept and skilled of a magician you must be to suddenly conjure a community network of support when every day you are just treading water to get the food on the table and get the $$ to pay the bills and get your family out of the mold infested
house or the dangerous neighborhood your kids are in?
I can’t tell you the countless parenting books I read that had amazing ideas and ways to parent but no possible way for me a single mom working and dealing with life’s other challenges to implement othem ? And the authors would add a paragraph just like you dutifully did about build the community get the grandparent over etc — it simply shows you are not underresourced and have had the good fortune through mostly as I see it the causes and conditions of life or simply put the luck of the draw to be able to do this for your kids and I’m glad for you but please no platitudes or tacked on not clearly thought out paragraph the rest of us. It just shows how clueless the author is in these other arenas of culture .
My kid now 27 has grown into a gentle, openhearted, strikingly handsome and surprising young man who is shaping his own life in ways that keep feeding him forward with wonder and $$ and connecting w amazing people that I cannot have imagined would come.
I plagued myself for all the things I could not do for him or be for him as a single mom but I forgot in large part due to cultural bias and my own class issues that I was utterly and absolutely a good enough parent and all I really did was I fiercely loved him and parented him despite
our family’s challenges — support and underresourced—love in the end is all you need it turns out that seems true. So for all the single parents and the like take heart your heart is enough even with the crazy of all the screens .
So author best to say the truth-I have no idea how underresourced or sick or single parents or those without networks could do this on their own and I’m sorry - don’t pretend to offer anything here . You are waaaaay out of your element .
And don’t listen to parenting experts ! Follow your own guidance -! You are enough ! I sure was !
Don't listen to experts? What???
The hardest part of doing a digital detox for us was re-learning how to use maps to get to remote camping spots...it was tough at first, but also a fun game!
Who cares if you get lost a little, or arrive late to the campsite?
It's about the journey, and each time my wife and I learn new lessons when we do a digital detox:
https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/digitaldetox
Navigating without GPS is a challenge! It's also a great brain workout!
Exactly! Maps make you feel like you're on an adventure, and you actually then remember where you went after the fact. How long have you been trying to navigate without GPS? do you do it often?
So true. I have not used GPS for about a year now, ever since I switched to a flip phone. If I go somewhere new for the first time near-ish to where I live, I usually look it up the location on my laptop before I leave so I know where I'm going. If I'm going somewhere I'm totally unfamiliar with, I will print the directions to get there, like we used to do with map quest, and make mental notes of landmarks for turns. Then I challenge myself to mentally reverse the directions on the way back using those landmarks. If I get really lost, I phone a friend or my husband to look up directions for me. The hardest part is that real maps are difficult to come by, but they are truly the ideal thing to use! I try to pick them up at welcome centers on road trips. Gives you a much better sense of where you physically are, which makes me a more confident traveler.
This is all good/great advice, but is wickedly hard to do if both parents work.
If detoxing your kids is the goal, consider an overnight summer camp, device-free of course. Summer camp offers a large pool of “available” aka not-distracted-by-a-device peers, all the fun activities a kid or teen could want, tons of time in nature, and a proper nights sleep every night. Every state has a state camping association, here in Maine ours is mainecamps.org, where you can sort by session length, price, activity type, age etc.
Powerful article. such great advice! The Screenstrong Podcast also has many stories from families who have successfully done a digital detox. https://screenstrongfamilies.buzzsprout.com/
By the fourth century and into the medieval period, there was in some Christian communities segregation of the sexes, in part so men would not be tempted by being able to look at women. We would never do such a thing now with people but throwing phones out of life so we don't look at them is obeying the same false idea. First teach yourselves, parents, then your children, not to be obsessed with tech but to use it wisely and often. This is necessary for the blind and visually impaired of all ages for safety and information. Computers and phones now have built-in screen reading software and some third party software and, though app and Web site screen reader accessibility are often problematic, there are lots of accessible information sources and use of specialized AI apps has led to astounding abilities, such as orientation, visual interpretation, quick and accurate reading of mail, food packages and cooking/heating instructions, work and school handouts, books of all kinds, rendering PDF documents accessible or easier to read, with accessible mainstream apps for transportation, weather forecasts, watches, warnings and live condition notifications. Remember, many blind and visually impaired people cannot look at the sky or see the wind's effects. Think of what a day would be like for you who see without information. Sighted people can also gain from phone notifications, reading and TV. Please, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Amen, very well said!
I love the idea behind an intentional shift in screen habits. Especially those that started off unintentional and become habit. But I think parents use of tech is equally (if not more) important. For our own mental health and for the tone it sets in the home 🧡
Digital detox reminds me of people drinking lemon water and paprika for weight loss. Nope. You have to change your habits, yes. But Detox is slang for internet quick fix.
Yeah the word detox immediately sends the mindset in an unhealthy direction. I think.
Step 1. PREPARE
“Remember, if you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
pastor H.K. Williams, 1919
I'm mostly on board with this, but why no TV? TV has been around for decades and is not the problem.
From my experience, it's not the tv that's the problem, it's the always availability of streaming shows. When I did a 45 day detox with my kids one summer, getting rid of tv altogether made it easier for me because I didn't have to have the streaming battle.
Fair enough ... I mentally categorize TV (streaming and linear) in a different box than social media that has no addictive component to it, but this could be due to my being part of Gen X
We have found some balance by tying screen time to chores. Various chores are worth a certain number of tickets. Each child has their own color of paper carnival tickets I award for chores so we can keep track of them. I award more tickets for harder or messier chores and fewer for easy chores. Each ticket is worth 5 minutes of screen time.
By tying screen time to chores I’m not having to argue over screen time as much with my kids and I’m not spending my time trying to keep things fair with each child. If you want to play a video game or watch TV then turn in some tickets you have earned.
The nice bonus to this is that I have seen my kids are more likely to choose better-quality content when they realize they had to work to earn the time. They don’t want to waste their time on mindless screen usage. Since the chores themselves take time and more always needs to be done in a busy house with kids it is almost impossible for a child to get into excessive screen time territory when they have to earn it. Just price the chores fairly but conservatively. Kids feel in control because they can always earn more tickets; albeit with strong boundaries set by parents.
Little kids cannot do as many chores or as difficult chores as older kids, so by default they earn less and have fewer screen time opportunities.
What responsible parent wouldn't want to prevent screen psychosis in their children?
Lol what’s screen psychosis?
Psychosis induced by continual staring at screens,