The screens that once came along to every road trip, every hotel room and every long weekend at the lake are increasingly being left in the car or locked up at the front desk. What used to feel like a punishment is becoming a deliberate choice, and May is turning into the month families use to reset before summer begins.
This post may contain affiliate links that may earn us a commission. For more information, see our Disclosures.
Global travelers are choosing rest over activity, with 56% citing rest and recharge as their top motivation for leisure travel, and more than half of parents and grandparents initiating no-screen-time periods during family trips to keep everyone present. Print book sales grew for two consecutive years through 2025 and remain above pre-pandemic levels, while analog travel programming is filling up months in advance. The Global Wellness Summit named analog wellness one of its 10 major trends last year, describing it as the era in which more people get aggressive about logging off.
The phone parking question
The biggest obstacle to a real digital detox weekend is not willpower but the absence of a system. Families who successfully unplug tend to start with a physical ritual of putting devices somewhere they cannot easily retrieve them. Some hotels now offer front desk lockboxes for exactly this purpose, and at home or at a cabin rental, a designated drawer with a simple household rule works considerably better than vague intentions made on the drive over.
The physical act of handing over a device matters more than it sounds because it removes the negotiation entirely. When the phone is behind a desk or inside a lockbox rather than a pocket, the decision has already been made and does not need to be revisited.
What fills the space
The first objection is always the same: what do families actually do without screens? The answer is often simpler than expected. Board games that have been untouched for a year, a trail map and a cooler, a cookbook and two hours to make dinner together. The specific activity matters far less than the fact that it requires presence and attention, both of which fill the gap faster than most families anticipate.
Properties that lean into this trend are deliberately curating the experience. Many resorts and independent lodges build screen-free programming into weekend packages, including guided foraging walks, stargazing sessions and communal dinners without a television in sight.
It is a direct response to travelers who rank spending time in nature and improving mental health among their top motivations for travel, at 37% and 36% respectively, and to booking data showing that 76% of global travelers are considering or planning a nature or mountain escape this year, with hotel searches for “room with a mountain view” up 103% year over year.
Make it work for kids
For families with children, the digital detox conversation involves a different negotiation than it does for adults, and the first two hours are the evidence. Parents and grandparents initiate no-screen-time periods during vacation at rates that cut across traveler types, with 58% doing so even among families who would not describe themselves as wellness travelers.
A separate 84% say they plan to seek out opportunities for the whole family to play together without devices this year. Kids accustomed to screens as their default entertainment experience a recognizable restlessness when access disappears, an agitation that parents who have done this before learn to wait out rather than fill.
Age-appropriate analog swaps help considerably. A disposable camera gives a 10-year-old a project to work on across the whole weekend, while a nature journal gives an 8-year-old structure in unstructured time. Younger children tend to adapt fastest once the initial friction passes, and it does pass, reliably, by the end of the first afternoon.
Day 1 versus day 2
Anyone who has attempted a no-screens weekend will describe the first day as dragging, and the slowness is uncomfortable. A particular restlessness sets in around midafternoon, the kind that reaches for its usual outlet and finds nothing there. Most families report that the urge to check a phone does not disappear on the first day so much as it becomes easier to ignore.
By the second day, the impulse to check a phone is still there, but easier to ignore. Conversation runs longer, children find their own entertainment without prompting and the pace that felt effortful on Saturday starts to feel natural by Sunday afternoon. Families who complete one detox weekend often schedule the next one before they have driven home.
Where the trend is headed
Digital detox travel draws a wider audience than the wellness label might suggest. Families who would not describe themselves as wellness travelers are choosing screen-free weekends in growing numbers, enticed less by the idea of a digital detox than by the straightforward result of two days spent paying attention to the people they came with.
That shift has not gone unnoticed by the travel industry, as screen-free programming, analog amenities and low-stimulation environments are moving from niche differentiators to baseline expectations. They now appear at properties across price points as more family travelers decide that presence, not itinerary, is what they are actually paying for.
Zuzana Paar, a co-founder of Food Drink Life, is a seasoned traveler and writer who has explored 62 countries and lived in St. Lucia, Dubai, Vienna, Doha and Slovakia. Her work has been featured on Fox News, New York Daily News, MSN and more; she has also appeared live on Chicago’s WGN Bob Sirott Radio Show. When she’s not discovering new destinations, she shares travel tips and insider insights to help others experience the world in a unique and unforgettable way.