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Episode 4 is here! Today, we are continuing to focus on technology and how screens affect us. We are looking at screens’ impacts on us and how we could possibly live with no screens. Specifically, we are talking about whether or not you should go “no screens”? Is it even possible? And, why would you even want to?

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Links:

Habits Guide
Reset Your Child’s Brain: A Four Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time by Victoria Dunckley
1,000 Hours Outside Interview with Victoria Dunckley
Tech-wise Family
Reclaiming Conversation
The Common Rule
Habits of the Household
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood–and What That Means for the Rest of Us
S1E3 – Does Technology Rule Your Life?

Download the notes for our technology worksheet here. You can subscribe to the blog to access our free subscriber library for more bible studies, devotionals, and printables.

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Here at A More Beautiful Life Collective, we know that the hectic hurry of everyday life can drown out our focus on what matters. This podcast is a moment to intentionally pause and realign our focus. Together, we’re working to find the rhythm of Peace in him through the pace of beauty and order. Thanks so much for joining me.

Announcements

Hey everyone! Welcome back to A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast! I’m so glad you are back here to listen to episode 4! Before we get started, here are a couple of quick announcements to keep you updated on all the awesome things that are going on around here!

If you haven’t yet, make sure you check out our show notes. Here you’ll find all the links to books, other podcasts, guides, and more. You can also check out the blog which has more content geared towards making your life more beautiful. If you subscribe to the blog, you’ll get access to our free subscriber library. You’ll get an email every week with news and updates from the blog including the latest blog posts and podcasts. You’ll also get access to our free subscriber library. The library has tons of resources for you, including free devotionals and other printables. I’m adding to it regularly, so I hope you’ll come check it out! You can also subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube so that you never miss an episode. If you haven’t yet, please leave a rating and review. This helps others to find the podcast, and I would be so grateful for your help in growing our community! Now onto the episode!

Should we live with no screens?

In our last episode, we focused on the role that technology plays in our lives. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, I encourage you to go back and listen because that really sets the groundwork for what we are going to be talking about today. In that episode, we focused on what our current habits of technology are and what we are trying to get out of technology. Specifically, we looked at the way that technology can be an idol in our lives if we are not careful. We sacrifice our time, our children, and our health on the altar of social media, sports, online shopping, and video games – and we are often unaware that we are even doing so.

At the end of the last episode, I read 10 tech-wise family commitments that can equip you in your struggle with technology. After reading those, I realized we really needed to spend more time unpacking the role technology can play in our lives – and to what extent we need to place limits on our technology use. One big question we need to ask ourselves is whether or not we should live ‘no screens.’ How would life be different if we decided to live that way? Is it even possible? And why would we even want to?

So today, we are going to be focusing on two things: (1) What technology is doing to us and our children and (2) Some specific pointers to which we can refer to control our technology habits. I’m basing much of what we are talking about today off of two fabulous books, Reset Your Child’s Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time and The Tech-wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place. If what we are discussing today is interesting, I encourage you to get those books and read them! You can find a link to purchase both of those in the show notes. If you purchase the link, I get a small commission at no cost to you that really helps offset the cost of the show and the blog! I appreciate it!

What are screens doing to our brains?

So let’s start off by thinking about what screens are doing to our brains. I know that this can be a touchy subject. I really love technology – in fact, if you ask many of my coworkers, they would tell you that I’m the tech person. My dad was an engineer, and it seems like I was born with a computer in my hand. Some of my earliest memories are playing computer games with my cousins or watching Disney movies on repeat. We had the latest gaming consoles, and I just grew up knowing how technology works.

You would think with my background, I would say that technology is the best thing. But, I also know the feeling of being in a fog because of too much screen time. And no matter your age, I think you can relate.

