This Summer, Take a Family Digital Detox

Why a 30-Day digital detox may be the best gift you can give your kids—and how to make it work

Intro from Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch:

Parents across the country are about to face the same summer dilemma: they want their kids to enjoy a real, playful, outdoor childhood, but feel stuck in a world where everyone else is on screens. Even parents who recognize the harms of the phone-based childhood often feel powerless to act, fearing their child will be left out socially or fall behind. This is the collective action trap — where everyone is waiting for someone else to go first.

In today’s post, Clare Morell offers a clear way out.

Clare is a tech policy expert at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a mother of three, and the author of the important new book The Tech Exit. (It comes out tomorrow, June 3rd!)

Image: Book Cover, Tech Exit

Drawing from dozens of interviews with families across the country, Clare shows what it takes to break free from the screen time trap — and why it may be one of the best decisions a parent can make.

– Jon and Zach

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This Summer, Take a Family Digital Detox

By Clare Morell

Image: Shutterstock

[NOTE: This post is adapted from The Tech Exit]

The end of school is here. Kids are elated. Parents, on the other hand, feel a mix of relief (no more drop-offs, pick-ups, homework nagging, or last-minute trips to Target for the 100^th day of school costume no one warned you about) and trepidation about how to fill their children’s free time over the summer months.

Most parents don’t envision their kids spending their summer glued to screens. But when boredom strikes and parents are busy, screen time becomes an alluring, if not irresistible, default. Even as awareness grows about the risks and harms of smartphones and digital tech for kids, many of us still feel it is nearly impossible to keep screens from dominating long summer days. So, we hand over the tablet or say yes to more phone time — all while ignoring a nagging sense of guilt. We feel stuck.

That’s why I wrote The Tech Exit — to help parents break free from the screen-time trap. As a tech policy expert, I had seen evidence firsthand: half-measures like screen time limits and parental controls are largely ineffective at protecting kids from online harms. And as a mom, my husband and I decided not simply to limit our children’s access to digital tech, but to remove it from childhood entirely, except for shared family screen time for movies. We committed to not give smartphones, tablets, or social media to our kids. But at the time all three of them were under age four, and I was unsure if I could really keep this commitment even through the teen years. I needed to find out: Was this really possible? And if so, how had other parents done it?

I spent the last three years talking to families around the country who have fully opted out of digital technology for their kids, including saying no to smartphones and social media through the end of high school. What I found is that it not only can be done, but it is absolutely worth it. Not a single family expressed regret. On the contrary, they describe it as one of the most important parenting decisions they have made. Their now-adult children appreciate it too, even if they didn’t love the restrictions at the time. For those who are intrigued, you can follow in their footsteps to find this same freedom from tech.

Summer is the perfect opportunity to take a step in this direction. You don’t have to spend the next few months battling over screen time or feeling guilty for saying yes to another show on the iPad. You can reclaim control over the digital technology in your home – and give your children the gift of a real-world summer break. Best of all, it’s simpler than you might think.

Try a Detox Instead

How do you begin moving toward a tech-free home? Start with a thirty-day digital detox for your kids this summer. That means no smartphones, no iPads or other tablets, no video games, no social media, and no TV (except for family movies).

It sounds daunting, but detoxes work. In one recent study, adults who blocked internet access on their phones for just two-weeks reported significant improvements. In fact, 91% felt better afterward. They found they had better mental health, better subjective well-being and better sustained attention. Another study of young adults found that a two-week detox from social media resulted in “improved smartphone and social media addiction, as well as sleep, satisfaction with life, stress, perceived wellness, and supportive relationships.”

Psychiatrist Dr. Victoria Dunckley, author of Reset Your Child’s Brain, has used screen detoxes with patients facing conditions like ADHD or autism. She found that removing all screens substantially reduced symptoms and behavioral issues. Of the over 500 children and teens who have done her detox, 80% with a diagnosed psychiatric disorder saw at least a 50% reduction in symptoms. In some cases, symptoms like tantrums and poor focus entirely disappeared.

I’ve seen the results with my own eyes, both in my family and among the dozens of families I interviewed for my book. It’s never too late to reset your child’s relationship with screens. And summer, with its warm weather, more options for outdoor activities, and for many no school-required screens, is the perfect time to begin.

A digital detox is simple: no screens. But that does not mean it is easy.

Of course, there will be challenges and some families will face more resistance than others. A digital detox can be more challenging for single parents, those working multiple jobs, or families with limited time at home to guide kids through the transition. It can also be more daunting for families with an only child who doesn’t have built-in playmates. If you face any of these difficulties, consider asking for support from other family members or members of your community. Perhaps Grandma or Grandpa could come stay with you for a few weeks? Is there a friend or neighbor with more daytime flexibility who might join you in the detox and welcome your child to play with their kids during the day? You might also explore summer camp options through your local Parks and Recreation Department or a phone-free overnight camp. Detoxing doesn’t have to mean doing it alone — sometimes the key is finding creative ways to share the load.

But for every parent, a detox at a minimum will require preparation and commitment. To be successful, you will need a plan.

My Four Step Plan To Help You Get Started

1. Prepare

Before implementing the detox, prepare yourself, your spouse or partner, and your home. Do a little background reading on the harms of screens to kids to inform your rationale and shore up your resolve, and then talk about it with your partner.

Next, do a full “screen sweep.” Gather all devices (smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, handhelds, etc.) and box them up. Move them out of sight, and if possible, out of the house entirely (even to a friend’s garage). Then, talk to your kids about the detox. Some families find it helpful to take a weekend camping trip or getaway without screens and use the time to introduce the idea and plan together.

