How to change screen time habits: Q&A with Childhood Unplugged author Katherine Johnson Martinko 

In 2023, Katherine Johnson Martinko published her first book, Childhood Unplugged: Practical Advice to Get Kids Off Screens and Find Balance, about her experience raising three boys almost entirely screen-free. “No parent I’ve ever talked to wishes their kid spent more time online; it’s always the opposite,” Johnson Martinko writes. “Many parents want a different family dynamic but don’t know where to start.” Childhood Unplugged, full of her experiences and ideas to encourage play, offers just that—a place to start.

We spoke with Johnson Martinko about how she’s navigated screen time as her kids entered their teenage years—they’re now 16, 14, and 10. For more on the author and speaker’s work, check out her Substack, The Analog Family, and her monthly column for The Globe and Mail. Later this year, she’ll publish her second book, Hold the Phone: How Parents Can Rescue Their Kids From Too Much Screen Time. 

What prompted you to write your first book? 

I have three kids, and I was raising them in a largely screen-free environment. But that had been done unconsciously—it was just the way that I’d been raised. We’ve never had a TV. I’d never bought an iPad. I didn’t get an iPhone until many years after everyone else did. So my kids largely lived in this tech-free home that just seemed totally natural to us. But as they got older, a lot of people started asking me questions about it, and that’s when I realized that maybe I had an unconventional perspective on how to approach childhood.

At the same time, I was working as an editor at Treehugger, an environmental news website. I was writing a lot about the importance of outdoor play and building independence and resilience in kids. And I had also read a lot of research about how technology was starting to undermine kids’ opportunities to develop those skills. So I saw this connection between the more devices we give kids indoors, the less inclined they are to go outside. 

Can you talk a bit more about how raising your kids the way you did mirrored the way that you grew up in the ‘90s?

I grew up in Muskoka, and I lived on the edge of a little lake deep in the forest with no year-round neighbours. I was the oldest of four kids. My memories of my childhood are of time spent outside, playing on the water, in the forest with my siblings, doing a lot of canoeing and hiking and skating and skiing and snowshoeing, building fires, building forts, climbing trees.

Then I met my husband, who was the product of a very different upbringing. He grew up in Mississauga, in suburbia, and spent a lot of time playing video games and watching TV and not going outside as much, as the son of first-generation immigrants who thought that letting their kid watch TV all the time was just what you did in Canada. And so when we swapped notes, he felt that he’d missed out on this wealth of outdoor-based childhood experiences. So we decided to raise our kids more in the style that I’d been raised.

What is your approach to screen time in your home? At one point in the book, you use the term “analog childhood.” 

I often describe it as a digital-minimalist approach. I do believe that much of modern technology can be beneficial. I would be silly to say that I want to live in a world without it, because my entire career has been enabled by it. So having a laptop and an internet connection in my home allowed me to become a writer and an editor and a public speaker, and a figure who talks about this. 

The problem is that we’ve let technology creep into our lives, and it has become our primary form of entertainment and communication. It’s started replacing a lot of our interpersonal relationships, and we ceased living as much in the real world as a result of it. So the digital-minimalist approach advocates for using it as a tool, not a toy. It advocates for delaying access. So I have been very strict about holding out on not letting my kids get access to this technology in our home for as long as possible.

My oldest son turned 16 last year, and he’s moving abroad later this year for a full year of exchange. We’ve decided he’s ready. He’s got a driver’s license. Now it’s time to introduce a smartphone with a contract. I’d say that digital minimalism also prioritizes in-person interactions over online ones, so always making a point of being off of devices in the presence of others, if possible, not texting and talking to your kid at the same time, because that’s a little bit hurtful. And obviously prioritizing outdoor play, time spent in nature, especially for kids. 

Is your oldest the only child with a smartphone? 

Yes. The rule in the house is no one’s going to get a smartphone until they’re at least 16. I got that rule from Dr. Jean Twenge, an author and psychology prof at San Diego State University. She explained to me that she thinks that giving a kid a smartphone should be on par with getting a driver’s license in terms of the level of maturity that’s required to handle one. 

What’s the smartphone contract like for your 16-year-old?

It has clearly outlined rules for our expectations of use and consequences for misuse. He’s not allowed to take it to school, and he cannot ever take it in his room, and he can’t have social media yet. It explains that owning a phone is a privilege; it’s not a right. His parents pay for it and for the plan, which, up until recently, had no data at all. It outlines how he should always treat people with respect. Never post anything that you wouldn’t want to be made public, that would embarrass you. Don’t send inappropriate photos of anyone. Do not participate in any kind of group chats where that kind of stuff is swirling around.

I didn’t put strict screen time limits on it, because it really hasn’t been an issue. His phone lives in the kitchen. It stays there all night. It stays there all day when he’s at school, so he really can only check it in the morning and in the afternoon or the evening, when he’s at home and he’s in a common area. There’s not privacy for him to go down rabbit holes watching YouTube videos. 

When your kids were younger, they weren’t allowed any screen time, right? How has that changed?

They would watch movies occasionally on a computer. We had no video games, and they still don’t have iPads. But as they moved into high school, that’s when I set up iMessage on our desktop computer, so that they could at least be able to communicate with their friends and not feel completely cut off. So now we have a computer in our home where the kids can log in using my Apple ID, and they can send iMessages to their friends. But it lives in a permanent location in the home. It’s not portable, in their pocket, accessible every minute of the day. It’s in a common area where I’m able to keep an eye on how much time they’re spending there, what kind of things they’re doing. 

