How to Get Kids Off Screens: Clare Morell

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How to Get Kids Off Screens: Clare Morell

Guest:Clare Morell

From the series:Taking Back Childhood from Tech: Clare Morell (Day 2 of 3)

Air date:October 20, 2026

Clare (00:04):

We, of course, as parents have to do everything we can to protect our children. That’s part of why I’m arguing not giving smartphones or social media. It’s the best protection, but we do also have to prepare them. We have to have these conversations. We have to model the kind of behavior we’d want our kids to have as adults. We need to be modeling that for them with our phones.

Dave (00:32):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann (00:38):

And I’m Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave (00:51):

All right. We’re going to talk about smartphones becoming dumb phones.

Ann (00:56):

And how our smartphones make us dumb.

Dave (01:00):

Saving our kids, saving our home from the blessings, but also the dangers. We’ve got Clare Morell back with us. Clare’s an expert in this area and a mom and a wife, so let’s get into it.

Ann (01:18):

Maybe you feel like this, Clare, having young kids too. I remember always trying to figure out, “Why aren’t they sleeping?” But I think that happens with our kids’ behavior. Where is this behavior coming from?

Clare (01:31):

Coming from. That’s right.

Ann (01:32):

Is it phone use, screen time? And so as parents, we’re not always positive like, “Oh, it’s screen time.” How do we know that? Is it by taking it away and seeing what happens?

Clare (01:43):

Some of these screen-induced behaviors and symptoms can manifest in tantrums, irritability, struggle to focus or pay attention. And some kids, it can even mimic or exacerbate symptoms of autism or ADHD. And actually the child does not have ADHD. Just taking the screen away eliminates those symptoms. Addiction scientists will say it’s actually hard to see true cause and effect from an addictive substance until you take it away. Because it’s hard for us to actually evaluate the consequences if we’re still using this to think about what is attributing to these behaviors. But doing that digital detox, and I would say even if you think, “I don’t really think my kids are impacted by screens.” One mom that they detoxed for their three boys and they really did it for their youngest child who was having all these fits and outbursts and tantrums, but their second son had autism, and they didn’t really do the detox for him, but he experienced incredible benefits from the detox.

(02:43):

And so she just encourages parents, “Aren’t you curious to know what the best version of your child could look like?”

Ann:

Yes.

Clare (02:50):

And she just says, “Just try it for 30 days. Anyone can commit to something for 30 days. If you’re skeptical about doing this over the long term, start small, do a 30-day detox, just like committing to a diet or something else. In that kind of short term, you make a plan, you talk to your family about it, you explain to your kids why you’re doing this, and you just try it out.” And I would say that almost all the families that I interviewed and spoke with, that’s how it started because they reached those 30 days and they though, “Now that we see these benefits in our kids, why would we go back? Let’s keep going.” If you’re wondering about some of these symptoms or behaviors in your kids, question the screens. And even if you don’t think your child is being negatively impacted, you can’t really truly know until you try out taking it away and see what the results look like 30 days later.

Dave (03:40):

What about the kids that do their homework on a computer?

Clare (03:45):

Yes. No, this is such a challenge.

Dave (03:47):

So every night they have to be on there and they’re like, “Mom, Dad, what are you talking about?”

Clare (03:49):

Yes.

Dave (03:50):

“Here it is.” And then, “Hey, I wasn’t going to go off this site that I’m doing my homework on, but then boop, a notification came up and yeah, I drifted off.”

Clare (03:59):

Yes. I will say it’s really hard. That’s something that’s not as much in parents’ control. And so digital detox guidelines would say get rid of all the tablets, interactive screens, video games, social media, smartphones in your house, but you can allow very limited use of school issued screens for educational purposes. Now they can’t just start surfing the internet after they complete their assignment. So it takes a ton of intentionality as parents, but you can actually still do a detox because computers, specifically if they’re used as a tool, are still different than these interactive screens that are getting these kids these constant dopamine hits. So while it may not be as ideal, it is still possible to do a detox and having very, very limited use of those educational screens with very thorough parental oversight that they’re not going off onto YouTube or games or other things.

(04:48):

They’re just completing this assignment and getting off.

Ann (04:51):

And let me ask you, you have—your oldest are six?

Clare (04:55):

Yes, almost six.

