Kids are growing up in a completely different world than we did—but what makes it so different? They have the same neighborhoods, the same backyards, school activities, and friends. But they also have technology that exceeds our wildest playtime imaginings from back in the day. No, they don’t have personal rocket ships, but they do have a magic portal that shows them anything they want to see, manufactures canned fun, and entrances them for hours on end. And often, they have more than one of these magic devices to choose from whenever they get bored.

Kids are staying in more

The average household has 15 tech devices; 10 with screens—that’s 3.7 devices and 2.4 screens per person¹. Screen time presents a challenge that our parents only got a small taste of during Saturday morning cartoons. Now our kids not only have cartoons, but also video games, apps, and cameras on-demand—all day every day. That’s a lot of temptation for a kid, and a lot of responsibility for a caregiver to regulate.

Between the wide availability of screens in our homes and their inherent brand of “fun,” it’s not surprising that kids are spending more time on screens and less time outdoors than their parents did in their own childhoods. While 73 percent of us fondly remember having played outdoor games with friends, like Four Square, Tag, and Capture the Flag, only 60 percent of our  6-11 year-olds enjoy those same activities today. And only 1 in 10 (9 percent) of our kids consider outdoor play their favorite activity¹.

So why is that important? Should kids play outside?

According to the CDC, it’s essential. The CDC recommends at least an hour per day of physical activity for kids², and active free play does wonders for kids growing minds as well as their muscles. And while screens may feel fun, they often don’t provide that same cognitive or physical boost.

Video games are replacing other forms of play

Through screens, kids are receiving a dangerously versatile form of entertainment. Though many of our younger kids don’t have access to smartphones yet and watch about the same amount of TV as we did in our youth, video games have taken the place of many outdoor activities for them. Only 36 percent of us remember playing video games when we were growing up—but 65 percent of our 6-11 year-olds play video games at least weekly today. And video games are the number one preferred activity among our children.¹

“Our children have more and more friends who use video games and phones and won’t interact without those.” -Survey Respondent

Let’s not forget that video games themselves have drastically changed since our childhood. They’ve gotten more connected and more addictive, with internet-connected servers, superior graphics, and in-game purchases targeted at children. Video games have also arguably become more social—the difference being that kids today can talk and play with their friends and with strangers from a distance rather than on the couch together. That easy access to distance communication can prevent real playdates from occurring, becoming a child’s preferred form of social interaction.

Are video games bad for kids?

Like many things, video games themselves aren’t bad in moderation, but the way they’re used can be. Internet gaming disorder was recently added to the DSM V as a behavioral addiction³. And while many children that play games do not have a video game addiction, screen time is still an issue for their eyes and muscles. Screen time hours add up, and that’s worth paying attention to—especially if it is affecting their bedtime, their exercise, and the time they have for other kinds of free play.

Kids aren’t as independent as they used to be

This glowing glass web that’s encircling our children doesn’t just affect their Vitamin D levels, their physical fitness, and their social lives. 42 percent of parents agree that our kids today have less independence than we did when we were growing up, and even more of us, at 51 percent, believe our kids are less imaginative than we were when we were growing up.¹ And it’s not hard to see why.

“If we turn off their idiot boxes, they have no clue what to do with themselves and they hassle us to entertain them… we can’t get anything done or have any free time for ourselves.” -Survey Respondent

Kids have playtime options today that require less effort, less imagination, and less active participation than we had, and it’s far easier to be passively entertained than to take the initiative to create your own fun. When playtime has pre-set rules like in a video game or an app, or even the one unwritten rule of TV—sit and watch—kids aren’t challenged to think, to stretch their creative muscles, or to even try beating boredom without a technological crutch.

But what other choices do our children have?

With so many screens in our homes, can we expect a child who is still developing his or her self-control to make the independent choice to put down the easy entertainment option and create challenges for themselves? Maybe they could if they had some attractive alternatives. But it’s hard to get creative or forge any sort of independence during childhood when you can’t roam your neighborhood, go to a friend’s house by yourself, or even play in the backyard.