Think back to the most recent time when you’ve felt this way (or the most recent time you’ve seen your child or someone you know act this way):

Time Distortion: Like time just slipped out of your fingers, you look down at the clock and realize that 30 minutes to an hour has past when you meant to only spend a few minutes on your phone or playing a game.
Irritation: When someone or something breaks your concentration on your technology of choice, you feel irrationally annoyed or angry that they are tearing you away from that thing.
Wired and Tired: Your mind is racing and you can’t go to sleep at night, but you are so sleepy. You wake up the next morning in a fog.
Technology-craving: You grab your phone and Facebook or Instagram pops up even though you meant to text someone back. You play a game and you start playing it even though you know you have to get something done for class. You can’t tear your eyes away from Ted Lasso or the Netflix show you are binge-watching.
Hyperarousal: According to Victoria Dunkley a state of hyperarousal could include “significant dysfunction in school, at home, or with peers. Typical signs and symptoms mimic chronic stress or sleep deprivation and can include irritable, depressed, or rapidly changing moods, excessive or age-inappropriate tantrums, low frustration tolerance, poor self-regulation, disorganized behavior, oppositional-defiant behaviors, poor sportsmanship, social immaturity, poor eye contact, insomnia/non-restorative sleep, learning difficulties, and poor short-term memory” (p.17). She even says that ‘tics, stutters, hallucinations, or seizure activity’ can be related to screen time.
Social Immaturity: Maybe this is not something you’ve seen, but you’ve seen your child or a student you work with who seems a little young for their age. Maybe like the young people interviewed for the book iGen, these people are delaying adulthood and all its markers like a job, driver’s license, and significant other and instead pursuing video games or TikToks. I know that as a teacher there were students that just seemed a little immature and unable to handle social situations that we faced with ease.

We live in an epidemic of kids feeling anxious and depressed, and we are at a loss. And if you haven’t talked to any of your teacher friends recently, we also live in an epidemic of kids being disrespectful, hyper, and immature in class. Screens are a constant distraction, and I can tell you how many times I asked a kid to flip over their iPad because they were too distracted by it. We laugh off these things, and some of the veteran teachers around us wish for the days of teaching when there were no iPads. But, I don’t know if we really stop and think about any truly negative impacts of technology. Is there truly anything bad with it? Or is it just another change in modern life with some risks and some rewards? I think most people would say there are some drawbacks to technology: excessive use, some negative aspects of social media, and obesity. But, most would say the risks outweigh the rewards. I’m talking to you via technology right now. My daughter’s new pajamas are going to be delivered today because I ordered them yesterday with the click of a button. There are some pretty amazing perks of technology!

But, we never really stop and think is there anything worse happening because of technology? Yeah, kids don’t read books… but I bet a lot of you would say things aren’t that bad. The author of the book Reset Your Child’s Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time, Victoria Dunckley, would beg to differ. The symptoms I read to you before, hyperarousal, sleep deprivation, irritation, time distortion, and technology craving and/or addiction, are hallmarks of a new condition she describes as Electronic Screen Syndrome, or ESS. Victoria Dunckley is an integrative psychiatrist who specializes in finding alternative ways to treat patients in addition to or in lieu of medicine. What she has found is that children diagnosed with bipolar disorder, ADHD, depression, and anxiety respond to her prescription of a screen fast rather than a stronger dose of medicine.

In her book, she describes what ESS is and the other conditions that ESS seems to mimic. Then, she spends the latter half of the book with step-by-step instructions for how to complete a screen fast. Importantly, she states that many of her patients’ symptoms either go away or are strongly reduced when they go on a strict screen fast.

Screens and their impacts on mind, body, and community

In her book, she goes into detail about the way that screens impact our minds. I’ll just highlight a couple of things here for you, but if you’re interested or if you have or work with a child that has ADHD or these other diagnoses, I really encourage you to read her book.

