Here’s what happened when my son and I turned off our screens for a day

I was just outside of San Jose when my iPhone began buzzing inside the cup holder of my rental car, notifications lighting up the screen like a slot machine jackpot. My hand twitched toward the phone, muscle memory stronger than willpower. “Mom.” My 10-year-old son Everest in the backseat barely looked up from his Nintendo Switch. “You’re doing the grabby thing again.” He was right. For all my lectures about his screen time, I had my own digital addiction. I often found myself longing for a time before the constant hum of connectivity, when being offline didn’t feel like falling behind. That’s when I made an impulsive decision. Once we hit San Francisco, we’d time-travel the only way modern...