November 16, 2025 // Columns

Downtime vs. Screentime

Molly Jo Rose

I have a confession to make. My childhood was idyllic. I grew up with two parents, I never worried about food, and I had loads of time to play. Surrounding our home were tons of neighborhood kids who were regular fixtures in our house, just as we were in theirs.

On any given day, eight or nine of us neighborhood kids could be found in the cul-de-sac gathered around an overturned green bucket for a game of Kick the Can. Todd Paynich would probably be “it” because he was the type of guy you made be “it” first. He’d sit on the bucket, close his eyes, and loudly count down from 100 while we scattered behind the Kopenski’s side garage, shimmied up the tree next to the Basses’ house, or waited silently right behind Todd to kick the bucket out from under him before he had a chance to notice us.

If we weren’t playing Kick the Can, we were sitting in a circle, legs crisscross applesauce on someone’s shag-carpeted basement floor with a pile of spoons in the middle of us. Spoons was a particularly violent game in our neighborhood, with more than one player routinely leaping out of the circle with a bloody nose from a body blow as we rushed to grab a spoon.

Our front yard, while not large, had clearly marked divots that everyone understood to be first, second, and third base, with the center post of the fence serving as home plate. Similarly, every kid in the neighborhood knew which cracks in our respective driveways determined what was in and out of bounds for the regular pickup basketball games we played.

When we needed downtime – that restorative practice of resting our bodies and our minds – we’d spend long afternoons playing Monopoly, or we strolled to the creek a half mile from us, dragging sticks behind us and poking menacingly at anthills. Sometimes, we would lie down on the floor and repetitively tossed a ball up toward the ceiling. We played solitaire. We sat next to each other and listened to music. All these activities served the same purpose. They left our minds lighter and our cares more free.

In many ways, my kids are having a similarly idyllic childhood. They, too, are surrounded by neighbor kids who wait on our porch step to play with them as soon as they get home from school. They play baseball in the grass and bike around the neighborhood just as I did at their age. But what is different about our childhoods is that my kids lack restorative downtime. As soon as they face boredom or need a break, they pull up a screen that busies their minds in ways that are neither calming nor restorative.

In our house, our kids are allowed 20 minutes of tech a day. A scene that is probably familiar to most parents regularly unfolds: One of my daughters gets home from school and gets on tech. After 20 minutes, I tell her that her time is up. “I just want to relax,” she howls. “I just have one more challenge to finish!” Her furrowed brows never leave the screen. I could give her more time, but the truth is there is never a satisfactory amount of time for them. They are never filled up by it. Knowing this, I dig in and tell her it’s time to sign off. She growls at me, stomps her feet, and tosses the device from her lap before storming off in a ball of fury. What is clear is there is nothing restorative about her time spent in front of that screen. Where she needed quiet, she only found noise. When she needed refreshing, she only became more worn down.

It is hard to get our kids to be countercultural enough to pursue real downtime, but we have uncovered a few activities that have revived some of the restorative practices of the ’80s without abandoning the advantages of modern life. One of our favorites is to attach a Bluetooth speaker to my kid’s bike handle. They throw their legs over their bike seats and take off, calling out songs while their wheels languidly create rhythmic crazy eights. I walk behind them playing jukebox master.

Cards are a lost art. Our neighbor, Miss Sylvia, is teaching them poker. She gives them a jar of coins only to win it back before the evening is done. Spoons might not be the right thing to soothe the mind and body, but Gin Rummy and Kings in the Corner are making a comeback in our house, as are other low-tech activities such as friendship bracelet weaving and color by numbers. The jury is still out on tossing a ball to the ceiling.

I admit the competition with screens is fierce, but because of my mostly screen-free ’80s childhood, I know I have the cold, hard facts on my side. An idyllic life requires knowing how to be idle. And life is a lot better when you know how to unplug.

Molly Jo Rose, is a writer and English professor living with her husband and three children in Fort Wayne, where they are parishioners at St. John the Baptist. She walks a lot and writes a little.