Most people are averaging at least 7 hours a day in front of a screen despite the widely accepted recommendation of no more than 2 hours of screen time per day for adults and kids ages 5 to 17. That means that the average human is staring at a screen for 49 hours per week. 196 hours per month. 2,352 hours per year. Not for work or for school, but for pleasure alone.
Think of all the things we could do if we reclaimed just a thousand of those hours each year.
If you are tired of feeling held captive by the never ending notifications on your smartphone or if you are sick of your kids raging out when tech time comes to an end, I’ve got simple tips for you on how to lower screen time for your family starting today. These tips are the very practices that helped our low-tech family unplug from the virtual world and plug in to what truly matters.
How To Decrease Screen Time
Program Your Router
Utilize the parental controls on your Wi-Fi router to lower screen time. Routers have the ability to block, limit, and schedule internet usage in order to help you limit screen time.
Check the parental control settings on your router and see if yours has…
- The ability to block specific websites that are a problem in your home
- The ability to schedule your internet usage windows so that you can only be online during certain hours or days of the week that you designate ahead of time
- The ability to set time limits for how long a user can be on certain websites or apps
- The ability to set time limits for how long specific electronic devices can have internet access
- The ability to turn off internet access altogether
If your router does not have a parental control settings with the above listed capabilities, you can reduce screen time the old fashion way by simply unplugging your Wi-Fi router.
In our home, we have used the router to block websites we wanted to stop wasting time on, to schedule a short window of hours when internet usage would be available, and to set a virtual bedtime for the internet in our home.
Here are some ideas for how to use your router to reduce your family’s screen time…
- Shut off the internet 2 hours before bedtime. Take a family walk, talk, play board games, exercise, and read together instead of going online.
- Commit to blocking the website that you waste the most time on for 30 days. See how you feel afterward. Most likely, you won’t even want it back. Whenever I do a digital detox from a website or device, I realize how dependent I had become on it and also how much I truly don’t need access to it. It is far easier to identify these things when we take the time to separate from the screen and evaluate out patterns with a clear mind.
- Keep your kids well within the recommended daily screen limit for children by setting a one hour time constraint for any electronic devices your child uses. When the time is up, the time is up.
Grab my free printable Before Screen Time Checklist for Kids, Screen Time Budget Tracker, Screen Time Schedule, and Screen Free Family Bingo Challenge here:
Beginning at your Wi-Fi router is a surefire way to decrease screen time in your home. I love that we are able to make intentional choices ahead of time about how we want to spend our time and then the router will take action and remind us of our priorities by shutting off the internet in the evenings or not allowing us on a website we wanted to stay off of.
These ideas might sound extreme but personally, I think it is extreme that most children and adults are spending upwards of 7 hours a day on electronic devices. We all know this is a problem for our mental health, our physical health, and our relationships but screens are so enticing that we do it anyway. Exercising self-control to put technology in its proper place is extremely challenging for people of all ages. The internet was designed to keep us “engaged” but in reality, it is helping us disengage from the people we say matter most to us.
If we want to start saying no to aimless scrolling and yes to things that matter to us in real life, we’re going to have to take deliberate action.
Need a screen detox? Start here:
What are the symptoms of too much screen time?
Some of the symptoms of too much screen time include poor sleep patterns, brain fog, anxiety, weight gain, vision problems, headaches, and moodiness. In children specifically, screen time is linked to behavior problems and learning delays.
More Tips To Reduce Screen Time
(For adults and kids)
Keep a Tech Journal
Another idea to help you decrease screen time is to keep a journal of things you want to do online. Instead of grabbing your phone, iPad, or laptop all throughout the day whenever something comes to mind, save those activities for a specific time in the day that you have determined is healthiest for you.
For example, if you are a mom of littles like me, you might decide not to get on the internet until your children’s nap time. But throughout the day, you will inevitably think of things you need to do online like placing a grocery pickup order, requesting a virtual extension on library books, making an appointment, checking out the details on a sports team for your child, responding to a friend’s text message, and ordering a birthday gift.
Rather than doing these types of things all day long, jot them down on a notepad as they come to mind. This way, you can clear your mind of your virtual to-do list and remain focused on the most important tasks at hand. You’ll be assured that the things you need to do online will be waiting for you in that journal when the appropriate time comes to do them.
The tech journal will also help you to stay on track when you spend time on electronic devices. If you choose to limit yourself to 1 to 2 hours on tech in the afternoons, you will need to use your time wisely to accomplish the tasks you took note of and not get distracted with all the shiny things the internet has to offer.
You can also use a tech journal for kids. Do your children ask a lot of questions like mine do? On any given day, our most inquisitive child asks thoughtful questions about history, science, engineering, geography, and theology. Many of these questions can be answered by us as parents or through books, but sometimes we need to use an online search engine. Instead of looking up the answer to each question the instant it is asked, we keep track and save online exploration for a later time.
