There is increasing evidence of the dangers of screens for developing minds (and adults, if we’re honest). However, if you are going to try to reduce screen time in your family, you need to replace it with something. That’s where this post comes in!
Summer is a great time to try to make changes, even if you don’t have much of summer left. If you missed that window, any time of transition can work well. You can start the new school year with solid plans in place to reduce screen time.
It can take 30 days to make behavioral changes, so don’t get discouraged. The 30 days idea comes from both addiction research and habit building. It may be hard at first – you and your kids will be unlearning habits – and you may have to replace a lot of screen time with parent time. As you all adjust to reduced screen use, it will get easier and easier, and eventually the kids will stop asking for the screens.
Don’t worry, we are going to walk through how start cultivating screen free habits in your family.
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Table of Contents
Why Reduce Screen Time?
There is a wealth of resources and books that others have compiled, so I will provide a bullet list of the key points and then some resources so that you can do more research if you need convincing of the benefits of reducing screen time in your family.
Key reasons to reduce screen time include:
- Social media use is linked to increase depression and anxiety, especially in girls
- Blue light affects our sleep
- The rapid content switches/speed of online devices increases attention problems
- People are losing the ability to be bored and/or daydream
- People are losing conversation skills because of too much written communication
- Children are exposed to porn at a young age, whether they seek it out or not
- Other unsafe content (for example, TikTok challenges) show up unprompted, and can be quite dangerous
- Violent video games are linked to increased aggression
- Kids (especially boys) need risky, physical play to develop into healthy adults (this means play that has high speed, heights, and/or the risk of getting lost)
The list above is summarized from what I read in the resources below.
Resources to Learn More
My favorite resources to learn more about the hazards of screen time:
- The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt and his substack, After Babel, are excellent for understanding the key issues at play here. The substack has a newsletter that shares ongoing research and other relevant articles. This is one of my all-time favorite parenting books.
- How to Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price is a great resource for a summary of the issues we are talking about and then a step-by-step process for establishing healthy boundaries with the technology in your life.
- Childhood Unplugged by Catherine Martinko has great ideas for setting yourself up for success in a reduced tech household. I love how she frames tech use as amplifying vs amputating your life. My then 12-year-old read this book, and he loved it.
- The Tech-Exit by Clare Morrell
- The Opt-out Family by Erin Loechner
- Dopamine Nation by Anna Lempke is about addiction in general, but has really interesting insights into how our brains get addicted, even from phones.
For more parenting books that I like, I keep a list of books that I found useful here.
What Can You Replace Screen Time With?
There is so much you can do to replace screen-time! Some activities take a lot of planning on your part, but others are really light-touch and can be implemented easily.
Outdoor Activities
Unstructured Free Play
Unstructured free play is a key part of being a low-tech family, but this can take time for kids to get used to. Unstructured free play lets kids be creative, active, and busy all at the same time.
My kids have ongoing stories/games involving the NBOPP (National Bureau of Plant Protection, they remove invasives from the forest behind our house, but also build “offices” in the woods), Fairyland Palace (a school, of sorts), Boringland Academy (the arch-enemy of Fairyland Palace), and Lavender Orpingtons (a fantasy world that is named for a breed of chickens… it’s a long story). These get pulled out anytime they are bored or playing without adults.
If they are newly without their screens, they will get bored easily, so don’t expect to get mileage out of unstructured free play right away. That being said, once they have gotten into their low-tech habits, you can rely on something as simple as “go play outside in the woods”, and they will disappear for hours.
In an ideal world, you’ll want a lot of the unstructured free play time to be outside. We got a zipline, Ninja line, and slack line for the backyard to encourage more outdoor time. They also have a sandbox (sort of – it’s a doggy pool with sand in it kept under an overturned kiddie pool), which has had remarkable longevity (I think it’s 11 years old). They also enjoy Stomp Rockets, and we have a Ninja bicycle jump to practice rolling off obstacles on their mountain bikes.
My idea was that the Ninja jump, and some other obstacles that we’re trying to make, would let them ride bikes in the front yard, and hopefully attract other kids to play with them, but the spring was too wet to try that out. We’ll experiment with making the no-phone play visible in the front yard this fall.
To encourage outdoor play, the kids get a sticker every day they spend at least 1 hour outside. They have a streak that started on March 1. They don’t get prizes or anything, but love to see the streak develop.
