How I Decreased my Screen Time as a Mom

Recognizing the problem

I grew up with movie night every Friday, where we’d break out the popcorn, order or make a pizza, and have a family sleepover in the living room. If we ever watched a movie any other time it was because it was an educational one to go along with whatever we were studying in our homeschool. We didn’t own a video game console, and only occasionally got to play video games (including the Wii) at friends houses. We had educational computer games and even that was on a timer. If I wanted to play an online game like pbskids we had 30 minutes on the computer at the library. I occasionally got hooked on media, but honestly, just didn’t have too much available to me in my life, and when I did, I got sick of it pretty quickly.

I married a man who loves to have his relaxation and zoning out come in the form of a screen much of the time and has been like that for a long time. We have had some discussions over the years trying to blend our two worlds and recognizing how much time we are using staring at a screen, and how it benefits or doesn’t benefit each of us, and how we want screens to be handled in our home. This is something we are still figuring out, especially as our family is still fairly young, and in no way are we flawless at this. But we have been figuring out a few things that have helped us.

I calculated that if we spent an average of 2 hours a night (the average length of a movie), every night for a year that that adds up to 730 hours per year, which equals a whopping 30.42 days per year! In 10 years of marriage that would add up to 304.2 days – getting close to a full year used just in watching a screen.

The average person works 8 hours/day and spends 8 hours sleeping/day and that’s 208.67 days/year, taking up 5.71 years of that 10 years just with stuff the average person HAS to do. So out of 10 years of being married – sleep, work, and watching 2 hrs of shows/day would take up around 6 and a half of them. That’s pretty sad. This is isn’t even counting commuting time, time spent in the bathroom, or time scrolling on a phone through endless videos or posts.

Beyond the “screen time” of maybe sitting down to watch a show at the end of the day, I find that I tend to reach for my phone and waste a lot of time, energy, and clear thinking with it. When I get some “down time” I am usually so exhausted I don’t want to think OR I have way too much on my mind already with my running “to-do” or “to-get” or “to-research” kinds of lists, so I reach for that little magical box that is so good at grabbing my attention and abusing it. I don’t think I had too much of a problem with my phone overall for a while – in fact, I deleted a lot of my social media apps of time-wasting games which helped a lot – but it started sneaking back up on me. I had a difficult time with my breastfeeding journey and being a new mother I was still learning a lot and was home by myself with a sleeping baby who would wake up from his nap if I moved. So I started bringing my phone with me to wherever I sat down to nurse him. It distracted me from the discomfort I felt at breastfeeding, and made it so I had something to do wherever I was at, one handed, so that once he fell asleep, I could keep busy. But then it became a habit.

I can spend a long time texting people, looking through family photos in my gallery, emailing the insurance company, and more, which are all well and good. I can also spend hours (well, it feels like it. I’m a mom so hours may be stretching it, haha) doom-scrolling anything from videos, to idea boards, to shopping apps, in the name of “being inspired” or “figuring out what I want to do/get” or “finding someone who relates” or a plethora of other excuses or reasons I give myself.

But I realized that even if I had actually woken up in a good mood, energized for the day, been on a roll getting things done, that basically the instant I allowed myself to be on my phone, time was flying by, my children and I became more disconnected, I started to have a fuzzy feeling in my brain, or a headache. I got just a little more grumpy. A little more irritable. A little more discontent and dissatisfied with my life when I looked up from the screen. I lost my motivation. I lost my excitement.

So, I knew I desperately needed to find a way to get off my phone. I tried several things and each time I kept coming back to my brightly colored screen to fall down another rabbit hole, only to be jerked away by reality (like a crying baby or realizing it was time to make dinner and I had no idea what I was making even after originally getting on my phone originally to find that one recipe I needed only to realize that I hadn’t even found it but had found a boatload of other recipes that took up thirty tabs on my browser and had looked up a hundred new kitchen gadgets I needed to buy and clothes I needed while I was at it, and educational toys for the kids…)

What was I to do?! I couldn’t seem to break my phone addiction. I knew it had to be my decision, my desire for it to change, my self-discipline to keep it going.

A turning point

I went to church with my husband one day and it was one of those sundays that other people held/watched the kids for me so I was able to listen. And the young man at the pulpit spoke about (drumroll) dopamine. Huh. Weird topic for a Sunday, right?

He spoke about how our bodies naturally release dopamine at certain times in our lives, usually after something we have had to work hard for. It helps bring contentment, and satisfaction, a reward for the hard work we just put in, and with that dopamine release it makes all the hard work worth it, and even makes us want to potentially do that work again (or something similar) to have that satisfying feeling again afterwards.

