How many phone checks does your child see? (calculator)
In the first years of life, your baby learns what is normal by watching what you do. And one action gets repeated more than any other: checking a phone. Most of us have no idea how often our little one sees it happen. Want your number?
Checks they see in a day
In a week
In a year
Before they turn five
That is 43,800 repeated lessons about what is important. Not a guilt trip, just a number worth knowing. The good news: it is one of the easiest numbers in parenting to change.
We are building something for this
A little dragon you raise by putting your phone down. Phone away, dragon thrives. Check too often and it gets tired, or worse, starts staring at its own tiny screen. Built for parents who want to reduce their screen time. Sign up to get it first, and get it free. (It also helps us decide how fast to build.)
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You are on the list. Your dragon thanks you already.
Five simple ways to shrink that number
No cold-turkey challenges and no shame. Phones are part of life: work emails, daycare messages, food orders. The goal is not zero. The goal is more intentional phone use, and to free yourself of that screen time dopamine dependency.
- Know your number. You just did the hard part. Most parents guess low by half. Keep the number somewhere you will see it this week; being aware of the habit is the first step to making a change.
- Give your phone one home. A phone in your pocket or on the counter gets picked up without conscious thought. A phone with a home gets picked up on purpose. Put it in a box, or out of sight on a shelf. Out of sight really is out of mind; the phone checks that disappear are the ones you never take.
- Turn off non-essential notifications. This is the big one. Most phone checks are not choices, they are reactions to a buzz, a banner, or a little red dot, and most notifications are designed to draw you mindlessly back into the app. Strip everything back to calls, your calendar, and the people who matter. If it is not time-sensitive, it does not need to interrupt your day.
- Switch your screen to greyscale. Greyscale removes the bright, colourful design that makes apps feel rewarding. A grey screen is genuinely boring to look at, so you put the phone down faster and pick it up less. On iPhone it is Settings, then Accessibility, then Display and Text Size, then Colour Filters, then Greyscale.
- Put your phone in a book. This one comes with a tool, the Hideaway Book. It is a real book with a hidden space inside, sized for your phone. Checking your phone now means opening a book first, and that small pause is a pattern disrupt that makes the habit less automatic. And it hides the checks you do make: your little one sees a book coming off the shelf, not a phone coming out of a pocket.
That is the whole idea behind the Hideaway Book
It looks like a regular board book but holds your phone in a hidden, foam lined compartment. You can still check your phone when you need to. Your little one just sees you pick up a book. It comes paired with a storybook made for them: Drift: Journey to Mount Chilly. Here is a quick look at how it works.