Editor’s Note: One Small Thing is a new series to help you take a simple step toward a healthy, impactful goal. Try this one thing, and you’ll be heading in the right direction.
When my daughters were 6 and 10, I tried to abstain from using my personal electronic devices (laptop, smartphone) while in their presence.
I challenged myself to do it for just a month — back when I’d successfully experimented with swapping monthly resolutions for the more traditional (and often less effective) annual New Year’s resolutions.
It was inconvenient on occasion, for sure. Other times, it was even comical — shutting a computer each time my kids entered the room, reopen it when they left and then close it again when they returned to tell me something else.
When I absolutely had to be looking at a screen (mainly for work, really), I told them what I was doing so at least they didn’t feel they were competing with social media for my attention.
Of the 12 micro-resolutions I did that year, screen-curbing one was the most impactful. It increased my awareness of how much I was ignoring, or half-ignoring, my kids for the phone or laptop, and I felt we connected more.
They noticed too, which only reinforced my effort. “I do like it,” my younger daughter said recently. “I feel more connected. I can’t tell your emotions when you’re talking to me while on your computer.”
“When it makes more of a difference is when I ask you a question,” my older daughter said, “because it feels like you’re paying more attention, even if you were listening the same amount while looking at your phone.”
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” the modern French philosopher Simone Weil said, summing up the opportunity.
My small self-challenge had a direct and outsized halo effect on my relationships with my daughters. The conversations were more interactive, longer. It became the only month-long resolution I kept going after the month was over, but I gradually became less strict about it, as go many resolutions that don’t make the leap to ingrained habit.
My kids are 12 and 17 now. They have their own personal screens today, unlike when I did the first experiment. Modeling good technology habits, so that they don’t become clock-gobbling distractions or speed bumps to direct and meaningful communication, seems even more vital.
Recent research backs up this notion. In a study released this past summer, authors found that parental screen use in front of their child “was associated with higher total screen time and problematic social media, video games, and mobile phone use in early adolescents.”
If you want to keep your kids’ use of devices in check beyond any rules and/or screentime limits you’re trying to enforce, one way to influence them positively is simply modeling the behavior when you’re with them, researchers found.
“I feel like I have a bad habit (of being on my phone in front of others), even when I’m not doing anything on my phone,” my older daughter confessed when I asked if my experiment was setting a good example, agreeing she needs to be better about it herself.
Connecting more with my family, being a good role model, becoming more mindful about whether I really need to be on a screen — those are the reasons I’ve recommitted to this effort to put down the phone and close the laptop when my kids enter the room, and keep it closed unless they know it’s for work or something else that can’t wait. I’m adding my wife, too, because that’s another relationship that is more important than anything I’m looking at on a screen.
I even announce it sometimes, so they know. While I was writing this column, my older daughter came downstairs and said, “I have a question for you.”
“I’m closing my laptop so I can fully hear it!” I happily replied, which made her laugh, and I assume appreciate the gesture.
The first month isn’t even over, and we’re already enjoying the benefits of this one small thing I’m committing to all year.
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