BUT with things like our phones and other technology nowadays, it shortcuts straight to the dopamine, almost a counterfeit dopamine, almost like the wrong kinds of sugars and fats and stuff which give you a high only to drop you and make you feel worse than before, which isn’t healthy or sustainable. It makes us lazy, tired, irritable, and so on.

A switch clicked in my brain.

Of course, he drew it back to religion, but overall there was this arching theme that spoke to me and to my desire for how I want my life to be lived and what I want to instill in my children. It connected with the things I had been feeling. It reminded me of a random moment in time that was etched into my mind from a few years back where I had had this sudden craving for hard work. Why would I WANT to work hard? Why did I get so excited at the thought of doing some big project that I couldn’t get done in just a few minutes?

I wanted to feel my body and my mind being used in a productive way, to know I was creative and put effort into something useful, to use that time as a time with someone I enjoyed being with. I wanted to look at the results and feel a pride and satisfaction and appreciation for the results. It’s the same kind of thing that is driving me (among other factors) to live more of a “simple”, back-to-the-roots, homesteading kind of life. Most foods taste better and memories are made when they are made from scratch, or at least eaten in a happy gathering, rather than having something door-dashed to you while you all stare at a screen and then go to bed and scroll some more.

I want my family to appreciate what we have, have used our time well, branched out and learned new things, spent time together, and felt the healthy satisfaction and contentment of a job well done, to be in a better mood, to think clearly, to be able to sleep well at night with that sleep that comes after a good day’s work, not the kind that comes after doom scrolling and microwaving.

That sermon was the motivation I needed to push me off the edge of the proverbial cliff and just take the jump. I finally did something with my phone that I had been putting off for a long time because I was still so reliant and entwined with my phone to let go enough. Your technology should serve you. You shouldn’t serve your tech.

Why it worked

Here are a few reasons why this works so well for me:

Dopamine is released oftentimes with bright, bold colors. They drag us in and appeal to our senses. There’s actually a whole science about color, which colors affect our mental and physical state, etc. and if you start researching that it can be quite interesting. I recommend reading a book about it if you can. By turning off the colors on my phone it reduced the amount of dopamine released when I interact with my phone which makes my brain less engaged with it. I don’t spend as much time “window shopping” because I can’t tell what color clothing or other items are on my shopping apps.

By removing the family photo/personalized wallpaper it was no longer personal. It made it less than generic and I no longer had stock in or was invested in my phone. We tend to almost feel like our phones are an extension of ourselves, and something we can’t live without, and adding personalization to it, especially a family photo/photo of someone we love, it makes it feel like we can’t neglect or ignore it – it becomes important to us, almost like a family scrapbook. And on top of that, the more personalized we make something, the more we tend to want to be with or engage with it – this is one reason why a lot of us tend to say, collect cups, or stickers, or clothing or shoes, etc. The color and the personalization of it connects us to it.

Deleting the apps that are literal time wasters for me helps make them so they aren’t there, easy to click on if I ever do have a moment of boredom, or downtime. It forces me to look elsewhere to fill that need. Same principle for letting children be bored – they tend to become more curious, creative, and to explore and grow more than if they are constantly entertained. We are all just big kids, right?

Hiding apps that I still need occasionally but waste time with if not used in moderation helps me feel like I am being more disciplined for myself. If you haven’t “hidden” an app (and “required a passcode” for it) before, what it does, at least on my phone, is it puts it in a folder that is fairly difficult to get to, then it has you type in a passcode to access the folder, and again to access the specific app, and then if you need to switch screens while using it, it makes you do it all over again, so there is no easy switching back and forth – you get your business done and that’s it. Then it essentially closes out of the window if you go to home or another app. Having so many steps to get to something actually helps by giving you time to think about what you are getting into – is it worth all the hassle right now? Can I be doing something better with my time? – and sometimes that is enough to make you not click on the app vs. when you have it right there on your home screen because by the time your brain starts to think of those things considering if it’s a good decision or not, you are already enthralled in the wonders of the app which are designed to pull you in.

Additional ideas

What I further plan to do if possible is to

• plug my phone in like it’s a landline
• place projects or books strategically around my living space, including in the car, etc
• if I need to really work on something I give myself a certain day/time to get it done and then that’s it, or I open my desktop computer to do it.

I know how good it feels to unplug and disconnect, so that is giving me the dopamine to continue, and by knowing the feeling of being plugged in vs not, I know the difference and which one I would rather deal with. It’s a waterfall or domino effect, too. I know if I go back on any of these things it’ll snowball into the full-on experience again because I feel that addiction of sorts or the negative side effects, so I would rather not deal with those so it motivates me to continue with the settings and boundaries I have set up for myself.

We have so many things calling for our attention and care and trying to take up space in our minds and our hearts and our lives that we need to determine is there enough room for this item? Is it something I really want to give real-estate to in my life? Is it worth it?