Our family returned from a vacation to Colorado earlier this week. It’s one of our happy places, and the chance to spend a few days away from the heat of a Kansas summer was most welcome.
I’ve been heading there since I was a kid, as has most of my family. As adults, it’s a chance to reconnect with siblings and pause our busy lives, if only for a few days. Our children adore the time with their cousins. We spend our days hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, exploring the forest, gazing idly at peaceful rivers and faraway peaks.
This year was my first with full cell phone service in the park. In the past, the signal was often weak and spotty. But now, even at our cabin, a 5G signal was available.
It wasn’t exactly welcome. At first, I worried it would represent a problem. All my life, our time in Colorado has been a “no screens” place. Would that change? Would the little ones now watch Bluey as they ate breakfast outdoors?
FORGIVE my paranoia. As a parent, I’m so tired of fighting this battle. It seems like I’ve already lost. Walk into a restaurant today and you’ll likely see kids hooked into headphones, eyes glued to a tablet to avoid any parental discomfort. Any spare moment, even waiting in line at Walmart, is a chance for fussy kids to watch a video on Dad’s phone.
Adults are just as bad, if not worse. Teachers and administrators are clear. The biggest obstacle to classroom learning today is cell phones. Standing firmly in the way of banning them? Needy, hyperconnected parents asking their kid in a text what they’d like for dinner.
Technology has its place. But when we are confusing genuine friendship with an exchange on ChatGPT, we’ve likely gone too far.
IT’S OUR FAULT, really. Kids didn’t ask for this world. They didn’t create social media or AI or mandate laptops in classrooms. They didn’t even consent to the baby photos we posted of them, leaving digital breadcrumbs since infancy.
So I was worried we were ruining summer vacation for them, too. Would a place to explore and connect with nature now be lost, too, replaced with hikers posing for selfies and Facetiming on mountaintops?
OVER the five days we were there, there wasn’t a single request for Disney. None. Now that I’m back in Iola, it seems pretty incredible. Our kids spent a week without even asking for screens.
I’ve thought a bit about why. First, because of an established culture. They likely knew not to even ask. That’s incredibly powerful. Families and communities transmit so many values without words.
Second, because there was so much else to do. Hiking, fishing, playing in the mountainsides, building forts, reading, spending time with family. The novelty of being someplace new surely helped.
My third theory: because they didn’t even want to. I truly believe kids today want and need the same things kids have wanted for ages: real fun, healthy challenges, genuine friendships, a loving family.
Parents can get in the way. The technology we buy them gets in the way. It gets in the way of lazy summer nights, of creativity, of connection.
I’m sure I sound like a broken record, a Luddite even.
YET as school gets ready to start, I worry we don’t know where to draw the line. An education system that cedes all its power to screens hurts our kids. As parents, we should push for phone-free schools. Teachers, not machines, are our greatest resource. Maybe we’ve forgotten that.
