Introducing The Balance Project
Bringing life + tech into harmony for kids, families and communities
By Holly Moscatiello
Originally published in Little Silver Neighbors February 2025 issue
As an elder millennial (ouch!), I feel SO lucky to have grown up smack in the middle of the analog to digital transition.
I had enough internet-free years to have a play-based childhood. I faced small-scale challenges that I had to solve independently (without my parents in my pocket!) giving me confidence and critical skills for later, bigger challenges. In my teens, I got to experience the internet explosion firsthand: asking Jeeves everything I could think of, teaching myself rudimentary HTML to make my very own gURLpage, and decorating my AIM/AOL profiles in the most emo way possible [“inSeRT sAppY qUotE hERe”].
Okay, back to 2025…
I’m so grateful to have this dual perspective: before and after The Internet. The Smartphone. Social Media. I truly appreciate the benefits of growing up in the “real world” as well as growing up in the “digital world”. I feel that I - as well as my elder millennial peers - truly did have the best of both worlds and that we benefited tremendously from what both had to offer.
That said, younger millennials, Gen Z and now Gen Alpha do not know the world before the internet. They have not experienced the privilege of true boredom, true freedom, or getting full attention from the people around them. Their mistakes, their FOMO, and their imperfections are magnified and memorialized. Most of their waking hours are spent on a screen (75% of waking hours on average and 344 daily phone pickups in 2024 if you’re curious!). And after a solid 15 years of evaluation, the data are now in: this new way of life is not good for them. They are in the midst of a mental health crisis and they are not thriving. The pendulum has swung too far and they are paying the price.
And now, as a mom of three young children, I want nothing more than for my girls to have things better than I did, as all of us parents do. And so, I plan to try with all of my might to help swing that collective pendulum back towards the center with The Balance Project.
Unfortunately, as much as we’d like to think we can control what happens within our own house and with our own kids, we must learn from those who came before us and are telling us - we can’t. The tide is too strong and the price is too high. To have a fighting chance, we have to move as a community of parents who want the best of both worlds for our kids - and we have to work for that together.
With The Balance Project, I hope to mobilize a collective effort to get closer to an optimal life/tech balance with kindness, openness, and a collective mantra, “to do the best we can with what we know”. I hope that we can work together to find a realistic, sustainable “sweet spot” between screen life and real life that allows our children, our families, and our communities to thrive in our ever-evolving modern society.
Together with other local parents, we have formed a core and extended team that is also committed to tackling this societal challenge. We have educational events scheduled throughout 2025 and are currently in the process of collaborating with our wonderful administrators, teachers, and local leaders to lay out a collective action plan for the Little Silver community that we intend to begin rolling out in September 2025.
In addition to supporting Little Silver, The Balance Project is also working with other interested communities across the nation to apply the approach and methodology to drive change more broadly. We have big dreams!
It is never too late to get involved - we are always looking for passionate volunteers, subject matter experts, and general supporters (and non-supporters…we need you too!) to help shape this effort in our schools, in our community, and beyond.
We believe wholeheartedly that this is only the beginning — and we cannot wait to see what happens next!
For more information or to get involved / join our email list, reach out to holly@thebalanceproject.life or visit us at www.thebalanceproject.life.
