Your son rushes home from school, not to head out and see which other guys want to play pickup basketball, but to head to his room, don his headphones, and spend the hours between now and dinner “connecting” to his friends playing Fortnite. Gone are the days of telling our teens to “turn off the tv and do your homework.” Homework, gaming, social media, research for school, Netflix, and even phone (FaceTime) calls are all intertwined and consume almost all the waking hours our students are not in school. A new study by Common Sense Media found that teens are spending an average of nine hours a day using entertainment media. Tweens had an average of six hours a day.

Average amount of time a Fortnite player spends with the game per week:   6-10 hours

Percentage of Fortnite players that are students that have skipped class to play it:  35%

Percentage of Fortnite players that are aged 18-24:  60%

Does it surprise you to think that your son or daughter, who claims not to have time to mow the grass, eat a family dinner, or spend an hour with Grandpa on the weekend, is spending 6-10 hours a week playing a game? This is one area where we would be thrilled to have a child who was below average. But what if she was above average? More than 10 hours a week? Yikes.  

What is a parent to do? There is something you can do. It is simple, but just as anything with teens, not necessarily easy. PowerThesaurus.org says the antonym for “social media” is “real presence.” The first obstacle to overcome is creating opportunities for our students to have real presence with us and with others. If the allure is powerful enough, it can overcome even the enticement of online gaming.  

Five simple steps to increasing your teen’s real presence quotient:  

1-Have a discussion.  Using an app like Moment can be eye-opening for you and your teen to see how much time she is spending on different apps or activities. Having a discussion about time management and what your family guidelines are regarding screen time is a great first step.

2-Create Online Free Zones/Times. Using a parent control app like Our Pact, a Circle wi-fi router, or the built in Screen Time on the iPhone can allow you to block certain hours each day or each week that will be internet free. If your teen is older, allowing them to manage this themselves builds trust.

3-Invent Fun. Creativity really counts here. Connect with other parents and choose a weekly time for teens to gather. Willingness to drive them to a park with sports fields or courts available might be key. Offering to have them all over for pizza and a game night (board games, not online games!) would be another option. Asking your son or daughter to brainstorm activities with you might create good ideas. A scavenger hunt in the neighborhood or at a safe local gathering place is highly interactive and fun.

4-Call the Gang Together. Getting students to buy into this idea may take some work, but see if you can offer to order their favorite pizza or make their favorite meal as a reward for coordinating schedules with their friends to make this happen. For them it is as easy as initiating a group text.

5-Schedule the Next Gathering. When you have the group together, make sure they coordinate the next week’s plan. Offer a prize for the winner of the chess/checkers/ping pong/pool tournament. The winning scavenger hunt team can pick the next sport outing. Within the group does anyone have a pool table, corn hole set, swimming pool, or other incentive to hang out? Try coordinating with that family to host the group.  

If your efforts result in your teen having two to three hours a week with real presence instead of online presence, you have been successful. We are not going to eliminate the internet or the allure of gaming. But with a plan and persistence, we can encourage our teens toward face to face relationships. We all know real relationships are not only beneficial for building friendships today, but also valuable for developing skills to enhance their future.

How do you motivate your child to be creative?

When your children are still young, what are some things you can do to encourage them to enjoy childhood and utilize their creativity instead of turning to a device to provide all their entertainment?

First, naturally limit use of electronic devices to fill times of boredom.

A quick Google search of “the value of boredom” revealed:

• How Being Bored Out of Your Mind Makes You More Creative,
• The Surprising Benefits of Boredom, and
• The Scientific Benefits of Being Bored.

Why is it that we have lost the love of boredom? Where do good ideas come from? Being bored. Making sure that we don’t hand our child a device or allow them to flip on the television or computer every time they claim “I’m bored,” is a huge step toward helping them develop skills that allow them to seek alternatives to electronics.

