I originally wrote this piece a month or so before the life of self-quarantine began. We delayed sharing it to the site because the middle of March (when we had originally planned to post it) just didn’t seem like quite the right timing. No one has time for lifestyle critiques in the midst of an unfolding crisis. I think most of us woke up every morning wondering what new, life-altering set of social-distancing policies were going to be put in place, and subsequently what we would need to do to take care of our most essential needs. This was the couple weeks we wondered what would be available in our local grocery stores, and grappled with our Church doors being closed for the first time in modern history. For myself, this was also a period when our family screentime policies went out the window and my husband and I were back to feeling glued to our devices. But I look back at our indulgence with regret. None of that extra time keeping up with the news helped me to feel more control in my life. If anything, it only fed my anxiety and led to some sleepless nights. I put aside my normal screentime standards and dove deep into the swirl of media-led panic. I tried to further numb my anxiety by watching videos, scrolling through facebook, or finding activities on my phone or computer that would distract me. None of these attempts really worked. I just ended up feeling gross and wasteful of my time.

I include this personal experience to point out that despite my ardent opinions on this matter, I still struggle to demonstrate the virtue of temperance myself. My own experience, and, I think, the experience of many others in the last few weeks, has also confirmed for me just how hollow of an existence life behind a screen really is. There’s no replacement for real community. There’s no replacement for the Sacraments. There are objectively good and objectively bad ways to spend my free time. I once had a professor share with our class, “You can come to know the measure of a man by how he uses his time of leisure.” Many of us, myself included, need this searing reminder in seasons like this spring of 2020. “Indulging” in my use of screens (that is, going beyond any use that could properly be defined as necessary) has made me a more selfish, narcissistic, short-tempered, unproductive person. I need to be reminded of my previous forms of screentime discipline just as much, or maybe more, that you, dear reader. I hope the following piece is able to help and encourage you in these strange and unprecedented times.

With that in mind, here’s the original piece:

So you’re here. You’re reading another article on another device. You may or may not remember exactly what this article says, or even that you read it a year from now (maybe less), and yet this is how so many of us fill our time. The time we have so little of, but still fill to the brim with scrolling through our feeds, reading another article, watching another youtube video, listening to another podcast etc. Hopefully, though, this article will actually prompt you to action. Because let’s be honest, how many articles have you read, podcasts have you heard, videos have you watched that have told you point blank that these devices are beginning to control us more and more. They have begun to eliminate our normal human interactions. Have you done anything about it? Seriously. Look at your life. Examine your habits. Honestly assess that nifty little screentime function on your phone. Have you made the changes you want? Have you decreased the overall time you spend looking at a screen every day? If you haven’t, and you have the desire to change that, this is for you. Here are four steps to help you reduce your daily screentime.

*One brief caveat before jumping in: I am speaking here of screentime as something with which we have chosen to fill our freetime, not something that the demands of our job dictate.

1) Make the commitment to real change. This might sound silly. You’re reading this after all, aren’t you? But just reading an article doesn’t force you to make changes. In fact, if we’re being honest, many of us read articles just like this one out of curiosity or boredom. Articles like this are just one more thing to keep us entertained; and an article versus a video helps us to feel a little superior in how we use our time. But then we go on our merry way, changing nothing in our own daily routine. Articles like this one become one more thing we have consumed on a screen.

This means that the first step you really need to take is admitting you have a problem. Does this sound like the first step to Alcoholics Anonymous? Good. It’s supposed to. Treating your time on screens like an addiction is probably an important first step for most of us in getting anywhere, because for a lot of us, our technology usage falls much more into the category of “addiction” than “entertainment”. Entertainment is something you choose and are meant to enjoy with others: it’s a show on Broadway, watching a movie with your family, or going to enjoy live music with friends. Addiction is something you don’t choose and mostly do alone: it’s turning on the TV without thinking about it, it’s picking up your phone and heading straight for the Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram apps before your brain has caught up with what your finger is doing, it’s continuing to watch youtube video after youtube video after youtube video…

Look honestly at your screen time habits. How many times a day do you pick up or log into your device? How many subsequent hours do you spend on it? What percentage of that time is spent on things that could ever be considered “necessary”? 