Set a Manual Timer
Lower screen time by keeping track of yours and your kid’s tech usage with a visual kitchen timer. Determine in advanced how much time you want to spend on a virtual task and hold yourself accountable to that time limit with a timer.
For example, I might give myself 45 minutes to work on a blog post and then when the timer goes off, I need to exercise self-control, shut the laptop, and move on to a screen free project whether my post is perfect or not.
You might decide you want to spend 20 minutes catching up with friends on social media or half an hour listening to your favorite podcast.
Set a timer and when your time is up you will be reminded that you didn’t want to lose track of time on your virtual activity and you have other priorities to address.
Timers also provide a clear signal to children that screen time is over. Plus, the noise helps parents monitor their child’s time on electronic devices. Streaming services have made it super easy to let one show after another automatically play for our kids. It’s tempting to give in and say yes when children ask if they can keep watching or finish “just one more” round of a video game. We feel that the screens are buying us peace and quiet so we easily lose track of how much time our kids are actually spending on them.
Before we know it, we are distracted and our kid has been in front a screen way longer than we intended. Then, post screen time behavior issues rear their ugly head. Children become irritable and disinterested in the healthy activities we long for them to do, like reading books and playing outdoors.
Eliminate this problem by letting your kids know up front how long they have on screens with a visual timer. Train your kids to hand over the tech and play outside when the timer goes off.
Swap Your Tech
Decide which technology is a stumbling block to a vibrant life worth living offline and simply get rid of it. Sell video game consoles, smartphones, tablets, and iPads. Use the proceeds to take a fun family day trip or a screen-free vacation to a place you’ve never been.
Several years ago, I swapped my iPhone for an old school flip phone. This is one of the best decisions I ever made for my mental health and my familial relationships.
Here are some low-tech phone options if you are interested in upgrading your personal life by “downgrading” your cellphone…
- The Light Phone
- Gabb Wireless Phone
- Generic Flip Phone
- Bark Phone
- Troomi Phone
Some of those phones are specifically marketed as safer phones for kids. Do your research. I personally have experience with a flip phone, The Light Phone, and a Gabb Wireless Phone. I think all three are great options for teens and adults, but my preference is a cheap flip phone with basic call and text capabilities.
Sunlight Before Blue Light
This practice has changed my life. Screen time had horrible effects on my sleep and mental health when I spent time staring at the blue light glow first thing in the morning and last thing before I went to bed at night.
How are you sleeping?
If you are noticing that high tech usage is getting in the way of the high quality sleep your body craves, start waking up to the sun instead of to a screen. What we do in the morning has an impact on how we rest at night.
Keep the first 2 hours of your day entirely screen free. Write a list of things you want to do in the mornings before checking your phone. Include things like…
- Getting natural light in your eyes
- Enjoying fresh air outdoors
- Drinking a full glass of water
- Writing your to-do list
- Washing laundry
- Folding laundry
- Eating breakfast
- Stretching
- Exercising
- Journaling
- Reading
- Organizing
Require the same of your children. Instead of letting them watch a show, play a tablet game, or scroll on their phone over breakfast, keep their mornings screen free. Send them outside for fresh air and exercise, give them morning chores, and require them to read before they interact with any electronic devices.
Do Screen Free Sundays
Set at least one day of the week as a screen free day. Unplug your Wi-Fi router, tuck away devices, make plans with friends, grab a good book, spend time outdoors, and stay offline. Screen free days are so incredibly refreshing. Everybody should do them at least one day per week.
Switch To Audiobooks
Instead of letting your kids watch TV, play video games, or scroll on a tablet, set them up with high quality audiobooks instead. Audiobooks will keep them occupied and give you a break as a parent without creating post screen time behavior issues. My kids like to do hands-on activities while listening to stories.
Here’s a post with the best children’s audiobooks, plus hands-on quiet time activities your kids can do while they listen:
Linger Over Meals
Before dinner, collect everyone’s devices in a basket and put them in another room on airplane mode. Instead of inhaling a quick meal while watching TV, linger at the dinner table with your loved ones. At first, this may be uncomfortable. All this excessive screen time has whet our appetites for a high-speed, convenient, comfortable life.
Need something? At the click of a button it can be headed to your door. Some deliveries you can receive within minutes. Lonely? There’s someone online who will acknowledge you. Frustrated with your responsibilities? Someone will affirm you on social media. Bored? Scroll through the thousands of TV shows and movies available to instantly stream.
Screens are easy. They provide things quick. They entertain us. They aren’t outwardly messy like real life, although they have the power to inwardly destroy us.
