Unplug for Back To School

Unplug for Back To School

by | Aug 4, 2020 | Uncategorized

It’s back to school season, which for many of us means that we are establishing routines and getting back into the groove of getting the kids ready for school each morning. Yet, going back to school looks different this year. Almost all schools have screen-based learning plugged in to their plan for the Fall. This means that the 7+ hours per day the average American kid spends on screen-based entertainment (playing video games, social media, watching shows, apps, etc.) could happen in addition to all of those hours of school screen time, plus homework!

It’s for this reason that we need offline time to be part of our weekly routines, too. So, unplug for back to school by making sure you get those breaks from screens one day per week.

Getting Back Into the Routine

This summer, I’ll admit that my Screen-Free Saturdays were a little less consistent than I would have liked. Sometimes they turned into a Screen-Free Sunday instead. Sometimes, little things slipped in and turned my screen-free time into screen-filled. For me, sometimes it was a board meeting or a last minute need to follow up on something via email or a big news headline that popped up as an ad while we were listening to music that I needed to check in on. For the kids, it was a spontaneous request from a friend to video chat, which turned into playing a logic game on the tablet until we would laugh and say, “Oh no! It’s Screen-Free Saturdays– oops!” Those little moments aren’t a big deal in the scheme of things, but I always felt like I wasn’t totally rested when I came back to the CCFC virtual office on Monday. And the kids weren’t rested either. 

Fast forward to next week when the kids start school remotely. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s going to be hard. One of my favorite first graders will be spending 5 hours on the screen with his classmates as part of their school’s plan. He told me, “I don’t want to go back to school. I don’t want to be just sitting at the computer all day.” For students who thrive in the bustling, active, social arena of school, online distance learning is tough, especially in this format. It’s more important than ever to make sure that we preserve some offline, active play for kids as they spend their days on screens without choice.

Our Getting Ready for Screen-Free Saturdays resource has all the language you need to {re}start the conversation. Then, revisit our activity suggestions, which have been published as guides for you:

Plus, our resource library keeps growing! Scroll down to see how to help promote Screen-Free Saturdays in your school or district!

Let Them Play

Our August 24th webinar “Back to School during COVID” for early educators produced some amazing advice for honoring kids in the time of distance learning. The online event featured Drs. Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Denisha Jones. Read these great tips for helping young children thrive while remote or in-person. 

Screen Breaks

Throughout the week, it’s also important for us to have screen breaks. Check out this toolkit from Yoga Ed., an organization that promotes mindfulness, movement, and social emotional learning for communities worldwide. The kit provides 3 breathing exercises, 3 chair yoga poses, and 3 brain breaks. 

Community Connections

Children enrolled in school need real breaks built into their weeks. That’s why we’re partnering with school districts to help them to spread a simple message: go screen-free one day per week. Interested in promoting Screen-Free Saturdays at your school for the benefit of children, families, and educators?

Check out our brand new SCHOOL ORGANIZING TOOLKIT! It features all that you need to build a campaign at your school, including a letter to parents, new SFS pledge cards, flyers, and more.

Download the full toolkit

Plus, share your stories with us. We’ll be highlighting stories of successful screen breaks this month, and we’d love to share yours! Reach out by replying to this email or tagging us on social media @screenfreeweek or using the hashtag #screenfreesaturdays (after Saturday of course!).

Happy unplugging,

Rachel Franz

P.S. Make sure to stay connected with all of our Screen-Free Saturdays ideas, resources, and fun by taking the pledge:

 

I'll go Screen-Free on Saturdays

Inspiring Youth: One Teen’s Solution to Screen Time Helps Peers and Elementary Schoolers

Inspiring Youth: One Teen’s Solution to Screen Time Helps Peers and Elementary Schoolers

by | Jul 15, 2020 | Uncategorized

In this guest blog, high school student, Haydn Wolfers, shares her experience with her own digital wellness and how she’s spread knowledge about tech use to not only her peers, but also elementary schoolers who are just beginning to develop their digital health habits.

I asked my classmate what she did over the weekend and if she studied for our math test. No, she said, she knew she needed to study, but she went on her phone and lost track of time. 

I’ve heard this so many times. My generation is one of the first to have cell phones and technology as such a large part of our lives and the problems this causes are not being addressed. I see this everywhere I look: from myself, to my classmates, to the kids I babysit. 

I became aware of this issue during my sophomore year of high school when Susan Reynolds from LookUp.live (then called Mindhood) visited my school to present about Digital Wellness. She shared how unhealthy habits with phones impact mental health and how prevalent this problem is. Until this point, I hadn’t realized how our phones can make such a negative impact on our lives. 