Need more specific guidelines? How about this: If you regularly spend more than an hour a day in front of a screen for entertainment purposes (videos, social media, even unnecessary texting) you have a problem. This Time article might be helpful for you to continue to look into your own screen time behavior and usage. If you need some outside perspective, don’t be afraid to ask friends or family members for their assessment of how connected you are to your device. Outsiders tend to notice our addictive behavior better than we do. If you are unable to be honest with yourself or unable to listen to the observations of others, you will make no progress with your efforts to control screentime. 

2) Make your phone a phone again. We have taken everything for which a computer was once necessary and put it in our pocket. And for an entire population of people addicted to screens, we have made the very thing they are addicted to travel-sized and readily available. How many of the apps and functions of our smartphone do we actually need? Do you need to check your various social media accounts while on the go? Do you need to have a fully functional internet browser in your pocket? Do you need to have constant access to your email inbox? Do you need to have a series of apps with all kinds of games just in case you find yourself in the terrifying situation of not having something to do while you wait for your dentist? 

Make your phone a phone again. Delete all of your video streaming apps immediately, followed quickly by your social media apps, your email apps, your internet browsers, and your news apps. Yes, even your news app. This is about eliminating from immediate access those things that ought to be consumed more intentionally. One of the biggest problems in our country is that the news has become a form of entertainment. The media goes out of it’s way to sensationalize everything in order to capture more of our time, attention, and money. The easiest way to make sure you don’t fall prey to this is by becoming more intentional about your news sources, which you should save for time spent on a computer or, if you want to be a real luddite, consider even subscribing to a real print newspaper. 

After you’ve deleted the frequent offender apps, start evaluating if you have any other quirky habits that don’t fit into the regular categories; for example, I can’t have the Weather Channel app on my phone, I have a weird obsession with checking the weather in all of my favorite places around the world and I can spend way too much time on it. Again, use the screen time function on your phone to help you diagnose your own weaknesses. 

Now start evaluating genuinely helpful things you can use your smartphone for without worrying whether you will abuse these functions. For example, I find it convenient and not overly tempting to have a good mapping app, my calendar, a camera, a podcast app, audiobook app, banking app, timer, music, and a very basic weather app. None of these are able to entertain me or hold my attention for more than 2 minutes at a time. However, each of us have different temptations. Figure out what yours are.

For those of you who are truly in over your heads, I encourage you to find a friend who is able to help you with this process. Your parental control functions can allow you to block certain apps from being downloaded, or even any new apps from being downloaded. All of this is accessible in your various screentime controls. You are able to set which apps are allowed, at what hours, and for the length of time you deem appropriate, then you can allow your friend to choose the password.

3) Rid your life of all unnecessary screens. The fewer screens you have in your life, the less likely you are to abuse the time you spend on them. At this point, the amount of options we have for including screens in our life is unbelievable. As you evaluate each of the screens you might come to purchase, always check your desire for this new widget with how much you may actually need it. For example, how many of us really need a smartwatch? Is it cool? Yes. Is it a status symbol? Yes. Do you need to know every time a phone call, text, or email comes in? No. Unless you need a smartwatch to help you track a chronic illness, or the nature of your work is important enough to demand your immediate attention, a gadget like this mostly falls into the category of superfluous status symbol.

Widgets like smartwatches, however, at least appeal to the practical, task managing side of technology. Televisions and tablets on the other hand are just open invitations to waste time. Everything about the design of a television or a tablet is meant to suck you in and feed your screen addiction. Many seem able to agree that a tablet isn’t a necessary item, but a TV? That’s a little extreme, isn’t it? Yes, I say, even the TV should go. Think of all the habits you want to develop, books you want to read, and intentional interactions you want to have with your family members. One of the single largest prohibitors of each of these things is your television and the amount of free time you allow it to take up. “But what about family movie night!?” you say. May I propose an alternative? If my family wants to watch a movie together, we pull out a projector, pull down a couple pictures on our living room wall and project the movie onto it. This makes our movie-watching-time intentional. This limits us to watching only a movie or so a week, and helps us to choose films that are only fitting for the whole family. 

