Screen Free Mindset

Cultivating a screen free mindset is the first step to helping your kids develop a healthy relationship with technology. Today, you’ll learn what it means to have a screen free mindset (it doesn’t mean no screens ever!) and how to get started setting new limits with your family.

You’ll learn:

• The problems with too much screen time
• Screen time best practices for kids of all ages
• How I managed screen time for my kids from the early days through the teen years
• Guidelines to help you adopt a screen free mindset
• Examples of limits around screen use (including what to do when they won’t turn it off)

While you may not approach technology use in exactly the same way I have with my family, I hope this information will help you figure out what you want your family’s guidelines to be. 

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As a parenting coach, I’ll never tell you what your values should be or what you should or shouldn’t do. My goal is to help you understand what your values are and give you strategies to help your life align with the values you choose. 

Ultimately, what I stand for is raising kids in a way that does not cause harm. As more research comes out about technology and screen use, we’re seeing that too much screen use actually does harm children. 

There aren’t a lot of protections for kids in the virtual world. Tech companies aren’t interested in limiting children's use because they get more money and data from that use. This means that it falls to parents to create those limits.

Today, I’ll provide some best practices for kids and screens. While you may not approach technology use in exactly the same way I have with my family, I hope this information will help you figure out what you want your family’s guidelines to be. 

Screen Use Best Practices

When it comes to things like sleep and nutrition, most of us have a general idea of what kids need. You can use those guidelines as a baseline ideal. You know how you want your kids to eat and how much sleep you want them to get, but you also know that some days will be closer to that ideal than others. 

The Centers for Disease Control, Pediatrics Magazine and the Journal of Adolescent Health (among others) are starting to establish similar guidelines for kids and screens. For our purposes, screens include tv, phone, tablet, computer or any other devices. 

Here’s what they’ve laid out by age:

• 0 to 3 years old - no screens
• 3 to 7 years old - 30-60 minutes per day
• 7 to 12 years old - about an hour a day
• 12 to 15 years old - 1.5 hours per day
• 16 and older - 2 hours per day

Currently, most kids ages 5 and up are getting around 5 hours per day of discretionary screen time - far beyond the recommended amount.

And studies have shown that kids who have more than the recommended amount of screen time tend to have worse executive functioning, declines in academic performance, delayed language development and detrimental effects on social and emotional growth. They are also more likely to have obesity, sleep disorders, or mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. 

Screen Free Mindset

If this is a little overwhelming to you, you’re not alone. Kids love screens, and you’re a busy mom. It’s hard to manage the time and boredom and all of it. But you can start with small changes, including the way you think about screens and your family.  

Screen free mindset means that you make an intentional decision that your child's free, unstructured time should be screen free as the default choice. For example, if you’re waiting at the doctor’s office or in a restaurant, rather than handing them your phone, you decide that it will be screen-free time. 

The idea is that, instead of auto