Screens affect every part of our life. For instance, our eyes, which are meant to be viewing things in detail outside, can have serious damage done if they are only viewing things on a screen. There is even a computer vision syndrome which causes blurred vision, headaches, and dry, irritated eyes due to the LED light emitted from screens. Our vision can be damaged if we never have our kids outside and off of screens. As Ginny Yurich says, there are statistics that kids spend an average of 1200 hours on screens a year while spending an average of 4-6 minutes outside during the school year. There have even been studies that state that the long-range vision that helps to train our own far-sighted vision is only done out of doors. Our eyes never get that workout if we stay inside looking at screens all the time.

In addition to this, the brain is also changed because of screen time. It can affect our fight-or-flight response, leading to heightened arousal. This is not just due to video games (though there have been studies that have linked video game use to almost PTSD-like response in children who played over 8 hours of violent gaming a day – which is a higher percentage than you would think). Part of this heightened arousal is just the intensity and vividness of the screen time usage (which can happen during educational games, social media, and traditional video gaming). It also is due to the lack of sleep. Screens are designed to trigger a dopamine response so that we keep coming back to them (like we mentioned in the last episode), so they trigger our addiction pathways as well. In fact, some brain imaging has shown that screens affect the same dopamine pathways as other drugs like amphetamines.

When we are constantly in this fight or flight response (aka heightened arousal), it can raise cortisol levels (which throws off our blood sugar and other hormones) and create oxidative stress, which can lead nutrients away from the brain. All of this leads to cognitive dysfunction, impaired social interactions, and mood dysregulation. Dunckley sums it up by saying, “Research has demonstrated brain shrinkage in processing areas (gray matter) including the frontal lobe” – where we make decisions, manage time, and remember deadlines – “loss of integrity in connection pathways (white matter)” – where we remember what we’ve been learning, “reduced cortical thickness (higher brain areas); and more impulsive but less accurate cognitive processing. When video game addicts are shown cues that induce “craving,” their brains light up in the same areas that drug-addicted brains do. Finally dopamine receptors may become desensitized, effectively requiring larger amounts of dopamine to do the same job” (p. 87).

In other words, every aspect of our minds is affected by technology and screen time. And, it’s even worse for our kids. Their brains are literally being stunted by technology use because of the heightened stress they are in. And they are so addicted to the ‘substance’ of technology that they don’t want to give it up. They couldn’t even fathom living no screens.

When screentime goes unchecked, a whole host of conditions can pop up that are traditionally treated with large amounts of medications whether they are actually needed or not. When people are using technology, they are getting large amounts of dopamine. When that source of dopamine is removed (at school or due to something else), there is a crash. That crash can lead to irritability or even depression. In addition, behaviors related to a large amount of technology use can generally lead to lesser production of serotonin (which needs morning sunlight and physical activity).

Attention and Social Behaviors are also related to ESS because of the brain’s inability to develop in the frontal lobe. People who are forgetful, struggle with keeping track of items, have a hard time getting started on assignments and projects, and have trouble staying on task are generally diagnosed with ADHD, but Dunckley would argue that screens play a big part in that. Because of the high state of stress a person is in due to screen time, the person might try to exert control over their surroundings by becoming oppositionally defiant. Or, they might have heightened social anxiety because they have developed a dependence on screens in order to connect with others. When they are trying to talk to someone without screens they may feel uncomfortable. They have never built up enough tolerance or practice to overcome those difficult situations. Importantly, “Because social skills and mood regulation are dependent on good frontal lobe function” – which excessive screen time stunts – “children with ESS often act much younger than their years and they may be teased, bullied, or ostracized because of outbursts” when they show poor sportsmanship, act bossy or controlling, are super competitive, or have meltdowns and excessively blame others (p. 83). There is a negative feedback loop here, where people feel uncomfortable in social situations and isolate themselves from others, which makes them turn to screens so that they never get the practice or frontal lobe production needed to overcome these social interactions. Because they are not living no screens, they have many negative consequences.

Screentime is affecting us in many ways, and it’s mostly negative.

How does ‘no screens’ alleviate all these problems?