Setting up stations or areas where your child can go when they are bored, can encourage creative play

A Dress-Up Station

Fill a bin with open-ended dress-up ideas.  Old clothes from your closet, Grandma’s or Goodwill is a great start. Look for Halloween costumes on sale in the winter. Scarves, costume jewelry, and even large fabric remnants can inspire your little one to get into character and go on adventures.  Accessories such as shoes and sunglasses also add a fun touch. Don’t forget a mirror so they can see how great they look. Dress-up can result in hours of pretending, dance events, and creative character play.

A Building Station

A tub with building supplies provides an opportunity for trial and error and figuring out the best way to create a project. Of course, Legos are great but so are other building materials. A visit to a construction site dumpster (with permission) or the local home improvement store can yield endless pieces for modular play. Various size pieces of PVC pipe and fittings, boards (remove any nails or splinters), and other building materials make for fort building paradise. Add a few sheets from a yard sale and your children may want to spend the night in their new creation.

An Arts & Crafts Station

Another storage tub could be dedicated to arts and crafts supplies. Stock up when school supplies are plentiful and add paints and paint brushes, fabric scraps and embroidery thread, glue and some construction paper, old magazines, and a couple of T-shirt’ for smocks.  Your artistic child will be content for hours creating a masterpiece for your fridge.

As with any activity for young children, you will need to set parameters on where they can spread out their creative supplies and how they will need to clean them up and return them to the storage tub. Eventually they will be able to independently choose activities, rather than always going to a device for entertainment.

By offering this unstructured time, think of the opportunities you are providing for your child.  They are practicing skills that use creativity, imagination, and innovation. So next time your youngster starts to whine, instead of handing over the iPad, reach for an activity tub to inspire them

Rachel Macy Stafford is a New York Times bestselling author of “Hands Free Mama” and “Hands Free Life.” Her attempts to let go of what doesn’t matter began when her daughters were young and she realized she was missing so much of their lives because she was distracted by email, the phone and outside commitments. She started her journey to become “Hands Free” with ten minutes a day of attempting to stay present and connected. She found that over time her desire for this time increased and her connection to her daughters did as well. 

It used to be that parents were the only ones distracted by the ping of emails, texts, and phone calls. Now that so many kids seem to have smart phones, they too are distracted by the constant “urgent” pull of notifications, SnapChat streaks, and Instagram updates. The more and more electronically “connected” we are to others in cyberspace, the less connected we can become to those in our physical realm. A recent study correlated the rise in depression to the rise in teen social media consumption. The Child-Mind institute says, “Some experts see the rise in depression as evidence that the connections social media users form electronically are less emotionally satisfying, leaving them feeling socially isolated.”

Rachel offers some great suggestions for parents to make sure they are available for connection with their children. One of the key first steps is to create some daily “hands free” time. Are there times you can agree on as a family to not use (or even have available) electronic devices?

Some of the most crucial times for face-to-face connection are:

• First thing in the morning and right before bed
• During greetings and departures
• At mealtimes 
• While driving 
• During exercise 
• While volunteering 

Stafford recommends putting boundaries around these times and holding that space for genuine connection with those in your presence as opposed to those in your digital world. If we lead by example, our children can follow. We can guide them toward a more genuine connection with others and allow them to exercise their communication muscles in a positive way. 

You may wonder what difference ten minutes can make. It is so easy to brush off a few minutes at a time. But the problem arises when you are busy checking the news while sipping your morning coffee and your daughter walks in to make her breakfast. She doesn’t want to interrupt, so she decides to check her Instagram feed. When you realize you could talk to her for a few minutes before she takes off for school, you look up from the computer to find her nose buried in Instagram. And round and round we go.  So we have to start somewhere. Even if you only make the kitchen a digital free zone, you may find yourself with ample opportunity to catch up with your uber-busy children. The laughter and stories at the dinner table and perhaps even the breakfast table can return. We can be “those parents,” you know, the ones whose kids know they care and desire a relationship with them? Yes. Those parents. It starts with ten minutes a day.