What To Do When Technology Takes Over

Help! My kids don't want to do anything if it doesn't involve a screen.

Does this sound familiar to you? We seem to be living in a world the majority of things in our lives revolve around some sort of technology.

And of course while technology has been incredibly helpful with making our lives easier, someone recently asked me, " Could screens be turning us into zombies?

“Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cellphone. STEVEN SPIELBERG”

But really, there's no need to panic.

Throughout history we can see new inventions being created while many people thought that it would ruing our brains forever.

Socrates believed that writing was not an effective means of communicating knowledge. To him, face-to-face communication was the only way one person could transmit knowledge to another.

Was he scared that books would turn our brains to mush?

Check this out to read about how other inventions or technology throughout history caused people to panic about the state of humanity. https://www.ranker.com/list/historical-freak-outs-about-new-technology/taeyura

So while we don't need to adopt a Luddite mindset.

We DO need to establish healthy relationships with technology that we can model for our kids so that we can all live healthy lifestyles.

Often when I hear people talk about their kids' addiction to screens, my first question is: "What is your relationship with screens?" In the book, "Screens and Teens" https://amzn.to/3FgZk41 Kathy Koch challenges us as parents to look at our own use of screens and says that our kids will not be that far off from our own usage.

If you want some great ideas on how to incorporate screen free time by age with your kids check out this article. https://fit.sanfordhealth.org/blog/10-ways-to-minimize-screen-time-article

What I have found in our household that works best, is if I create time within our schedule where everyone is screen free. When I set these parameters in place, I find us spending more quality time together as a family. More creative pursuits are attempted like art, music, lego making, and game creating.

Try implementing time each day where everyone in the family puts all screens away and see what happens.