Hi, this is Janet Landsbury. Welcome to Unreffelt.

Today I'm joined by Dr. Megan Owens. She's an author, a parent, a psychologist,

family counselor and therapist. She's currently a professor at Penn State University.

When Megan became a parent, she developed a special interest in researching the effects

of screen use on developing minds. And this education and research led her to decide to

raise her two children screen-free in their early years. And with her husband, she created

the popular website Screen Free Parenting, which offers thousands and thousands of independent

play screen-free alternatives for children. And then the emphasis of Megan's new book

spoiled right to laying screens and giving children what they really need is not so much

on what not to do and why, but rather on comprehensive practical answers to the question, what should

parents do instead? Before we begin.

Hi, Megan. Thank you so much for being on my show again.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

You were one of my first guests, I think, back when I started in, I don't know, even

when that was 2015, I think. And I so appreciated connecting with you and you have your new book

out spoiled right to laying screens and giving children what they really need. And it is

dense with information. I mean, this is a comprehensive book. You cover every study

that's ever been done on screen use. And you also offer very helpful practical advice

for delaying, minimizing, moving away from the dependency that I think, you know, we obviously

all have on screens these days. We all have a dependency on it, right?

Right. And there's so much debate and so much controversy and so much noise around it

that we kind of forget some of the basics.

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