Balance Project gets kids logging off and back outdoors in communities
Founder of The Balance Project Holly Moscatiello joins 'Fox & Friends' to discuss her mission to get young kids off screens and back outdoors, how she launched the project and its growing impact nationwide.
Parents in a New Jersey town have banded together to give their children more independence and less screen time, and their movement has already spread to more than 100 communities.
Holly Moscatiello, mother of three, joined "Fox & Friends" Wednesday morning to share why she founded the Balance Project, an organization that aims to help parents and their children find "that healthy balance between real-life experiences and mindful tech."
"I was learning more and more about the implications of a screen-based childhood and the consequences that that has on healthy child development and mental health," Moscatiello said. She created the Balance Project to "protect the entire generation."
New Jersey mother Holly Moscatiello founded the Balance Project to bring parents and young children together to discuss healthy smartphone use and child development. (Getty Images)
Moscatiello believes technology is necessary to succeed in the modern world — she just wants kids to understand how to use it safely.
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"I don't want it to replace those real-life experiences that make childhood childhood and make humans humans," she said.
Her message appears to be resonating. The Balance Project has spread to 140 communities, each facing its own pressures and trends surrounding smartphones and social media.
Balance Project founder Holly Moscatiello recommends waiting until late in high school before giving kids smartphones. (dolgachov )
In her own circles, Moscatiello noticed smartphones showing up as early as fourth and fifth grade. She and her husband decided to intervene before habits set in.
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She described an open, welcoming approach to starting a dialogue about smartphone use, including both parents and children.
"We brought parents together with their fourth-grade kids, and we talked to them about the fifth-grade brain, and why a fifth-grade brain is better served spending time playing and being independent and gaining real-life skills versus scrolling," she said.
Her strategy worked.
"The kids responded," Moscatiello said, "and right now we have the majority of those fifth graders without a phone for the first time, and we were able to shift that norm, and that's what we're looking to do across the country."
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Moscatiello recommended that parents delay giving kids a smartphone "as long as possible," ideally until late in high school.
"You're giving them access to everything that you can possibly want," she warned. "So you have to be really mindful about that choice."
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