I was sitting in a fancy artisanal ice cream shop in Canmore, Alberta, last week, savouring a delicious cup of blueberries-and-custard-flavoured ice cream, when my 11-year-old son told me he was stepping outside for a few moments to look at the mountains. I took this opportunity to pull my phone out of my bag and see if there were any messages from the past few hours. My son immediately popped up in front of me and said, “Aha! That was a test to see if you’d pull out your phone as soon as I went outside. You failed!”
It was embarrassing—not only because he said it loudly enough for everyone in the shop to hear, but also because it was a small moment of accountability from a child that hit a nerve. He had orchestrated his little test because, obviously, he feels a niggling sense of competition with my smartphone. If I am not lavishing my attention onto him, then I might be giving it to my phone instead.
I felt defensive, explaining that I make a conscious effort not to look at my phone unnecessarily whenever I’m in his presence, and that waiting till he leaves the room is meant to be an act of respect—and that his father was likely wondering if we’d arrived safely in Alberta after our flight from Toronto that afternoon—but he was not interested in my justifications.
“Stop doing that. You should look at the mountains instead,” he said, and ran back outside, for real this time. My phone went into my bag, and I finished my ice cream while mulling over how children keep us humble.
Normalizing Phonelessness
There is a bigger issue here, however, and that is the tendency of adults to look at their phones constantly, to the detriment of the children who watch us. We adults tend to forget how different the world looks today from when we grew up. When I was a child in the ‘90s, my parents would get absorbed in tasks and grow mentally distant for periods of time, but I could always see what they were doing—reading a book, painting a picture, doing carpentry, daydreaming, talking on the phone. Their temporary absence and inaccessibility made sense to my brain, and I knew I could summon their attention easily.
But now, when adults escape to their phones instead of different sorts of activities or projects, the watching children have no idea what their parents or other adults are doing on those devices. The adults are simply gone, oblivious to what’s happening around them, and it can feel challenging to yank them out of their techno-trance and back into the real world without a great deal of effort. When they finally do emerge, it is often with an expression of irritation and confusion, a sort of phone-induced hangover that takes a few moments to shake off.
I feel badly for the children. They don’t deserve to grow up in a world where most adults are mentally elsewhere for much of the day. One non-academic survey in 2025 found that adults check their phones nearly 200 times per day, or once every five minutes. Another estimate found that adults spend around 4.5 hours a day on their phones, two of which are devoted to social media alone.
So, it might be true sometimes that adults have no choice but to be on their phones, but that’s not true all the time. Many reach for their phones because it’s easy and accessible and it feels good in the moment, though the opportunity cost of everything else you could have been doing with your time is fairly steep and can leave many people feeling crummy afterward.
It is crucial to carve out and defend phone-free spaces in our lives. These are times and places where smartphones do not belong. We must create firm, clear rules for ourselves that spare us from having to rely on self-control or management hacks to avoid checking our devices. Not only does having defined phone-free spaces give us adults a much-needed break, but it allows our children to have reliable opportunities to interact with us. Many young people report wanting to spend more time talking to their parents, but saying that their parents’ phones get in the way.
More broadly, creating phone-free spaces helps build a society in which the state of phonelessness is normalized, instead of the proliferation of devices that we’ve passively accepted as the norm over the past 15 years.
Which Spaces Should Be Phone-Free?
Family mealtime should always be device-free. Don’t have a TV on in the background, either. Make meals a non-negotiable time to catch up with family members about what’s going on in their lives. Whether it’s a celebratory feast or a quick takeout meal, whether it’s at home or in a restaurant, do not pull out your phone. Sit and be present with your kids, no matter what. Ask what’s going on in their lives. Offer anecdotes about your day. Don’t let anyone look at their phone during the meal, not even to illustrate a point or look up a relevant fact. Allow the conversation to evolve into debate or speculation; not everything has to be settled immediately.
Car rides should be screen-free. It’s lonely to be a driver when a passenger is looking at their phone. Take this opportunity to talk. Designate your kid as the navigator or the purveyor of snacks. If you want to listen to music or a podcast, settle on something you both want to hear and do it together; don’t allow your kid to put AirPods in and block everyone out. That’s antisocial.
Young kids who grow up looking out the car window will become better oriented geographically within their community and, eventually, more capable at getting around on their own. Older kids are more likely to open up to their parents and talk when they’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, not making eye contact, especially if it’s dark. Some of the best conversations you’ll ever have with your teen might happen in a car, but if they’re scrolling on a phone, forget about it.
