MEMPHIS, Tenn. — For many, it's hard to go one day without a cell phone, Wi-Fi, or TV, but one Memphis family of seven is going cold turkey for the summer.
This summer, the Parish family is spending lots of time together with friends and mostly screen-free.
“We're taking out the Xbox, Switch, cell phones and scrolling on social media,” said mom Lori Parish. “We are taking out Netflix. We are going to kind of go 'old-school summer' like we had when we were growing up."
According to Parish, they've tried this before and it made a difference.
“We were inspired a couple years ago," she said. "We kind of took some technology away and we really saw them bloom."
It's helping her kids find creative ways to learn, have fun and prepare for the next school year.
"I do think it’ll make a difference,” said Parish. “I think that they will be more relaxed. I think they will be less stressed from having to always kind of be on."
Developmental Psychologist Dr. Stewart Burgess believes there are several benefits to limiting summer screen time to get ready for school this fall.
“You really want them practiced and ready to process the material on their own instead of having it be so digital so fast, so colorful, so rewarding in a in a cognitive processing or brain processing kind of context," said Dr. Burgess.
More hands-on learning could even help reduce summer slide, which happens when kids don't practice the skills they learned in school the previous year and forget them.
"If you look across studies that have been done for the last two decades, by the time children reach fifth grade, it's estimated on average, that they've lost about 18 months of acquired learning from school," said Dr. Burgess.
The Parish kids, who are 15 to two years old, may not have their phones, but they have plenty to do.
"There's different ways of kind of getting away from the technology and back to childhood,” said Parish.
Parish is sharing what she learned online with other moms in her blog, the Memphis Mom Collective. For most activities, her kids are practicing reading, writing and math without even noticing it.
"I think that it's just a good reminder of saying, 'Hey, there's nothing wrong with technology, but let's pull back a little bit,'” said Parish. “Let's make it less about that and more about us."