Ann (04:55):

I’m guessing you’ve already had conversations with those kids about phones. Yeah. What should this sound like? I want two categories. How do we start talking about it? And then later I want to get into if your kids are already there and they already have phones and the parents feel like it’s too late. I don’t even know if I can do a detox.

Dave (05:15):

Never too late.

Clare (05:15):

Never too late.

Ann (05:16):

It’s never too late.

Clare (05:16):

It’s never too late.

Ann (05:17):

So what’s the conversation sound like for you guys?

Clare (05:20):

Yeah. Part of my personal journey is I actually became convicted as a young mom that my smartphone was too distracting to me. And so about three years I actually got rid of my smartphone. So I have an alternative phone that doesn’t have an internet browser or social media or email. If I switch to something called the wise phone, I can text and talk and then it has a really limited kind of app store of just tool-based apps. So nothing that would be addictive or distracting, but I can—

Dave (05:46):

How do you drive anywhere?

Clare (05:47):

I have maps.

Ann:

You do have that.

Clare:

I have Venmo and Uber. I have my banking app, airlines apps. All the apps that they allow are very tool-based, not something that’s going to suck my attention away from the moment that I’m in. And so I can’t access my email. I can’t go on the internet. So if you’re at the park with your kids and you’re like, oh, I really should place this Amazon order, I can’t do it. So it really helps me be more present in the moment. Parents I talk about in the book too can take lots of steps just to dumb down your own smartphones. I have friends who’ve gotten just rid of the internet browser off their smartphone or they just ruthlessly eliminate apps. Do I need this app on my phone, particularly social media or anything distracting? No, I don’t. I’m going to delete it off my phone, and I could still do it on my computer if I needed to.

(06:31):

Conversations with our children, we’ve talked a lot about phones are not most important, people are the most important things. And so we really try to distance ourselves from our phones. We have a family phone box where we put our phones so we can enjoy meals together—

Ann:

Oh, I like that.

Clare:

—free of our devices. And then very practically, we just don’t have a lot of devices in our home. So we don’t have tablets. We don’t have a smart TV. We have an old dumb TV that on occasion we’ll do like a family movie night. And then my husband and I each have a computer that we keep really kind of out of sight, password protected, locked away. And then we each have our phones, but we have lots of conversations. Our kids aren’t allowed to touch and hold and look at our phones. So we tried to be really disciplined.

(07:14):

And then even with our boys who are four and almost six, I’ve used the book Good Pictures Bad Pictures, and they have Good Pictures Bad Pictures for elementary school kids. And then for preschool age, they have Good Pictures Bad Pictures Jr. And it just talks about how you might see bad pictures somewhere. Maybe a friend pulls something up on a phone or you see a bulletin board or something out in public. And so what do you do? And it kind of teaches kids how to turn away, run and tell their parent or tell a trusted adult. Other families I know too encourage their kids kind of with a family rule of we don’t look at phones so that if another child who does have a smartphone were to try to offer to show something to my sons on their phone, they would just say, “Oh, we don’t look at phones in my family. No, thank you.”

(08:05):

We, of course, as parents have to do everything we can to protect our children. That’s part of why I’m arguing not giving smartphones or social media. It’s the best protection, but we do also have to prepare them. We have to have these conversations. We have to model the kind of behavior we’d want our kids to have as adults. We need to be modeling that for them with our phones, and we need to be preparing them because in this digitally saturated culture, other kids are going to have smartphones. They will be adults one day and they will have to face these digital temptations. So part of the reason I get this pushback a lot, won’t these kids without smartphones binge and go crazy in college on tech later? That was not the case in any of the families I spoke to, but because they went to great effort to educate their children on the harms and explain the rationale behind these decisions to them so that they could understand it and hopefully one day own it for themselves.

(08:57):

And does that mean your teenager always loves it in the moment? No. But you treat them as an adult by explaining it to them and they can at least understand where you’re coming from and that this is a place of love. And for these kids, it really made them want to go kind of the opposite direction in college when they even got a smartphone. They weren’t interested in having social media on it. They weren’t checking it as much during the day because again, their core years of development, they had formed all their habits independent of the phones. Whereas their friends who got the smartphone at 10 or 11, all their core habits were very dependent and revolved around the phone. And so you really do set your kids up for success by protecting them and then preparing them and training them for how they handle being exposed to screens from other people or how they will handle those temptations as adults.