We have also tried the 1000 hours outside challenge, but because we do big outdoor trips, and they go to summer camp (and scout campouts during the year), they hit the 1000 hours pretty easily, and tended to rationalize staying indoors in bad weather with more time the next day. By going for a daily challenge, we get more consistent outdoor time. That being said, do whatever form of tracking works for your family. The 1000 hours outdoors tracking sheets are gorgeous!
Outdoor Adventures as a Family
This takes a bit more planning as a family, but starting your tech-free journey with a weekend (or longer) getaway can help jumpstart it. The adventure doesn’t need to be to somewhere far away, but a short period of time away from home can help shake up routines. Check out a new trail, a different park, or a bike route. Some of our favorite backpacking trips have been closer to home and less flashy adventures.
Outdoor adventures can be small adventures as well. Maybe one day you go check out a new Splash Pad, or a swimming hole you heard about. Leave the screens behind, and enjoy the time bonding as a family.
Check out TMM posts on Water Adventures, Backyard Adventures, Urban Outdoor Adventures, 50 Hiking Games for Kids, and Urban Winter Adventures for some good ideas.
Teaching kids outdoor skills such as Basic Navigation Skills for Kids, Teaching Kids Outdoor Fire Safety, or Nature Study for More Outdoor Fun can also take you outside as a family.
Outdoor Sports
We aren’t big traditional sports people in our family, but find that cycling (road and mountain), climbing, skiing, and hiking are great for family bonding, fitness, and even some competition (mountain biking, specifically).
Regardless of what your family is into sports-wise, sports are a great way to keep kids busy and away from phones. As a college professor, I have noticed that my students who are athletes tend to have the best relationships with peers. My hypothesis is that the time they spend at practice gives them space and time to develop more meaningful, in person relationships.
You don’t have to already be good at any of these activities to take them up with your family. Check out some of these posts from the TMM team on how to get started with outdoor sports, including Mountain Biking with Kids, Teaching Kids Cross Country Skiing, How to Teach Kids to Downhill Ski, Balancing Organized Sports and Outdoor Time, and Rock Climbing for Kids.
Tech-free Sleepaway Camp
We are big fans of sleepaway camp for child independence and overall growth. Since camp tends to be outdoors, I’m sticking it in the outdoors category.
We’ve slowly been increasing how long they go to sleepaway camp for each summer (we started at 2 weeks, and this summer [years 5 and 4, depending on the kid], they went to 4 weeks; next summer we expect it will be 5).
Our kids attend a tech-free YMCA camp in New Hampshire (I was a counselor there nearly 30 years ago), Girl Scout camp in Ohio (just my daughter, obviously), and Scouting America camp in Ohio (both kids are in Scouting America). We love all three, but the kids feel a real difference between the Scouting America camp, where their troop allows phones, and the other camps, where phones aren’t allowed.
While my kids are at camp, the camp shares photos online. I decided this year that I didn’t want to look at the photos until I could look with the kids once they were back. I want to share the memories with them, rather than feeling like I’m spying on them while they are away.
Camp has been a way for our kids to learn some social skills (both are autistic with generalized anxiety) in a supportive setting. Early on, they cared more about the fun activities, but increasingly they come home talking about the friends they made doing those activities. Both want to be counselors when they are old enough (added bonus – that’s a job!).
Inside Activities
Puzzles
Puzzles are a great way to keep kids engaged indoors. During the winter months, I try to keep a puzzle in progress on our dining room table (we mainly eat in the kitchen). I’ll sit and work on it for a few minutes in the morning or evening, and the kids often join me. Once they get into the puzzle routine, they will ask me to read to them while they work on the puzzle.
Another form of puzzle is puzzle books. By this I mean Kenken, mazes, crosswords, and Sudoku. I bought some collections of each of these types of puzzles and keep them in easy reach in the kitchen. This keeps adults and kids from reaching for tech during downtime.
Games
We have SO MANY board games, I can’t even keep track of them all. We have, at various times, been really into playing them all (or nearly them all… some have been flops). The games range from simple 15-minute silly games like Exploding Kittens to serious strategy games like Wingspan and Beyond the Sun. The half of the dining room table without my puzzle often has an ongoing strategy game. We rarely can manage a big game in one sitting, but playing a few turns at a time over a week can be lots of fun. Other times, we choose a less committing game and finish up in one afternoon.
When we travel, we carry Pocket Farkle (and a scoresheet for Yahtzee, since that uses 5 dice and Farkle has 6) and a deck or two of plastic cards. Cards work better when actually traveling (like on trains or in airports), while Farkle is better when camping because the dice can’t blow away. We prefer not to carry games like Uno because they are less multipurpose. You can always play Crazy 8s if you want Uno. But our children (as of ages 10 and 12) enjoy Hearts, Rummy, Canasta, and Hand and Foot (although this requires four decks).
