Open your phone’s setting and go to screen time and see which app has been your most used app today, this week, the past few weeks. 

In my case, it’s Safari. 

Today, I used it for 35 minutes. 

I used it to order myself new pyjamas, look up if that one med could still be used a couple of months after its expiry date (not recommended) and one more thing I can’t remember. 

Now, why is it so important to look at my own phone usage when this blog is supposed to be about getting children away from the screen and back into our physical world? 

Because actions speak louder than words. 

YOUR actions. 

If I want my children to be interested in the world around them, I need to go first. 

Here’s an example. 

The moment I just stand there and look lot out of the window, one of my children will immediately right by my side and want to know what I’m looking at. 

Sometimes there’s really something “happening”, like a digger being unloaded or the rubbish collectors are coming out a family we know is riding their bikes in lite street. 

But most of the time, I’m just blankly staring into the sky. 

“Hey, mum, this cloud looks like a crocodile AGAIN!” (We have lots of crocodile clouds here where I live). 

Or

“Mummy, look, birds!”

And then we have this magical moment where for once my kids don’t need anything from me. We just stand there together looking at the world. 

This is such a simple thing to do. It doesn’t cost anything — no money, not a lot of time and no effort. 

But it gives us so much: connection, awe and therefore nervous system regulation. 

Especially the latter, a dysregulated nervous system, is what lets us reach for our phones. We scroll to numb ourselves. 

When they see us do this as our only means of regulating ourselves, our children of course will do the very same thing once they have access to their own phone. 

A recent study shows that 75% of the 9-month-olds in the UK spend an average of 41 minutes per day in front of a screen!

Now, even the authors of the study comment that this doesn’t necessarily have to have negative consequences. My personal opinion on this is, though, that we need to find quiet moments with our kids away from the screens. The younger they are, the easier it is for them to form positive habits and to the earlier we start, the sooner they learn to regulate their emotions. The 40 minutes might not be the problem. But it may be the foundation of a problem later on when they learn to only calm down while watching a video.

P.S. this is the study I’m referring to: .
https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/babies-and-screentime/