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WASHINGTON – In the age of information and artificial intelligence, smartphones are at the center of our culture, and that comes with serious challenges and concerns, especially for kids whose minds are still developing.
A new book by Clare Morell, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, shows families how they can ditch smartphones and screens.
“Most of the parenting books on technology kind of accept this premise that at some point your child will get a smartphone and social media, so here’s how to mitigate the damage,” said Morell in an interview with CBN News.
Morell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and director of its Technology and Human Flourishing Project, flips that notion on its head in the book.
“My research had shown me that screentime limits and parental controls really weren’t enough to fully and sufficiently protect kids from the harms out there,” she explained. “So, I had this hypothesis of, ‘I think this is possible, I want to find out if people have done this, how have they done this?’ So, because that book didn’t exist, I wrote it.”
Morell, a mother of three young children, set out to find those who made the change.
Maureen Ferguson was among them. A mother of five, she and her family live in Potomac, Maryland.
Ferguson told CBN News she could see the dangers of smartphones and social media early on and made the decision to say ‘no.’ Getting their children on board started with education.
“I had all of my kids watch the movie, ‘The Social Dilemma’ in which these tech executives explain how they addict kids,” she said. “So, my kids kind of had the attitude of, ‘Hmm, okay, I don’t want to be manipulated. I understand now how these social media companies are trying to addict me and how they’re trying to manipulate me and manipulate my thinking.'”
Ferguson says they also found friends who didn’t have smartphones.
“I teamed up with other moms to say hey let’s make this easy, you know, we’re entering the teenage years, how can we make this easier on all of us?” she said. “It’s easier on the kids and it’s easier on the parents to just keep your kids off of it entirely at least until they’re older, at least until their brains are kind of wired up a little bit more.”
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Each of Ferguson’s kids got a dumbed-down phone when they entered high school. CBN News asked if their social lives suffered for it. To the contrary.
“I mean, here in our backyard they would have spike ball tournaments or they would go for hikes or, you know, I got a ping pong table for the basement, bought lots of M&M’s and soda so that my kids would hang out in my basement and whatever, play board games and that kind of thing,” she explained. “So I think I helped them to develop a really rich in-person social life so that they didn’t feel the loss of the sort of fake social media life.”
After they completed their college applications, she gave them smartphones, usually in their final semester of high school.
For families that have already given their kids smartphones but want to give the “Tech Exit” a try, Morell recommends a 30-day detox.
“So setting aside 30 days on your calendar and coming up with a plan of activities of what you’re going to be doing those 30 days instead, actually making it fun and exciting for your family, something to look forward to,” she told CBN News. “We’re going to do these excursions, we’re going to do these family game nights. Trying to actually structure the time and replace the screens with real-life activities.”
The next step is to follow Ferguson’s example and find other families who might want to join the effort, whether that be at your children’s school or even church. The book includes a section on engaging your faith community.
Morell’s other big recommendation is to find those alternatives, be it a dumbed-down phone of something else.
“I had this hypothesis going into the book that this was possible and I wanted to learn how, but what I came out of interviewing all these families thinking was just not only is this possible, this is the best possible thing we can do for our kids and that the benefits are just overwhelmingly positive,” she said. “The ‘Tech Exit’ is really a positive ‘no.’ These families saying ‘no’ to the smartphones and social media are saying ‘yes’ so much more in real life.”
CBN News asked Morell how parents should participate in this. She says you can keep your smartphone, but to be mindful about how you use it in front of your kids to set a good example.
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