“51 percent of us enjoyed playing in public parks unsupervised as kids… only 26 percent of our kids are allowed to do the same.¹”

Playing outside without direct parental supervision just isn’t as easy as it used to be when we were kids. When is it appropriate for a kid to stay home alone? Play outside alone? Far fewer parents believe their 11-year-olds are ready for either. Where 51 percent of us enjoyed playing in public parks unsupervised as kids, only 26 percent of our kids are allowed to do the same.¹ Even playing outside in their own front or backyard is harder—91 percent of us considered unsupervised yard play normal, and only 78 percent of our kids experience that same freedom.¹

Parents seem to be more unwilling to lets kids out of their sightline these days, and when they get busy, have errands to run, chores to do, or need a rest, kids’ playtime options are limited. So where we as children roamed free while our parents tidied up, cooked dinner, or took a well-deserved nap, our kids just can’t do that. And the vacuum left by this lack of free-roaming playtime has been filled by screens.

So what can parents and families do to help their kids maintain a healthy relationship with technology? In part 2, we talk about how choices parents make can affect their kids’ digital behavior.

Read Part 2 >

Reference:

1. Nationally representative online survey of 1,403 U.S. parents of children aged 6-11 conducted by Republic Wireless; May 2018
2. “How Much Physical Activity Do Children Need?” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. June 04, 2015. https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/children/index.htm.
3. Kuss, Daria J., Mark D. Griffiths, and Halley M. Pontes. “DSM-5 Diagnosis of Internet Gaming Disorder: Some Ways Forward in Overcoming Issues and Concerns in the Gaming Studies Field.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports. June 2017. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5520128/.

About The Study:

The Relay Bring Back Play Study was fielded online by Republic Wireless from April 27, 2018 to May 2, 2018 in partnership with Critical Mix, a global insights data provider and owner of consumer online survey panel, OneOpinion. A total of 1,403 parents of children aged 6-11 were interviewed across the US. The margin of sampling error for total respondents (N=1,403) is +2.6 percentage points.

About Critical Mix

Critical Mix creates insights that drive business decisions with easy, collaborative tools to access global target audiences, program engaging surveys and visualize results. Insights professionals around the world rely on Critical Mix’s simplified solutions to innovate and grow. Critical Mix is passionate about providing the best customer experience in the industry. Supporting every project with a dedicated, always-available team of professionals who anticipate needs and provide thoughtful customer care. The company operates globally with locations throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Call us at 1-800-651-8240 or email simplify@criticalmix.com.

If you’re a parent with young children, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the conflicting advice, instructions, and warnings about screen time you find online. There’s a lot of information out there, but who can you trust, especially when it comes to raising your child? To clear things up and set the record straight, we consulted an expert. Dr. Meghan Owenz is a psychologist and professor, a mother of two, and runs the Screen Free Parenting website with her husband. We asked her about her website, her own experience with screen-free parenting, and what she recommends to other parents out there who are wondering if—or how—their family should go screen-free.

Tell us a little bit about Screen Free Parenting and your mission.

I run the Screen Free Parenting website with my husband. We have two young children who are 6- and 3-years-old. We started the site to give parents, grandparents and educators a place to connect with others who believe children do best with limited screen-time. We do two main things on our site on a weekly basis: an article about some recent research related to parenting—especially around screens—and an article with five screen-free things our kids did in the last week. We hope this serves to inspire other parents. I have developed a system of prioritizing children’s activities that encourages parents and caregivers to put more weight on activities tied to positive child development. The SPOIL system highlights social activities, free play, outdoor time, independent work (like chores), and literacy-based activities. We hope families can focus on these fun activities as a way of limiting screen-time battles.

What are some of the negative effects of screens on children that you aim to reverse through Screen Free Parenting?

For young children, there are five main negative associations with excessive recreational screen-time that we highlight. We call them the reasons to SWAAT screen-time:

1. Sleep: excessive screen time is associated with later bedtimes and less overall sleep
2. Weight: because of the relationship between excessive screen time and excess weight
3. Attention: entertainment-based screen-time has been associated with decreased attentional abilities
4. Aggression: research shows watching aggressive programming (as many children’s shows feature) is associated with real-world aggression
5. Talking: for young toddlers and infants, excessive screen-time is associated with smaller vocabularies and a slower expansion of vocabulary.

For the research and more information on those reasons, see this article, which is one of the first we ever wrote for our site: Find it here.

If a parent is trying to reduce or eliminate screens in their kids’ lives, where should they start?

We work with a lot of parents who don’t start out screen-free or screen-lite. Rather, they found screen-time spiraled out of control and now they are trying to reel it back in after noticing some negative consequences in their own children. That is not the parent’s fault. That’s the way the technology is made now: it is designed to reel and keep kids in. It’s no wonder they have trouble shifting away from it. There are two approaches that seem to work well:

1. Going cold turkey for a period of time to see how your child’s behavior changes
2. Cutting negative content and bad habits, like screen-time before bed, in the morning and in the car.

