Teaching Technology Self-Control: How to "Untether" from your Device

There is no question that technology has altered the way we live, work, play, and often the way we think. If you take a look around your home, workplace, or community, you may find technology that helps us drive (what did we do before GPS?), operating washing machines, delivering news, and helping us access information about almost anything through the internet. Thus, the world our children are growing up in looks much different from the one in which we grew up. Think about this, when our children grown up, they may tell their children that the "oldest" technology they will be able to remember using is the iPad.

With technology taking a major focus in our lives, we may see the value in taking time to "unplug" and focus on the physical world around. That may be easier said than done - how can we teach this balance to our children, when we may struggle with this ourselves? We need to teach technology self-control... and this teaching may start with us.

How many of us know someone who checks their social media during dinner, plays Candy Crush while watching TV, or experiences their child's first class performance behind their phone's video screen. Maybe we have even been guilty of a few similar actions ourselves. With technology not having the same prevalence in our youth, we may not have developed the self-control around technoloy.

We can teach our children through modeling - showing them by example. To build technology self-control, you'll may want to start small- with one context. Let's say you want to keep family dinners technology free. All texts, email, and tweets can wait until after dinner. This may be easy to do at home, when you can put your devices in another room, but what happens when you are at a restaurant and it's not feasible to leave your phone in the car? Will you succumb to temptation when your phone dings? Can you still ignore your phone as it sits on the table in front of you, or in your bag?

A good place to start building self control is at home. You can start by putting all phones and devices in a different room, the physical separation will make it easy to avoid sending texts at the table. At this time, you can set the rules and hold everyone accountable. Trust, your children may be adept at reminding you of the rules if you feel tempted to send one more text before dessert.

Once you've mastered that and have successfully had a few tech-free dinners, try moving the devices closer (in the same room), but out of reach. You'll have to train yourself to ignore the beeps and dings that may happen. You may find this difficult at first, but keep trying. You need to break yourself of the urge to look at your phone every time it makes a noise. After you have mastered this for a few dinners, you can move the device to the table, screen side down. This way, you can practice restraining yourself from using the devices when they are within reach.