The problem is screens. Or is it?

Before we had kids, among other naive opinions about modern parenting that only non-parents would have, my husband and I thought that screen time had been unfairly depicted as the boogeyman. We both work in technology and have always been enthusiastic adopters of new technologies. We believed then and still believe now that technology has made our lives easier. Online banking and online shopping have made the mundane day-to-day more efficient. Social media and messaging, despite their flaws, made it easier to stay connected with friends and family even when living on different continents. Streaming made entertainment more affordable and accessible. Smartphones and tablets put all of it within reach of more people than ever.

Our first child shook up our lives - high energy, strong-willed, and extremely extroverted. At the time, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended no screen time for babies, and as first-time parents who wanted to do the best for our baby, we mostly stuck to that - at least until Covid hit. The pandemic disrupted the rhythm of our lives. Where we had once managed our child’s boundless energy and social needs with trips to the science center or the playground, social distancing left us mostly at home with a very small backyard. Very quickly, the screen time limits loosened, because that was the only way we could get a break from the constant demand for attention from our young child.

Soon came a second child, and in the haze of parenting two young children, screen time (especially on weekends) slowly and insidiously crept up. Somewhere in there we started noticing something about our house on the heavy-screen days: everyone in it was a little worse off, us included. There was more emotional dysregulation, and patience ran thinner. A morning of TV somehow produced an afternoon that was harder on all of us. A weekend with a lot of screen time left us more tired than a weekend with none, which made no sense and was also undeniably true. We tried imposing various forms of screen time limitations, and we went through the cycle I suspect most families experience: better for a while when limits are newly imposed, then backsliding as life happens, then reimposing limits.

This spring, we decided that enough is enough and made the default mode for our family no screen time for TV and non-social games. Instead, we made it a point to spend more time outside and go on family adventures. We go on long hikes and play in streams. We explore different playgrounds and try new activities, such as tennis, as a family. The first few weeks were hard, and the kids frequently asked for their devices. But soon we all realized that we have more fun and are happier as a family when we spend more time outside, doing, instead of looking at a screen.

We didn’t get rid of technology, and we are not planning to. We still take pictures with our phones. We use apps to find interesting hikes and to identify the plants and insects and creatures we come across on them. We use social media to learn about new playgrounds, and maps to figure out where the closest ice cream shop is. We are using technology in a way that complements our family life instead of replacing it.

A couple of months in, the question in our house on the weekend changed. It used to be “Do we have to go? Can we just watch TV instead?” Now it is “Is there going to be a stream? Can we go in the water?” I’ll take it.