If I’ve learned anything from working with Gen Alpha, it’s what everyone seemingly already knows: they love their screens.
According to Common Sense Media, “53% of kids in the U.S. today have a smartphone by the age of 11.” Additionally, “On average, children ages 8-12 spend 4-6 hours a day watching or using screens, while teens spend up to 9 hours.”
Catchy phrases have been coined, and statistics laid out, raising concern about Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s relationship with screens. Should kids be allowed screen time? Does too much screen time hinder cognitive development? How can we prevent a child’s exposure to pornography?
Parents are not exempt from the conversation. The allure of screens is just as prevalent for parents as it is for kids.
A Pew study finds that “almost half of teenagers think their parents get distracted by their phones.” In every way, misuse and overuse of screens is not just a children’s or teens’ issue—it’s a family issue.
The home, then, is our starting place. Here, more than anywhere else, parents can interrupt negative trends and inspire lasting change in their children’s lives.
Boundaries Are Good
In 1 Corinthians 10:23, Paul writes, “All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.”
While Paul is not referring to technology here, he is warning the church against a misuse of Christian liberty. The liberty God grants us in Christ has limits. We can’t justify sin on the grounds of “Christian liberty.”
Similarly, Galatians 5:13 says, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”
Technology can be a good thing—a gift from God, even. As recipients of God’s common grace, we are free to experiment with, utilize, create, and work with technology. Even still, we need to acknowledge the limits of our freedom.
Unlimited freedom in the home when it comes to screens leads to dangerous territory. There’s no sugarcoating it. It is the very playing field where the Enemy can subtly disconnect, distract, and destroy us—and our families.
Putting Tech in Its Rightful Place
In The Tech-Wise Family, Andy Crouch writes, “…Figuring out the proper place for technology in our particular family and stage of life requires discernment rather than a simple formula” (Crouch, p. 18).
Christ—not technology—is Lord of the Christian home. He is the head and heart of the household. He sets the home apart as sacred, infusing it with His beauty, joy, unity, and peace.
If you took an honest, impartial look at your heart and home, who would it reveal as your master—Christ or your screens?
I challenge you to be prayerful about the place of technology in your home. It makes for a futile master, an unreliable friend, and a counterfeit fix for your—and your family’s—ache for connection. But it is a useful tool, nonetheless. With creativity and grace, you can take control of the screens in your home instead of letting them control your home.
To help you get started, here are eight ways to take control of the screens in your home:
1. Device-Free Meals
With today’s hectic family schedules, shared dinners around the table have become a rarity. This isn’t about pressuring or guilt-tripping you into ensuring a family dinner every night. Maybe that’s the goal eventually, but for now, pick one night. Ask open-ended questions, be present, and listen. Soon, it’ll be something everyone looks forward to, and you—and your kids—will miss these meals together when they’re out of the house.
If family dinners are new to your household, here are five rules for the family table to help you get started.
2. Tech Sabbath
Crouch recommends practicing a regular tech sabbath. Can you pick one day out of the week or month to give up screens with the intent to rest—spiritually, emotionally, and physically? It’s a great habit to instill in young children, one they can carry into adulthood.
3. Let Kids Be Bored
If taking screens away from your kids leads to the immediate response, “I’m bored,” you might feel the need to swoop in and save the day with some form of entertainment. Instead, let them be bored. Let them build forts in the living room or slide down the stairs in sleeping bags. Let them put on silly theatrical skits. Boredom leads kids to create rather than consume. It can be a life-giving rhythm.
4. Nature Outings
Studies show that walking outside in nature for 30 minutes a day can boost creativity by up to 60%, increase blood flow to the brain, and enhance cognitive function. Walk in your neighborhood or visit a local park or nature trail. Exploring nature with your kids is a worthwhile way to spend time, especially on a “tech sabbath.”
5. Reconsider What’s at the Center of Your Home
Crouch suggests considering what’s at the center of the main room in your house. Does that object foster connection, creativity, and love for God and others? If it’s a TV, could it be moved to another side of the room, with something like a piano or bookshelf taking its place?
This idea may not work for your family’s stage of life right now, and that’s okay. We can at least appreciate his gentle challenge to set the precedent, even spatially, for creativity and connection in the home.
6. Serve Together
Overconsumption of screens breeds self-absorption. Make service a core value woven into your family’s daily life. Encourage acts of service within the home and outside of it. Serving outside the home strengthens a child’s compassion, empathy, and ability to communicate. It challenges them to step into someone else’s shoes.
If you desire compassionate kids in a me-centered culture, serve together. Consider volunteering at the CMC or with one of Champion Forest’s local ministry partners.
7. Model Healthy Habits
Kids today are born into the digital world and look to adults for guidance on how to navigate it responsibly. Change starts in your home, and it starts with you. If you want your kids to set boundaries for themselves, learn to set good boundaries for yourself. If your kids see you practicing a tech sabbath or reading in the evenings instead of scrolling, they will learn to develop similar healthy habits.
8. Change Starts in Your Home
You can’t implement all of these suggestions in one day, one week, or even one month—and no one expects you to. My encouragement is to pick one of these seven practices to focus on in 2025. Steadily and prayerfully, incorporate it into your home life and family culture.
Parents, interrupt the trends. Defy the statistics. Put technology in its rightful place and keep Christ as Lord of your home.
Start small. Start today. Start in your home. Most of all, start in God’s presence, for it is He who “works in you (and your family), both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