Now that you’ve learned about the potential impacts of living with screens, what do you do about it? Could you possibly live with no screens? How would that even look?

Dunckley mentions some major concerns about living with no screens – lack of screen-related social activities, no screen-related breaks for parents, and potential lifestyle change. But, whether you decide to do a 3 week fast like she recommends as a reset or significantly change your screen time use indefinitely, it’s hard to imagine what this life would look like.

This is where The Tech-wise Family comes in. Last week, I read some of the tech-wise family commitments that the author, Andy Crouch, recommended for his family. I think this shows you the richness of a no screens lifestyle. Yes, his book is written from the perspective of a father passing along wisdom to other families, but I think that this is important for everyone who is trying to passionately pursue Christ in their lives. If you are dealing with ESS, which I think can affect anyone, then you are being inhibited in your walk with God – just like not being sober would inhibit you in your walk with God. We want to be sober-minded, and that means being very diligent about not being ruled by screens. We really need to take seriously the question of whether or not we need to live with no screens.

Andy Crouch is an author, speaker, musician, and dad. He wrote Tech-wise Family to describe the life that he had created with his kids that severely limited screens, a life I think Dr. Dunckley would approve of.

Andy Crouch begins his book with the following statement, “This book is about how to find the proper place for technology in our family lives – and how to keep it there. If only it were as simple as cleaning up a bunch of stuffed animals. Technology is literally everywhere in our homes – not only the devices in our pockets but the invisible electromagnetic waves that flood our homes. This change has come about overnight, in the blink of an eye in terms of human history and culture” (p. 16). When technology is in its proper place, it can be a tool that connects others (like we’re doing right now!), facilitates creativity and communication, and showcases the beauty of everyday life. Outside of its proper place, we are creating the people who are facing the effects of ESS as we described before.

Crouch’s recommendations for how to put technology into its proper place include two facets – nudges and disciplines. Nudges are changes in our environments that lead to less use of technology (like switching your phone to grayscale which I mentioned in the last episode) and disciplines are repeated habits that are crucial to develop in our everyday lives. He recommends living with no screens.

If you didn’t catch them last time, here are his ten tech-wise commitments:

We develop wisdom and courage together as a family.
We want to create more than we consume. So we fill the center of our home with things that reward skill and active engagement.
We are designed for a rhythm of work and rest. So one hour a day, one day per week, and one week a year, we turn off our devices and worship, feast, play, and rest together.
We wake up before our devices do, and they “go to bed” before we do.
We aim for “no screens before double digits” at school and at home.
We use screens for a purpose, and we use them together, rather than using them aimlessly and alone.
Car time is conversation time.
Spouses have one another’s passwords, and parents have total access to children’s devices.
We learn to sing together, rather than letting recorded and amplified music take over our lives and worship.
We show up in person for the big events of life. We learn how to be human by being fully present in our moments of greatest vulnerability. We hope to die in one another’s arms.

~ From “The Tech-wise Family” by Andy Crouch, p. 41-42

A No Screens Lifestyle

So let’s break down some key components that connect all of these commitments.

As a people, we need to connect in person about the things that matter, not over screens about vanities and petty squabbles.

Technology is inhibiting our ability for intimacy. In her book Reclaiming Conversation, Sherry Turkle describes how humans naturally need about 7 minutes to get into a deep, real conversation with someone. Every time we are interrupted, that clock restarts. Technology interrupts us constantly, so we are never able to actually connect with others.

Technology, whether music, my personal favorite podcasts, or other screens, has elbowed its way into time that was normally dedicated to conversation, like car rides, family dinners, or late nights talking with friends.

We have to value face-to-face interaction and conversation. You don’t get to real intimacy without it. This means we have to set boundaries and limits on our technology use to facilitate that conversation.

We put limits and boundaries on our screen time to control them instead of letting them control us.