What Do We Do All Day has great game suggestions.
Open Ended Toys
I would rather not have any more Legos in my house, but they are great, flexible toys, so we have tons. We also have Crazy Forts, some dress-up clothes (including wooden swords), and a chain reaction domino thing. I still banish the kids outside on a regular basis, but at least they have some quality indoor activities as well.
Art
Keep a collection of open-ended art supplies around so that your kids can be creative inside. They may even mix outdoor supplies with indoor activities. If you have a kid who swears they hate art (I get it, I have one), try other media. My son, who would rather die than paint something, discovered a love for photography this spring. He is homeschooled, and has decided that photography is the only art he will do for his remaining 5 years in school. Fine with me. It’s better than the complete refusal to do any art.
My daughter is the opposite and loves art. We keep paints, colored pencils, crayons, markers, paper, brushes, glue, scissors, yarn, knitting looms, weaving looms, beads, a bunch of different types of yarn/string/cord, and clay around for her. She goes through phases, but often combines her materials in interesting ways. Recently she discovered jewelry making, so that’s been a hit this summer, but last year it was weaving. All of this is a way for her to practice being creative.
Books
We have a reading corner where we keep a big range of books. I take the kids to the library regularly (or they take themselves), and we always have a read aloud going (plus an audiobook we are listening to together). In addition, I subscribe to (gasp) paper copies of The Week and The Atlantic. The combination keep us informed about the news (including some analysis), while not being an overwhelming volume of reading material. I keep these on the kitchen table (or near it) with the puzzle books.
For reading ideas beyond the standards, check out What Do We Do All Day. My kids loved the 6th and 8th grade summer reading lists from there for this summer. And my daughter worked her way through the entire list of Historical Fiction with Strong Female Protagonists list.
Reading aloud to kids and/or listening to audiobooks together as a family are great activities for any age. My kids and I love our (nearly) daily read aloud time, and we all enjoy listening to books in the car. Recently, I drove them to camp in New Hampshire while also taking 4 college students to do field work. The college students got really into listening to A Little Princess with the kids and me. We get audiobooks exclusively through the Libby app at the library or books on CD at the library.
A word about ereaders. We are big readers, and travel a fair bit, so ereaders make sense for us. We have Kindles (either kindle kids or kindle paperwhite, not the tablet kind), and all use them with the light turned off (this removes blue light and makes the reflectivity approximately the same as a book). My daughter reads very slowly, and the open dyslexic font plus the ability to increase font size make it much easier for her to read on a kindle than physical books.
We pretty much exclusively use Libby through our libraries to get books, which we send to the kindles. The Kindle ereaders don’t have browsers, but the Kindle Kids and Kindle Shops aren’t always child friendly, so we prefer to intentionally choose books through the library searches and then send them to the kindles. We also don’t want to get sucked into spending more money than we mean through subscriptions or 1-click purchases on our kindles.
Helping the Family Out
Cooking
Cooking is an easily overlooked way to keep a low-tech kid engaged. Teaching a child to cook also reduces your around-the-house work. My son got really excited about cooking while working on his cooking merit badge for Scouting America, and now both kids have their night that they are responsible for dinner.
This translates well to outdoor family activities as well. When we go on bike tours, camping trips, and backpacking trips, I will assign each kid at least 24 hours in which they are “grub master”. They have to tell me what they are cooking/providing, help with the grocery list, and then actually cook on the trail. They help with preparing food to dehydrate as well.
Chores
You’re probably laughing that I put chores on this list, but I’m serious! Chores help kids develop independence and help them feel essential in the family. In Raising Adults and Never Enough, the authors argue that chores give kids a sense of purpose that school and activities (and tech) do not.
You’ll probably be a little shocked to see what age appropriate chore lists look like (seriously, try googling it), but here is one set of ideas from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry:
- 2 to 3-year-olds can put toys and groceries away and dress themselves with help.
- 4 to 5-year-olds can help feed pets, make their beds (maybe not perfectly), and help clear the table after dinner.
- 6 to 7-year-olds can wipe tables and counters, put laundry away, and sweep floors.
- 7 to 9-year-olds can load and unload the dishwasher, help with meal preparation, and pack their own lunch for school.
- 10 to 11-year-olds can change their sheets, clean the kitchen or bathrooms, and do yard work.
