alt Hacker NewsChanging habits is hard enough on it's own. parenthood and modern life makes that even more difficult
It is possible to make changes, I would say this is one of the easier bad habits to beat. The best is to start with fixed moments where you as a family decide phones are forbidden. For example, shortly after our daughter was born, we decided "no phones during eating (breakfast/lunch/dinner)". When both parents are in, it is easy to mutually enforce. For over a decade, we have never used a phone during dinner and it's one of those moments of family time.
Now we are always surprised when we have dinner together at a restaurant that some people are on their phones half the time (sometimes doing useless stuff like checking Facebook/insta), rather than enjoying each other and dinner. It's so weird.
Another good method is to remove addictive social media from your phone. Primarily games and apps with algorithmic timelines like Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, etc. I removed all those from my phone. I noticed with apps that do not have an algorithmic timeline, like Mastodon, you catch up once and after that it's not interesting anymore.
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It's not impossible,but on top of all the other stresses in life you need to sit down and figure out this new problem too? You have got to at least sympathize with the situation. I know I've regressed on phone use since my child was born.
There are many things you can do to get it out of your family's life. No phones in the bedroom, No phones after X O'clock, Open conversations about social media with your kids, Unite with them in the fight against social media, block social media from your phones (use only a computer). My own poison of choice was twitter but thankfully, it's become X and I've become ex-twitter more or less. It's liberating. I also vibe coded some software to keep me off these things on my work computer so that's been good too.