Unplug To Reconnect

In 2025, concerned parents and educators in Los Angeles, USA, formed a group called Schools Beyond Screens requesting their district to curb children’s screen time in schools. By and large, schools in the US are heavily invested in technology with most children having their own digital devices to learn. With the tech boom in the 2000s, educators rushed to transition towards digital learning. The main gist was that technology was the future so every child had to be introduced to it. No parents wanted to be left behind; thus, they supported this trend towards digitalised learning. Now this is backfiring. 

As the group Schools Beyond Screens asserts, children today are inundated with technology. They don’t tend to gather in playgrounds playing hide and seek or simply making up their own games. Instead they are buried deep in electronic gadgets. In countries such as the US, they are taught their lessons in Chromebook at schools and upon returning home, their favourite leisure activity is watching endless videos on YouTube. This begs the question: are we raising kids who are deft in technology or are we just making them too dependent on screens to play, think or imagine on their own?

Childhood is said to be an idyllic time. Before the advent of smartphones children used to spend a significant portion of time on playgrounds making friendships and alliances in games. They would also spend more time reading, getting lost in magical worlds of Harry Potter and Alice in Wonderland. Now with the tech boom, exhausted parents attempt to soothe their children’s fits with YouTube videos. As parents seek quiet time after a long day’s work, they allow their kids to access screen time while they themselves peruse social media. 

It is alarming how ubiquitous screen time has become. In the long queue in grocery stores, while waiting for the bus to arrive at the bus station, in between class lectures and even in theatres, people tend to scroll just to pass a few moments of time. Boredom is no longer an option. It is eradicated by the constant scrolling with the never-ending content. Videos are the most trending way to engulf the attention of the viewers. What kind of future will this mean for young minds who see adults attached to their phones like the fifth appendage?

Imagination and wonder are two states of mind that are deeply intertwined. Human minds require occasional pause to reset. During this pause, the mind may wander imaginatively leading to a state of wonder. Unlike the typical notion, daydreaming is not simply idleness, instead it is a time for the mind to be curious about the sensory perceptions, certain problems or issues, an awareness that is just germinating and so on. Being imaginative bolsters creativity. It makes us wonder on life’s nuances and mysteries which is why scrolling is detrimental in the long run. 

We may pass time easily during scrolling but we are also preventing the mind from imaginative wandering in a trip down the memory lane, dissecting a certain idea, or even formulating new ones. It is about time screen time be regulated for our own wellbeing or else we risk the future to technology that is highly intelligent but lacks a sentient humanity.