A Prescription to Heal a Screen-based Childhood

The cure may be as simple as opening our back doors.

As I made my way to a large school auditorium for an evening parent talk, I took an unexpected detour through the K-2 halls. I was prepared for my talk as I frequently engage with parent audiences about childhood screen addiction and prevention, but I was not prepared for what I encountered in that hallway. 

Initially, I was flooded with memories of my kids’ years in elementary school. Some things were the same: tiny backpacks, small cubbies, oversized crayons, and the smell of glue. I was enveloped in a wave of nostalgia. Then, I began to notice the differences. I peeked into an empty classroom and assumed I would see those little chairs that were hard for adults to fit in on parent night, but they weren’t there. The classrooms had strange hammocks resembling cocoons, webbed swinging chairs hanging from the ceiling, and small rocker-style chairs. Around the tables were big ‘sitting’ balls and something called wobble chairs. 

Curious, I inquired about these unconventional seating arrangements from my guide, Kathy, the technology teacher. She enlightened me, revealing that these innovative seating options were for “active sitting.” With a gentle nod towards the importance of physical activity and its correlation with academic performance, Kathy explained, “Since kids spend so much time indoors on screens these days, they are entering school lacking the core strength to help them physically sit up in chairs and learn.” She explained that the school needed to compensate for the motor deficiencies of physically weak children.

Everything in the classroom was designed to accommodate kids with gross and fine motor sensory deficiencies. There were floor surfers so kids could slide on their bellies across the room, vestibular wedges (a seating cushion to activate and strengthen core muscles), balance disks, and more. Kathy explained that these tools are indispensable for bridging the gap between delayed physical development and learning, underscoring the necessity of these adaptations in contemporary education.

“This is the regular classroom. This is standard for our younger students,” she explained.

Down the hallway, there were art projects strangely different from those we still have hanging in our kitchen. Very few were made by hand. Instead, most were photos printed from a digital printer, sloppily cut out, and pasted on poster boards. 

“Kids do “digital art” these days. They love the computer,“ Kathy explained.

Amidst the wave of digital projects hanging in the hall, a glimmer of traditional art caught my eye outside a first-grade classroom. Kathy said that this particular teacher dislikes using technology in her classroom. Seeing something a little more familiar was refreshing, but the drawings weren’t the trees, families, and flowers one might expect from young children. These drawings included block-like video game characters and paintings of stick figures with tablets and phones. One drawing with knives, complete with red blood drops and a disembodied head, was very disturbing. I felt like I was in a science fiction movie. Where was the kid art? I didn’t see any houses, birds, or rainbows, and the few stick families drawn had faces with no details; some were just strangely blank. I remembered the wonderful drawing of me my kindergartner brought home for Mother’s Day with exaggerated eyelashes and big earrings. None of those were on display here.

As I continued through the building, I asked about the strange “dirt” line along the entire length of the main hallway at waist level. Kathy explained: “When the children walk in single file, they extend their arms to touch the wall so they can get their bearings and not fall over. Their physical balance is off because their core is weak; they are not experiencing enough recess or physical play outside of school.” 

I headed to the auditorium, a little distracted to deliver my talk. What I saw in that hallway was disturbing. Was this the norm now, or was this just this school? I began to unravel this elementary school mystery the next day when I called my friend, Cris Rowan, a pediatric occupational therapist. 

A discussion with an occupational therapist

Cris was not surprised by my description of what I saw. She explained that the average child spends more time on a screen than asleep. They aren’t getting enough time to move and play to build core muscles, hurting their learning ability. Simply put, kids aren’t spending enough time outside experiencing the push and pull of nature. They are experiencing what Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, calls a nature deficit disorder.

Rowan explained, “Humans have two sensorimotor systems stimulated by movement: the vestibular system in the brain (often called our inner ear) and the proprioceptive system in our muscles. These two systems integrate with the visual system to provide core stability, motor coordination, and balance. Children who don’t move enough don’t fully develop these essential sensorimotor systems, resulting in poor core stability, coordination, and balance. Consequently, they need to reach out to use the wall for stability.”