Talking to your kids in preparation for the detox may also involve apologizing to them. One principal of a low-tech school suggests telling your child: “I have to apologize. I put you in a situation that I should not have put you into. I have done a disservice to you. . . . We’re going to change this.”

Reversing course is part of parenting. We adjust all the time, whether it's sleep training, nutrition, or curfews. Just because you’ve already given your child a smartphone doesn’t mean it needs to stay that way.

2. Plan out screen-free activities

To make the detox stick, you will need alternatives to screens. At first, that mainly means your time. Kids will need support as they re-learn how to play, explore, and be bored. But just like a muscle, their capacity for independent, creative play will grow with use, and it won’t take long. In the summer another great option that can take some weight off of parents is sending your kids away to a phone-free summer camp. A phone-free camp can even be an easy way to start the detox and then keep it going after they return from camp.

Help your kids understand the new plan, too. Post a simple daily schedule where your kids can see it. Include a mix of fun activities, household chores, and quiet time, like taking family walks, making beds, and reading for thirty minutes to an hour. Schedule social time with friends, too. Summer is also a great time to teach each child a new chore they will be responsible for doing around the home.

For older kids and teens, screen-free activities might include bonfires, poker night, spikeball, or playing pool.These are all fun ways for teens to socialize with their friends off screens. And restricting screens also allows teens more independence in the real world, like driving over to a friend’s house or local hangout spot.

(For more examples of activities for different ages, you can find a practical tip sheet from me here).

3. Limit your own screen use during the detox

You don’t have to get rid of your smartphones or computers entirely like your kids, but modeling restraint is powerful. When you get home, put your phone in a box or another room. Turn off notifications, use grayscale, and hide apps away in folders. Get a landline and don’t have your phone in your bedroom. Read a book before you fall asleep instead. Distance from our phones helps make them less addictive to us.

4. Find at least one other family to detox with you

Detoxing together can make it easier on each family, and increase accountability, because the children have peers going through it with them and parents have allies.

Keep Going for the Long Haul

Many families, after experiencing the benefits of the detox, decide to get rid of the smartphones and other addictive screens for good. I call these families “Tech Exit” families. And you can join them. In The Tech Exit, I show you how. You don’t need to figure out how to do this for yourself or reinvent the wheel: you can learn from the many families who have already successfully made this exit.

In fact, the two most common concerns that stop parents from making the detox permanent often turn out to be smaller than they seem. The first fear is that their child won’t have friends. The second fear is that their child will binge on tech later as an adult. Let me share what I learned about these hurdles from the first-hand experiences of “Tech Exit” families.

Friendship is a real concern. No parent wants their child to be the only one without a phone or social media. That’s why it’s so important to find other families to join you. Many “Tech Exit” families find or build counter-communities to make it easier to opt out and help their children build a social life. But don’t picture these families living in some kind of Luddite bubble. These are normal people. They’re your neighbors, the family down the street. Their children aren’t socially isolated. In fact, they have friendships, including with other tweens and teens whose families don’t share the same low-tech standards.

And for many of these kids, the absence of screens actually speeds up the process of finding good friends. A Tech Exit dad named Mike put it this way

“Finding good friends who look out for you and will accommodate your difference—that’s real friendship.”

And that’s what many of their kids have found.

One “Tech Exit” kid, now in college, told me that his high school soccer team used group texts to coordinate practices and announcements. His basic phone couldn’t always receive the messages, so his teammates would call or text him directly. He was never left out.. Kids adapt — and they’re better for it.

The second fear, that kids who have tech restrictions in childhood will binge in college, is largely a myth. What I repeatedly heard from “Tech Exit” families I spoke with was the opposite: giving their children a low-tech childhood, including through high school, and having them form their core habits (and their brains) without smartphones helps set them up for more responsible use as young adults.

Jack, a college freshman, explained it this way:

“My friends who grew up with more tech have a harder time managing it. I’ll see their phones out during meals or when we’re hanging out. They check them constantly—it’s just a habit. It bugs me a little because I’m right there. But I know it’s not intentional. It’s just automatic for them.”

Even if Tech Exit kids do end up using smartphones and social media in college and as adults, what I learned is they will always have mature memories of themselves from ages zero to eighteen (the core period of human development) without these technologies that will serve as a tether for them. They will be better able to regulate themselves with the technologies, if only because they know what they’ve lost by using them.

While not a fear, one last challenge to successfully exiting screens over the long haul is how educational screens are being imposed on children against parents’ will by the schools. ​​Unlike smartphones, which are within a parent’s power to opt out of, educational screens are a more pernicious problem for parents to confront. I hear from parentst that they did everything to make their home screen-free only to have the school require their child to use a Chromebook or iPad. I would encourage parents to be bold and ask your school for exemptions for your child to complete assignments by pen and paper instead of on the screen. Some parents have had success doing this.

And on a higher level, parents should advocate to their school board members for the school district to minimize or eliminate entirely the use of individual screens for classroom instruction and homework assignments. In encouraging news, some school districts have recently decided to not refurbish or replace educational screens issued during COVID for budgetary reasons. As school districts across the U.S. have to determine what to do with the now-declining devices passed out during quarantine, this is an opportunity for parents to leverage and encourage schools to not replace the individual screens but to return to books and paper instead and/or to the limited use of computers in a computer lab at school. It is certainly an uphill battle, but every parent that asks for an exemption or that speaks up about it, makes it easier on all the other parents.

Try It Out This Summer

Whether or not you decide to make the change permanent, giving your kids a 30-day break to reconnect to life beyond screens is a gift. You’ll likely see improvement in your kids’ moods and focus, have more quality time together without the intrusion of screens, and create new routines and memories that last.

It’s time to give kids their childhood back, and where better to start than giving them a summer of embracing the real word?