I did something crazy at the beginning of the summer and forced my household to go from a screen time free-for-all to a strict two-hour limit per day.
What was I thinking? Well, for starters, I really wanted my kids to be bored.
Though it sounds a bit sadistic, there’s a good reason I
hoped for them to be out of their minds with nothing to do -- studies have shown
that boredom fosters creativity.
I am fully aware that, try as I might, I will never be able
to recreate the carefree summers of my youth (all-day bike rides and adult-free
adventures until the street lights came on). Devices are just part of our lives now, from zoning
out to YouTube videos to looking up slime recipes. So I get it, we
are not becoming members of Laura Ingalls' family anytime soon. But, during unstructured
time, they always would rather watch videos of people doing stuff than actually
do anything themselves. They needed forced downtime to fight (yes, fight! How else do you learn social skills?), build stuff with cardboard boxes and rock
on the swings until they were dizzy.
When scientists tried this out with adults, they found the more boring activity was followed by greater creativity. No matter the age, people need time to daydream, think silly or
serious thoughts and just do something mindless until inspiration follows. For
kids, that might be hanging upside down on the sofa until all the blood rushes
to their heads. For adults, it might be bouncing a ball in the office until a big
idea hits.
It wasn’t easy cutting back on screen time -- there was a big period of grousing every day. The kids would turn on each other, pushing
and pulling as they negotiated the rules of how they would play next (sometimes
ending in tears). But there were also races to the favorite swing, robots made
from Amazon boxes and big messes to clean up at the end of the day (for them, not me). It wasn’t perfect; when I had things to do, sometimes it was
easy to forget the fact that screen time was up so I could get a little more
done. Eventually, forced summer reading became reading without being
told and lots of time whispering ridiculous stories back and forth.
Have I improved them as people? It’s yet to be seen long-term
if I’ve made a dent in their screen-time addiction (they are definitely still
jonesing for their next iPad fix, no matter how much fun they had the day
before without it), but hopefully they’ll remember their screen downtime and go
searching for the neighborhood Demogorgon without being told.