A volunteer’s view on Screen-Free Week

by | May 9, 2019 | Uncategorized

Hi there – my name is Kristen and I am the 2019 Screen-Free Week volunteer! It has been a pleasure getting to see all the wonderful events that you all have registered. I have been shocked at how widespread these events are. From Puerto Rico to India, these events are truly all around the world!

My interest in Screen-Free Week stemmed from my public health background and desire to care for others. My experience working with children strengthened my passions and has shown me the importance of spending meaningful, face-to-face time with others. It has been encouraging to see so many Screen-Free Week events and how people have used this time to be active together. Being a part of this event has not only been refreshing both physically and mentally, but encouraging as well. I have felt as though I am part of a supportive team working towards a goal.

A few weeks ago, I read an article about the difficulties a parent was facing in getting their child on board with limiting screen time and how they were working towards engaging in screen-free activities. This article stuck with me because, for many of us, this is a reality. I myself often find it difficult to engage in many screen-free activities. Screens are everywhere, our computers, phones, and even in our cars! With screens so present in my daily life, I have to remind myself to start small. I now realize adjusting my screen time is not something that will happen overnight. Limiting my screen time for any durable length of time is a habit I must create. Just like tying my shoes or fastening my seatbelt, I know to create this habit, it will take repetition and time.  

So, Screen-Free Week was my start. It was the start of my commitment to limit my screen time and move more – in fact, I signed up for my first triathlon and used the week to begin training! While my first week was tiring, it was great. It reminded me of my interests and the things I enjoy doing in the world outside of screens. All in all, I have discovered how encouraging Screen-Free Week is. It is a time to rediscover my interests and try something new! Thank you, Screen-Free Week, for encouraging me to rediscover interests and spend more time with the ones I love.

Kristen is Screen-Free Week’s volunteer. When she’s not volunteering with us, she works with Strong4Life, a wellness movement from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, where she helps coordinate various community, camp and provider programs.

What we learned this Screen-Free Week

What we learned this Screen-Free Week

by | May 7, 2019 | Uncategorized

CCFC staff enjoy lunch on a sunny day during Screen-Free Week

One of the great joys of Screen-Free Week is that it’s a brand new experience every year – whether this is your first, third, or tenth time unplugging, there’s always something new to learn! Here’s what the CCFC staff discovered about ourselves, our screens, and what it means to unplug during Screen-Free Week 2019.  

Our time is ours, and we have more of it than we think

On the first day of Screen-Free Week, CCFC program coordinator Sam Garin and executive director Josh Golin made the same startling discovery: we actually do have time to do the things we love! For Sam, the realization came when she dug up an old literary textbook from high school. “It was full of all these poems I loved and hadn’t read in years,” she says. “I spent Monday night just reading poetry, and at 9 I looked up and realized I could still do chores and get to bed early – I had so much time!”

Josh noticed a change on the first day, too: “Everything felt easier,” he says, “from getting everyone out the door in the morning to cooking, eating, and cleaning up after dinner. I wasn’t stressing out, rushing from task to task – even the annoying things like bringing an overflowing recycling bin down two flights of stairs felt not-annoying, and once they were done, I had all this time to do actually fun stuff like read or play games with my family.”

Our brains can be really, really loud

“I was walking to the train, and I was really committed to not being on my phone,” says Darshana Shakya, CCFC’s operations coordinator. “And my mind started racing with all of these questions that I suddenly felt like I needed to look up, even though I knew it wasn’t actually urgent. I really wanted that instant gratification from knowing the answer.” She didn’t look up anything her brain was telling her to, but resisting the urge was definitely not easy.

Communications manager Melissa Campbell had a similar experience, but unlike Darshana, couldn’t resist: “I started Screen-Free Week fresh off a breakup, and at one point, I literally thought If you just looked at some funny tweets you would feel better,” she says. “I mean, that’s just not true! But the pull was so strong that more than once I found myself scrolling aimlessly through my timeline, reading the same tweets over and over again. My brain kept telling me Twitter would help, even as it was actively not helping!”