Haydn Wolfers (second from right) and Susan Reynolds of LookUp.live (far right) speaking on a panel about teenagers’ habits with technology

This led me to start the first LookUp Club with some friends. Our goal was to raise awareness about Digital Wellness in our high school and having a healthy tech/life balance. We wanted to help our peers (as well as ourselves) develop healthier habits. We hosted some of the first LookUp Challenges at our school.

DID YOU KNOW?: LookUp Challenges occur when students invite their friends, family and community to take a break from social media and digital distraction TOGETHER for a week. Recently, Screen-Free Week hosted a week-long LookUp Challenges, beginning with Screen-Free Saturday on July 18th, with ideas for digital wellness for elementary, middle, and high schoolers inspired by the work of students like Haydn. Check it out at www.screenfree.org/look-up-challenge!

At lunchtime, we set up a table that our classmates would stop by to learn about the variety of options they could choose from to challenge themselves to change their habits. For example, they were encouraged to sleep with their phone outside their room (Sleeping Dog) or take a break from their phone while studying (Busy Bee). It can be very difficult to change habits, but we found that it’s much easier when everyone is doing it together and supporting each other.

One of Haydn’s resources for the LookUp Club!

When I began to work on my Girl Scout Gold Award Project during my junior year, I wanted to continue to address this issue, but from a new angle. I decided to focus on teaching upper-elementary students about Digital Wellness! I hoped that if they were aware of the issues before they developed too many bad habits, they wouldn’t have to try to change these habits later. 

I developed a lesson for them, similar to what Susan Reynolds taught my class, but targeted at a much younger age. The lesson consisted of watching a video about teenagers’ relationships with their phones, so the children could become aware of the issue. Next we discussed their reactions, experiences, and tips to improve habits in the future. Tips included not being on their phones while with friends and being aware that what’s posted on social media isn’t the reality. The 5th graders I visited were not aware of how problematic phones can become and were very interested in learning about it. We finished the lesson by decorating small burlap sacks to become “Phone Sleeping Bags,” which would serve as an extra reminder for them to not use their phones when they shouldn’t, as well as to remind them of what they learned in the lesson. 

Haydn’s infographic “Top 10 Tips to Look Up from Your Phone”

Unfortunately, after visiting only two classrooms, the coronavirus hit and my plan to visit classrooms could not continue. However, I didn’t want to stop spreading the message because it’s more important while quarantining than ever, as everyone is spending so much time using technology. To continue spreading the message, I made infographics and spoke on several virtual panels to share my perspective.

Once it became clear that school wouldn’t open back up for a while, I decided to convert the lesson I had made to become virtual, because I still wanted the students to learn about this important topic. My lesson now consists of the same short video I showed in class, with questions to be filled out in a google form. The lesson can be done as a family or class by discussing the questions, or it can be completed individually through personal reflection. Although I think the lesson is not as impactful when it is not in person, now that it is virtual it can reach a wider audience of kids all over the country, instead of only in my school district. 

I’m so glad that I’ve learned about digital wellness. It is extremely important in our lives, yet it does not receive the attention it deserves. My own tech/life balance has improved immensely as I’ve been spreading the message to others. I hope that I can continue to improve and help others become aware of the importance of developing healthy habits with technology and learn how to do so.

About the Author

Haydn Wolfers is a rising senior in Piedmont, California. She is a founder of her school’s LookUp club addressing digital wellness amongst her peers. She is a dedicated Girl Scout working on her Gold Award Project. Additionally, she is on the LookUp Youth Leadership Council. 

Want more strategies for building digital wellness? Take our pledge to learn about Screen-Free Saturdays and solutions like Haydn’s through our monthly e-mails! They are full of activities, resources, and inspiration.

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Are you a nomophobe? One teen’s solution for reliance on phones

Are you a nomophobe? One teen’s solution for reliance on phones

by | Jun 10, 2020 | Uncategorized

Teens, more than ever, are suffering from nomophobia- the fear of not having access to one’s phone. Rising highschool Junior, Celine Bernhardt-Lanier, offers her inspiring solutions for phone dependence in support of her peers.

Imagine you come home from work or school one day, and your phone has completely disappeared. You’ve lost it. It’s nowhere to be found.

What would you feel? A twinge of anxiety? Distress? Panic? Fear that you might miss out on something important?

If the answer is yes, then you might have “nomophobia,” a term scientists use to describe the fear of losing or not having access to one’s cell phone. Don’t worry, you’re not the only nomophobe around!

As teens, most of us are constantly checking our social media. We jump to respond to notifications, scan Instagram’s latest models, YouTube’s latest epic fails, TikTok’s viral dances, and Twitter’s political memes. Prisoners to our phones, we lack true face-to-face connection. From my experience of hanging out with friends, sometimes it seems we don’t even have real conversations– other than mindless celebrity gossip or self-conscious ranting about recent posts. How are we deepening our friendships?