Rowan said nature ignites the imagination in ways a screen never could. Nature stimulates all our senses—sight, sound, touch, smell, and even taste—in the perfect balance necessary for kids to develop appropriately. Without exposure to these stimuli, children become hypersensitive and anxious. I learned that a lack of natural outdoor experiences contributes to sensory deficiencies, and the lack of physical strength affects brain development. As I ended my call with Cris, I asked her about the art. She very matter-of-factly suggested that if a child doesn’t experience nature, they cannot draw it. That made sense.

Who knew that holding crayons, learning to read, and sitting in a chair at school were so dependent on how much time a child spends in physical play? I imagine that many young parents today have no idea how important these brain/muscle systems are and how they are all tied together. I have raised four children, and I never knew that. 

As a nurse, I was certainly aware of the importance of exercise as I had seen the mental health effects of sedentary lifestyles in older teens. Still, I was unaware that screen time is robbing our youngest children of necessary physical development. Like every parent, I know kids like to move and that going outside can solve many problems, including bad moods and meltdowns. However, I never connected how important opening the back door and sending kids out in nature was for learning until that day. I concluded that screen time comes with another hidden price: stunted physical development that may put kids behind academically.

How play-based childhoods kept us healthy

When we were growing up, I doubt our parents knew anything about our gross and fine motor skills, sensory issues, or critical core strength needs. Why did we not require cocoon swings, wobble chairs, and balance boards? Why were we drawing pictures of real human faces and trees and birds? Because we spent a lot of time with people and outdoors. TV was a babysitter sometimes, but we were not glued to it for hours on end. The shows had a stopping point, generally after 30 minutes, and then we went outside or engaged in rough-and-tumble play inside. We spent more time outdoors than indoors. We socialized face-to-face, primarily out of the house, and playing in the dirt was what we did to grow up. Nature was our babysitter and our classroom. 

My favorite memories of childhood centered around being outside with my brother. These experiences were not only the building blocks of our personalities and influenced who we became as adults but also made us strong. Our core muscles were strengthened every time we ran and rode our bikes. Our gross and fine motor skills were practiced every time we balanced our favorite book, bubblegum, and toy as we climbed up to our tree fort. Our sensory systems were developed, too, as we were often barefoot. We experienced the soft but sometimes itchy grass on our bare feet and then felt that same grass when it was wet and slippery as we ran through the sprinklers. Who knew these activities were the building blocks that prepared our brains and bodies for future learning?

Building with our hands grew our brains.

Our outside play activities—which could never be replicated in a classroom—helped us become better students. For example, my brother and I used our imaginations and innovative skills to build our double-decker tree fort out of scrap wood—complete with a trap door he engineered—in our avocado tree in the backyard. It was not safe enough for us to sleep in it, but we did anyway. It was not built with our parents’ help or using a kit from a big box store. 

I made mud stew filled with leaves and berries, and he gathered kumquats—the more rotten, the better—for our backyard battles with friends. We improvised our swings using tires or whatever materials we could find. We were motivated to climb the tree to pick avocados without dropping them. Then we became businessmen, selling those avocados to the neighbors around the block and investing our earnings in candy from the drug store just a bike ride away.

No parents allowed.

Our parents were not involved at all in our outdoor adventures. Most of the time, they had no idea where we were as we had no phone trackers in our pockets. We routinely wore splinters, cuts, and skinned knees like badges of honor earned through countless daring adventures outside our back door. Hanging from trees and scaling Mr. Hart’s towering five-foot brick wall—our playground knew no bounds. We were independently building our independence. 

We played hard. Our muscles and brains got stronger as our imaginations grew. Boredom was a foreign concept outside (the only time we got bored was when we were inside too long). Armed with hammers, shovels, and saws, we embarked on endless projects. There were no search engines to answer our questions or videos to show us how to do things. We solved problems because we had to. If we couldn’t solve a problem easily, we kept trying until we figured it out. We never asked our parents for help with anything in our backyard; it never crossed our minds or theirs.

We were a team.

We learned how to plan, try new ideas, and invent our own fun. We tested our limits. We staged our own Wild West show (remember that show?) by engineering a daring zip line from our tree fort to the house. Each attempt became a practical lesson in physics and a firsthand encounter with the consequences of nature’s laws. A few sprained ankles were worth the lesson of gravity’s unyielding grip.