Ann (09:43):

We had Arlene Pellicane—have you heard of Arlene?

Clare (09:46):

Oh yes, I’ve been on her podcast. Yes. She’s so sweet.

Ann (09:49):

She explained this to her kids as they were getting older. She’s like, “When you turn 18, you can decide if you want to get one and pay for it.”

Clare (09:57):

Right. It’s your decision.

Ann (09:58):

It’s your decision. And her 18-year-old said, “I don’t want to get a smartphone.”

Clare (10:03):

That’s great.

Ann (10:03):

I’ve seen what it’s done to my friends. I can’t even really have a relationship with them because they’re so absorbed in their own phones. It’s like they’re in their own world and they can’t even talk to me.

Dave (10:14):

Did you go through a process in your own marriage where you realized, oh, the phone or tablets—is this something that’s always been in your marriage or is the last five, six years—

Ann (10:25):

Where you got rid of—

Dave (10:25):

We shifted.

Ann (10:27):

Yeah.

Clare (10:27):

I think we had some awareness going into marriage, but then of course when we had our first child and then I’m doing all this research and initially we had a smart TV and then it was kind of a fluke accident. My husband was trying to clear stuff out of the way, and he shoved my son’s Little Tikes shopping cart too hard, and it ran into our TV stand, and the TV just fell and the screen completely smashed. But then my husband was like, “You know what? This is providential. I wanted to get rid of the smart TV.” Because we just actually saw that our son, even though we didn’t really let him use it, was drawn to it. He was intrigued. So we actually just went without a TV for several years. We just decided we didn’t need one. And then it was only more recently, we just got a dumb TV.

(11:11):

And so now we have to connect it to something to play a movie or something for our kids. But no, we definitely evolved. And then I think lots of friends of ours would say, “Well, how are you going to fly with him on an airplane without a tablet?” And so there was that kind of like, “Should we get a tablet for airplane flights? You know what? No. We’re going to have other alternative activities.” So we’ve definitely gone through iterations of just how do we think about this well? And families will land in different places on exactly how they set screen time boundaries. The tech exit is really a prohibition on interactive screens like tablets, smartphones, video games, social media. But I’m not saying your family can’t have a television or a family computer where children are learning to use this computer as a tool with parental supervision, or you use that television as a family for an entertainment activity that brings you all together.

(12:02):

And so I talk about that in the chapter, on how do we set up digital accountability and family screen rules in the home, that there are certain screens that are not as inherently addictive that we can use in ways that are more intentional. And so I’m not a complete ledder complete from the prohibition. I get asked that question a lot. The guiding principles are any screen use is always public and purposeful, that there’s no private devices, there’s no using screens in private places. It’s a family computer in a public setting where they’re doing a school assignment and anyone can walk by and it’s purposeful. They’re not then just surfing the internet. They do their assignment, then they get off. And then for screen entertainment, it’s sparing and shared. So in the families I spoke to, this was not a daily habit of watching TV, but maybe a Friday night family movie night or a sporting game on a Saturday, but it was something they always shared and did us a shared experience so that the screens are not dividing the family, but it’s something used intentionally.

(12:58):

So those are just a couple categories that I give to parents, and we’ve tried to use those principles in how we think through things in our home. And so yeah, we don’t have any tablets or anything and our kids don’t need to use computers for school yet, but we do occasionally use our dumb TV.

Dave (13:17):

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Ann (13:24):

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Dave (13:26):

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Ann (13:36):

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Dave (13:46):

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Ann (14:15):

Join us.

I want you to close this time with just talking about your last part of your book called Feast.

Clare (14:24):

Yes, yes. We have to get to the positive.

Ann (14:26):

Yes. Let’s talk about how do we do this? What can it look like?

Clare (14:29):

Yes. I wanted to give parents an acronym they could easily hold onto, and I wanted it to evoke this sense of positivity that the saying no to screens, the tech exit is fundamentally, it’s a positive no because it’s saying yes to so much more in life. And so if we’re fasting from these screens, we’re trying to help our kids actually FEAST on real life the way that God created them to. F is find other families. I talked about this a little bit, but just especially for Christians, we have the church, this is a really natural counter community and that just finding one or two other families to do this with you. We were talking about those pressures of every other kid having one. That doesn’t need to be the case. If we can actually band together and just talk to each other, I think most parents feel pressured into it.

