Digital Detox Family Resource

Dr Helen Thomas, GP

The resources we create at Health Professionals for Safer Screens are driven by both our members’ requests and by the patients and families we support. We have had fantastic new resources developed to help families and our young people understand why we are concerned about screentime, but this is most often followed by “how do I stop it?”

The latest resource aims to answer that for families. We have produced a guide that supports families in navigating the changes needed, in safe and manageable steps, to reduce screentime and bring back connected family and social time. 

The guide was written with the support of experts in addiction and gaming. Hilarie Cash, the CCO at ReStart in Washington, USA, runs inpatient services for young adults, and prior to COVID, ran these sessions for younger children. Her experience and the resources she shared were important in understanding how to rebuild lives broken by screen addiction. The National Centre for Gaming Disorders in London raised that going “cold turkey” from devices could be very difficult, so ensuring that screen time was replaced with rewarding alternatives was vital. In addition, the wording and flow of the guide was written specifically with motivational interviewing prompts. Professor Donald Forrester focuses on using motivational interviewing with families and children to navigate challenges and change in his book, “Motivational Interviewing for working with children and families” and I attended an online webinar around practical use of this.  Motivational Interviewing seemed really appropriate language to use in supporting families through reducing screen time and digital devices. Lastly a paediatric research colleague, Samuele Cortese, shared an editorial with me from World Psychiatry, where he and a team looked at the evidence that exists to make device use as healthy as possible, and this too was incorporated in the guide. 

Ultimately, we are asking families to navigate this at home themselves which may be too much for some. However, it is a start to show that taking time to think about reducing device use, working in small steps, refocusing on real life connection and creating an evidence based, expert backed resource is possible. 

Please use this guide widely. We would love to hear your feedback so we can continue producing the resources that work. We are excited that, as Australia rapidly approaches its smartphone ban, HPFSS resources are being used on the frontline to support families through this sudden change.