Together, we dug giant holes in the backyard (to make temporary swimming pools) and dutifully walked our dog Daisy, rain or shine, ensuring ample doses of vitamin D and moments of relaxation. We had ‘white space’ and ‘margin’ in our play because nothing was instant; we had time to relax, contemplate, and dream up plans for the next day. The flicker of the streetlights coming on at dusk was the dinner bell. We would eat as a family and fall into bed for over nine hours of well-earned sleep.

We not only built our physical core strength, but little did we know that our backyard was a fortress, protecting us against mental health problems like depression and anxiety. As you can see from the details I can recall, we were also building a wealth of memories as rulers of our backyard kingdom, memories that we still lean on today as we manage the ups and downs of life as adults. 

We have diagnosed the problem.

The current state of affairs suggests a concerning trend: our screen-based homes are depriving our kids of the health benefits of outdoor play, and I don’t think parents understand how deep this problem is. Was our childhood in the “old days” perfect? Far from it—no childhood is without its trials. However, today's children face unique and unnecessary obstacles tied to excessive screen time. The repercussions of this trend are clear: a decline in outdoor play, which is crucial for holistic childhood development. We have the diagnosis, and now we can begin to heal childhood. When we return to play-based childhood, we can restore the inherent health benefits that have been lost. The equation is simple: the more time kids spend entranced by screens, the less time they will have to play outside. 

The RX: Close the screens and open the back door. 

Our kids only get one chance to get this right, so let’s stop gambling and stop forcing our kids to adapt to the screen world so early. Let’s raise the bar and focus first on what is physically best for them. How do we remove not all screens but the screen obstacles stunting our child’s development? How do we create smartphone-free childhoods?

Fortunately, like all ScreenStrong solutions, the cure is easier than you think. To a wailing infant, a bored 10-year-old, or an anxious teenager, stepping outside is like a magic elixir, a prescription offering unparalleled healing. We have the cure for the problem of screen-saturated childhoods. Science gives us clear direction—remove the addictive screens—and we already have everything we need to get started—nature. 

For younger kids, begin by physically removing screen obstacles that keep them inside so it will be easier to fill their downtime with outdoor choices instead. A few weeks of a new low-tech outdoor routine will reset their brains. It may be as simple as stopping by the park for an hour after school each day since afternoons can be the most prone to excessive screen use. Have them help you with meal prep, and then enjoy a screen-free dinner together in the backyard. 

A reset is more challenging for older teens because the screen culture has already shaped their brains and created strong cravings, but resetting is possible. Help your teens start by assisting them with plans for routine outdoor social activities with friends, like fishing, hiking, or enjoying a homemade firepit in the backyard together. They will need your prompting at first, but soon, they will discover the magic found outside and leave their screens more often.

When you sit down for dinner tonight with your kids, share your favorite outside stories from your childhood, and then ask them about their favorite outdoor activities. If they have a nice long list, keep doing more of what you are doing. If they don’t know their favorite backyard activities, today is the best day to open the back door and send them on their way to find out. 

Let’s eliminate the need for classroom wobble chairs and vestibular wedges by removing mindless screen time and allowing our kids to fill their days with active play outside, barefoot, and without us. Could the cure to the screen crisis really be as close as our backyards? I think it is.

Subscribe for free to read our posts, but if you want to support our mission, consider getting a paid subscription. ScreenStrong is a non-profit organization because we want to encourage families to give generously to spread the message and save more kids. It’s simple: the bigger our budget is, the more kids we can save.

To learn more, listen to the following podcasts:

Summer Strategies: Keeping Middle Schoolers ScreenStrong This Summer (#190)

ENCORE: The Endless Non-Tech Gift Ideas with Evan Hempe (#130)

48 Benefits Living 48 Months ScreenStrong with Evan & Andrew Hempe (#169)

Melanie Hempe, BSN, is the founder of ScreenStrong, a nonprofit organization, and the author of the Kid’s Brains and Screens course series for students and parents. She is dedicated to preventing and reversing childhood screen addictions by providing scientific evidence and community for families around the globe. Her educational material is filled with everything she wished she had known before her oldest child suffered from a screen addiction. ScreenStrong has created what every family needs—education and the community—to skip toxic screens through adolescence so that teens can reach their full potential. Visit ScreenStrongSolutions.com for educational material and ScreenStrong.org to learn more and join the community that is saving childhood.