Where are the kids?

About ten years ago, my husband and I moved into an elitist nice town. We live in a place where people either have lawn care or cleaning people or both. To be clear – we don’t. It wasn’t always this way, but COVID changed things when people decided to mass exodus from the city because they didn’t need a daily commute. Everyday for the last ten-ish years, I have walked along the same 3-mile route. I’ve walked on all different days, and at all different times, and there’s one thing I’ve noticed – there are never any children outside playing in their yards. And I do mean never. I’ve seen children outside exactly five times in 8 years.

For years, this mystery evaded me. I know – with certainty – that there are plenty of children here. It is well known in our community that only interacts via social media that you don’t want to be stuck in the school pickup line. Avoiding it like the plague is an understatement. There are buses as far as your eye can see and even more parents. In the winter months, our fire department gets a visit from Santa Claus and tours him around our town. They use the bus stop route – which has many stops on my road. Curiously though, I do not see or hear children at those homes any other time of the year. Where are they?

I wish I was the only one who noticed it. In the past week, I’ve bumped into two older neighbors who have noted the same thing. And for the last few Sundays, on our way home from our family adventures, we have been taking intentional notice of homes. No matter which route we take or what the weather is like, there are no children outside playing.

Now… I do think there is a fair amount of see-and-be-seen going on in my town. Lots of birthday parties to attend, places to go, after-school activities and the like. I also realize that I am not rolling with the “in” crowd because my kids are homeschooled and I’m generally pretty countercultural. I once wore a scarlet letter for suggesting that a child who was interested in archery not take formal instruction, but instead practice in their yard.

That said, the public school parents I have spoken with have alluded to the fact that their children spend a lot of time “decompressing” in front of the screen in the afternoons. And I’ve seen it first hand. Not that long ago, I had a seven year old express he didn’t want to play, but instead wanted to play his video game. That made me feel really sad. Not just for my kids (who were very loudly being dissed), but also for him. He’s missing out on the best time of his life right now. Childhood should not be so stressful that these kids feel like they need to decompress in front of a video game. And are they really decompressing? I suppose that’s a conversation for another day.

I still vividly remember the day when my screen-free days went down the shitter.

Screen addiction is something I’ve struggled with for a long time. When I was a young teen, I had a blaring computer screen straight across from my bed. You better believe it was glowing at all hours of the night. I know my parents thought they were giving me a leg up, but I’m sure it wrecked my circadian rhythm, monthly cycles, and definitely mental health. I was always looking at that screen – hoping someone would message me. I was so lonely and the only people who did message me were typically after something or had something mean to say.

During undergrad, I worked really hard to rid myself of screen addiction. And what a beautiful life it was. As an adult, when was the last time you watched how the trees flipped their leaves to welcome an incoming storm? Then I met my husband – a computer engineer by education and a biotech engineer by trade. I was chit chatting with him about… something. It started with “I wonder…” and it ended with him whipping his phone out of his pocket, jiggling it from side to side, and saying “you know, we have these little things called phones that’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to know.”

I’m not sure if it was his insistence to communicate mostly via text, or the fact that I tried to avoid asking him questions and looking it up myself. But before I knew it, I was back in a screen hole. Then we got married, had a baby, and a couple more. Suddenly I needed something to do while I was nursing for the 18th hour of the day. And it wasn’t even social media for me. I was craving the mental stimulation that my job had provided, so I was researching and spending an inordinate amount of time on the Crisis News Network (a.k.a. CNN). I do *not* recommend this during the throes of Postpartum Depression. Regardless of the what-when-where-why or how, I had slipped back into the nightmarish lair of screen addiction that I had fought so hard to get out.

And then I gave my kids a screen to survive.

Fast forward seven years, a few babies, and z-e-r-o local support system. My second and third babies were born pretty close together, and all of them were terrible in the car. (It’s motion sickness, so please hold your judgement about powering through). And I did what any well-meaning parent would do – I gave them a screen to occupy their time during their car rides.

But you know what’s downright impossible? Trying to explain to a preschooler why we have to put the dopamine-activating screen away because we’re home now. Especially when you have a baby that really needs to nurse and a toddler that needs to nap. So that meant the screen time was creeping into our home life.

And during nap time? Yeah. I needed quiet time. So cartoons it was. Looking back, I’m embarrassed to admit that I used cartoons as a way to pacify my kids just to get my younger ones down for nap.

And now I’m going to say something crazy...

