WE Are the Reason Kids Are on Screens

Lenore Skenazy on Apr 4, 2024

In (not so) short: We have disappeared a normal childhood, complete with adventures, MIS-adventures, boredom, free play and poking around. Even "screen-time experts" can't imagine kids doing something that is not on a screen but not a parent-supervised something-or-other either. An '80s childhood? "Come home when the streetlights go on"? Down the memory hole!

Well, no wonder kids are on phones! That is the only place we let them play and wander without us.

And no wonder we let them scroll! For parents, phones are the only alternative to a one-family, education-stuffed, infinitely fascinating day care center run by YOU for your own kid(s).

Screen-time experts, worried parents and everyone working to break the hold that phones have on kids, take heed:

NO KIDS WILL GET OFF PHONES IF THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE IS INTENSIVE, PARENT-LED, ADULT-SUPERVISED ACTIVITIES. Because no parent will have the time, ability or desire to make that happen on any sustainable basis. Life is not a constant field trip.

Let Grow -- which I run -- is the only organization I know of that is trying to make it NORMAL to let kids do some things on their own, unsupervised. It's strange that no one else is flying this flag. They should! Because until we succeed, kids will spend most of their childhoods in the virtual world.

And it's our fault for not giving them that other one -- the real world -- to enjoy with their friends, without us.

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Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a contributing writer at Reason.com, and author of "Has the World Gone Skenazy?" To learn more about Lenore Skenazy (Lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.