We’re never actually Screen-Free, even when we really want to be

During Screen-Free Week, CCFC staff used screens to check the weather, look up bus times, pay bills, talk to far-away friends and family, find recipes, play music, and countless other little tasks that felt like they should be discrete, but actually acted as a gateway to not-utilitarian screen use. “Smartphones aren’t made to just let you do one thing,” says Josh, noting that having to look at his screen often interrupted otherwise serene moments. “Having an actual phone-free week would probably be much more peaceful and smooth, but would take so much more prep.”

A “successful” Screen-Free Week is different for everyone

Since almost no one can be literally screen-free, even for a week, the “success” of Screen-Free Week is up to the person celebrating! For CCFC’s screen time program manager, Jean Rogers, success meant finding new ways to relax and restore: “My husband and I are so wiped out at the end of the day, especially with long commutes, that we just want to crash in front of the TV,” she says. “It’s our default relaxation! So this week, we really focused on finding other things to do, like listening to the radio together, reading in front of the fire, or playing piano and singing together. I thought, why don’t we do this more?”

For campaign manager David Monahan, a successful Screen-Free Week is all about balance. “I think of screens as junk food,” he says, “and make room for it in my day the way I make room for mochas in my diet. Screen-Free Week is a time where I can kind of check in, like, oh, is this actually balanced? Am I actually in control?”

And even when our goals were concrete, they often led to other surprises: “My goal was no social media,” says Darshana, “but it turned out that that revealed this other goal, which was about restoring connection – finding those moments where you and your family might have been looking at a screen, but now you’re spending time with each other instead.”

Sam agrees. “I wanted to stop checking news sites compulsively,” she says, “and be really intentional that if I was using my phone, it was to connect, not to consume. I definitely feel like I succeeded, because I usually felt good whenever I put my phone down.”

We want to hear about your Screen-Free Week! What did you notice, encounter, or discover? How will you carry it with you? Send us a note – or a photo, video, audio message, poem, painting, or anything else! – at [email protected] and tell us all about it.

Why you should Do Nothing this Screen-Free Week

Why you should Do Nothing this Screen-Free Week

by | Apr 26, 2019 | Uncategorized

When I first heard about Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, I was immediately reminded of a Facebook Safety Seminar from 2018. Facebook’s head of research claimed smartphone use didn’t displace conversation, and instead people reached for their phones at a time they otherwise would have been “doing nothing.” Watching alone in my office, I was incensed. “You’re never doing nothing!” I yelled at the livestream. “You just think it’s nothing because you can’t monetize it!”

Odell’s book, which is somewhere between a manifesto and a self-help text, takes that moment and spins it into an urgent and optimistic call for action. Facebook’s belief that not being on your phone is “doing nothing” – that if there isn’t a way to profit off something, it doesn’t count – isn’t limited to just Facebook. It’s baked into practically all commercial technology, from social media to productivity apps to educational software. As users, we feel like we can’t afford to disconnect, lest we isolate ourselves socially or disadvantage ourselves economically. And the more immersed in this logic we are, the more it takes hold of our thoughts and inhibits our imaginations, until, Odell says, “we also see all our own time and our actions as potentially commercial.”

As someone whose literal job it is to help shield kids’ imaginations from corporate interference, this resonates. Just as unboxing videos on YouTube make the concept of playing almost inextricable from the concept of shopping, the attention economy’s constant demands leave us unable to do the “nothings” that are actually vitally important to our wellbeing: deep thinking, emotional and physical connection, contemplation of a cool-looking leaf or a funny-sounding bird. (Odell is very into birdwatching.) In order to resist, Odell says, we need to “protect our spaces and our time for non-instrumental, non-commercial activity and thought, for maintenance, for care, for conviviality.”

This is, of course, exactly what Screen-Free Week is about! Unstructured, creative time for non-commercial play, exploration, boredom, and anything else that might bubble up from inside of us. But, Odell says, screen-free space and time are about more than just the good feelings we get when we unplug: “We absolutely require distance and time to be able to see the mechanisms we thoughtlessly submit to,” she writes. This resonates, too. In our time of growing racial and economic inequality and environmental destruction, a week spent refocusing, strengthening, and deepening our attention is both personally and politically necessary:

“It’s not just that living in a constant state of distraction is unpleasant, or that a life without willful thought and action is an impoverished one. If it’s true that collective agency both mirrors and relies on the individual ability to ‘pay attention,’ then in a time that demands action, distraction appears to be (at the collective level) a life-and-death matter. A social body that can’t concentrate or communicate with itself is like a person who can’t think and act.”