I think everyone can agree things were different when we were kids. And I believe everyone can also agree that we all spend too much time on our devices. Our kids are glued to devices way more than we’d like them to be, and certainly more than we were as children. But there’s something even more sinister that our devices (and social media) are doing: they are destroying communities.

What do I mean by that? I’m not sure where you hail from – but where I come from, the people who volunteer to work the football game on Fridays also run the community programs on Saturdays. You see the same people at Walmart and they wave hello and stop for a friendly chat while you’re mowing your lawn. Everyone knows everyone, and they know a lot bit of your business, too. But you know what? That type of vibe doesn’t exist there anymore, either. What I once thought was a cultural phenomenon between living in the Northeast versus the South, is very clearly a widespread issue. And it isn’t just generational. I’ve seen grandparents and great-grandparents who miss out on the little people right in front of them because they are scrolling their phones.

And you know what else? People aren’t calling their friends on the phone – they’re texting. Nobody sends birthday cards, instead sending well wishes on social media when it tells you to (trying to suppress a gag here). And we can’t even develop relationships with new people in our life because we have so much mental clutter from the people from our past. And even if we did look up long enough to chat with a stranger, we’ve all got so much social anxiety from the meanness on social media and the discomfort of eye contact, that everything gets weird in a hurry.

We’ve really got to set the example, here.

I knew I couldn’t ask my kids to quit their tech if I wasn’t doing it myself. I’m not a “do as I say” kind of lady. But I tried and failed a few times. It was brutal. Then, I started using app timers, which drastically improved my usage and kept me honest. I’m not tech-savvy, so going in and adjusting the timer was just too much of a headache for me.

But it still wasn’t enough.

I was still checking my phone 8,000 times a day, waiting for someone to text me. Then I’d pop over onto Facebook to see if there were any homeschool things happening in my area (because we were lonely), and realize that the people that weren’t texting me were interacting on Facebook It just became a sad, depressing existence, and I felt totally invisible. I wasn’t present with my kids because I was stewing about the fact that my supposed “friends” were ignoring me for weeks on end, but putting their energy into these superficial more-is-more networks. I was beating myself up about my blog, I was second guessing my worth as a human, then I read Glow Kids and listened to an inspiring podcast by Darren Whitehead. I realized I wasn’t the only person noticing this problem. Then my epiphany happened: let’s do a screen-free summer.

The Screen Free Summer has only two simple rules.

From Memorial Day to Labor Day (99 days), follow these two rules:

1. No WIFI connected screens for kids. Period. No YouTube. No smart phones. No video games. No social media. You can have a family movie night, go to the actual theatre or a drive-in together.
   
2. O-N-E hour of screen time for adults. No screens outside of work hours when you could be with your kids. No e-mail. No texting. No scrolling. No social media. You can use your camera, your maps, and the call feature. Use whatever features you want when you are away from your kids, but set the app timers so that the *total* time on your device is one hour or less. The one hour INCLUDES texting. Yeah. That’s right. You’re actually going to have to call people or forego some conversations.

Just think about how these two simple things could impact the world around you.

Often in meditation, we are asked to think about how our meditation practice will impact others. If we all collectively put down our phones and looked up at the same time – what would that look like? How would it feel to live in balance with technology? Imagine what it would feel like for your kids if they didn’t have to call your attention away from your phone? How would it impact your family? Your friends? Your community as a whole? What time would you get back and what could you do with it?

You can’t say no because I’ve made a handy-dandy tracker.

Apparently people love free printables, and I wouldn’t dare ask you to track this shit in an app. So go ahead and download our tracker, post it to your fridge and color in the sections as you go.

And yes, I am throwing up a social media hashtag. Here’s why.

I’m throwing up a social media hashtag simply because I want to draw awareness where the problem exists. It’s the easiest way to spread the word and get people to rethink their time online. I didn’t want you to think I’m a hypocrite or anything. (#thescreenfreesummer if you’re wondering)

This isn’t about elimination, it’s about balance.

My husband tells me I should call this the “Screenless” summer. When it comes down to it, he’s right. This isn’t about eliminating screens from our lives altogether. We can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. But we can look for ways to balance our usage. As Mama Bear says “I don’t have a problem with TV, it’s the habit of it.” Let’s spend this summer changing our habits and getting back to face-to-face interactions. Or, at minimum, picking up the phone and calling our friend instead of texting them. When you leave this blog, I hope you’ll throw some app timers on your phone and forward this along to let everyone know you’re participating in what could be the next coolest social experiment of our time.