The Best Way to Kick Your Screen Time Habit

Summary

The article suggests that the best way to reduce screen time is not through discipline but by filling life with more engaging and fulfilling activities.

Abstract

The author discusses the challenge of reducing screen time, particularly for children, and the ineffectiveness of setting strict hour limits. The article highlights a personal experience where the author's child significantly reduced screen time naturally due to increased participation in engaging activities such as camp, parkour, and reading. It emphasizes that time is a zero-sum game, and suggests that making life more interesting is a more enjoyable and effective method for cutting back on screen time. The author points out that while screens are the default leisure activity for many, especially due to their convenience and the habitual nature of their use, busier individuals tend to spend less time on them. The article advocates for actively scheduling enjoyable commitments and hobbies to crowd out screen time, leading to a more fulfilling life.

Opinions

Discipline alone is not an effective strategy for reducing screen time.
Engaging activities like sports, reading, and hobbies can naturally displace time spent on screens.
The convenience of screens makes them a default choice for leisure, filling any available free time.
Employed parents with young children inherently spend less time on screens due to time constraints.
Actively planning for fun and commitment outside of screen-based activities is crucial.
Engaging in physical activities, community service, or learning new skills can be more rewarding than screen time.
Having a strategy for weekends and free time can prevent defaulting to screens.
The article implies that societal busyness paradoxically coexists with significant screen time.
The author believes that making life more interesting is both practical and enjoyable for reducing screen time.

The Best Way to Kick Your Screen Time Habit

My kids, like most kids, love their screens. Who can blame them? YouTube offers up videos on anything under the sun, to say nothing of the possibilities offered by Minecraft, Fortnite, and so forth.

In the past I’ve tried setting daily hour limits, but it always felt like a huge battle. Then, this past week, the kid I was most concerned about dropped his tallies significantly. His iPad has been out of battery for two days and he hasn’t recharged it.

Miracle? Hardly — I know it will come out again. It’s just this week he got a lot busier. Between full-day camp, parkour class, ninja class, and karate on top of family meals, Harry Potter reading, and a really cool new Spirograph set, he’s only had a small number of hours each day for screen-based leisure pursuits.

Time is always a zero-sum game, which is a phenomenon worth keeping in mind if you’re trying to kick a screen time habit. You can try to cut back through discipline. But why not just make your life more interesting instead? You’ll achieve the same result and have a lot more fun.

It’s one of the paradoxes of modern life. People claim to be very busy, and yet the average person clocks copious hours of screen-based leisure (2.86 hours of TV per day, according to the American Time Use Survey). The best explanation is that it is there, and easy, and so it is the default activity when potential free time appears. Add in that our phones and tablets make it easy to access content in small chunks of time (while waiting for a phone call to start, or in the camp pick-up line) and it’s no wonder that about two thirds of Americans say they spend too much time on screens.

Even the busiest people spend time on screens, but it will come as no surprise that employed parents with children under age 6 spend significantly less time with screen-based entertainment than the average person (1.64 hours of TV per day, per the American Time Use Survey). I doubt that people with jobs and kids are inherently more disciplined than retirees, students, or young professionals. There’s just less time available.

Similarly, if you’d like to spend less time on screens, the most straightforward way to do that is to engineer more time commitments into your life — but in a way that makes you excited, not resentful. My kid isn’t sad about missing YouTube when he’s diving around on an obstacle course and he’s not annoyed that he’s not on Fortnite when he’s playing games with his camp friends.

You can likewise make your life more fun. Dig those hobbies back out of the boxes they’ve settled into. It’s hard to peruse Instagram while practicing the trumpet. Train for a 5k with a friend. Don’t be afraid of commitment. Even busy people can make time for a once-a-week gig like volunteering at a food bank, or playing on a softball team. Think through your weekends ahead of time, and plan in adventures that are as compelling as what’s on TV; you probably won’t have reception to check Twitter at the top of that mountain in a nearby state park anyway (at least I hope).

Yes, the logistics might be complicated. Screens are forgiving of energy levels, your desire not to have to change out of sweatpants, or the fact that there’s no baby-sitter hanging around on call. But I know I feel better when I work out at the YMCA while my kid has a class there. Spouses (or neighbors or friends) can trade off kid coverage. Families can do things together. If all else fails, having a big stack of must-read books from the library can nudge down the hours available for screens. Crowd out what you want to spend less time doing with things you want to spend more time doing. It really is as simple as that.