Digital Detox in schools

How can you encourage a digital detox for children in schools and get your kids to spend less time on their tablets and more time spent engaging in outside play? Monitoring your children’s screen time can be difficult. Especially at school age, when they are spending time in the care of others.

Outdoor classroom day is worldwide campaign led by Project Dirt and a part of the Dirt is Good movement by Unilever. Inspiring schools to take kids outside for their lessons and to reconnect them with nature and outside play, essentially a digital detox in schools!

The advantages of this style of learning are abundant, learning how to problem solve in real life situations, working with others, and the positive effects of being outdoors has on physical and mental health are just a few of the proven benefits.

A digital detox for children encouraging them to engage with nature rather than their screens is something I think we all need to get behind, to ensure the next generation has a healthy balance in their lives. Persil funded a survey which unveiled some rather alarming results, it found that children spend TWICE as long playing on screens as they do playing outside. Even worse, an incredible 75% of British children spend less time outdoors than prison inmates. 

These findings are a little scary, but, the good thing is, we can do something about it, whether it’s locking away devices for a period of time or by getting involved with campaigns like this and encouraging a digital detox!

Get your children involved in a digital detox today and check out the Outdoor Classroom Day website to sign up as a teacher, parent, supporter or organisation. The UK and Ireland campaign is led by Learning through Landscapes, it has two dates each year. The next one is 1st November so there is still time to get involved. Following that, Thursday 23rd May 2019. But every day should be an outdoor classroom day, right!