(15:16):

And if we just actually talk to each other, we’d say, “Oh, you don’t want to do the phone too? Me neither. Let’s not together. And then our kids will have friends who aren’t on the phone.” So there is so much strength in numbers and just having a couple of friends in your life and in your kids’ peer group really makes such a kind of positive buffer against those pressures towards the phone.

Ann (15:37):

Have you found that?

Clare (15:37):

Find other families. Oh yes, completely. Most of the families that I interviewed in the book said that that was the key factor for their success in doing this over the long term is they knew at least one or maybe two other families who also were saying no. And you need that as parents, both the allies and encouragement to kind of shore up your own resolve. And then your kids genuinely do need friends. And I had lots of parents say even their decision to not give smartphones was actually very positively friend filtering for their kids. So some of their friends didn’t have the phones and that was helpful. But then even their friends who did, they showed that they were a real friend by actually reaching out to that kid even if they weren’t on the social media apps.

Ann:

Yeah.

Dave (16:18):

I mean, have you heard of those kids?

Clare (16:18):

And so you find your real friends faster.

Dave (16:21):

Have you heard of those kids getting made fun of?

Clare (16:23):

I think somewhat. But then again, what these parents said is then they just didn’t really spend time with those kids. They found the kids who were actually willing to, as this dad said, accommodate their difference. And that’s what a real friend does. If you don’t prefer to do this thing or you don’t have this phone, I’m going to respect that and accommodate your difference. And so these kids ended up having both friends who didn’t have phones and some who did, but who genuinely were good friends and would reach out to them even if they weren’t on the apps. E, we already talked about, was just explain, educate, and exemplify the importance of educating our kids, explaining the rationale, and then exemplifying this wise, healthy use of phones ourselves as adults for them because we really are their biggest teachers. And so no, the answer is not giving our child a smartphone to train them on it.

(17:11):

We want to form their habits without it, but it is modeling good behaviors that they will observe in our homes and hopefully replicate us adults. A is very simple, adopt alternatives. We talked about the Wisephone is one alternative. Adults can adopt too.

Ann:

Any other?

Clare:

But there’s many for kids. The Pinwheel phone, the Bark phone, the Gabb phone. These are all phones that actually even kind of look like a smartphone, but it just doesn’t have internet, social media, gaming apps, nothing addictive or distracting. They’re all kind of designed, I would say, again, I would delay the age of first cell phone as long as possible, but when your child starts operating independently, like late high school, they’re driving, they need communication, opting for one of these alternatives instead. And then S is set up digital accountability and family screen rules in the home, which we discussed just how do we then have a proper healthy use of computers or televisions while we say no to these other addictive interactive screens?

(18:07):

And then just this Christian principle really of accountability, just any kind of communication channels a child has access to, whether it’s email or even texting on one of these dumb phone alternatives, there’s this expectation of parental accountability that if I have a concern, I can check these channels of communication. And that accountability is itself the protection. Parents said, “I wasn’t constantly snooping, but the child knew I could access it.” And so it actually just promoted more transparency in the home. Kids were more willing to say, “Hey, you’re actually going to see, if you go on my phone, you’ll see this text message from this friend. It was inappropriate. I told them not to do that.” And it just actually created more opportunities for parents to come alongside and guide their kids. So modeling that accountability is really important too.

Ann (18:53):

I wonder, I remember our kids in high school, when everybody was going to a spring break thing and I said, “We’re not going to do that. Our family’s not going to do that.” I remember it’s like, “Oh, oh, it’s because you don’t trust me. You don’t trust me.” Oh, make the biggest thing about it. And I remember saying, “I don’t know if I’d trust myself in those situations.”

Clare (19:14):

No, we adults need the accountability too. And I think it’s—yeah. So I always encourage parents, even if you’re not doing the smartphone, if they have any access to a phone or email, just setting up that digital accountability in the home. And part of that too is that computer use should always be public and purposeful, that there’s this in-person accountability. So I always tell parents, yes, you can install an internet filter. It’s probably a wise thing to do for an additional layer of protection, but you just can’t count on it. These parental controls, there’s just too many loopholes. The best protection is really that in-person accountability in the family.

