Four Key Takeaways from The Balance Project’s Perspectives Panel
By Scott Davis
On a snowy January night, in a Little Silver elementary school cafeteria, Oscar, a local seventh grader, confirmed what many adults — parents and non-parents alike — have seen themselves.
“My peers are really glued to their phones and their screens,” Oscar told a crowd of 100 adults in attendance for The Balance Project Perspectives Panel.
“As soon as we leave [for the day], they just take their phones out and start going on them,” Oscar continued.
It may not be a revelation for some, but it’s further proof that there is a problem that needs to be solved. It’s even being recognized by kids themselves!
“Put simply: modern childhood is out of balance,” says Holly Moscatiello, founder of The Balance Project. “With The Balance Project”, Holly continued, “we hope to swing the pendulum back toward the center, helping communities find and maintain a healthier balance of real-world experiences and technology. We want to set our kids up for success and ensure they can fully experience their real lives both now and in the future.”
This was the goal of the Perspectives Panel hosted by The Balance Project: to bring together the perspectives of different stakeholders to discuss the short and long-term impacts of an imbalanced approach to real-life experiences and technology usage.
The panel consisted of five adults with expertise in education, mental health, pediatric development, and clinical psychology, as well as three local teens. Adults from over a dozen Monmouth County-based towns attended the event to learn more about this important topic.
Here are four key takeaways from the panel:
1. Children really are in front of screens as much as we think — and maybe more.
The panel discussed that the average American child is spending 6-9 of their waking hours on screens each day according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Nora, a local high school junior on the panel, told the audience that she and her friends will at times sit in silence while looking at their phones while hanging out. On the occasional nights she is allowed to have her phone in her room, she admitted to staying up until 2 or 3 am scrolling social media.
Jack, a local high school senior, echoed this, saying he and his friends will often lose over an hour of time together “doomscrolling” together and looking at “nonsense,” as he put it.
2. The impacts of a technology-based childhood are now clear.
Several members of the panel noted the change they’ve seen in children as lives are increasingly spent online.
Kathy Van Benthuysen, founder of Converlation and a 30-year veteran fourth grade teacher, recounted fewer and fewer students being able to look her in the eye and say hello, with just one student being able to do this in her last year of teaching a few years ago.
Dr. Nicole Pensak, a clinical psychologist, author of “Rattled,” and researcher, discussed the numerous ways children’s development can be affected by too much time with technology: less risk-based free play, decreasing confidence and the inability to negotiate and navigate failure and build resilience.
Dr. Pensak also detailed how adolescence is a developmental phase with heightened neuroplasticity, making it an incredible opportunity to nurture mental health. However, the malleability of the brain at this stage also means it is especially vulnerable to the detrimental effects of social media culture and a screen-based childhood (vs. an experience-based childhood).
Most startlingly, Terri Cioffi, an elementary school principal, said she has seen a significant increase in mental health screenings this year because they’ve had suicidal ideations. It is a difficult part of her job, Cioffi said, but necessary when children express thoughts of harming themselves and ideas of how to do it, based, in part, because of content they’ve seen online.
3. Boredom, play and independence are critical parts of healthy childhood development.
The night was not all doom and gloom, of course. The panel’s experts all co-signed a simple, beneficial solution to less screen time and positive development for children: more boredom, free play and independence!
Emily McCue, an occupational therapist and founder of Sticks and Sprouts, noted how critical play is to developing crucial foundational skills: creativity, risk-reward analysis, the ability to navigate emotions, build interpersonal social skills, confidence and more.
Additionally, McCue and Van Benthuysen both supported the use of simple, open-ended toys — that is, toys and games that don’t have a definitive conclusion or end to their use. Things like blocks, cups, bowls, and outdoor elements like water, sand, and mud, are all excellent for allowing open-ended, imaginative play with kids, which form the foundations for future creativity and innovation. Van Benthuysen recalled Legos becoming a class-wide hit with her fourth graders when she denied access to screens during recess.
Ironically, McCue noted, there are great online resources for parents to look up how to encourage more independent play in their kids, especially when faced with the common complaint of ‘I’m bored!”.
4. The search for balance is a work in progress, but there are steps you can take today.
The Balance Project team and panelists agree: there is no easy answer or clear-cut solution. However, by getting educated and collaborating together as a community to define “what good looks like (based on what we know)”, communities can begin to shift toward a healthier approach.
And in the meantime, the panel of experts all had simple suggestions for improving the life/tech balance – starting now.
Dr. Pensak challenged parents and children to put their phones down, perhaps in another room, and “surf the urge” — ride out the urge to pick up your device with deep breaths until the moment has passed. Doing so repeatedly will train your brain to check your phone less.
McCue suggested taking daily phone-less walks outside to shake off the “indoor” feeling of wanting to be on screens.
John Moscatiello, the founder of Marco Learning and former National Tutoring Director at The Princeton Review, suggested reading more books.
“The kids who read dozens or hundreds of books across their childhood are ready to take the SAT with no prep, they’re ready to do well in school, they’re ready to think slower.”
And The Balance Project offered a list of simple “baby steps” to take toward a better balance, including awareness, screen-free meals and more unstructured, screen-free time for kids.
In Conclusion
As Van Benthuysen told The Balance Project after the event, “I love that people realize this is a problem.”
“Because technology is so pervasive, parents sometimes say, ‘I can’t do anything about it! Everyone else has it, everyone else is giving it to their kids, so I have to do the same.’
“But you don’t have to. You can be the difference in your child’s life.”