Today, in quarantine, this issue is complicated. Our primary outlet for connection is virtual. Yes, we do appreciate Zoom surprise parties! But despite their obvious benefits during social distancing, our 2D screens don’t replace genuine presence. And it’s not surprising that many of us end the day feeling tired and anxious. So how do we deal with virtual dependency in a healthy way?

As a sophomore at the French International School, my response was to start a venture called iConnect.

In January, I sent a survey to high-schoolers and middle-schoolers at my school to discover the core issues of phone dependency. One question asked: “Do you consider yourself addicted to your phone?”

The result was fascinating: 60% thought their peers were addicted, while only 15% thought they were addicted. Given the difference in perception, we concluded two things:

First: we want our peers to change
Second: we have a hard time seeing our own habits

The more important question is: what’s the health secret to live in an interconnected world of technology and feel a sense of true human connection at the same time? I believe the answer is simple: balance.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you. -Anne Lamot

Through iConnect, we build healthier communities through digital wellness, mindfulness practices, and face-to-face relationships.

iConnect’s activities that bring balance include:

-Zoom calls with yoga and mindfulness sessions
-Social media campaigns on a school’s Instagram page
-Workshops on raising awareness
-Phone-free spaces in schools

So far, we have facilitated two hour-long workshops at the 2020 DC Student Action Summit, started partnerships with organizations like IBme (to offer mindfulness and retreats in schools), Yondr (to create phone-free spaces during social events), and LookUp (to promote screen-free days).

We launched an Awareness Campaign to promote a week-long “Unplug Challenge” through our school’s Instagram page. (Check out our Unplug Challenge guide and video!) Over 100 members of our school community followed the challenge, helping us raise awareness around digital wellness– a great start! It was also fascinating to address an issue I am so passionate about in my school (and also showed me that teenagers are sometimes hard to motivate!)

So… did you find your phone? Are you a nomophobe, enslaved to your device? Either way, join our movement to create more digital balance and human connection, even during the pandemic. You’ll be truly free at last!

About the Author

Celine is a rising junior at the French International School in Bethesda, Maryland and is founder of iConnect, a venture to help high school students develop real-life connections away from their phones. Celine is a volunteer at CCFC this summer and is working to build a resource for teen tech use with us.

Want more strategies for disconnecting? Take our pledge to learn about Screen-Free Saturdays and solutions like Celine’s through our monthly e-mails! They are full of activities, resources, and inspiration.

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Unplug to Move: A Screen-Free Saturdays Guide

Unplug to Move: A Screen-Free Saturdays Guide

by | May 28, 2020 | Uncategorized

Our ability to move our bodies throughout the week depends on so many things: space at home, outdoor access, our physical needs, and especially our time. That’s why this Screen-Free Saturday we invite you to Unplug to Move! 

This weekend, make a commitment to connect with your body and invite kiddos to do the same. Go for a family walk around the neighborhood while following social distancing guidelines. Stretch. Tumble off the couch. Have a dance party. Play hide n’ seek. Whether you’re in a studio apartment or have acres of land, there are so many excellent, screen-free ways to remind our kids (and, OK, ourselves!) that being a kid IRL is way more fun than running around in a virtual world.

3 Activities for Healthy Bodies

Hiding games: Having been a childcare provider for over a decade, I spent a significant chunk of my time hiding in closets, behind a suitcase, while babysitting and nannying. Most recently, I successfully lodged my 6’0” body into a washing machine and was crowned “CHAMPION” by two six year-olds and a couple of 11 year-olds. When was the last time you played hide n’ seek together? Or, my favorite challenge? “Hide the Rock.” Take an object (or multiple) and have the “it” person hide it. The seekers look for the object(s) and then get a turn hiding. It’s a real-life treasure hunt!

Yoga: Yoga is a great Saturday morning kickoff activity to bring presence, awareness, and fun to the day. Plus, everyone from babies to 99 year-olds can get into yoga! Can’t touch your toes? Great, there’s yoga for you. Your child is a super gymnast that can stand on their head? Yep, yoga is great for getting that energy out. Your child isn’t engaged? Meet them where they are: the 2-year-olds in my class were into trucks, so our “downward dogs” became “excavator scoops” and our “forward folds” were “cranes.” Families can also make or purchase great yoga story books and yoga cards, which can make it feel more like a game and less like an exercise.

Big body play: The science is out, and it tells us that children need big body play: fast, wide movements, big bear hugs, wrestling, heavy lifting, rolling, tumbling, crawling, swinging… the list goes on. One of my favorite activities with kids 6-12 in a small space is “The Spider Web” (also called “Ninja Lasers” for certain crowds):

Each kiddo gets a ball of string or yarn (we’ve even used old birthday streamers).