Ann (19:48):

Okay, T.

Clare (19:49):

T is just trade screens for real life responsibilities and pursuits. And this was the most fun chapter to write because it was just about all the things these families filled their kids’ time with instead. And I will say what stood out to me especially was it wasn’t just play, it wasn’t just hobbies, sports and music, though those are great things for kids. It really all centered on real life relationships and responsibility. Kids need a greater purpose in life than just play. We know this from the Bible. We want to call them to this higher standard and really to try to train them to love God and love others and to learn—

Ann:

It’s Deuteronomy 6.

Clare:

Yes, and to learn to serve. And so that starts small in the home. These families would often give their kids chores, responsibilities around the house to learn to help serve the family.

(20:34):

And then as they got older, that would expand outward to their neighborhood, their school, their church, encouraging our children in this service to God and to others and helping them lift their eyes both upwards and outwards, whereas the screen really just caves kids in on themselves and turns their eyes inward. There’s so many things you can do in real life, but just centering it around those relationships and the family and the church and primarily teaching them to have a relationship with Jesus through his word and then encouraging them to learn then ways to serve other people and take on more responsibilities. By doing that, you really set your children up for success as adults. You help them progress towards adulthood where screens really, just stunts that development. It undermines that self-control and that just thinking of other people. It’s just an inherently self-focused device. And that’s what I tell Christian parents.

(21:26):

It’s not just about the content, the screen, the medium itself is the message. The message it sends kids is life is all about you. It’s all about your own entertainment and pleasure, and it just completely revolves around you. It’s such a self-focused, individualized device that just teaches our kids the purpose of life is entertainment, or the purpose of life is consumption rather than teaching them the purpose of their lives is to love and serve God and love and serve others. And that is what will bring also their greatest flourishing and blessing and joy and delight. That chapter is really just about how do we do that? How do we teach our kids those real-life skills and relationships and responsibilities when we take the screens away?

Dave (22:07):

Yeah, I would just add, hearing you say that I really want to look at the mom and dad and say, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, I want to do this.

Ann (22:17):

Yes.

Dave (22:18):

But you’re also thinking this is really going to be hard. And you know what? You right. It’s going to be—

Ann (22:22):

And you’re going to hear it from your kids. They’re going to complain.

Clare (22:24):

It is going to be hard. And you know what most parents said too is hardest with their first kid, right? You’re laying the foundation. But then I interviewed one of, this son, and he was number four in this family and I said, “Was this hard for you? Did you resent your parents? Did you resist these things?” He’s like, “Honestly, not really. I saw them raise my older brother and they really didn’t give in. And so by the time it got to me, I was like, ‘Yeah, there’s no chance I’m getting a smartphone, so why would I fight it?’” So I do think you’re laying such a foundation. It is initially costly, especially with that first child and if you’re reversing course those first couple weeks. But I would just say it really is never too late, especially for Christians. We have the most hope. We have everything we need in God’s Word.

(23:05):

It is sufficient for all of these challenges. And we have the hope that God can redeem our mistakes, that He can redeem things that we didn’t know that we did wrongly, and He can reverse these effects on our kids. And I often hear from parents, “Well, they only have one year left at home, and we already gave the smartphone, so it’s kind of too late.” And I’m like, “No, it’s the opposite. You have one year left with this child that you can actually set them up well for adulthood. You can help reshape their habits and set them up with good habits to go off to college.” And so even any amount of time you have left, God can really redeem that, and we can use that then to set our kids up for true flourishing as adults. It’s never too late.

Dave (23:48):

I mean, this is kind of stuff that is literally going to change homes. You got to take control of this area. I think parents, we feel like we’ve lost control, we have no control. We can take back this area and save our kids from a life of heartache.

Ann (24:04):

Yeah, because it feels impossible. And honestly, Dave, even as grandparents, I feel like we’re guilty of being on our phones too much with our grandkids. They always want our phones when they come over.

Dave (24:15):

You definitely are. I’m pretty good at it. No, we’re both really bad. But here’s the deal. You want help? We got help. It’s called The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones. And you can just go to FamilyLifeToday.com and click on the link in the show notes and get the book for yourself and your friends.

Ann (24:34):

And we have resources to help you as a parent, and you can go to FamilyLife.com/ParentingHelp.

Dave (24:45):

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