- Those 12 and above can wash the car and help out with younger siblings. Teens can help with grocery shopping and running errands.
In our family, my then 10-year-old regularly went to the grocery store up to a mile away when we were in London, UK, for fall semester. My 13-year-old will go to the library, go to the grocery store (by bike), and volunteers with a local Cub Scout Pack (he gets to meetings himself). Both kids do their laundry, help with dinner clean up, cook, mow the lawn, and are responsible for trash, recycling, and compost in the family. They don’t always love it, but they do their chores.
Jobs
My kids are still too young for jobs, so I’m going to share a story about a friend’s son. We know him through bike racing. When my friend’s son, A, was about, 10, he got (I’m not sure how… either found and repaired or dad helped him purchase) a small stand-on lawnmower. That summer, he started a yard care business. He dragged a wagon of tools while riding on the lawnmower to get to his jobs.
During the next school year, he traded the lawn mower for a bigger one using money he earned. He took on more jobs the next summer.
Soon after, he decided he wanted a new cyclocross bike. His dad told him to mow more lawns. He did, and bought the bike.
Year after year, he upgraded his equipment and expanded his business. Now, the 10-year-old is out of high school and running a yard care business full-time, with employees.
Don’t have your kid’s first job be the work-study job they get in college, or the first summer job they get doing research for a professor. I’ve been that professor – I want students who have worked hard, even when they don’t like the work. That way, when they realize research can be kind of boring, they power through and keep doing good work, rather than checking out and live streaming reality TV during the workday.
Get the Kids Onboard
Obviously, you can make the rules as a parent, but it helps to get your kids on board before you start your tech-reduction plan. I talk with my kids about what I read, and why we are going to further reduce their screen use.
When I took away the old phones they listened to audiobooks on (because they learned to do other things on the phones), I explained why, and offered an alternative (a boom box). My son doesn’t care enough, but my daughter reads slowly, and she now listens to books on CD from the library on a boom box. One unexpected benefit is that she is now very aware of how long she listens, and we can easily restrict listening to one CD a day.
If your kids are older, you can have them read a book such as Childhood Unplugged. I had my son read it, and then suggested my friend give it to her (video game addicted) daughter. It helps to get the kids onboard more. Just be careful to pre-screen as some books have graphic descriptions of online content that you may not want your kid seeing.
Find other families. You don’t need to have all the same restrictions on tech, but a general agreement in the importance of outdoor free play will help. This is the entire motivation behind my purchasing/building mountain bike obstacles. I think that kids doing cool tricks on mountain bikes in a visible space (front yard) will bring more kids out to play. My kids do cool and fun things in the woods behind the house also, but that’s not visible to the neighbors. I want to recruit more kids to the low-tech play in a natural way.
Don’t Worry, the Kids are Safe
I’ve been talking a lot about free play outdoors, and I can hear the concerns about kids being kidnapped or getting hurt. My kids play outside unsupervised nearly every day of the year. Sometimes an adult is home, but not always. My husband and I both work a few blocks from home, and we have a landline which the kids know how to use to call our work phones (or our cell phones, but it’s easier to get us on the landlines at work).
Crime rates are lower than they have been since the 1960s in the US, and the online world is largely unregulated. It is safer to let kids play outside.
Let Grow has great information and resources on this topic.
Lead by Example
If you are always on your phone (or computer or tablet or smartwatch), your kid won’t take to the new reduced screen plan. Lead by example and change your own habits as well. Some of the things we did:
- Black and white screens on our phones to make them less interesting
- Cover that blocks the screen on my phone
- Implementing Screen Free Sunday (from the start of dinner Saturday to end of dinner Sunday) as inspired by 24/6 by Tiffany Shlain.
- Doing puzzles, reading magazines, and reading books instead of mindlessly scrolling through the phone
- Having fires in the solo stove after dinner instead of each going off to do our own thing (mainly online)
- Playing family games
- Not using the digital map on a family adventure, but instead relying on a map and compass
- Establish a place to store phones when you are home (and overnight)
- Do NOT use phones at meal time (not even to check that one little thing – the kids notice)
Resources on Screen Free Activities
No, Minecraft Has Not Won
A friend told me recently “Minecraft has won, it’s too late”. I don’t buy it. You, too, can cultivate screen-free habits in your family. You can start now, regardless of how old your kids are. The approach is certainly easier when they are younger (less unlearning), but you can do it at any age. You’re the parent. You’ve got this!
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Cultivating Screen Free Habits in Your Family
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