My point is that we have become a people in a rush. We’ve forgotten how to slow down, taste our food, and enjoy the company around our table. Sometimes we don’t even pursue fellowship during meals. Each family member retreats with their own device in their own separate corner of the home.
We are losing important practices like making eye contact, reading body language, pausing to consider someone’s statement, listening without distraction, and genuinely laughing with our loved ones.
In this fast paced culture, even home-cooked meals are scarfed down in a fast food drive through manner. We eat quickly while scrolling, barely looking up from our devices and if we do, the stillness of reality is not as appealing as the dopamine from our phone. In all of our digital indulging, we have found that virtual life is comfortable and reality is not.
There is always hope. Our tech has an off button and we also have the power to deactivate it at any point. We don’t have to buy into the lie that this is just the way things have to be now-digitally connected yet disconnected from our loved ones.
Let’s remember how to simply be with people through slow, screen free meals. Commit to eating with your family at home at least 5 nights a week. Prepare the food together, set the table together, and clean up together.
Ask each person a question and take time to listen to their answer. Invite each family member to take turns praying from something that is on their heart. Read together after the meal is over. Enjoy dessert together.
In our home, meals are messy, loud, and fabulous. All of the children have something they want to share, even down to the babbling baby. A cup of water usually spills. A fidgety child bounces in their chair. Someone needs a fork just as we are ready to pray. But all of this chaos is a part of having a family. Even though it is a lot of work for me to cook and clean up dinner with littles underfoot, dinner is my favorite time of day because we are all together.
Here are some ways you can engage your kids during meals…
- Ask them one thing they learned in school.
- Buy the Questions for Humans: Parents & Kids card set and rotate through those questions.
- Play the State game. Keep a map of North America handy and ask your kids questions like “which state is shaped like a boot?” or “what state is shaped like a mitten?” or “what is one state on the East Coast?”
- Ask your children to help you solve a riddle.
- Read aloud to your children.
- Recite poetry and bible verses to memorize as a family.
Leave Your Phone At Home
What if the car breaks down? What if I miss an important call? What if I need to do a price check comparison at the store to get a discount? What if I need my phone in an emergency?
What if I don’t?
What if I survive perfectly fine without an electronic device out in public? What if there is not emergency?
What if I knew that I could easily find someone else with a phone if I really and truly needed one?
Nearly every Sunday I leave my phone at home in our junk drawer while we go to church. Nine times out of ten, I have zero notifications when I eventually check it the next day. On the occasions when I did miss a message, it was never an emergency.
Go to the park with your kids without tech. Watch them play. Swing on the swings with them. Catch them as they come flying down the slide. Don’t record it to “remember” later. Take a snapshot in your mind and be fully present with the ones you love.
Your kids deserve memories of you smiling at them and looking them in the eyes, not memories of a black rectangle in your hand.
Go to lunch with a friend and leave your phone in the car. Enjoy her company and lose track of time.
Go to church and worship without distraction. Introduce yourself to someone new and take the time to hear their story.
Go on a walk with your spouse and leave your phone at home. Hold his hand. Forget about the virtual world. Skip the selfie for social media. Nobody needs to know that you shared a special moment together except the two of you.
Appreciate a sunset without documenting it for the world to see. Experience it through your own two eyes instead of a camera lens.
Share Devices
An easy way to limit screen time for your family is to not own a lot of screens. In most households today, it is common to have a television in every room—sometimes including the bathroom!—plus, every family member typically has their own smartphone, laptop, and iPad or tablet.
The age that children are getting their own electronic devices is constantly lowering.
Instead of providing every family member with their own device, make screen time inconvenient and unappealing by paring down the amount of tech in your home. Have family members share devices. On top of making tech time unattractive, this also adds an extra layer of accountability.
Here are some ideas for device sharing…
- Get rid of bedroom televisions and limit your family to one communal TV in an open area such as your living room. Preferably store it in an entertainment center that has closing cabinet doors so that you can use it sparingly.
- Deactivate your kid’s individual phones and have them share a phone. Whoever needs to chat with a friend can do it on a communal device. This will lower the chances of them doing inappropriate things on the device. Also, whoever is going out with friends, to youth group, or to a sports practice could take the phone that evening.
In our home, we don’t own a television. There is no flat screen in the living room, no TV in anybody’s bedrooms, no theatre set up in the basement. We have one communal family laptop that is over a decade old. If the family is sick and we decide to put on a movie, everyone has to huddle around our little laptop. The volume isn’t great and the screen is not very large. We can’t all watch separate shows because there is only one way to watch, so we all need to agree or compromise on the movie.
This might sound inconvenient and unenjoyable. That’s the point.
When our kids are bored, we want them to get creative and play together, not whine for screen time. When my husband and I are bored, we want to be pushed to connect with one another, not retreat to our separate corners of the house to stream our separate shows.
