Digital Detox

The Two-Week Tech Reset for Kids

Molly DeFrank

• Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780764238765
• eBook ISBN: 9781493435753

"This brilliant book is a game-changer."--WENDY SPEAKE, author of The 40-Day Social Media Fast and Triggers: Exchanging Parents' Angry Reactions for Gentle Biblical Responses

"Hope and practical direction for parents." --FRANCIS and LISA CHAN, New York Times bestselling authors

It's time to flip the switch and get your kids back.

Mom of six Molly DeFrank was sick of screen-time meltdowns. She wanted more for her family, so she pulled the plug, declaring a digital detox for her kids. The transformation blew her away: She got her sweet, happy kids back.

The detox was easier than she could have hoped, and the results were better than she could have dreamed. In just two weeks, her children were free from the grip of digital devices. Their moods shifted immediately, and their creativity exploded. They learned how to entertain themselves and enjoy life without screens.

Her experiment led to a total tech overhaul that changed her family's life. Here's how she did it in just fourteen days, and how you can too.

Digital Detox offers step-by-step guidance that will help you
· overcome your fear of firing your "electronic babysitter"
· cultivate your child's giftings outside of screens
· confidently set the right tech boundaries for your family
· develop a long-term plan to sustain lasting change

Best of all, you'll transform screen zombies into friendly, happy, grateful kids.

You can put technology in its right place. This book will show you how.

1
Parenting Challenges for a New Generation—The Problem

I wake up in cold sweats every so often thinking, what did we bring to the world? . . . Did we really bring a nuclear bomb with information that can . . . blow up people’s brains and reprogram them?

TONY FADELL, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, APPLE

We didn’t sign up for the digital lives we now lead. They were instead, to a large extent, crafted in boardrooms to serve the interests of a select group of technology investors.

CAL NEWPORT, DIGITAL MINIMALISM

MY FIVE KIDS were home with the babysitter. I don’t remember my exact errands that day, but as a stay-at-home mom of many, it didn’t matter. I would’ve welcomed the relative calm of a root canal appointment as if it were a trip to a resort in Cabo San Lucas.

Well, that Cabo vacation/root canal high came to an abrupt halt as soon as I arrived home, greeted by a child’s most annoying question: “Can I play on your phone?”

I’d been away for hours, and when I stepped through the door, I didn’t hear “Hi, Mommy!” or “I missed you!” Instead, it was straight-up, “Hey, gatekeeper of electronics? Gimme a fix.”

My brain pulled a quote from American Idol’s Randy Jackson: “That’s gonna be a no from me, dawg.”

My husband and I had already noticed negative behaviors from the kids—extra sibling arguments, slowness to obey, difficulty concentrating, bursts of anger, general grumpiness. And heaven forbid when it was time to transition from a screen to not-a-screen . . . Yikes.

We would enforce consequences for these outbursts, but our kids’ responses seemed almost primal. Something was changing internally. As if their little minds were shifting into fight-or-flight mode, completely different from their bright, spunky selves. The behaviors would come and go intermittently, so we wondered if it was an inevitable part of this wild ride we call parenthood.

We had no clue there was a deeper cause. We thought, Hey, maybe acting like rivaling WWE wrestlers is normal for their ages. We wondered if we needed to cut sugar out of their diets. Did they need more sleep? Less gluten? Boarding school? Holy water? We couldn’t be sure.

We just knew that we didn’t like it, and something had to change.

When my baby greeted me as if I was an electronics vending machine, that was the last straw. I called my husband at work.

“Babe. We need to pull the plug. The kids need a screen break.”

“Awesome,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

We broke the news to the kids that night at dinner. My husband made the announcement.

“Okay, kids. Until further notice, we are turning off all screens. There will be no Netflix, YouTube, Nintendo Switch, iPad, computer, Minecraft, Xbox. None. This is not negotiable. Do not bother asking us to play or watch anything screen related. We love you, and this is a change we are going to try out together. We need to unplug and reevaluate. We’ll keep you posted.”

Then we all hugged and celebrated a new beginning. Together, we made vision boards that forecasted a simpler time of family cultural enrichment, spending lazy days on the lawn, honing our basket-weaving skills.

Just kidding.

The kids immediately went into a state of mourning. You would have thought we told them our dog died. Tears abounded. For five minutes. Then we all moved on to the next topic.

But internally, I still feared what the next day would bring. I prepared for the worst—the children dressed in head-to-toe black, singing longingly, “Nobody knooooows the trouble I’ve seen. . . .”

What actually happened blew me away. The kids did not ask for one screen that day. They knew the topic would be a nonstarter. So instead, they played with the toys on their shelves. They played with each other. Lo and behold, they were already starting to act happier, more obedient, kinder, and overall, less addict-like. It was as if we had flipped an actual switch. As if we’d discovered some kind of miraculous parenting hack. I got my kids back. For us, it was that simple.

I hope that your detox is as simple as ours was. But be encouraged to know that if it isn’t, you’re not alone. I’ve helped coach many families through their own detoxes. Dual-working households. Homeschooling families. Foster families. Stay-at-home parents. Work-from-home parents. Big families. Small families. Of course, every family encountered unique levels of stress, complaining, and difficulty. In later chapters, you will hear many of their stories, trials, and triumphs. One family’s first detox attempt failed a few hours in. But with some coaching and a new plan, they committed to a second try. And guess what? They were thrilled with their results. More on them in chapter 11. Of the families who used my plan and reported their results back to me, 100 percent experienced a dramatic and positive change by the end of two weeks.

