What’s Currently Taking Up Space (and some tools to help): Finding the Right Balance of Tech for Your Family
Oversubscribed Newsletter. Season: 2025 Back to School. Article by Megan Hughes, PhD
Original art by GHF
What’s Currently Taking Up Space (and some tools to help): Finding the Right Balance of Tech for Your Family
by Megan Hughes, PhD
Many of us who parented through the pandemic leaned into screens more than we would have liked. It was a struggle to get even the smallest amount of work done between managing my older child’s remote learning and attempting to create a homeschool preschool for my younger one. In my more recent attempt to consider the role of technology in our household, I stumbled upon the Balance Project. Holly Moscatiello is the founder and director of the Balance Project (https://www.thebalanceproject.life/), an organization that is focused on helping parents of kiddos 0 to 18 develop a balanced, intentional approach to children’s technology use in their communities. Holly began with developing a program in her own community in New Jersey and now the Balance Project is expanding to form chapters in other areas. I attended an event co-led by the Balance Project and Let Grow, an organization focused on increasing children’s independence. Together, these organizations are focused on reclaiming children’s independence, in-person relationships, time outside, and sleep that are all being displaced by tech usage.
I spoke with Holly about the Balance Project and she had so many great ideas to share. For families, the Balance Project offers a list of alternatives to smart phones, including classic landlines (and a cute alternative called the Tin Can), watches with some communication capabilities, dumb phones, and more. The Balance Project also works with schools to be more intentional with the tech that they offer in the classroom and students’ access to phones in the classroom. Finally, the Balance Project is working with towns to offer opportunities for kids to be more independent, including making it safer to walk and bike to school and creating community spaces for adolescents who have outgrown the local playground. Furthermore, the Balance Project and Let Grow websites offer lists of vetted resources that can support families wherever they are in their journey.
Our family’s tech reset. During the school year, my kids’ screen time had creeped up, especially on weekend mornings. For us, we needed a screen-time reset and vacation turned out to be the perfect time to do it. Based on a last-minute change in vacation plans, we ended up going on a camping trip this summer. The kids were screen free for the week and when we came home it was easier to reintroduce screens at a lower level and with higher quality content. It has felt like a better balance for our household. That transition was smoother than I expected and we’ve been keeping it strong. For those of you who need a screen reset, consider natural transition points. In our area, many kids go to sleepaway camp and are screen-free during that time. Coming back from camp and entering the school year is a perfect time to set new family guidelines.
I’m also working on my own tech reset. I’m about to do a 30-day digital declutter based on Cal Newport’s book, Digital Minimalism. I’ll include a book review and share more on my personal experience in the next newsletter. See below for Cal Newport’s resources on this topic.
Want more resources?
Article:
Time Magazine article on the Balance Project: One Community’s Experiment With a Phone-Free Childhood
https://time.com/7314325/balance-project-phone-free-childhood/
Podcast Episodes:
Emily Oster has a helpful podcast episode about smartphones and kids. (25 minutes, but feel free to listen at 1.5 x speed like I do) https://www.thefp.com/p/ep-6-are-smartphones-stealing-childhood
Short Podcast Series. The Washington Post’s Try This Podcast recently had a series with strategies for reducing problematic phone usage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/try-this/ 4-part series starting March 18th, 2025 (4 episodes for a total of 41 minutes)
Websites: Resources on alternatives to smart phone usage in kids and tools for delaying smart phones, encouraging independence and resilience in youth, and making a healthier and more intentional screen time diet.
Balance Project: https://www.thebalanceproject.life/ website and booklet https://simplebooklet.com/thebalanceprojectbrochure1
Project Reboot: https://www.projectreboot.school/
Dino Ambrosio at Project Reboot has great, practical tips for talking with kids about screen use and helping create a healthier screen time diet. My fourth grader overheard a bit of his talk and approached me later to talk about how to be more effective with his screen time choices. Check out some of his blog posts here: https://www.projectreboot.school/blog
Video and Book:
Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism book discusses how to engage in a digital declutter https://calnewport.com/my-new-book-digital-minimalism/
Here’s a 13-minute YouTube video in which Cal Newport describes the digital declutter process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsGKzjyj_6Q