Nothing that I’ve said here is coming from a place of judgment. I’ve been there and done most of the things that I’ve suggested you stop doing.
Here are some of the benefits I have personally experienced from limiting screen time and living a low-tech lifestyle:
What is a healthy amount of screen time?
A healthy amount of screen time will vary by individual. If you have a high-tech job that requires you to be in front of a screen for eight hours a day, consider implementing screen free evenings and weekends for yourself so that you can digitally detox. Spend time outside and connect with your family.
If you work with your hands, your capacity for screen time may be different. The recommended limit is no more than 2 hours per day of screen time for adults and kids ages 5 to 17. Stay within this limit and reduce screen time as needed if you notice poor sleeping patterns, increased loneliness, headaches, vision problems, amplified anxiety, or other concerning symptoms after time on screens.
How do I limit screen time naturally?
The easiest way I have found to limit screen time naturally is to replace time on tech with time with humans. Many of us lose track of time on electronic devices searching for the in-person connection we were designed to crave. Whether you categorize yourself as an introvert or an extrovert, you were made to live in community. All of us need other people. When we replace human connection with digital distraction, we are going to come up empty every time.
Here are some simple ways to replace screen time with human interaction…
- Go to an unhurried coffee, tea, breakfast, lunch, or dinner with a friends. Leave your phone in the car.
- Invite a family into your home for dessert and a family friendly game night. When we do this, we typically set up an adult and kid’s table with age appropriate games for both.
- Set up a playdate with a family in a similar season of life as you. Go to a playground or a state park for a light hike and a picnic lunch.
- Seek out a wise, older mentor who is willing to pour into you. In the past, I have done weekly phone calls to pray, read scripture, and talk to older women from my church and it has been a blessing to both of us. Phone calls are different than screen time. You can hear tone and respond accordingly. Conversations flow in a more organic way when you speak with a human out loud rather than text or send a social media message.
- Look for someone you can pour into. Are you a mom of upper elementary schoolers who has a little extra time to come alongside the mom of littles in your church? Bring her a meal, help her fold a basket of laundry, and listen to her struggles. Is there a single working mom in your neighborhood who could use help with after school care? Offer to keep her child one evening a week. Get them outside in the fresh air to play and send home dinner for Mom.
- If you are single, volunteer time for a cause you believe in. Also, get a pet and take extra good care of them. I know that pets are not humans. But they have adorable personalities and they crave companionship. Invest time in walking, training, exercising, and playing with a pet instead of scrolling online.
What is the best way to reduce screen time?
The best way to reduce screen time is to delete social media. Once my husband and I deactivated all of our social media accounts, our screen time was automatically cut in half. It is easy to spend way more time than you intend to on social. The problem is that we go online seeking connection with friends, but we often leave feeling lonely, isolated, insecure, or envious of others.
We buy things we might never have known we “needed” had we not seen the product advertised over and over again on social media. We feel left out when friends post photos together at events they clearly didn’t invite us to. We feel insecure when we see how clean another mom’s house is or how her children are excelling at a sport ours aren’t even enrolled in. We feel envious when distant relatives post their lavish vacations.
Perhaps you are above these feelings, but most people are not. Day after day, month after month, year after year of soaking these things in and suddenly your mind is filled with narratives written by a thousand acquaintances you don’t actually know very well.
Social media evokes all kinds of unhealthy feelings that we wouldn’t have experienced had we not had an inappropriate window into another person’s living room, marriage, or private vacation.
We don’t need an Instagram photo of what our coworker ate for lunch, a passionate political dissertation from our aggravated neighbor, a midday reminder of all the ways the world is going to heck in a hand basket, or a mushy PDA-filled photo collage displaying the very best of someone else’s personal relationship in which the husband purchased the wife a dozen red roses “just because.”
In less than 60 seconds we can see all of those things on social. If those were the things I had been looking at this afternoon I would most likely feel hungry or annoyed with my coworker, judgmental toward my neighbor, anxious about the news, and discontent with an ordinary day in my perfectly happy marriage. This is a rollercoaster of emotions that none of us have to willingly subject ourselves to.
There is a bible verse in 1 Thessalonians that talks about aspiring to live a quiet life, minding one’s own affairs, and working with your own hands. I realize that this was not written about social media, but I appreciate the sentiment all the same.
We can live quiet lives and mind our own business by keeping our eyes on our own home and not peering into the homes of others on social media. Also by using wisdom and discernment about what we choose to put online and keeping private things private.
There is good and bad in most things. Social media in and of itself isn’t bad. The way we as a culture overuse tech in such excess is the problem.
Need activities to reduce screen time? Try these:
What is your biggest struggle when it comes to screen time? Which tip from this post are you excited to start implementing in your home?
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