Screen Free Week 2025
Image Credit: Jens Kreuter
1st - 7th May 2023
Do you ever feel that screen time is running the lives of you and your children? Do you arrange your evening around a favourite soap or just despair at the amount of time that your kids spend playing computer games or scrolling on their phones?
Have you ever felt left out because everyone else’s conversation consists solely of what was on TV last night and you didn’t watch? You are not alone.
The concept of a week away from your screen started in the US in 1994 as TV Turn-off Week. For a short time it was known as Digital Detox Week before becoming Screen-Free Week in 2010. It is an opportunity to try not watching TV or to stop scrolling mindlessly on your phone for a week and see what other interesting things you could be doing instead.
Screen-Free Week is held during the first week in May each year. It is now organised by Fairplay, which was previously known as Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC). They have a huge library of resources on how to have your own Screen-Free Week, with reading suggestions for all ages and free printables.
Of course it is getting harder to keep kids away from screens; so much of our children’s homework these involves online tests, research and many teens now write all their schoolwork on a lap-top.
So many adults too, use a computor or digital terminal as part of their work.
A totally screen-free week may be impossible for kids with assignments to hand in, but we can try to reduce our kid’s constant exposure to screens.
Screen-Free Week Tips and Ideas
If you want to decrease the amount of screen time that you and your children are having, whether you want to get your children to watch less TV, spend less time gaming and or put their phones away during family time, here are some ideas to help and inspire you.
- You Don’t Have To Go Cold Turkey.
- Television is Mesmerising.
- Gaming Has The Same Effect.
- Watching TV is Passive.
- Set the Kids A Good Example.
- Let Yourself Get Used To It
- Watch TV Selectively.
- At The End Of Screen-Free Week.
You don’t have to sit in silence, staring into space; you can put on the radio, some music or an audio book. It’s not an exercise in denial; it’s a way of getting your life back from the media.
Why do you think it keeps the kids so quiet?
You are hypnotised by the programmes, so that when the advertisements come on you are deep in their power. Why do you think TV is the most powerful advertising medium?
Video games are cleverly designed to keep you playing just one more level. That is why younger people are now spending more time gaming than watching TV.
You are not getting exercise. You are not learning anything (how much of those documentaries do you actually remember?)
You are not getting any use out of the amazing brain that you were given.
Bluntly, if you spend all your free time scrolling on your phone or tweeting, your kids won’t know any better.
If you have always lived in a home where the TV is on all day, it feels strange when the set is off. You hear stuff you never heard before (Is the central heating really that noisy? The third stair down creaks!).
Screen use is a habit, and can be quite an addictive one. If we are unused to being away from our screens, it can be unsettling. You will get used to it, I promise.
Decide as a family what programmes you really enjoy as opposed to those which you sit through waiting for something better to come on. Watch them then switch the TV off.
Write down all the things you did during the week. Where did you go? What did you read, make, mend, and listen to? Which friends did you catch up with? What did you learn?
Look back and feel a real sense of achievement, and decide now that you won’t ever waste that much time again.
If you are worried about the amount of time your children are spending using screens, here are the current screen time guidelines for babies, toddlers, kids and teens.