This is why, for me, Screen-Free Week isn’t about “time well spent,” or “mindful technology use,” or any of the other tech-gone-good buzzwords that suggest that the problem is with users and not with the exploitative, profit-driven logic of the attention economy. It’s also not an exile, a giving up, or a quitting – taking a break is not the same as running away. Instead, I see Screen-Free Week as a way to hold space for possibility, to do what Odell describes as “standing apart”:

To stand apart is to take the view of the outsider without leaving, always oriented toward what it is that you would have left. It means not fleeing your enemy, but knowing your enemy, which turns out not to be the world, but the channels through which you encounter it day-to-day. It also means giving yourself the critical break that media cycles and narratives will not, allowing yourself to believe in another world while living in this one.

In the struggle to imagine, believe in, and build another world — one where human needs come before corporate profits – Screen-Free Week is a powerful tool. It gives us an opportunity to take back our emotions, energy, and relationships from companies who see them as a commodity – to remember that we are human, and we have real power. And then, we can focus our attention on what it really takes to change the world: patience, reflection, deep listening, joy, and relationships based in common goals and dreams.

Melissa Campbell is CCFC’s Communications Manager. 

Register your Screen-Free Week celebration today!

A High-Schooler Celebrates Screen-Free Week

A High-Schooler Celebrates Screen-Free Week

by | Apr 25, 2019 | Uncategorized

Mary Holohan is a high schooler who celebrates Screen-Free Week with her family every year. In this blog, she tells us what it was like.

My heart thumps violently. Sweat begins to pool on the palms of my hands. Anxiety wreaks havoc in my stomach. I begin patting myself down, frantically searching my pockets to try and locate… my phone.

Misplacing or losing your phone can feel like the end of the world. In high school, most teenagers have smartphones and can become quite attached.

I am one of them. And yet I spent a week “screen free” to break away from the distraction that takes over my life.

Screen-Free Week is an annual international movement facilitated by Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Our family participates in Screen-Free Week every year to reset and see the true impact screens can have on our well being.

The rules of Screen-Free Week are no screens unless for a school or work assignment or vital communication. I also turned off all notifications except for text messages and deleted Instagram from my phone for the week.

I chose to take you through the week with me to highlight the impact Screen-Free Week had.

Day 1:

As soon as my alarm rang out I immediately reached for my phone to check the latest updates on social media, but I had to catch myself. Before I started browsing, I turned my alarm off and chose to simply lay in bed. The rest of the day went similarly, every time I had the urge to reach to my phone when there was downtime in class or sitting at my lunch table, I corrected myself and found an alternative. Already on day one I noticed how all the “quick” checks throughout a day add up.

Day 2:

Today I was more accustomed to not relying on my phone to fill time and I already noticed a difference. My attention span was slowly getting longer. When I got home from school I pounded out homework without getting distracted and accomplished more in a smaller amount of time. I tend to get sidetracked quite easily, but when my phone wasn’t available I was able to get what I needed to do done. My family also had more time to be together. Instead of all scattering to our separate devices after dinner, we gathered and listened to my dad read a peculiar article about a man who kayaked the Atlantic ocean. Moments where my whole family gathered became more frequent.

Day 3:

Roughly halfway through the week I definitely felt a dramatic change. Around this time I began to notice the impact of not interacting with social media. I enjoy being present in social media. Turns out not knowing what people were having for lunch, or what test they were stressed about was a relief. I constantly compare my life, actions and looks to others on social. Because I was removed from these harsh comparisons, I was able to appreciate my own endeavors and push myself to make the most of my time.

Day 4:

At this point in the week, I fell into a routine and school helped my time management. When I returned home from school I finished my homework and then found alternate activities to do. I quickly realized I had time to go hammock with my sister or jump on the trampoline with my younger brother. I was already enjoying the time that I had to experience the world around me, rather than watching others’ experiences through my device.

Day 5:

Friday was the last day that I had the distraction of school to occupy my day. At this point in the week, I’d explain to my friends what I was doing and they seemed very supportive. I was surprised to encounter their enthusiasm and encouragement, and also their interest in participating themselves. They too noticed the same destructive and distracting factors that screens and phones can have on our lives, especially as teenagers. As I continued to set my phone aside, I noticed similar actions from the people I was around and more social interactions. When I thought ahead to the weekend I stretched myself to consider activities that weren’t as easy as binge watching a show.

