How to create a tech-free zone in your home (without a family revolt)

{"text":[[{"start":7.5,"text":"After reading Getting Healthy in Toxic Times by former GP Dr Jenny Goodman, Beth Long confiscated her three children’s iPads and turned the top floor of their house in Dorset, on the UK’s south-west coast, into a tech-free zone. "}],[{"start":22.75,"text":"“My middle child [aged 11] was addicted to his iPad,” she says. “Taking it away was three months of pain. He would complain that he was bored all the time. Eventually he stopped asking.” She replaced them with Yoto and Tonie audio players and installed a 24-hour plug timer to turn off WiFi between 10pm and 6am. She also installed a landline so her 13-year-old daughter could chat with her friends sans smartphone."}],[{"start":49.3,"text":"It was a painful adjustment. But “everybody has found greater peace,” she says."}],[{"start":54.4,"text":"Long and her family are part of a growing cohort carving out tech-free havens — a bedroom, an upstairs floor or most of the home. Chiming with the UK’s landmark policy to ban under-16s from social media in June, joining Australia, Turkey and others, “tech resistance is slowly becoming the defining feature of 2026”, says Alice Crossley, deputy foresight editor of The Future Laboratory."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":80.8,"text":"Earlier this year, the trend forecaster released the results of a survey of 3,000 adults in the UK, US and Australia, showing 57 per cent are seeking slower, analogue ways of completing tasks, while 46 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds are actively trying to decrease screen time."}],[{"start":100.05,"text":"“These are not technophobes,” says the report, “but . . . informed sceptics who understand exactly how technology works and how to resist it because of that knowledge.”"}],[{"start":111.7,"text":"“They do not want ‘dumb homes’, but ‘wise homes,’” continues Felipe Correa, an Ecuadorean architect who co-founded Somatic Collaborative, a New York-based design practice, with partner Anthony Acciavatti."}],[{"start":125.10000000000001,"text":"He adds: “More people are looking to answer social withdrawal by designing their homes for physical interaction, thoughtful conversation and actively creating spaces that prioritise that from the ground up.”"}],[{"start":137.10000000000002,"text":"Here’s how they’re doing it."}],[{"start":139.10000000000002,"text":"Turning off apps "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":141.60000000000002,"text":"Many consumers are bringing back “digital friction” — making pathways to tech harder — at home to ward off mindless app checking. Brick (£45) is the maker of a small, battery-free, magnetic device for Android and iOS that you stick on your fridge, or similar. By tapping with your phone, it blocks chosen apps — could be social media, messaging or email. To unblock, tap the Brick again. Chicago-based co-founders TJ Driver and Zach Nasgowitz launched the start-up in 2023 after “wanting to start a business” but finding themselves “scrolling instead”. “You can leave your Brick at home when you go out, which removes the temptation to unlock apps,” says Driver."}],[{"start":184.25000000000003,"text":"Unplugging the WiFi"}],[{"start":186.80000000000004,"text":"Interior designer Henriette von Stockhausen was asked by a client in Hampshire to install a single switch “to turn off all electrical and wireless waves at night in the main living areas and upstairs bedrooms”, she says, ensuring the household would spend their evenings unplugged. She has also designed media rooms where families go specifically to access WiFi, leaving the rest of the house unconnected, “so there is no temptation of mindless scrolling and a more mindful approach to phone use”, she says."}],[{"start":213.45000000000005,"text":"Installing retro phones"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":215.60000000000005,"text":"Instead of FaceTime, Nancy Davis, chief creative officer and executive director of the Global Wellness Summit in New York, speaks to her grandchildren, aged seven and nine, on Tin Can, a WiFi-enabled landline. “The sound quality is terrible — like you’re actually talking in a tin can,” Davis caveats, “but the kids don’t seem to mind.” With its twirling cord and pastel hues, the company is leaning into nostalgia; following success in the US, it launched this year in the UK, New Zealand and Australia."}],[{"start":247.20000000000005,"text":"Tin Can was co-founded in 2024 in Seattle by father of three Chet Kittleson. After reading The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, he set out to create a screen-free phone for his then seven-year-old daughter. It joins a small but growing list of phones modelled on the old-school landline, including Austin, Texas-headquartered Pinwheel and Cordee, a British landline maker launching this year. "}],[{"start":272.90000000000003,"text":"“We want to encourage parents to model good behaviours: walk in the house, mobiles away, humans in the room,” says co-founder Ben Johnstone, who, as a divorcé, wanted his son to be able to call him freely without resorting to a screen."}],[{"start":287.8,"text":"Creating analogue entertainment spaces"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":290.6,"text":"“If you remove screens, you have to replace them with something more appealing,” is the advice of Davis of GWS, whose dining table turns into a smorgasbord of “Japanese stickers, coloured cards, feathers, origami kits, googly eyes, Popsicle sticks and clay” when her grandchildren come over. “With digital, they never have anything in their hands. When they have a piece of paper, it’s real to them.” "}],[{"start":315.5,"text":"Adults are also leaning into tangibility. When Kayla and George Wallace, 33, renovated an 1850s shotgun home in New Orleans, the priority was sociable spaces with tech pared back to a minimum. The main home is structured around an enfilade of three salons . In the first, a projector was installed in the ceiling to host film screenings in lieu of a TV. There’s also a record player, so, says George, “you’re sitting with the intentionality of flipping records, not listening to a Bluetooth speaker”. "}],[{"start":344.7,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram"}],[{"start":357.59999999999997,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1792223561_1286.mp3"}