For four simple ways to select quality shows, see this article. For four key times to eliminate screens, see this article.

How do you recommend responding to the protests of “my friend has/watches XYZ” when parenting screen-free?

If parents believe going screen-lite or screen-free is best for their child, I think it is much easier to deal with those type of complaints. In our house, we really don’t get those complaints yet as our children are quite young. However, I know they are coming as there are certain types of screen-time I will never tolerate (i.e., violence). I would simply explain that our family values certain things more than screen-time or that type of screen-time, therefore we don’t see that. Every family has different values and rules. If the parent is confident in their limit setting, the child will follow. I also recommend parents seek support from one another on these issues. We have created two forums for parents to do just that: A Facebook Closed Community Group and a Forum on our website.  

What do kids typically see as the biggest “miss” by not having or using screens regularly?

I don’t see one! If I felt my kids were missing something positive, I would give it to them. As my children get a little older, I’m sure I’ll feel they are missing things (perhaps social interaction) and I’ll give them appropriate screen-time for that purpose. I feel my kids are getting so much more by being screen-free at these ages. They get long interrupted blocks of imaginative play, creativity, good sleep, and the ability to entertain themselves for a start.

What are some of the positive changes you’ve observed in families after seeing screen-time eliminated or reduced?

Families typically report that they see very positive changes in their own children when they reduce or eliminate screen-time. There is usually a period of adjustment where their young child’s behavior is worse (more tantrums, etc.) while they adjust. After that period, parents have reported a calmer, more content child who sleeps easier and becomes incredibly involved in their own play. Watching a child play in their own imaginative way (not by replicating or reprocessing a film) is a beautiful thing that all parents enjoy.  

How does a parent’s use of screens and technology affect his or her children?

Greatly! Parents are the model. I follow a lot of rules in my own life around screens that I might not be so particular about if I didn’t have children. I don’t allow phones at the table, don’t use them in my car, and always put my phone down when someone comes to talk to me. These rules are for me, not my children, since they don’t have phones. However, they are the ways I would want my children to treat me, so I provide that same courtesy to them. There is a research study conducted by Dr. Jenny Radesky which observed parents in fast-food restaurants—it found that children really had to amp up their misbehavior to get their parents’ attention when the parents were using digital devices. Another study of infant-parent dads found that infant attention span was affected by their parents looking down at their phone during play time.

What element of screens do you think is the biggest culprit of negative behavior in kids? (TV shows, texting, social media, etc.)

I don’t have a great answer to this question. I take a developmental approach to tech and kids. I think different types of tech affect them differently at different ages. For young children, I am concerned about TV shows and interactive games. For adolescents, I would be most concerned about social media, as research suggests the more time teens spend with screens, the less happy they are. I also think it depends greatly on the kid. As a parent, you need to be a little bit of a scientist with a sample size of one. Watch your child and his or her habits and modify things regularly as you note positive or negative effects.  

Is there a recommended or realistic age that screens start becoming a part of a child’s life?

Absolutely! I think it is different for each particular kid and family. I don’t recommend being screen-free with a teenager and the research doesn’t support it either. For us, we have stayed screen-free for the first 5 years. Our daughter, who is six, now uses screens at museums, a little bit at school and with us at home to look up the weather, take pictures or search for music to dance to. We are always modifying our rules based on what we believe is best for our children. To see the general layout of how we plan to allow screen-time as our children age, see this article.  

Any other words of wisdom or recommendations for families who want to have a better offline relationship but don’t know how to do it?

I recommend parents do a little experiment and cut screen-time for a weekend. See how the family connects differently and make adjustments from there. This article describes a research study where parents did just that. Here is a success story from a reader who cut back screen-time and saw some great results.

Relay was built with screen-free play for kids in mind. Get yours for $49.99!

Ready to introduce Relay to your family?

Relay is an innovative new device that gives families a safer way to stay in touch. It’s as simple to use as a walkie-talkie, but works everywhere a cell phone works, includes location tracking, and will have other fun features such as music, games, and voice assistant functionality in the upcoming months.  

If you’re wondering why we built Relay, this is our story.