Day 6:

The first day of the weekend and I enjoyed not having the option of staying inside. When I woke up and thought about what I had planned for my day I found that I had no distractions to prevent limitless ideas: I could go to ice cream with my family; have a bonfire with friends; accomplish homework all in one day. As I spent my weekend with friends and family I really enjoyed the connectivity found when I put my phone away and conversations grew.

Day 7:

The last day of Screen-Free Week caused me to reflect on what I had learned throughout the week and what I may have underestimated at the beginning. At dinner Sunday night my family discussed how we thought Screen-Free Week benefited us, what changed, what we enjoyed and some aspects we may have missed.

I noticed…

  • My time was spent doing more valuable things that I truly wanted to do, rather than getting sucked into the abyss a phone provides.
  • I had real and meaningful conversations with my friends and I could accomplish things in a shorter and more efficient amount of time.
  • I didn’t miss the presence of social media in my life and that knowing what people are doing constantly wasn’t necessary.
  • How much of teen culture is focused on social media and you can feel left out when you’re not keeping up with Snapchat stories and Instagram feeds.
  • Everyone should take time to step away from their devices whether it be a couple hours, a couple days, or a whole week, and try to appreciate the world around you and the time you have.

This article was originally published in The Roar, a student publication of Northview High School.

Why a 20-something celebrates Screen-Free Week

Why a 20-something celebrates Screen-Free Week

by | Apr 18, 2019 | Uncategorized

It’s my junior year at Hofstra University. A week of exams makes it hard to get out of bed, hard to wrap your brain around every last thing to be done, and most of all, it makes caffeine an outright necessity. Having just run out of coffee at my house, I decided one morning to treat myself to the campus café. When I arrived, half asleep, and found my place in line, my exhausted thoughts still rumbled in my brain: which test is it today?… I still need to edit that paper… midterms are crazy this semester… you know what? I bet everybody else here feels this way… If they did, I wouldn’t have known. My peers weren’t looking to talk with me, let alone unite over our mutual stress. They stood in line with their heads in their phones, tapping away at their screens.

As a young person who listened to vinyl records well before they came back into vogue, practiced my string bass for fun and hiked the 48 4000-foot-high peaks of New Hampshire before I turned 21, I’ve always been kind of screen-free. When I put down screens, I find myself on mountain trails, I meet people who have stories and goals and personalities different than my own, and I hear complex chords that resonate in a world of dissonance. But it can be lonely to be a 20-something today. Sometimes I just wish you could turn the whole thing off.

On this one particular morning, I beheld this collective obsession for what it was. Had our lives become so stressful that our only means of relief was to exchange barrages of texts and relentlessly peruse Instagram feeds? I laughed in irony at the thought of trying to speak to the person in front of me. Would he have joined me in conversation, or just returned a look of simultaneous surprise and annoyance? My guess is the latter. Such is the reality of our times. It’s hard to fathom how we got here; it seems as if just yesterday, I was running around the woods with my childhood friends, communing with the outdoors in blissful disconnect. Now, in the age of digital socialization, it’s near second nature to check my phone almost every minute. It’s hard to resist when everyone around me is equally transfixed by their devices.

The best I can do is create rituals of my own that keep me grounded and disconnected for a while. For instance, although I use my phone as an alarm, I don’t sleep with it under my pillow or even on my night table. Instead, I place it across the room on top of my bookshelf That’s it. When I cook, I don’t listen to music or podcasts. If I did, how could I savor the rhythm of chopping, the smell of fresh herbs and the satisfaction of making a meal for others? Some of my roommates are on board with things like no-screen meals, but all bets are off when we’re hanging around the house together. I get frustrated when I want to talk or just hang with someone and they are actually spending time with someone else virtually.