Maybe chucking the television is a step too far for you just now. While it’s an end goal I would still encourage you to pursue, in the meantime you can still make sure you have guidelines that dictate what appropriate TV usage in your house looks like. At what time of the day is the TV allowed to be on? How many hours a week are acceptable? Keep a running log of weekly usage near your television and keep it faithfully. Though this has become a trend for different reasons, I also encourage you to cut ties with your traditional cable provider. Avoid any type of tv usage that’s not intentional. Channel surfing is the very opposite of intentional. This is a tempting and almost unavoidable side-effect of having the traditional cable package. When you do sit down to watch a movie or television show, try to consistently do this with family and friends, not in isolation. And if you’re watching a TV show make a decision beforehand about how much you’re going to watch. I advise that you refrain from watching more than an hour and a half to two hours of any given show and try not to do this more than a couple times a week. Binge-watching is the very definition of screentime abuse.

Finally, there is our computer usage. For most of us, getting rid of our computer is not a realistic option with the societal and work-related demands of the twenty-first century. And the personal computer is perhaps one of the best examples of how technology can be legitimately useful and even good. With our family living so far from grandparents, facetime is a very important part of our week. It helps us to strengthen bonds with our loved ones. Many of us have replaced traditional letter writing with email correspondence or no longer subscribe to print magazines or newspapers but instead check blogs and online news sites. All of these things have a place for strengthening our minds, hearts, and relationships, so don’t throw the technological baby out with the bathwater. However, just because a computer is often a more task-oriented machine, this doesn’t mean we are immune to misusing our time on it. Be aware of how your time in front of a screen is spent. Be intentional about it, and set reasonable time limits for yourself when using any kind of screen. Remember to live in the present moment and be human.

Most of us want to develop better habits and rid ourselves of the addictions we have to our screens. Most of us also seem to think that we possess more willpower and determination than we actually do. We think that we will be able to keep the abundant screens around us and somehow be able to overcome our addiction to them. For those of you more tempted to think this way, I want you to again refer to step number one and seriously begin to think of the time you spend with screens in your day in the category of addiction rather than bad habits. Biting your nails is a bad habit. American adults spending 11.5 hours a day interacting with some kind of screen is an addiction (especially when most of us can only reasonably allot about seven of those hours to work screentime). Think of it this way: Would you encourage an alcoholic to keep any sort of alcohol in his house in order to assert his own willpower and determination? It’s time to let the screens go.

4) Form new habits. This is the final and key step to establishing a healthy relationship with the screens in your possession. Once you have made your phone a phone again and gotten rid of the excess screens in your life, you need to find quality, purposeful things to fill your time with. One of the most common experiences for those going through a digital detox is the overwhelming sense of: “Ok, now what do I do?” Here are a few ideas for you:

-Read. We all have books that have been recommended to us, given to us, or that have attracted our interest that we just haven’t been able to get to. Now is the time! If you’re afraid that some of these titles might be too difficult or take more mental stamina than you currently possess, start small. Reacquaint yourself with excellent children’s literature, or adventure novels like The Lord of the Rings that are quick-paced, easy reading. Be patient with yourself as you try more difficult pieces of literature.

-Acquire a new skill, and then another one! Each of us ought to cultivate at least one skill that we can accomplish with our hands around our house. These are things like baking bread, sewing, crafting, sketching, or gardening. These tasks require a different kind of work for our bodies and our brains, which in the twenty-first century most of us don’t get nearly enough of.

-Give time to an organization that strengthens your community. Familiarize yourself with the needs of your parish, neighborhood, or a cause you are truly passionate about. And then schedule the time into your weekly or monthly calendar that you will volunteer for these organizations. If you have time, it’s time to give back.

-Embrace the boredom. There are going to be times when somehow there’s more time on your hands than you anticipated. Maybe it’s one of those in between times when you just got back from one appointment and you have some time before another. As you pick up around the house, cook, ready yourself or your children for the day, or drive from place to place, I encourage you to be more content with times of quiet. We don’t constantly need to be listening to something, watching something, or even doing something. Allow your brain to use this time to unwind, process things, and come up with new ideas. Studies have shown that this kind of time is absolutely essential both for our mental wellbeing, and for our ability to think creatively. Embrace it!

The process of detaching yourself from addictions is ongoing. Don’t grow discouraged when you feel you have failed; you only fail if you give up your attempts to improve yourself and the life of your family.