It all started with Republic Wireless, the WiFi-first mobile carrier we launched in 2011 with a mission to provide remarkably simple and affordable ways for families to stay in touch.  Since then, we’ve saved our members over $500 million on their cell phone bills. But more recently, we saw a need emerging that even the most affordable smartphones couldn’t solve. Young families, like many of our own, needed simpler and safer ways to communicate. That’s why we expanded our mission and decided to build Relay.  Read on to learn more details of how all this came to be.

Our first focus

Republic’s first chapter focused on addressing the “remarkably affordable” side of the equation since we hated the absurdly expensive, contractually restrictive cell phone plans that the Big 4 carriers forced everyone to pay back then. We thought that with our expertise in software and network, we could do something about it.

Our technology introduced a new concept into the marketplace—using WiFi in a smart way with cellular to save people money. WiFi is free. It’s all around you. And if you use it whenever possible (and cellular when it’s not) for calls, messages, and data, you can have the lowest cell phone bill possible.

To bring this vision to life, we built a robust technology platform that seamlessly handles the transitions across networks and devices. Over the last 6 years, in addition to over $500 million in savings for our members, it’s helped us earn numerous awards and recognition such as being ranked the #1 prepaid carrier by Consumer Reports for three consecutive years.  

As Republic grew, we saw things in the market begin to change for the better. Have you noticed that cell phone service from the Big 4 is a lot less expensive now than it was in 2011 and that they no longer require contracts (just like us, who never did)? We believe Republic Wireless had a hand in this positive change.

Seeing an unmet growing need

Changes were happening throughout the cellular industry, but we saw a new need beginning to emerge in the market, and, quite frankly, in our own families. A need for not only simpler and more affordable communication solutions, but for safer ones as well.  

You see, we love technology, and celebrate the benefits smartphones bring to our lives. But it became hard to ignore the dangers that phones and screens can create―especially for a company that’s all about phone-life balance™! Our phones are designed to call out for our constant attention. When kids have their own phones, they’re exposed to cyber-bullying, screen addiction, the risk of “stranger danger,” and more―all part of a world they’re not ready to handle.  

Sure, there are flip phones and kid trackers out there. And yes, there are parental controls to block social media apps. But they leave the problem only half-solved. Any device with a phone number, a screen, or the trappings of traditional cellular communication will continually bring dangers and risks that can’t be completely avoided.

But what other choices do parents have?

Smartphones have become these insanely “smart” mini-computers, but the irony is that communication is still “dumb.” Phone communication has been stuck in the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rule for some time now. But we began to see that, especially for children and families, it is broken—with very few companies even attempting to fix it.  

The vast majority of the market’s focus and phone innovation has gone into capturing your attention away from the real life (and real people) around you. On our phones, the ads are more personalized, Netflix streams faster, and the camera’s resolution is sharper, tempting us to view the real world through more and more screens and filters. Big carriers even offer discounted family plans to get more screens into your home. But does this really fit the needs of your children, your family, or your lifestyle?

Expanding our mission to design something new

In 2014, we decided to do something about it and set out to design a simpler, safer way for families to stay in touch. We challenged ourselves to stop thinking about adding features to “kid-proof” a phone, or stripping away features until it was “safe-enough.”

Instead, we started from scratch. We designed “kid-up” vs. “parent-down,” with safety woven into every facet of the product.

In the process, we began to question everything we thought we knew about how communication should work. For example, why are there so many steps to make a simple call? If your focus is communicating with your family, do you need phone numbers at all? Does a call really need to ring? Do all calls need to be 2-way calls? Would kids prefer to talk in a more back-and-forth fashion, similar to the way text messages work? And the most controversial question of all: can we build a solution so simple that it eliminates the need for screen, as that would eliminate screen dangers as well?

For four years we designed, tested, and redesigned again. We created countless prototypes as we searched for the best solution.

For more details on “how” we built Relay, check out this story as well.  

The meaning behind our mission

Our drive to develop Relay was rooted in our need as parents, and the valuable freedom we remembered from our own childhoods that we wish our children could have now. We wanted to create a device that would empower our kids’ minds, imaginations, and childhoods without commandeering their attention—unlike the smartphones we saw endangering them. We also wanted to create a simpler solution for our elderly parents, where peace of mind could come with the push of a single button. So we put all our tech and talents to work and built the solution we found missing in the market—and in our lives.  And now, we’re delighted to share Relay with your families as well.

Learn more

About the author

Chris is the Co-Founder and CEO of Republic Wireless and Relay. But his most important role is being a loving husband and father of four young children, whom he’s eager to provide with technology that safely empowers their childhoods, instead of distracting from it.