There has been a sickness going around my kids’ school lately, and I’m not talking about the stomach bug making the rounds. Among the parents, there’s been an outbreak of dramatic screen time cutbacks.
For the uninitiated, “screen time” in our circle means individual time spent on a personal device: an iPad, a laptop, a Nintendo Switch, a phone. Family movie night or watching live sports together seems to be universally exempt. And, notably, parents themselves are not typically subject to the same limits. A few families in our friend group have gone even further and banned devices outright until summer.
My kids have grown up with screen time. It’s woven into the fabric of their days and they expect it in some form almost every afternoon. We do have one firm rule: no screens at restaurants. Okay, there have been one or two exceptions when the food service was taking an eternity or the company had long since exhausted what could reasonably be called conversation. They are kids after all. But in general, the rule holds.
So when spring break approached, specifically a weekend trip out of town, my wife unveiled what I can only describe as a bold and slightly insidious plan: no screens for the entire trip. That includes us parents.
The allowed exceptions were narrow but practical: normal phone calls, texts, and emails for connectivity; maps and navigation; and the camera. No news. No social media scrolling. No streaming. No gaming.
Here’s where it got personal for me: my current book is a library loan through the Libby app on my phone. Under the new regime, that doesn’t qualify. I had to set it aside and dig up a physical book to bring instead.
The blackout begins when we load up the car Saturday morning and lifts when we pull back into the driveway Monday afternoon. Wish me luck. I’ll report back below once I’ve had my screen time privileges restored.
We survived. And honestly, it wasn’t that bad. Noticeable, but not bad.
Iowa and Missouri are genuinely ugly this time of year, by the way. I only know that because I wasn’t burying my head in a screen for once.
The trip surfaced some interesting dynamics pretty quickly. Abby communicates a lot on weekends, as it turns out, and the no-screens rule made that more apparent. She eventually opted out of the challenge after the kids caught here on Instagram and opening up Facebook, claiming I was the one who extended it beyond the kids in the first place. As I recall, that was a necessary evil to keep the kids from revolting. For my part, the communication needs were lighter. I ignored most of the buzzes. I rarely looked at my phone and so, didn’t catch the usual drip of weather updates and notifications that normally fill my lock screen.
There was one exception I hadn’t anticipated. Sunday evening, our phones blared with a tornado warning. I claimed emergency weather as a legitimate exception and, to their credit, the kids allowed it as they wanted to know what was going on. We gathered ourselves and spent about 20 minutes sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for the all-clear. Probably the most justifiable screen use of the whole trip.
The kids did well, all things considered. The library had these little standalone audiobook players called Playaways, and we brought our magnetic chess and checkers set, which helped eat up the car time. Still, the backseat produced a reliable rotation of “are we there yet?”
The car and hotel idle time were when the kids felt the absence of screens the most. Waiting for everyone to shower at night or wake up in the morning. That awkward window between showering and bedtime where we couldn’t agree on anything. We ended up watching Harry Potter both nights on TV, Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows Part 1, interrupted by what felt like 30-plus minutes of commercials each.
The thing that surprised me most was realizing how often I reach for my phone to look up random stuff. Are tinted license plate covers illegal? How hot is a hot tub supposed to be? Whose Petronas tower was next to the lake in Deathly Hallows Part 1? Did Build-A-Bear originate in Missouri? Are there other cities named Nashville? What does alcohol by volume actually mean, and specifically, how much more this wine is going to affect me compared to a light beer? Back in the day, if you didn’t have the book handy, you called the library reference desk or the state extension office. Somehow we managed.
My physical book never quite grabbed me. I think I made it to chapter three. I’m pretty eager to get back to my Libby loan, so instead of reading at night, one unexpected upside: I went to bed early every night. No long scroll means no lost hour you didn’t realize you were spending.
The closest call of the trip had nothing to do with screens and everything to do with one. At the City Museum, I took a photo of Evelyn and failed to properly pocket my phone before dropping into a wire-caged tube roughly 40 feet in the air. Several welded obstacles later, I reached for it in my pocket and it was gone. Thankfully, a young boy found it teetering up there before it fell, handed it to his mother, and Abby called the number to track it down. Crisis averted.
Maps turned out to be genuinely irreplaceable. Even something as mundane as figuring out how to cut across four lanes from our hotel parking lot to a nearby Aldi, without getting hopping divided highways and encountering no-U-turn signs, made the phone feel less like a luxury and more like basic infrastructure.
We got home Monday afternoon to a few inches of snow that had fallen while we were gone. After clearing the driveway and unpacking, we landed on the couch for about 40 minutes of screen time to catch up or just scratch the itch. Felt earned.
I will say, there was something else it is hard to put into words. Sitting down together for a meal, there was this unspoken feeling of shared experience. There was a collective buy-in that was bringing us together. I’m also not naive enough to think it lasts forever. My kids are at an age where this is still possible. Give it a few years and my teenagers will almost certainly revolt, and honestly, they’ll probably win.