Technology is like clutter. It’s like a weed. It is invasive and creeps into our lives without us actually realizing it’s happening. I’ve been on a journey of trying to limit my screen time for a long time. There have been several times when I go to my husband and say ‘Okay our son is done watching Paw Patrol.’ Or, ‘Okay I’m off Facebook.’ Or ‘Okay, I hate my phone.’ But, a few months later, my son is watching TV and I’m staring at social media on my phone. It’s so easy to want to do something but struggle with the enforcing of that thing.

As we talked about in our last episode, it’s important to set boundaries and curate our use. Some boundaries that we can set for ourselves and our families are to limit when we are able to use technology, where the technology stays, and how often we have access to technology.

I was one of those “weird kids” who wasn’t able to get a smartphone until I graduated from high school. I did have Facebook, but I was only able to access it from my laptop which I didn’t have all the time. That limit helped me to not be so attached to screens. I actually deactivated my Facebook for a while and severely limited my own use in high school. I think it was because I wasn’t in the ‘technology brain fog’ that just led to more and more use.

Creating a threshold boundary for the age at which your kids get technology is so important. Once they have a phone – which like Crouch says should at least be in the double digits but Dunckley recommends as long as you can possibly wait – that phone should live in common areas. As a former teacher, I can attest that nothing good comes from phone usage after bedtime. It should stay plugged up where you know your child isn’t using it. The same goes for you. If there is a true emergency, people know where to find you. Falling asleep while looking at your phone doesn’t help you at all. It can make your sleep worse and non-restorative.

You need breaks and boundaries that limit your use which requires discipline and also nudges. I keep my charging cables on the kitchen counter so I’m not tempted to bring my phone into my room. I’ve heard of people using a projector instead of a TV. Every time they want to watch something they have to set up the projector which adds enough friction to limit how much TV that person watches.

Doing a total screen fast or sabbath can also be a way to limit your time. What’s important is to replace screen time with something fun that you enjoy. You don’t want to go from this dopamine-producing device to nothing. You won’t stick with your new habit. You need to figure out something else that makes you happy that will make your new lifestyle enjoyable

We value real rest, movement, nature, creativity, and worship rather than the counterfeit versions of these that technology provides.

Which brings us to our last point: Replace screen time with real things. Screen time offers counterfeit versions of things that God has commanded us to do as a gift to us. It seems like a night at home relaxing is restful but think about the last time that you spent a night at home glued to your phone. Were you rested? Or think about the last time that you listened to a song on the radio did it provide the same feeling as when you sang that song with your church or friends? Or when you watched the latest game? Is it anything like the last pick-up game you played of football, frisbee, or pickleball? Probably not. We know that technology offers an easier but not as rewarding version of the things that we love to do. The issue is that when we repeatedly turn to technology to satisfy our craving to do these hard things – singing, movement, worship, rest, time outside – doing the actual thing becomes “too much” as my students would say. It is too difficult, too hard, and not as immediately rewarding. And, without the practice, that thing will never be rewarding. I have to get used to the weather, the bugs, and the sun (or lack of it) to enjoy my time outside. If I turn to recorded music all the time, I will never learn to play my own. If I turn to watching sports to satisfy my need for movement and competition, I will never get better at playing it myself.

We have to practice all of these things in real life in order to truly get better at them and reap their benefits. It requires us to risk being different, to risk the no screens lifestyle to truly grow and change. To have better working minds, bodies, and relationships.

What do you think? Would you risk it? Would you want to reap the rewards?

Join the Community

Thanks so much for listening! You can come join the conversation at A More Beautiful Life Collective on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. I would love to hear your thoughts on technology and the no screen life. You can message me there or leave a comment! If anything that we’ve talked about today has interested you, I really encourage you to get a copy of Reset Your Child’s Brain, the Tech-wise Family, and Habits of the Household. You can get a link to all of those books in the show notes. If you purchase it through the link, I get a small commission which is so helpful – and at no cost to you. Next week we are going to jump into the importance of the habit of personal spiritual disciplines. I hope you’ll join us. See you next week!

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