Am I guaranteeing that your journey will be easy? Not necessarily. But with some setup on the front end, it can be simple. And the obstacles you might encounter will be worth the momentary struggle. Guiding your kids through a digital detox is simple. And while it might not be easy, it will absolutely be worth it.

This decision will transform the culture of your home. You will be shocked that something so simple could change your family so profoundly.

At this point you might be wondering, how is it possible that digital entertainment is having such an enormous impact on our kids? How is this happening to amazing kids with great parents—especially if you are only allowing an hour or two of TV, tablets, and video games per day?

A totally different childhood

Today’s parents feel the weight of an unprecedented amount of technology in the home, and the change has been gradual. It’s not like a dam burst; it’s more like our boats have been slowly taking on water. Another holiday brings a new console, a new iPhone, more video games. Another friend’s parents allow a new app, and we feel the pressure to follow suit. These well-intentioned “gifts” are burying our kids in entertainment. We look around and see that everyone else seems to be parenting the same way. Everyone can’t be getting this wrong. If all kids are playing the games, if they’re all on social media, then the status quo must be fine, right? we wonder, as our boats continue to take on more water. Our kids are disengaged and ornery. Parents are frustrated. Our boats are sinking.

Seventy-eight percent of parents say that raising kids today is more complicated than when they grew up.1 Eighty-five percent of parents are worried about the amount of time their kids are spending in front of a screen.2 If technology is supposed to be so helpful, why is it stressing out parents and bringing out the worst in our kids?

From waking to bedtime, there’s an app or a screen to fill the silences, the lulls, the boredom. And from a parent’s perspective, it seems kind of great. Need to take a call? Hand over the iPad. Need a few minutes of peace and quiet on the long drive? Flip on a movie and hand the headphones to the back seat. But if you’ve been at this parenting gig for a few years and have taken advantage of these new options for kid entertainment, it doesn’t take long to see the emotional and behavioral problems. Parents wonder, Why does my child seamlessly transition from LEGO to puzzles, but the end of screen time turns her into a cave troll? What is the cost of all this cheap and convenient entertainment?

We can’t look to grandparents and great-grandparents for answers on this one. It’s a massive, brand-new social experiment, and our kids are the guinea pigs.

Everything has changed

Yes, we all use technology daily for both productivity and diversion. But if you’re reading this book, you probably spent the first decade-plus of life learning how to be a human without screens (except television and movies), to be bored and troubleshoot and knock on the neighbor’s door to find a friend. You had your feelings hurt and hurt someone else’s. You learned how to make it right by apologizing, hugging it out, and moving on. You spent years honing the foundations of being in relationship with other people. With the extent technology is available to kids in our homes today, there’s a diminished incentive for them to interact in real relationships.

There’s no opportunity for the benefits of boredom. Easy entertainment is available to children in shiny rectangular boxes throughout the house. Why go outside? Why risk rejection by knocking on the neighbor’s door? Why troubleshoot the uneven couch fort support mechanism? Why build anything? Why hone any skill? That would involve effort and setbacks. Why attempt any of the character-building, mind-forming activities that their parents’ and grandparents’ childhoods were built on?

So the kids don’t. Not to the extent their brilliant little minds need. How can we blame them? If we grew up with the same diversions, we’d be doing the same thing. Some days we are. Parents get sucked into the entertainment vortex too.

The problem, it turns out, is that kids (and adults) are using screens as substitutes for face-to-face conversations. If you grew up in the 1980s and ’90s like I did, then you remember. We built our middle school friendships over drippy Otter Pops and daisy chain necklaces. We endured conversational lulls required in any friendship worth building. We didn’t have another option. And we reaped the relational fruit by investing time in the kids around us. We listened to friends confide about their parents’ rocky marriages or their silly pets. We postulated how the world works from our weird ten-year-old brains. How will I escape when I inevitably fall into a pit of quicksand? (The greatest threat of childhood, according to third graders in the 1990s.) We strategized and wondered together, troubleshooting and laughing at inside jokes we created along the way. Our communication wasn’t hindered by character limits. We had to interpret real body language and facial expressions, not ambiguous one-dimensional emojis.

We subconsciously understood that thousands of micro-interactions were the building blocks of budding relationships.

But now? Kids stare at screens. And the effects are starting to show in dramatic ways in the classroom, at the dinner table, at bedtime. Kids aren’t developing the way they have for thousands of years.

How are screens putting my kids in a bad mood?

Ellie is fourteen. She had always been bright, fun, and friendly. But now she is exhausted all the time. She’s often moody and lonely. When sad or bored, she picks up her phone and scrolls social media. “It helps me connect with my friends!” she tells her parents. They assume she is right, that this is how modern friendships work. They know that social connection is critical for teenagers, but Ellie still seems sad. In her social media world, Ellie scrolls through endless photos of flawless filtered teenagers. Why can’t she look like them? Her “friends” tease her on group text about her crush. Someone screenshots their conversation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Parenting Challenges for a New Generation—The Problem
• Part One: UNDO the Tech Trance
• Part Two: Now What? Sustaining Your Results
• Afterword
• Tips for Getting a Skeptical Spouse on Board
• Two-Week Detox Daily Plan
• Worksheet for Tweens and Teens
• Creating Preventative Solutions
• FAQs
• Recommended Reading
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• About the Author
• Back Cover