At the end of last month, some friends told my wife and me they were doing a media fast for all of September. They decided to take a break from social media, tv, movies, etc. One exception would be one movie night a week. Basically they wanted to put some boundaries on screen time for a month.

Later that day, my wife asked me what I thought about us doing a media fast for the month of September.

Inside I secretly thought, “That sounds awesome! I want to do it!” On the outside, though, I played it cool. I pretended to only be interested and supportive. My excitement stayed hidden. I wasn’t sure if it was a “crazy idea” or something we might actually do.

Well, it turns out that I am the main person in our family who comes up with “crazy ideas” we do not actually do. My wife was serious about it. So we set out to lay down our ground rules.

1) Limited screen time, outside of what would be necessary for work/school.

2) No movies, tv, netflix, etc except for one night a week.

3) Limited social media. (Not too hard, since I’ve been limiting my social media already.)

Then my wife thought we should invite our three kids to join us. I thought, “That will never happen. What kind of 11, 9 and 6.5 year old would want to do a media fast for a month?”

We cast the vision and they went for it!

Side note: I’d suggest not doing a media fast during football season. That is my only regret. Our friends are not football fans and we did not consider this when they told us their plan.

We will be done on October 1st. The kids have done a ton of reading and not killed one another. My wife and I have also been very productive and read a bunch. We have all spent more time together, which has been amazing.

We (not the kids) are considering doing it again. We’ll see though. Football is calling my name.