Can free movie tickets, pizza get Pierce Co. kids off their phones this weekend?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Thriving Generation runs phone-free weekend challenges to reduce youth screen time.
- About 25 community groups, schools and faith leaders coordinate prizes and outreach.
- Organizers aim to normalize no smartphones for grades 4-8 and teach healthy use.
Trampoline park passes, movie tickets and pizza gift cards: Is it enough to get kids off their phones?
Thriving Generation, a grassroots campaign led by school staff, faith leaders, physicians, students and other volunteers in the Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula areas, is inviting kids to put their phones down from 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7, to 8 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9, for a chance to win one of over 20 prizes. It will be the first of a series of quarterly challenges the group plans to run into the future, said John Hellwich, one of the group’s founding members and the Peninsula School District’s director of secondary teaching and learning.
Participants can enter the drawing by filling out the form at peninsulathrivegeneration.org/contest-google-form. It’s based on the honor system, and prizes will be drawn Monday. The challenge is limited to residents of the Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula areas.
The campaign comes amid a national reckoning over the impact of cell phone and social media use on kids and teens. The U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory in 2023 warning of social media’s risk to youth mental health.
The concerns have caused a stir locally, too. In 2023, the Peninsula School District became one of the early districts in the state to ban students from using cell phones during the regular school day, outside of lunch. They also implemented a ban on social media use in school buildings that year.
Volunteers with Thriving Generation believe the problem of phone addiction is best fought in numbers.
“We have to kind of get away from this American individualistic thought process of it’s just me and my kid,” Alexandra Rubel, a parent volunteer with Thriving Generation, told The News Tribune. “We have to look to the community so we can essentially inoculate our kids against this, and if everyone can stay away from the smartphones, then no one’s kid’s left out.”
Rubel said her family plans to participate in the challenge Nov. 7-9. Only using your phone for non-entertainment purposes gets you one entry in the drawing, and only using your phone for calls gets you two, according to the guidelines.
Prizes include passes to Sky Zone Trampoline Park and gift certificates to Galaxy Theatres, Devoted Kiss Café, Fondi Pizzeria and Fusion Donut Café, per an event flyer.
Hellwich said there are about 22 prizes total. Rubel said she has been working on getting the prizes together and estimated that several of the prizes and gift cards are in the $25 to $50 range.
Because Rubel’s kids don’t have phones yet, she and her husband plan to cut screen time over the weekend altogether, she said. Their weekend plans include a dinner with friends, a play date and a soccer game for one of her kids, she said.
As a pediatric nurse practitioner, Rubel said she feels lucky to have seen how devices can pull kids in before she had to make choices for her own children, who are 6 and 2 years old.
“ ... it was an easy choice for me, just because of what I’ve seen and experienced in my practice,” Rubel said. “Seeing these children overstimulated ... unable to even tear their eyes away from their parent’s phone while they’re sitting in the office, while I’m talking to the parent.”
She emphasized that she doesn’t want to make any parent feel ashamed for giving their kids early access to phones or technology. Still, she hopes that the Thriving Generation campaign will allow people in the community to band together and connect more with their families and loved ones.
“And again, technology is great, and it has a place,” she said. “It’s got a great utility. But I really do feel like in a big, big way, we’re kind of losing our humanity a little bit in that we are always looking at our phones and not at each other, creating those connections.”
Cooper Giovanini, 16, is a junior at Gig Harbor High School who was elected as his school’s ASB treasurer last year. He joined the Thriving Generation campaign after he heard about it from his leadership teacher, he told The News Tribune via phone Thursday.
“It definitely has a major impact on, I think, a lot of things, especially like my focus,” Giovanini said about cell phones. “And I think as a generation entirely, we struggle to communicate and gain strong friendships.”
He’s also reading “The Anxious Generation,” a book by Jonathan Haidt that has figured prominently in the campaign’s messaging about the impacts of phones and social media on youth, he said. He plans to use his phone for calls only during the phone-free weekend challenge.
“I have my SAT on Saturday, so I will be taking that and then I also have a (friend’s) birthday party, and I’m just going to do a lot of reading and just enjoying time with people,” Giovanini said.
Thriving Generation is listed as a fund under the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, which accepts and processes donations to the campaign.
Though the school district is in support of Thriving Generation, the campaign is not sponsored by the school district and no school funds are going toward it, Hellwich said.
He explained that the idea for the campaign originated at a meeting with school district staff and local faith leaders. The district invites local faith leaders to a meeting three times a year to discuss ways they can work together in areas such as responding to student crises, he said.
At their meeting last fall, they began talking about cell phone use in schools and church youth groups, and ultimately decided to pursue community action inspired by the recommendations in Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation.” Now, about 25 different organizations are involved in the campaign, Hellwich said.
The campaign had its first event on Oct. 11, World Mental Health Day, at Gateway Park. They estimated that about 110 kids attended, he said.
Moving forward, their plans include hosting future phone-free weekend challenges and educating parents via their website, social media and other events. The website has a list of resources for parents related to smartphones and screen time.
The campaign hopes to normalize not having a smartphone in grades 4-8, and support high school student-led campaigns for “responsible, healthy use of social media,” the website says.
