28. Breaking Free from Screens: How Device Use Shapes Our Children’s Brains, Emotions, and Future

In this week’s episode of Nourished with Dr. Anikó, host Dr. Anikó Gréger opens a vital conversation about one of the most pressing challenges facing families today: screen use, device dependence, and the ways our digital habits quietly shape the mental, emotional, and physical health of both parents and children.

Through compassionate insight and grounded neuroscience, she reframes screen use not as a moral failing or a parenting flaw, but as an addiction engineered by design. She explains how devices, apps, and platforms are intentionally created to be habit-forming, how they erode our natural emotional regulation, and how they affect the developing brains of children whose neural pathways are still forming.

Dr. Anikó offers a refreshing, empowering perspective for parents who feel overwhelmed by the pressure of managing devices in a digital world. She emphasizes that guilt and shame have no place in this conversation. Instead, she guides listeners toward understanding, agency, and practical steps to reduce screen dependency within the family.

She discusses why boredom is essential for creativity, why slowness is necessary for healthy nervous system development, and how reclaiming presence can rebuild connection inside the home. From resetting your own relationship with your phone to modeling healthier digital habits for your children, this episode offers a compassionate and realistic path forward in a tech-saturated world.

With relatable storytelling, developmental psychology insights, and deeply human examples, this episode helps us see screens for what they are: tools that can support us but often pull us away from the vibrant, sensory-rich, emotionally connected lives we were meant to live.

Episode Highlights:

02:00 Why screen and device use is one of today’s biggest parenting challenges
04:00 How addictive design impacts mood, emotional regulation, and loneliness
06:00 What neuroplasticity means for children’s developing brains
08:00 Why boredom is essential for creativity, imagination, and resilience
10:00 Understanding societal responsibility versus individual guilt
12:00 Letting go of shame to see the issue clearly and take meaningful action
14:00 The powerful parallel between device addiction and substance addiction
16:00 How scrolling worsens anxiety, depression, and disconnection
18:00 Imagining life with fewer screens and reclaiming presence
20:00 Phone boundaries and creating device-free rituals
22:00 How intentional shifts can transform the household

Whether you’re worried about your child’s screen time, noticing your own device habits creeping in, or simply trying to build a more connected home, this episode offers clarity, compassion, and practical support as you navigate screen use in a digital era.

Tune in and rediscover the nourishment that comes from slowing down, looking up, and returning to what matters most. 

Connect with Dr. Anikó:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.aniko/

Website: https://www.draniko.com/

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Disclaimer:
The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the guidance of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding your health or a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast.

Transcript

Dr. Anikó: [00:00:00] Hello. Hello y'all and welcome back to Nourished with Dr. Anikó. Today. I wanted to just start to scratch the surface of a topic that is so big and so. Pertinent that we are going to have more than one episode on it. But today I just wanted to offer kind of a different point of view and framework around it to hopefully help us change our attitudes [00:01:00] around it and our habits around it.

And that topic is screen use and device use, and. This feels like one of the most difficult obstacles in parenting right now. One of the most difficult things to

navigate because so often it feels like. The world is both telling us how bad these devices are, specifically our addiction to these devices and the way that we use them, and also the way that they are intentionally designed to be addictive. While also giving us the message that we need them. We can't possibly have a life without them.

Our kids won't have friends if we don't let them use devices. And I'm here to tell [00:02:00] you that the former is very much true devices and our screen use have devastating effects on mental health, on physical health, on our wellbeing. They make problems worse, right? So often we turn to screens and devices and social media when we're feeling lonely or that we actually feel more lonely.

After we use our devices and after we're on social media and research has shown that our capacity to regulate our emotions gets worse and worse as we turn to devices for that essentially soothing and regulation. And this is even more significant in kids because kids are just learning those right?