Attending sports games, recitals, speeches, theatre productions, awards ceremonies, and any kind of special occasion should call for mandatory phonelessness. This might sound like the opposite of how most parents operate these days—there is a compulsion to film everything—but what if, instead of filming it, you just chose to sit and be present in the moment, paying close attention to whatever your child is doing, without mediating the experience through a device? There won’t be a record of it on your phone, but it will be stamped in your memory, which is the most important place for it to be.
Play dates and social hangouts should always be screen-free. The whole point of spending time with a friend is eroded if you or they are escaping to be with other friends online at the same time. No one is more important than the person who’s right in front of you at any given moment. Show that with your actions. A good rule of thumb is the 4T rule: No talking, texting, tapping on a phone, or TV when another person is present. It doesn’t mean you can’t do those things, but save them for when no one else is around.
Travelling with a child is another good time to avoid using your phone, apart from necessary tasks. The little incident with my son reminded me of this—that certain tasks might seem important in the moment, but ultimately detract from the overall experience of being together. So if they’re not critical, just let them be. The texts can usually wait. Go look at some mountains instead.
Benefits of Phone-Free Spaces
So much good comes of putting down our phones and showing up for real life. It gives parents a chance to be fully present and available for their children’s ongoing bids for attention. We never know when those bids are going to come, nor do we realize how often they’re made and met with the back of a phone or a blank expression that causes the child to give up and turn away.
Creating a phone-free space demonstrates to a child that we adults do not need to be on our phones all the time, that we can entertain ourselves in other ways, and that in-person interactions are more important than virtual ones. It dilutes the phone’s appeal, making it slightly less of a coveted belonging and more of a practical tool, which sets a healthier tone for the child’s future relationship with a smartphone.
It creates opportunities for us to reflect, sit in silence, experience boredom, feel curiosity, think creatively, and develop new hobbies and skills, which makes us more interesting, well-rounded people. These are all the reasons why kids should be off devices, and they apply to adults as well. Being off our devices calms us. It does away with the “frenzied self” that develops from constant stimulation and exposure to the firehose of information that our phones feed to us.
The absence of a phone improves the quality of our thoughts, projects, and conversations. There’s interesting research that shows how the mere presence of a phone can undermine concentration and attention—and it doesn’t even have to be our own phone. Just seeing someone else’s phone, e.g., a child seeing their parent’s phone on the table, causes a person’s cognitive ability to decline and distraction to ensue. The phone is a powerful visual reminder of everything else that could be happening in the world, and that’s all it takes to pull our interest away from the conversation we’re having.
As parents, we cannot not model. Our children are always watching us, and one of the best things we can do is prove to them that it’s possible to live apart from our phones in certain situations, for extended periods of time. Do this by carving out phone-free spaces in your life, sticking to it, and reaping the benefits that follow.
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Several weeks ago, I did a lengthy interview with a Canadian organization called Active For Life. The full piece, “How to Change Screen-Time Habits: Q&A With Author Katherine Johnson Martinko,” is now available to read. Please check it out and let me know what you think!
I’m still busy with public speaking, which I love! The reason I was in Alberta last week was to deliver two talks—one as a keynote speaker for the Kids Literacy Collective at the Calgary Central Library, and another for parents in the Calgary Catholic school district.
If you happen to live in southwestern Ontario, there are two upcoming parent talks—one in Clinton, ON, on May 5 and another in Stratford, ON, on May 25. I hope you can join!
I so loved, “My son immediately popped up in front of me and said, ‘Aha! That was a test to see if you’d pull out your phone as soon as I went outside. You failed!’” It gave me a good laugh—if I’d been nearby, you would’ve heard a loud, “Busted!”
I’m a QC manager for my employer, and I appreciate when technicians call me out on my misses—it keeps us all on our toes.
I’ve started leaving my phone in my vehicle when I’m eating with someone at a restaurant. Inevitably, they’ll say, “You forgot your phone,” or something similar if we rode together. It’s as if phone are a part of our dress and without one people react like I'm stepping out almost indecently exposed.
This is something I am constantly wrestling with. I have a 7 and 5 year old and a week old baby. My first postpartums and at least the first three years of being a mom I was scrolling all the time. I want this baby to experience a very different mom than my first did. I am constantly working on my habits! I do find it helpful to tell my older kids what I’m doing “Daddy texted me and I’m just writing a text back to him about ____.” “I’m adding some milk and butter to the grocery order, then I’ll be done” Depending on what I’m doing, if they’re waiting for me I sometimes narrate what I’m typing.