How do I get my kid off their phone and doing something?

Taking the phone away creates a bored kid rather than a busy one, and a bored kid is not automatically an enterprising kid. They are just annoyed with you and waiting for it back.

The more useful framing is that the phone is winning a competition nothing else entered. It is right there, it costs nothing, and it delivers something every few seconds. Anything replacing it has to offer something the phone cannot, and there are only a few things that qualify.

Money is one of them. Not money in general, which is abstract. A specific thing they want, with a price on it, that they currently have no way to buy. That is the rare thing a phone genuinely cannot provide, and it is why this works when arguments about screen time do not.

So the question worth asking is not about the phone at all. If you had money coming in, what would you want? Then be quiet through the first shrug and wait for the second answer.

Three things that help once something is actually happening.

Make the first step smaller than seems reasonable. Ask one person one question this week. The gap between doing nothing and doing something is the whole problem, and a big first step guarantees it does not get crossed.

Let it be theirs. A kid doing your idea to get you off their back is doing a chore with extra steps, and the phone is more appealing than any chore.

Do not make it the alternative to the phone out loud. The moment this is framed as the thing that gets you off screens, it becomes a punishment with a business attached.

One honest note. If the phone is the only thing they engage with, if things they used to enjoy have stopped mattering, and it has been months, that is worth treating as its own situation rather than a motivation problem. Talk to a doctor.