We picked a space inside (outside works, too) to play and cleared out any obvious dangers such as things that will fall and identify others that shouldn’t be touched. We usually did this in a bedroom.

Say “GO” and all “spiders” go to work, wrapping their string around furniture, door knobs, and more until it runs out.

As if that wasn’t enough fun, now comes the challenge: getting from one end of the room to the other without touching the string. Otherwise… “ZAP.”

Build upon the difficulty by adding more string, navigating it holding hands, trying to rescue an object that gets thrown in the middle… the possibilities are endless! We spent at least 3 hours doing this one day, adding on to our play. When I was over it, the kids kept going!

Check out our BINGO Card for activities for the whole family!

Indoor Big Body Games

Grown-ups, get your game faces ready. This article from Fatherly has some great tips for indoor big body games that also work during the week in between your WFH grind. While we might replace the word “distraction” with “quality time,” you get the idea! 

Take a Stretch Break

Anyone else having a sore neck from all this screen time? Experts call this our “TECH NECK” and it’s a common issue especially while many are working from home. Give your neck a break on Saturday and every day! Putting down the screen will help and these stretches are designed to relieve that tension.

Community Connections

Join our upcoming Action Network Live! webinars, which are designed to help families navigate children’s technology use during COVID-19. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE.

 Make sure to stay connected with all of our Screen-Free Saturdays ideas, resources, and fun by taking the pledge:

I'll go Screen-Free on Saturdays
Unplug to Read: A Screen-Free Saturdays Guide

Unplug to Read: A Screen-Free Saturdays Guide

by | May 28, 2020 | Uncategorized

For the past several years, we’ve partnered with the Children’s Book Council for a joint celebration of Children’s Book Week and Screen-Free Week! Even though we’re postponing our official celebration of Screen-Free Week this year, Children’s Book Week is still on, and it’s inspiring us to UNPLUG TO READ this week for Screen-Free Saturdays! No matter where you and your children are at in your relationship with reading, there are so many ways to use words and images to explore our world.

This Saturday (or whatever day you’re choosing to go Screen-Free), take a minute to read.

“I can’t imagine a single Screen-Free Saturday without reading. With older kids like mine, we all set aside time to read to ourselves. But read-alouds for all ages (younger and my kids’ ages) is a special time for us too. At this moment, I’m reading to my daughter while my husband reads to our son, but there have been times when I have read books to both kids at the same time, or when we’ve reversed the parent-child dyad. Reading is an all-weather activity, which makes it ideal for every Saturday.”
-Rinny Yourman J.D., Washington, D.C.

Tips for Success

With our friends at Children’s Book Week, we’re offering a list of 100 Screen-Free, Reading-Related Activities! Here are some of our COVID-friendly favorites:

– Read a book without pictures. 
– Read a book without words (They’re out there!)
– Hold a family book night — everyone reads a book at the same time, in the same room.
– Read to your pet.
– Find a new cookbook and try a new recipe together for family dinner night.
– Ask the adults in your life about their favorite children’s books growing up.
– Find a book about clouds, then go or look outside and see if you can identify them.
– Use a heavy book to press freshly cut flowers and leaves.
– Find a book about a place where an ancestor came from.

Need help finding a book? See below for info about libraries, support your local bookstore, visit your local Little Free Library, ask a neighbor (and sanitize) or check out and print PDFs from gutenberg.org.

Read More Tips on Our Website

Children’s Book Week

Children’s Book Week has so many great tools for your family to start, maintain, and expand upon a love of reading this weekend and beyond! Check out their website for everything you need to celebrate.

Our Annual Booklist!

Presenting our 2020 Screen-Free Week Children’s Book List! We’ve added some new, amazing titles and continue to enjoy our favorites from years past! Check it out here.

Community Connections

This week, we are encouraging folks to check in with their local libraries! In my town, our library offers a “takeout window” for books right now, so we were able to go and get books for the kids really easily this week. Other library systems are offering additional online resources, community book readings, deliveries, and more! Quarantine can’t stop us from enjoying books! 

What better way to kick off your Children’s Book Week and your Screen-Free Saturday than taking some time to reflect on your family’s wellness?! To help everyone develop healthy relationships with tech, our friends at Digital Wellness Collective are offering virtual and personal events going on all over the world on May 1- check out the archive. Learn more here!

Enjoy curling up with a good book this week! How will you unplug to reconnect? Share your experience with us at ccfc@commercialfreechildhood.org or tagging us @screenfreeweek on your social media (after Saturday, of course). Let us know what issues came up so we can troubleshoot together!

Haven’t taken the pledge yet? Join our community today and have access to regular Screen-Free Saturdays updates, resources, and activity ideas!

I'll go Screen-Free on Saturdays