How do you think having a mostly screen-free existence at home has affected your kids’ play?

I think it’s been the best thing ever. As soon as a smartphone or a tablet or a video console lands in a child’s home, it pushes out all of their interest in other activities that may have piqued their curiosity in the past. In the past—or in the case of my kids—if you were slightly bored, you’d have to do something about it. You’d have to go outside. You’d have to crack open a book or spread out a board game and convince someone to play with you or come up with the rules of a new imaginary game.

But if you give them something else that’s just available and instantaneously at the swipe of their fingertips or a button, they can be sucked into a world that’s hyper-stimulating. They are going to choose that option every single time, and why wouldn’t they? We do it too as adults—it’s just so easy. It’s just so alluring. So when you are not trained to follow that path of least resistance every single second of your life, I think you do become better at playing, at entertaining yourself, at focusing, at brainstorming, at daydreaming, speculating—all these things that are such an integral part of being human. I would say that my kids are pretty good at it, because that’s what they’ve always grown up doing, which is really, really wonderful to see. 

AfL: What would you suggest to parents who didn’t start with firm screen-time boundaries and are struggling with their child not being able to play independently? Or the child is reliant on the parent for entertainment?

I talk to a lot of parents who are in that situation. First of all, it’s never too late. No matter how far gone you feel things are in your home, you can always walk back the tech use. I also urge parents: Don’t beat yourself up over a technology that you may have introduced prematurely, maybe without realizing what the negative effects might have been. Don’t feel bad. The point is now to look at it and ask: Is this the life you want for your child? I’m definitely a fan of going cold turkey. I think that when a kid can see a device or it’s just there in their peripheral vision, it can make it really hard for them to get into independent play. I would just get rid of tech completely, if you can, for at least for a four-week period. There’s research that suggests it takes four weeks to get screens out of a child’s system in order to actually kind of reestablish their emotional baseline. 

Independent play is a muscle that has to be developed and it has to be trained. When you are embarking on this journey, it can feel really difficult. There’s going to be growing pains. It’s going to hurt. There’s this virtual cycle of improvement that happens where kids become more emotionally regulated, they become calmer, they become happier, they become more curious and creative, and everything just starts getting better.

So don’t give up. You have to stick it out. It’s not easy to get your kids off of an extremely addictive device and give them something as boring as just regular toys, but given enough time, they will become better at it. It becomes easier and easier. 

How can parents set up their home in a way that encourages kids’ play? 

You have to look at your home environment through the eyes of a child. Kids need stuff to do, and that might mean getting more materials in your home that make it easier for kids to play, so craft supplies, books, sporting gear, musical instruments, baking ingredients, dress-up clothes, puzzles. You might have to accept as a parent that you’re going to have a slightly messier, more chaotic space. And resist the urge to put things away, like a blanket fort that your kids have built—does it really need to be cleaned up that night? If you leave it, maybe they’re going to rediscover it in the morning, and that will buy you two or three hours of quiet time while they’re busy playing in it. 

You write in the book that, at one point, your 12-year-old tells you he’s embarrassed about the screen-free life that your family has. What was your reaction?

They continue to share that with me as they grow. I think that it’s always hard for kids to be different—they have an inclination to want to blend in and be like everyone else. I’ve explained to them various ways over the years that this is my work. This is something I know a lot about, and I know too much to be able to just let you have a phone and let you play video games all night long, and have social media. It would be irresponsible of me. I tell them they’re welcome to do things differently when they get older, when they have kids.

Another part of it is listening to them about what the issue is—it’s not often about just having the device. It’s more about, ‘How am I going to talk to my friends? I want to be able to text them and make plans and not feel left out.’ So if you can come up with workarounds—which is why we got our landline, why we set up our iMessage texting system—often those concerns of theirs melt away and become a little bit less pressing.

Can you tell us about your new book?

It looks more at the role of the parent in all of this and very much urges parents to reclaim a sense of parental authority when it comes to managing screen time. The number of parents who’ve come up to me after talks and said, ‘Please just give me permission to say no to my kid. Tell me it’s going to be okay,’ has really been mind-boggling. So many parents just feel like they can’t say no. 

It’s a multi-layered problem. We need the high-level legislative change that increases the age of internet adulthood. We should be limiting social media sign-ups to the age of 16 and over. We need the tech companies to be held accountable. We need school districts to roll out real smartphone bans that physically separate the kids from their phones. And then we need the parents to step up. I really want to empower parents and make them realize that even though they might be feeling helpless and hopeless, that they’re weak in the face of this really malicious force, that’s not at all the case. Parents actually hold the most power out of anyone here. They’re the gatekeepers and the first line of defense. There’s so much you can do in the home to protect your children and to delay access to this technology.

When parents approach you after your talks, what emotions are they dealing with? 

Parents are feeling racked with guilt. They’re feeling overwhelmed. Some of them feel like they failed their kids, that their childhoods have been lost to these devices. When I talk to these parents, I often give them scripts for how to talk about walking back tech use. I’ve talked to parents who have given their kids a smartphone then decided to take it away. This is totally doable. More and more people are doing it. There’s this quiet rebellion that’s brewing.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.