Screen habits and the approaching summer. What to do before the schedule disappears.

In late May, in households with children, there is a visible shift in screen habits. The school-year defaults — screen after homework, limits on weekday use — begin to relax as summer becomes proximate. My daughter, who has been reliably off screens by eight during term time, starts negotiating the eight o'clock boundary in the last weeks of May. The negotiation is a signal that the summer drift is beginning.

The summer screen drift is not a moral failure. It is what happens when the structure that contains screen use loosens. Structure loosens in summer. Screen use increases.

The parent's screen relationship is the most powerful variable in the family's screen relationship. The child who grows up watching a parent who uses screens intentionally — putting the device down when someone is talking, not checking it at meals, having visible offline hours — learns a relationship to screens that cannot be taught by any rule or lecture. This is the specific thing that produces the change. The change comes from the practice. The practice comes from the decision to try it once, this week, in the ordinary moment that is already available. This is the specific thing that produces the change. The change comes from the practice. The practice comes