The Tech Exit By Clare Morell

🖨️ Print post

The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones
By Clare Morell
Forum Books

The Tech Exit is both the most disturbing and hopeful book I’ve read in quite a while. It closely aligns with two major priorities of the Weston A. Price Foundation—nourishing our children and using “Technology as Servant.” Author Clare Morell not only has a name in com­mon but has followed in Sally Fallon Morell’s footsteps by doing for technology what Fallon Morell has done for food: clearly delineating the dangers of our “standard diet” of screens and social media and providing “recipes” (step-by-step guidance) for us to create a nourishing environment for our families.

Scholar-researcher Clare Morell is pas­sionate about protecting children from online dangers and has been advising lawmakers and working to change public policy for the past decade. She is also a mother living the chal­lenges of raising children in our tech-driven world. The Tech Exit is an excellent guide to help parents take back the power that screens have acquired over our children. Thorough and fact-packed, yet a quick and compelling read, it intersperses a plethora of well-referenced data with heart-wrenching and heart-warming real-life examples. The valuable information and resources in the Appendix alone are reason enough to get this book.

Morell starts by documenting the many disturbing problems resulting from technology’s overpowering role in our children’s lives, ex­posing the “parental controls” myth (they don’t really give you control), soundly denouncing the ineffectiveness of “screen time limits” (no matter how limited, screens often dominate our children’s thoughts) and convincingly making a case for change. By now, we all intuitively know the addictive appeal and negative impacts of social media’s “likes” and doom-scrolling, but the research-backed facts that Morell provides may bolster our motivation to act.

To cite a handful of examples, consider that in crisis situations, children have been shown to focus on their phones rather than pay attention to what is going on around them or identify av­enues of escape. In school, children learn better and process written text more deeply without screens. In terms of physical health, the disap­pearance of eye oil glands (typically only an issue for adults in their seventies) is showing up in children as young as eight. As for mental and emotional health, children are exposed to porn, on average, by age twelve, mostly accidentally on social media, in advertisements and in gam­ing (and even Bible) apps. One in three minors has had an online sexual encounter, and three of four who do, don’t tell anyone. Today’s porn is often violent, sadomasochistic and dehu­manizing. Finally, Morell notes that the instant gratification furnished by digital technology reduces children’s capacity to delay gratifica­tion, solve problems and deal with frustration and pain. Excessive screen use can even cause brain damage similar to alcohol addiction and drugs like heroin and cocaine.

The good news is that Morell doesn’t leave you in the bleakness of these findings. The rest of the book, almost two hundred pages, offers practical guidelines to motivate and energize us to fight back against the harmful impact of smartphones. Continuing with the food parallel, Parts II and III are titled “Fast” and “FEAST” “Fast” is a short, encouraging section offering multiple paths to take a “detox” break from screens. The full benefits require a thirty-day commitment, but one can start with as little as one mealtime without screens. Morell recom­mends the non-profit ScreenStrong, which offers educational downloads and a free seven-day challenge, as well as more comprehensive paid programs.

“FEAST” offers a cornucopia of hope and practical ideas in a world increasingly controlled and subsumed by technology. Building out the acronym FEAST, while perhaps a bit contrived, is an effective framework for explaining the key components of breaking free: Finding com­munity, Educating on the dangers of technol­ogy addiction, Alternatives to smartphones, Screen rules and Trading screens for real-life experiences.

Part IV, “Collective Solutions,” is valuable for activists working to change schools, com­munities, laws and regulations. Focusing on the detrimental impact of smartphones and porn, Morell points to organizations like Mothers Against Media Addiction and the Phone-Free Schools Movement, as well as providing inspir­ing stories of communities that have addressed both successfully. But this is one area where WAPF readers should be alert! Morell credits digital IDs with effectively curtailing child access to porn and speaks positively about it, saying, “This innovative technology both allows adults to verify their age anonymously, protect­ing their privacy, and provides an effective means of keeping adult content from children, since children don’t have and can’t easily falsify digital IDs.”

Morell closes with a beautiful vision of family life and community, highlighting sto­ries of flourishing families who have tamed the technology monster. I am reminded of Dr. Price’s description of the mental and emotional well-being he found in the highly nourished groups he studied. In Chapter 21 of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, he wrote, “I have found a universal expression of love, happiness and peace. . . . Children are trained in kindness and unselfishness. . . . The individuals of these races live together in a spirit of cooperation and mutual helpfulness.” Imagine a world where our children and grandchildren are fully nourished in body, mind and spirit. Isn’t that what we all truly want? Don’t delay in reading and sharing this book—both thumbs up!

🖨️ Print post