Time for A Digital Detox?

If you found yourself noticing that your children were glued to screens more than usual over the Christmas holidays, know that you’re not alone. 

During the festive period, we’re busy prepping and entertaining, the kids stay up past their bedtimes and are tired, it’s cold and dark outside and too often, despite our best efforts to play board games, read, do puzzles, etc., sometimes our kids just want to chill out and watch a bit of TV, play their video games or message their friends.

But if you found your usual screen time limits slipping a bit TOO much over the holidays and your kids turning into gremlins… you know, the little, not-so-pretty creatures that are still cute but not the kids you know and love, well, it might be time for a Digital Detox.

Are Screens really bad?

You’re most likely aware that for some children, watching screens - whether it be a TV, iPad or playing video games - can have a significant impact on their brains.  In particular, we know that TV can stimulate the pleasure and reward centres of the brain, having an effect much like some narcotics. 

Screens can pull children into that world such that they are so absorbed they have no awareness of the reality around them.  It can also make some children very aggressive and/or agitated at the end when you turn off a screen - much like coming off a high.

Now, this doesn’t happen to all children and each child has a different threshold level - that tipping point between screens being an entertaining pastime and it overstimulating the brain with drug-like effects.

You will know your own children and have a sense of what their personal thresholds are.  If the gremlins have come out, you know they’ve gone beyond their threshold.  If, when you turn off the screen your child is able to happy re-enter the real world, chat, play and be sociable with you, then you can be pretty confident that limit works for them.

Screentime Limits

For our own family, we have pretty “strict” rules around screens.  For two reasons: 

1. As parents, we don’t actually watch much TV or play any video games ourselves and don’t personally value it highly as a pastime, and

2. We feel our lives are pretty busy without screens, so when there is some downtime, we prefer our kids to hang out, play and socialise rather than be glued to a screen. 

This is just reflective of our personal family values.  It’s not about being right or wrong, but the way it works for us. 

Other families might have lots of screen time, let their kids watch TV every day or have their TVs on all the time.  If your family is like that and it works for you, then that’s great!  There really is no one right or wrong here.

Many parents who let their children watch TV or play video games whenever they want feel that this autonomy will allow them to eventually self-regulate and turn the screens off when they feel they have had enough.  Whether this works for your child and family is something you personally have to decide.

How to do a Digital Detox

A Digital Detox is exactly as it sounds. 

Have a family chat and together (depending on the ages of your kids) decide how long you will detox and what is included.  I would generally recommend that all screens are included in the detox - TV, iPads, video game consoles, smartphones, etc. 

To be most effective, all family members should be included, although you could limit it to the kids waking hours and make an exception for phone calls or work-related stuff.

Talk about why you might be having a digital detox, and what other activities you could do instead or what workarounds might need to happen.  For example, if your child is used to using google to look up words, they might use an old-fashioned dictionary instead.

In order for kids and family to reap the full benefits of a digital detox (which might include re-discovering play, re-connecting with each other, discovering new activities, reading more, interacting more, etc.), I feel the minimum time period should be 1 month. 

You might find after a month you are all enjoying it so much that you take a decision to extend it for another month.  But in general, a month is a long enough period of time to have the “detox” effect but short enough to be achievable for the whole family. 

Is it worth it?

Absolutely.  My own family did a digital detox in the autumn last year and, despite the initial, very brief, protests from the kids, we all adapted to life without screens within a couple of days.  The benefits were AMAZING. 

The children NEVER asked to watch a program or play a game.  They just got on with life - they played more, got along better, talked more. 

As a family, we re-connected with each other, had more conversations and started laughing more together.  None of us felt like we were missing something and we always found old-fashioned workarounds to our digital habits.

I know a lot of other families who have also done digital detoxes with similar success.  They all remark at how much easier it is than they anticipated, how better behaved the children were and how much happier the family was overall. 

So is it worth it?  OH YES!!! 

If you haven’t tried it before and feel screens got the better of your family over the holidays or at any time during the year, have a family chat and seriously consider going for it!  You’ll be surprised how easy it is to do and the positive effect it will have on your family life.