Their brains haven't. Even developed fully yet. And because their brains are so plastic, meaning they're really malleable and [00:03:00] changeable, right? we talk about brain plasticity and neuroplasticity where if you use certain circuits in your brain, those circuits get stronger. And what we don't use essentially gets pruned.

And that's actually a term in neurology is pruning. And when our kids haven't even built the skills to regulate and to self-soothe, and we are as a society, right, not just individual parents. As a society, we are offering them devices that essentially thwart that development for them. The long term consequences are.

Immense, right? It's physical health. It's mental health, it's relationships, it's expression, it's creativity. The effect of being exposed to devices and screens and apps and platforms that are designed to give [00:04:00] these dopamine hits and payoffs and designed to be addictive. Cannot be overstated. It is a huge challenge to parenting.

It's a huge challenge to development, and I'm here to tell you that not only is it essential that we reduce screen and device use to the point that it is essentially almost eliminated except for schoolwork and.

Professional work in areas where this system has been built so that we don't really have another way to do it. But I will say that especially in early education. Keeping screens out of the classroom for as long as possible is incredibly important. Learning how to write by hand. Learning how to write cursive, learning how to read from a book, these [00:05:00] tactile ways of learning, and also these tactile ways of expressing oneself are so essential to child development that when we cut them out.

It is a huge detriment to our kids, and as so many of us know, who grew up without screens and who grew up in a world before all of this, and then had that interesting transition into a that feels like it's now all screens. We can attest to the fact that there is so much fun and connection, and development and expression to be had and enjoyed in a world outside of screens, in a world outside of devices.

But like any addictive substance, there's a detox period because just like when somebody is. [00:06:00] Coming off of being addicted to alcohol or drugs or any other kind of substance that they might be addicted to. There is this transitional period where the undistorted world as it is feels pretty bland and boring, and that's because we have not yet adjusted our filter. Or our speed or whatever it is. Our dopamine need, let's say, to be able to take in see the vibrancy and the beauty and the joy of the world around us. That is there all the time. Right. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to parents and they express to me, or even the child sometimes will express to me that the world is just kind of boring.

That's your sign that you need to. Move [00:07:00] away from devices and that you probably need to detox from devices in order to allow your nervous system to get used to the pace of actual life, the pace of the natural world, the pace of actual conversations with pauses. Thoughtfulness and back and forth and eye contact and all of those things that when you're on your devices enough, you start to not know how to navigate that and not even be able to tolerate that slowness.

And one of the things that I tell families, parents are typically more receptive to it than kids, but even parents don't love hearing it, but it makes sense to them in a way that it sometimes doesn't make as much sense to kids. Boredom is your friend. Boredom is the fertile soil [00:08:00] for creativity. And when you think back on your childhood, you might remember a time where you were bored and you decided to build something out of Popsicle sticks or you went in the backyard and you.

Found ants or something. I remember being a kid and having ant farm. I recently told this story to my kids because we saw fire ants and I filled my ant farm with these black ants that I found, and they were all digging little tunnels and I was watching them again. Super slow. I was watching ants dig tunnels in sand.

That is a slow experience, but it was fascinating to me,  right? I was in flow, I was in focus. My brain was concentrating on a slow process. And then my dad knew I was looking for ants for my farm, and we collected some fire ants, some red ants to like mix it [00:09:00] up in the farm. And I remember putting my stick into that little ant hole and the little fire ants crawled up.

And then I stuck the stick into my amp farm and I let the fire ants. Go into the farm and join their, you know, black ant siblings, and then the fire ants ate all the rest of the ants. So that was a really important lesson for me. I learned that different species of ants don't necessarily mix, but I can assure you that that amp farm was purchased because I was.

Probably complaining of being bored or maybe my parents were thinking this could be a cool gift, who knows? But the point is, is our boredom is not only fertile soil, but it is necessary. It's necessary part of. Our creative process and our brain development when we don't let [00:10:00] our brain kind of percolate and rest, and rest isn't the right word, because it's still so much is happening in our brains.

