Does More Freedom Equal Less Screen Time? Experts Think So
In a screen time battle, there are no winners. Either you give in and let your kids have way too much screen time, leading to increased mental health problems and other issues, or you strictly control their screens so much that they end up feeling ignored, misunderstood, and babied. It’s a lose-lose situation. My oldest child is only 7, and it’s already a struggle for my family. But what are we supposed to do? A new study asked experts how to actually lower screen time in kids, and the answer is something that feels completely counter-intuitive: give your kids more freedom.
The Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt, along with Lenore Skenazy and Zach Rausch, recently partnered with Harris Poll to survey 500 U.S. kids ages 8 to 12 about their phone habits and wrote about the results in The Atlantic. They found that the majority of kids already owned smartphones, with about half of 10-to-12-year-olds reporting that “most” or “all” of their friends use social media, despite the minimum age being 13. (Haidt advocates that kids don’t have phones until high school and social media until they are 16.)
Additionally, about 75 percent of kids ages 9 to 12 play the online game Roblox, where they can interact with friends and internet strangers. However, most of the children said they aren’t allowed to be in public at all without an adult. Fewer than half of the 8- and 9-year-olds have gone down a grocery-store aisle alone and more than a quarter aren’t allowed to play unsupervised in their front yard. When asked how they would prefer spending time with friends, the majority said unstructured play in real life.
“Children want to meet up in person, no screens or supervision,” the authors wrote. “But because so many parents restrict their ability to socialize in the real world on their own, kids resort to the one thing that allows them to hang out with no adults hovering: their phones.”
In fact, nearly three-quarters of kids in the study said they would spend less time online if there were more friends in their neighborhood to play with in person.
Kids Want More Freedom Too
Members of our SheKnows Teen Council shared how they enjoy stepping away from their phones for hands-on “adventuring,” such as building a tiki hut, shooting hoops, and connecting with their friends.
“You’re going out with your friends, you’re finding activities to do, you’re exploring, you’re building something — it can really be anything,” 16-year-old Clive told us. And as a result? “You feel double satisfaction. You had fun, and you’re proud of yourself for not scrolling on your phone all day.”
“If there’s a way that a kid can walk a few blocks to a store and buy something, at age 8, they should be doing that,” Haidt previously told SheKnows. “And the kids who go out and do something, they come back and they’re jumping up and down. They are so excited. It has a huge impact on the kids, but the really important thing is that it has an impact on the parents, because we don’t know what the right age is to let them out. We’re afraid.”
Over-policing of Parents
Short of getting in a time-machine and raising kids in the ‘80s, it’s hard to let your kids roam the neighborhood when no other kids are doing it — or parents are watching out the windows and calling the police if they see unsupervised kids out and about.
Take this tragedy from a family in North Carolina. Jessica and Sameule Jenkins let their 7-year-old son Legend and 10-year-old son Brandon walk to the neighborhood Food Lion supermarket and Subway sandwich shop, which was less than 10 minutes away from their apartment. In an interview with The New York Times, the parents revealed they were hesitant.
“I really thought against it,” said Mr. Jenkins. He added that he and his wife are “very protective of our kids.” But they compromised: the boys could walk their if they stayed on the phone with their parents the whole time.
“They made it there safe,” Mrs. Jenkins said.
But on the way back, Legend stepped off a grass median and was tragically hit and killed by an SUV driver. Although the driver faced no charges for the incident, the parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter with bail set at $1.5 million each. “As many parents now control their children’s every move, transgressions by parents who take a freer approach — one that used to be normal — can result in criminal charges,” stated the outlet.
“Just because parents don’t have their eyes on their kids every single second doesn’t mean they are bad parents,” Lenore Skenazy, who chronicles such cases as president of Let Grow, which advocates for more childhood freedom, along with Jonathan Haidt, told the outlet. “We’re blaming these parents, but they’ve done everything as good as they can for 10 years, and then something terrible happens.”
When parents do let kids have more freedom, everyone benefits.
How Parents Can Help Screen Addiction
A March 2025 Common Sense Media report found that by the time kids are 2 years old, 40 percent have their own tablet. By age 8, nearly 1 in 4 kids have their own cell phone. Overall, 51 percent of children age 8 and younger have some sort of mobile device. And kids ages 5-8 spend about three and a half hours daily on screens.
Other studies have shown that kids are addicted to their screens, which interferes with schoolwork, relationships, and life because they only want to be on their devices.
Psychologist and author Dr. Becky Kennedy (known as “Dr. Becky”) previously talked to SheKnows about kids and screen time. She reminded us that we have to think about both short- and long-term needs for our kids. “Sometimes short-term needs are, ‘I need my kid to be fully occupied for an amount of time, so I can fill-in-the-blank: decompress, cook, answer emails, work out, have time to myself,’ whatever it is. I totally understand this!” she told us.
Long term needs might be: “‘I want my kid to be able to access their own creativity and turn that creativity into action. I want my kid to learn to be bored, and to wait, and to know that that’s part of human existence. I want my kid to learn that hard work and effort is what leads to good feelings, as opposed to only mindlessness and low effort leading to good, exciting feelings.’”
“[I]t’s not a way of saying long term needs should always trump short term needs,” Dr. Becky clarified. “It’s a way of saying we just need to think about them both.”
No one is saying kids can never watch cartoons or play iPad games on a long car trip. But what experts are suggesting is that we also think about how we want to raise our kids to prepare them for the future. Teaching them how to explore and entertain themselves when they’re bored. Help them gain skills to be independent and work hard at what they want. And it starts with loosening the leash and giving them a little more freedom.
It’s like what Clive previously told us. “I don’t know if being on my phone makes me unhappy,” the teen shared. “But I’m 100 percent sure that when I’m really happy — like during the summer when I have things to do and I’m in my best place — I don’t want to be on my phone.”
Let’s work together to start giving our kids more freedoms
Before you go, check out these celebrities who have shared their technology rules for their kids.