Chel Owens

“I find myself worrying most that when we hand our children phones we steal their boredom from them. As a result, we are raising a generation of writers who will never start writing, artists who will never start doodling, chefs who will never make a mess of the kitchen, athletes who will never kick a ball against a wall, musicians who will never pick up their aunt’s guitar and start strumming.”

-Glennon Doyle, Untamed.

51 thoughts on “”

  6. And it’s not just the children; we’re doing it to ourselves, too, even though we have memories of quieter inner lives. I find I have a hard time with boredom now; it’s harder for me to access those spaces of imagination without feeling I need a new distraction.

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  9. Interesting thought! That had not occurred to me, but it may well be true. Most of my childhood was spent making up games and activities, not simply watching them done by someone else on a screen.

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      1. I remember when my daughter was 18 months old, we were on vacation. The family at the table gave their two/three year old a portable CD player while they were at breakfast. I know I gave a look of disgust, which I’m not proud of, and the mother said just wait…you’ll do this too…and at that moment I swore that my daughter would not be given tech indiscriminately…and I held to that. I don’t believe in the easy way out rule of parenting…how’s that?

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          1. I know! First…it’s ok to be bored. It’s ok to daydream. Second…play a game with them or talk to them. I realize talking is a foreign concept, but really

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  12. You’ve touched on one of my pet peeves. Nothing drives me crazier than to watch a family of four somewhere, and all of them are on their phones instead of actually interacting with the people in front of them.

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    1. Oooh, it’s one of mine, too! People might be surprised at my anti-screenness because we are a PC-gaming family and Kevin’s a computer programmer but it’s a HUGE issue for me. I think all this virtual crap is messing everyone up.

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    1. We’ve had a lot more screen time with the COVID stuff, but I still restrict mine and don’t allow them to have cell phones. I can’t really do much once they’re adults. 🙂

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  16. Well, I beg to differ. I don’t have any empirical evidence to back me up on this but just based on my observation of my own young adult children, who were never denied electronic entertainment unless they had misbehaved (yes – it was punishment to take it away from them), I’ve noticed that, even with the plethora of ways they can keep themselves entertained with or on or using devices, they can still get bored. I think the same could apply to a lot of children, though maybe not all.

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