Why it's Time to Stop Talking About Screentime

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Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

This year, my cellphone screen time went up.

And not just in a small, barely noticeable way, but in a reasonably dramatic one. If I spent a little over three and a half hours a day on my phone in 2023, then in 2024 it passed four. In a world of metrics, this is not a small one.

As someone who worked in tech for a long time, who once wrote a book on productivity, and who has three children all on their own screen time journeys (which I co-manage, alongside my relevant comfort pile of books, apps, and podcasts), this was a change I noticed.

I also noticed that it felt like I was reading less on a day-to-day basis.

On the surface, these aren’t great things to notice about oneself. But did I worry about all this, when I noticed it?

I did not.

Instead, I bought my first ipad.

Let me back up.

When I first noticed my screentime increase, there was indeed a moment of curiosity, a moment of - Wait, am I really just hate-stalking Instagram for 30 minutes more a day than I did in 2023? - until I remembered what had changed.

What had changed was I had rediscovered my love of crossword puzzles. And although I had bought several paperback NYT crossword books and assorted one-a-day-calendars, I was also turning to my screen to fuel my fun. (Upon reflection, I realized that a similar thing had happened years ago, when I went through a multi-year period of heavy Tetris use, after, laughably, reading about its mental health benefits.)

All in all, this was not that interesting of a revelation.

I have often looked at my screentime total, and then reminded myself that the number next to my podcast listening didn’t “count”, for example. If you have ever looked at your screentime numbers, you may have done the same. That’s because we all inherently know that certain things we do on our phones are of different levels of value than others.

And herein lies the problem.

When we talk about screen- “time” for us or our kids, we generally focus our discussion about digital use on the binary issue of time spent. Are we off or on, bad or good? Instead, we need to talk about the different things humans do on devices and the varying levels of value they bring or don’t bring to our lives. As we all inherently know, some of the things we do on our phones are of deep value.

Like crosswords?

Last week I clicked play on a Courtney M. Martin podcast called “How to Rethink Screentime” that I one billion percent hesitated in clicking on at all.

As a parent, I am overloaded with content about screentime.

After the Jonathan Haidt book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, was released in Argentina, I joined the requisite three spinoff Whatsapp groups for each of my children’s classes full of parents sharing thoughts, feelings, and screentime-contract-related-angst. (If you want to bother to call the groups ironic, even though it is 2024 and where the heck else are we supposed to talk about it, it will not lost on me.) Dutifully, I then ran around the house for a few weeks more up in arms than usual, unplugging my kids’ devices with random huffy abandon and generally feeling more anxious than ever about the time limits I set on Screentime (the predictable name of a paid app for parents to manage kids’ devices, and my favorite of the ones I’ve tried).

Since that feverish time, although the heart palpitations have worn off a bit, my feed is on fire with the topic.

Cue Courtney’s podcast, with her guest Richard Culatta, the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education. There are learning moments when you finally see things in a new way, and about five minutes into listening I realized this was such a moment. The podcast, which I’ve listened to twice now, shifted a few key things in the way I think about kids and screentime.

When it Comes to Screentime, It’s About Value

The biggest Aha! for me was the parsing out of the difference between time and value.

As a parent, I have been trained to think screens are bad, except maybe if it’s a grandparent’s face talking through on one of them. Richard breaks it down further, and encourages critical thinking about broader ways that devices are valuable.

In his life, for example, he has helped his four kids see their screens as a curiosity tool as well. In one anecdote, he tells how his evening ritual of reading with his son naturally ebbed off as the child grew older and started reading his own books. As a replacement, and as a lead-in to learning about screens, Richard and his son started a “curiosity practice” (my words), where during the course of a day they would come up with something they wanted to learn more about and then before bed they would spend 10-15 minutes using their devices to figure out everything they could about that thing. It’s a way to bond, and a way to learn about how screens can advance knowledge and then encourage the sharing of that knowledge.

I loved this idea. Not least of all because kids love looking up weird stuff;)

As I type this, in another tab there is a story open that one of my kids is writing for his grandfather, for which he Googled the phrase “submarines near Berkeley” and came up with something called the “Transbay Tube”, a blandly name thing which had never crossed my path and a perfect example of something we could dig into together.

There are many other uses for devices that bring value, and talking with people who matter, looking weird stuff up, and crosswords are just a few examples, but Richard’s idea has encouraged me to consistently think more widely of others.

Screen value, anyone? Do we need a chunkily named cursive letter sweatshirt?

Using Digital Tools is a Skill that is Learned Over Time

Another interesting point, which was relatively new to me, is that using devices smartly is a skill. This seems obvious as soon as you start thinking about it, and it also seems wise, in a way that contrasts to the way that teaching elderly people how to use apps has always seemed somehow … silly? Low-level? (I can’t quite put my finger on why, but that’s that.)

In the podcast, Richard shares the story of giving a speech about screentime and having a woman stand up and say something like, “That’s all well and good, but I’m just not giving my kid a phone until he’s 17 and that’s the end of it!” This is actually something a lot of parents say, and even more of them feel, without saying it.

When Richard points out to the woman that banning something completely and then suddenly providing unfettered access to it without any education or training generally doesn’t work well for kids (or anyone) in life, she’s immediately speechless. Alongside sex, guns, sugar, or driving, it doesn’t take much to imagine the disastrous consequences. The solution, of course, is to treat kids and devices like we treat many other things in life. Educate and practice with the kid until he or she is ready to jump into the deep end alone.

For Kids, Screentime Should Not be Private

Finally, the idea of screentime’s privacy, or lack thereof, was a great point. It was a small mindshift for me, but an important one.

To keep screens as safe as possible for kids, the best path is actually to first establish that using them isn’t something kids do in private. Instead, it’s an activity that is out in the open, literally — not behind a closed door, and in a family charging station at night so as not to be in bed — and is talked about.

The benefits of this are obvious. If a kid and a parent are using devices openly and talking in passing about what’s happening during a kid’s screentime (additional point: it’s not realistic for the parent to be looking over their shoulder), then the kid is more likely to bring up something questionable that could be a red flag in terms of safety. If this is a casual conversation topic and not one mired in anxious tension, all the better.

Overall, I was super impressed with the interview, and with Richard’s work in general, and I look forward to digging into his book.

The reframing of value, the importance of teaching digital use as a skill, and the note on privacy, were all new ways for me to look at an important issue, and I found Richard a great conduit for the message.

Finally, and most importantly, I liked the chance to think critically about kids and screentime without freaking the hell out about it, all the time. Because if there’s one thing that caring, informed, and well-meaning parents like me are great at doing on their own without podcasts, it’s freaking the hell out about screentime.

Here’s to less of the freaking;)