When we are bored or when we're daydreaming, so much necessary activity is happening that we are not as a society again. I. Wanna be really, really clear that this is not the individual responsibility of you or any parent or any family. We have agency in this certainly, right? We can have our own rules about screens in our family.

We can create communities where we have similar roles about devices so that we can kind of have our little. Cohorts where our kids can go to other houses and we know that they're not just gonna be glued to screens the whole time. But the fact that we are, as a society addicted to screens and [00:11:00] that we are as a society systematically addicting our children to screens is so.

Far above our pay grade, right? We have agency, like I said, but this is a way bigger problem than just us. So I say that to hopefully dispel the idea that there is some shame to be had around this. There is no shame.

In being addicted to a device that was both designed to be addicting And marketed intensively to us, completely integrated into virtually every part of our lives, and then even more intentionally and intensively sold to and marketed to our children. So I hope that helps you shake off the guilt and the shame, [00:12:00] because that's only gonna get in our way because shame is going to keep us from seeing things as they are perhaps seeing things for as bad as they are.

And that's gonna keep us from taking action. So let's just shake off that guilt right now. Shake off that shame because it's not ours to hold. It is. For those companies that develop these devices intentionally to be addicting and to be sold to our kids, and hopefully releasing that feeling can help us see things as they are so we can just get to work.

So the work starts here, right? And this is another part that parents. Don't love hearing, but I promise you that it is actually so much more empowering than it sounds at the beginning, it is life changing. So the first step to changing [00:13:00] our relationship with screens is to start seeing it as an addiction, right?

To start seeing it as something that is. Keeping us out of the joy of our life, keeping us away from the things that can truly bring us connection and support, and can truly help us feel less lonely or feel more supported, or can truly be a mood booster. Because so many of us, and this is shown in statistics as well, we use screens and devices to reduce boredom, to regulate our emotions.

When we feel lonely, we turn to screens a lot of the time, but we don't actually get those needs filled by screens. It's sort of this temporary respite a little bit, but in many cases it makes it worse. And I draw the parallel with alcohol. And alcohol is a really. Appropriate [00:14:00] parallel in many ways alcohol too is woven into our society in a way that it feels like, well, I can't possibly stop drinking.

It's involved in every celebration. It's how we connect, it's how we unwind, it's how we celebrate special occasions and alcohol as more and more research is showing us now. Probably there is no healthy amount of alcohol to ingest, even though it's such a sort of integrated part of our culture. It's probably not that good for us.

/And when we use alcohol to. Sort of grease the wheels of socializing, right? Or to deal with our anxiety.

What we find is alcohol in itself increases symptoms of depression and anxiety, and this is true even in [00:15:00] non-human animals. This is even true in mice. So It's not dependent on your personality or the situation or the culture that you're in. Obviously those are all factors, But alcohol in itself as a substance can cause symptoms of depression and anxiety, which is really ironic.

In the true sense of the word when we're using it to ease our symptoms of depression and anxiety. And this is where the parallel to device use, especially social media use, is really, really appropriate. Because similarly, when we turn to our devices to help us with our loneliness, our anxiety, our depression, it may give you a.

/

Speaker: Temporary little hit that sort of alleviates it just for that moment. But once you put your device [00:16:00] down, those symptoms get worse. So you can see how the parallel to addictive substances is really, really. Appropriate here, and this is the point of view that I'm hoping to share with y'all today because when you start thinking of your screen time as sort of a jail that you're in, that's keeping you away from the rest of your vibrant.

Connected, social loving, truly mood boosting life. Obviously, not all of life is happy, right? Sometimes life is really hard and we build the resilience, we build the tools to emotionally regulate. We are not building those tools when we use our devices. So as we start to imagine what our life could look like if we were on our screens [00:17:00] less, or even if we weren't on our screens at all, what would mealtimes look like?