The conversation surrounding the role of our phones in our everyday lives is hard to start and difficult to sustain, but it has never been more urgent. Not only is it necessary that we spread awareness of how our reliance on screens manifests itself in our lives, our habits, and our relationships; it’s vital that we willingly take time away from screens. Yet I find I have to be very careful how I do it and what I say about it. On the college campuses of today, parading oneself around as a screen-free symbol of perfection warrants accusations of pretentiousness and elitism. We have to be ready to admit that each of us spends a little too much time staring at screens—time that could be spent reconnecting with our friends, our passions, and the substance of the real world. Humbly, we have to step up and lead our generation back to connectedness. Screen-Free Week is coming, so let’s spread the word!

Benny Gottwald is a junior at Hofstra University.

Register your Screen-Free Week celebration today!

Screen-Free Week at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library

Screen-Free Week at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library

by | Apr 17, 2019 | Uncategorized

We are always excited to hear about Screen-Free Week events hosted by public libraries.  Not only do libraries encourage reading, but they also serve as important gathering spaces for all members of the community. So when we heard about how Tiffin-Seneca Public Library in Tiffin, Ohio, had organized a successful Screen-Free Week 2018 celebration, we had to ask them how they did it.

Many thanks to Becky Oswalt for sharing Tiffin-Seneca’s Screen-Free Week story with us, and a big thank you to librarians Trinity Lescallett, Lori Hodkinson and Connie Cole for organizing Tiffin-Seneca Library’s Screen-Free Week last year.

Tiffin-Seneca Public Library decided to celebrate Screen-Free Week in 2018 because we understand the harmful effects of excessive screen time on people of all ages. Helping families become more intentional at putting down their devices and inspiring them to think of ideas for screen-free fun all year long seemed like a win-win situation. So, in March 2018 we formed a small committee of staff members to help plan a full slate of activities for Screen-Free Week.

Offering a daily activity or event during Screen-Free Week seemed like a good way to help families meet their pledge to go free of screen entertainment for the week, with the added bonus of bringing together families who were all trying to accomplish the same goal.  We decided to host an informational session the first night of the week to educate adults and school-age kids on the effects of excessive screens. The program, Digital Detox: Family Edition, used slides, research, statistics, and helpful tips. The program acknowledged the negative psychological, social, and cultural impact of spending more than half of our waking lives in front of a screen, and offered ways to make it easier to put down the screen. It was also an opportunity to encourage attendees to consider making a screen-free pledge of some kind for the week. 

Here’s what else we scheduled:

  • On Tuesday night, the library set out board games all over the library for families to enjoy on their own time.
  • Crafts and coloring projects for all ages were available around the library on Wednesday evening.
  • We put on an “Are You Smarter than a Librarian?” trivia contest, pitting families against our librarians on Thursday.
  • On Friday and Saturday, we stuck with two of our regularly scheduled programs to highlight some of the fun screen-free activities that we offer year-round. Playtime @ the Library is a monthly program for children ages 18 months to five years old. This two-hour drop-in program features a large selection of toys and activities that encourage unstructured, creative play. Our monthly Lego Saturday program invites children and families of all ages to stop by and build their own Lego creations with friends. We provide Duplo Blocks and Legos, and we also provide a different theme every month.
  • All week long we offered a StoryWalk® where participants walked around the library, reading a story as they progressed. The StoryWalk® Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT and developed in collaboration with the Kellogg Hubbard Library. Also, different craft projects were set out on the tables in the Junior Department and rotated daily.
  • During the week, the library displayed relevant books for parents such as Unplug Your Kids: A Guide to Raising Happy, Active, and Well-Adjusted Children in the Digital Age by David Dutwin, and picture books for kids such as Hello! Hello!by Matthew Cordell. We printed up a list of screen-free activities and a book list filled with more screen-free ideas.

By far the most fun activity to plan was the “Are You Smarter than a Librarian?” trivia contest. We made our own PowerPoint with five different rounds of five questions and a bonus round question. When the game ended, teams that had more points than the librarians won a small prize, but more importantly, they could now brag that they’re “smarter than a librarian!” Categories included “Songs from Movies,” where we would play a short music clip for players to guess which movie it came from. Another round was “Fun with Words,” and the bonus round consisted of pictures of 25 book characters, where teams had to identify as many as possible before time ran out.

We realized that because our library has a special place in the lives of local families, we could bring families closer together by offering fun, meaningful activities that don’t involve technology. If we encouraged just one family to put down the screens and engage in some fun family time, then we consider Screen-Free Week 2018 to be a success!