I just returned from Anahim Lake, a small community in the Chilcotin area of British Columbia and home to the Ulkatcho First Nations people. I would like to take this opportunity to share with you a journey toward child health and wellness that took place over the course of the past four years and comprised a number of community initiatives. This process started with a question I asked the children: “What would make you put down the phone and go outside and play?“ The children responded with a number of outdoor activities including cool playgrounds, bike trails, ice rink, outdoor recreation center, etc. This ‘beyond the screen’ journey involved the coming together of a number of community members, health and education professionals, parents and Elders, Ulkatcho Tribal Council, local governments, and of course much input from many, many children! I’d like to share this journey with you in the hope that you too, can listen to what children have to say about why they overuse screens, AND what they need instead that will get them off the screens and into outdoor play.
Over the past 35 years, I’ve had the unique opportunity to provide a variety of paediatric OT services for communities in 12 countries which include community engagement forums, parent, teacher and clinician workshops, school and home visits etc. During this time, I’ve had uncountable conversations with children about why they overuse screens, as well as many, many meetings with caring adults who want to develop initiatives for screen reduction. What I’ve discovered in our screen obsessed culture, is that children have not been given the opportunity to develop skill confidence and competence in non-screen related activities e.g. they are only “good at” screens. Schools have compounded this issue by using screens for learning e.g. teachers are only good at teaching if they use a screen and students are only good at paying attention and learning when using a screen. So now we have a generation of children and adults with screen addiction. In my experience, talking about screen reduction initiatives has been met with considerable resistance, by children, adults, government and of course the technology industry. We urgently need to listen to what children are telling us, that they don’t like (and feel like they are addicted) to screens. Our actions that follow need to address children’s concerns and be in the best interest of our children.
Back to the Chilcotin. The week of Oct. 20, 2025, the Ulkatcho First Nation hosted a variety of community and school-based interventions to address child and family screen overuse and addiction. On Tuesday, I visited school classrooms doing “Tech Talks” for the students where we identified a variety of non-screen activities and I challenged them to do a 24 hour “Screen Unplug”. That evening, the Public and Band school staff hosted a family dinner at the public school where I provided a workshop for parents on the effects of screens on kids. During the dinner, the nurse practitioner and I did blood pressure readings on teens as they played video games. After dinner families convened with children to decide on 2 non-screen activities they would engage in as a family weekly. The next day, the Nagwuntl’loo Band School invited the Anahim Lake community to see their 3 new playgrounds (one for 0-2 years, 3-5 years and 6-12 years) which were envisioned through a variety of community engagement forums which included children and achieved through much hard work and grant writing.
The 3 playgrounds were not chosen by adults but rather were decided on by the children through a process of creating multiple PowerPoint slides presentations where the kids voted on the playground devices they wanted. As a sensory integration specialist, I guided them gently toward devices which activated their vestibular, proprioceptive, tactile, and attachment systems which included a lot of climbing, swinging, spinning, rough and tumble play, camaraderie and of course, plain old fun. Research shows that adequate stimulation to children’s sensory and motor systems results in enhanced child development, behaviour and learning. Playgrounds rich in provision of essential components for developing foundations for literacy and learning result in improved literacy, grades and ability to pay attention and learn in the classroom.
Initiatives to get children and families off screens don’t stop with just playgrounds…there is much, much more work to be done to create healthy communities. Bringing together a variety of people to develop initiatives to make outside safe and accessible, even in inclement weather, can be a very effective deterrent to child and family screen over use and addiction. The “If you build it, they will come” adage does not take into account the powerful motivating factors that a community can create by coming together and working directly with their children to develop a huge variety of screen deterrent initiatives.
My take home message for you is this: instead of focussing on child and family screen reduction, shift your vision toward increased engagement in healthy activities. What do the families and children in your community need to help them put down the screen and go outside and play? You will be pleasantly surprised and inherently motivated by their answers. We need to start to listen to children and families to learn more about WHY people overuse screens and then act quickly and efficiently to give them what they need to put down the screen and go outside and play.