What would your morning look like? /

What would you do with all that time? I mean, I once. heard a story about a couple who stopped watching TV and they ended up building a submarine. It was just this woman and her husband, and they built a submarine in all the time that they had freed up by not watching TV anymore.

And that's the kind of imagining I'm encouraging y'all to do right now. How would you feel? What would you do? Where would you go? where would you travel? What hobby would you pick up if you weren't glued to this device? That's not only not helping you, it is actively hurting you. And so to circle back to the point that parents don't always love hearing, but then after we talk about it, it actually is a wonderful, empowering place of a lot of agency, as with so [00:18:00] many things.

You start with yourself. How are you using screens? How often are you using screens? Are you using them in front of your kids? Are you breaking off conversations with them to answer your phone? Are you there but not really there physically there, but your mind is elsewhere 'cause it's on your device.

Obviously that can happen with or without devices, but devices are like a superhigh to emotional absence with physical presence that is particularly. Dysregulating and kind of hard, especially for kids to be around. It kind of freaks you out that you have this sort of like body snatcher situation with your parent, where your parents there and then all of a sudden their attention is completely gone.

It's time to start bringing some awareness to that, and once you have an awareness of how often you're using screens, then it's time to dig a little deeper. Why are you using screens, right? And [00:19:00] how can you change those habits? So one thing that's been really effective in our family is that it's tricky because my husband has a job where he sort of is almost required to be on call in a lot of ways with his phone.

And so what we have found to be really helpful is that if for some reason he needs to respond to a text or take a phone call, he leaves the room, he goes into a separate room from us in order to take that call or to answer that text. So you're not having that constant attention in attention out, attention in, attention out, and because it's forcing him to and do something different. you have that moment. 

 to consider whether or not this is a truly urgent matter, whether or not this really has to be answered right now, or if it can wait. We certainly do not have any phones near us at [00:20:00] mealtime. Our children do not have their own devices, and we are getting a landline for our older child so that they can talk to their friends because the idea is not to not be connected.

I would love for my kids to spend hours on the phone talking to their friends the way that I did. That is an immense connection. It's a beautiful and needed support. And social network building element for life. But that's real connection. That's real exchange. That's real emotional regulation. That's real relationship building.

 Social media is not. Our devices are not offering that, and so even if my child's friends have devices, they can still talk on the phone. I know you would never know it to look at a tween or teen using a phone that you could actually talk on the phone, but you actually can, and my issue is not with the phone.

My issue is getting lost in a world of [00:21:00] scrolling and getting stuck in that hole of scrolling to nowhere, not the spending hours talking to your friend on the phone. That's a wonderful thing. That's a thing to embrace. So. Starting with yourself again can be annoying because we always want the idea to be that we're fixing other people and other people have the problem.

We all have the problem when it comes to screens, to be honest and. The reason it's empowering is that you can't actually control what anybody else does. Even your kids, believe it or not, you cannot control them. If you have a good enough relationship with them and a good enough connection, you can influence them, but you cannot control them after a certain point.

Right. But the person you can control a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time is yourself. So that's why it starts off as kind of an annoying piece of information or [00:22:00] annoying. Guidance to start with yourself, but it ends up being hugely powerful because also as you change how you use your device, as you change how you use the hours of your wild and precious life, that will naturally start to reverberate through your family.

And change the energy that your entire family has around devices and screens and around life. How you spend time as a family. Are you all sitting in a room scrolling on your own devices? And again, zero shame y'all a huge percentage of our country and world. That's how they spend their family time. But you now get a chance to change that. So I think we'll leave on that note 'cause obviously this could be a very, very long episode. But this is just our first scratching the surface episode on screens. How we can change our relationship with them. Why to change our relationship with them [00:23:00] because our devices and our screens.

Are a kind of prison that are actually keeping us from living our fullest, our most vibrant and our most precious lives. Take good care, y'all, and I'll see you next time. [00:24:00]