Choosing Screens, Rethinking Use
Choosing how and when to use screens, and encouraging alternative activities, supports somatic, psychological, and cognitive health. When excessive or unaccompanied, screen use can affect overall well‑being: weight gain, sleep disturbances, agitation, inhibition, mental fatigue, and a diminished sense of connection to oneself and others. The goal is not to forbid screens or demonize them, but to think about their place in daily life, their function, their rhythm, and the alternatives we can offer.
A teenager who calls a friend and talks, who searches for information for schoolwork, engages valuable cognitive and relational functions. This is not the same as spending hours alone on video games or scrolling through random content. Connection is not built through text messages, but through spoken words, shared looks, shared silences. Watching a show together as a family, commenting on it, laughing or debating, does not have the same effects as watching short, repetitive videos alone.
Official recommendations in France remind us that screen time must be adapted to age: no screens before age 3, very limited use before age 6, and active guidance until adolescence. The goal is not to forbid, but to guide, choose, comment, and share. Reading a text — even on a screen — engages symbolic thinking and memory. Watching a video without exchange or reformulation leaves the brain in a receptive posture, without elaboration.
The YouTube video “The Habit That FORCES Your Brain To STOP Consuming” highlights this phenomenon: the brain, overstimulated by passive content, loses its ability to produce, connect, and dream. The author proposes a simple habit — the reflective exit — which consists of reformulating what one has learned in one’s own words, slowing the flow, transforming consumption into creation.
Neuroscience research, including the Stanford study by Oppezzo and Schwartz (2014), has shown that walking enhances creativity by activating the brain’s default mode network, involved in introspection and daydreaming. This network is inhibited by overly intense external stimulation. Likewise, playing an instrument, listening to the radio, reading slowly, or writing an idea on a post‑it reintroduce subjective time, the capacity to connect, to think, to create.
A walk after school, baking a cake together, free play without screens, listening to music or radio, drawing or crafting — all these gestures reintroduce rhythm, body, connection, and meaning. For adults too, these practices reduce anxiety, support emotional regulation, improve concentration, and foster a sense of inner coherence.
From a developmental perspective, these activities mobilize fine motor skills, coordination, symbolic thinking, and concentration. They help the child build representations, delay gratification, tolerate waiting, and inhabit the present — as shown in research on meditation. Walking is also a meditative form. Reading a story to a child invites presence, slowness, shared reverie.
Studies on meditation in children and adolescents — including a meta‑analysis of 66 studies with over 20,000 participants, and the French study by Julia David and Lindsay Valéro on emotional regulation through mindfulness — show positive effects on attention, executive functions, stress reduction, and academic performance. The European APEX program has also demonstrated the benefits of meditation on school success, concentration, and overall well‑being.
Experts such as neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik emphasize the importance of protecting young children from early screen exposure. He recommends no screens before age 3, a crucial period for brain development. Sensory and emotional interactions are essential for cognitive, emotional, and social development.
Serge Tisseron, psychiatrist and psychologist, proposed the 3‑6‑9‑12 guidelines for thoughtful digital education. He emphasizes the importance of guidance, content selection, and time regulation. What matters is not only how long children spend on screens, but what they do, with whom, and how.
Child psychiatrists such as Dr Nicolas Neveux underline that excessive screen exposure can worsen sleep disorders, language delays, attention difficulties, and anxiety or depressive symptoms. They insist on the importance of family support, regulated use, and the reintroduction of play, movement, and speech.
Boredom, often feared, is in fact a doorway to creativity. It allows the subject to confront themselves, mobilize internal resources, dream, invent. The immediate pleasure offered by screens, especially short videos, activates dopaminergic circuits without engaging symbolic pathways. It produces pleasure, but not thought. It supports neither memory nor concentration nor connection.
What I sometimes propose to families is not to forbid screens, but to reintroduce spaces of emptiness, slowness, and movement. These are invitations to rediscover presence to oneself and the world, to rehabilitate boredom as a creative space, to give the body back its place in the development of thought.
References
Cyrulnik, B. (2023). Pas d’écrans avant 3 ans. Ouest‑France. David, J., & Valéro, L. (2023). Régulation émotionnelle par la méditation pleine conscience chez les adolescents. DUMAS. Oppezzo, M., & Schwartz, D. L. (2014). Give your ideas some legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(4), 1142–1152. Tisseron, S. (2013). 3‑6‑9‑12: Apprivoiser les écrans et grandir. Érès. Neveux, N. (2022). Hyperexposition des enfants aux écrans : reconnaître et gérer. e‑psychiatrie.fr.
