U.S. Congress, state governments, and school districts across the nation are frantically promoting or passing measures to protect youth from harmful social media by restricting online platforms or limiting screen time and phone use in school, as well as a mass-action lawsuit against social media companies.
As that national debate unfolds, some educators and parents offer a simple solution predating all digital technology: Bring Back Boredom.
For Julian and Elena Pasek, aged 7 and 9, this means they get less than an hour of screen time per day. There’s always reading and activity books. After that, their imaginations go to work.
“You don’t need to be handed something external to be entertained,” their mother, Laura Pasek, said in a June 27 interview with The Epoch Times.
Yes, boredom happens, she said, but it’s only temporary.
Ms. Pasek, who also teaches elementary school children in suburban Detroit, balances this approach with her students and her children. At school, recess time for the youngest students is about learning creativity and collaboration, while the older kids use it for socializing and physical activity.
“The eighth graders,” she said, “are happy to just walk around the outdoor track and talk or kick a ball around.”
At home, whether in the house or outside, Julian and Elena are constantly inventing new games. There’s “Danger Mom,” where the siblings must work together to stop their mom from doing something foolish. They also invented creatures—giraffes with attached ladders—and businesses, such as a gourmet food delivery service for people stranded on mountain tops, Ms. Pasek said.
“Kids like to show mastery of something,” she said. “They like to be curious.”
The family travels often. Before a recent trip to Europe, Julien and Elena were allowed to access GPS sites on the internet to preview their destinations and learn how to map out their day trips by selecting landmarks. They also began learning German.
With what little screen time is allowed for entertainment, Ms. Pasek presents a teaching moment: Were you aware that you forgot to go to the bathroom? Did you notice you were rude to your parents when they tried to talk to you?
Ms. Pasek acknowledged that even with this approach, her children’s desire for screen time hasn’t decreased. They still salivate over shows and digital games, in part because of their curious nature.
With the older students, she said, fighting boredom without devices becomes increasingly difficult as they approach adolescence. As increased screen time is inevitable for education, recreation, and practical purposes, debating with middle schoolers over what age they should have phones is another valuable exercise and teaching moment.
While social media gets the most criticism nationally, Ms. Pasek believes that video games with no educational value are the worst form of screen time, followed by television streaming services geared toward binge-watching. While Elena will soon be getting a tablet device with limited capabilities, her mother said it’s far too soon to start talking about a phone.
Ms. Pasek’s mother-in-law, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, an author and psychology professor at Temple University, is on the front line of the debate between child wellness and digital media. During a June 15 panel discussion at the Brookings Institution public policy organization, where she is a senior fellow, Ms. Hirsh-Pasek said “Bring Back Boredom” can work if adults set better examples and engage with their children after saying no to excessive device time.
“Nothing’s more important than the conversation. Parents, put your phones down,” she said during the panel discussion titled “Screens and Children’s Well-Being.”
“We look at our screens; we break that connection. Use it in the same quantity as food: Don’t overdo it, but get a good meal.”
‘Wise to Monitor Online Activity’
“Learn Snapchat. Learn what engages them when you finally figure out how to steal a car in [Grand Theft Auto],” he said, adding that as screen time and social media use are allowed in gradual increments as they get older, it’s wise to monitor their online activity and require them to share their user names and passwords.“The kids are OK. This is and always will be a work in progress, and we have to follow their lead as much as we lead them.”
Another panelist, Phil McRae, an executive staff officer with The Alberta Teachers’ Association in Canada, noted that following a decade of research on youth anxiety and depression related to devices and social media, a law prohibiting smartphones during instruction time in all Alberta schools recently took effect.
“We need places in children’s lives where they can be screen-free,” Mr. McRae said. “But that balance is a tough one. We’ll see how it unfolds over time.”
Educators, policymakers, and legislators in the United States will be watching closely.
Two measures in New York state—the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and the New York Child Protection Act—were signed into law on June 20. The first law requires parental consent for those under 18 to use social media platforms that manipulate algorithm-generated feeds. The other law bars online sites from collecting, sharing, or selling personal data from minors without informed consent.
At the national level, the Kids Online Safety Act is making its way through Congress. That legislation, like New York’s, would restrict algorithm-generated feeds for minors on social media sites while also limiting some non-educational functions on those platforms, such as video games. In addition, more pressure will be placed on social media companies to remove harmful content that could lead to youth violence, self-harm, depression, and anxiety.
In the courts, hundreds of plaintiffs have joined the class-action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against the most popular social media companies, including Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Google, alleging that the defendants’ platforms encouraged addictive behaviors that caused emotional and physical harms, including death, according to court documents.
