Screen-free summer series ends on a high note
Pitney Meadows’ no-phones Sunset Socials brought back real connection, old-fashioned games and golden-hour joy — and paved the way for similar future events.
Chalk drawing, running in the grass, using the sunset as the tell-tale sign that it’s almost dinnertime…As it turns out, leaving all cell phones in the car for an old-fashioned neighborhood bash at Pitney Meadows felt a lot like taking a trip down memory lane.
And those childhood memories of running free without being tied to a handheld device? They lived up to the hype.
The final digital detox Sunset Summer Social went down last night, and it was as idyllic as I had hoped. On the surface: no interruptions for pics (no makeup needed!), no constantly checking your phone (there were plenty of hilarious “phantom” vibrations that elicited a twitch of the hand though), and no looking something up “really quickly.” This triggered a chat about if our “let me think; it’s on the tip of my tongue” muscle had actually atrophied.
Then we dug into a competitive game of War, shoes off, and the evening began.
“I learned a new lawn game called Kubb,” says Sarah Stacy, who brought her son Stian, 10. “And made stationary at the art table. I already used it to write my boyfriend a letter. My favorite part about the event was that it encouraged adults and kids alike to engage in play.”
Indeed, without my phone, it was amazing how much more I took in — and the thing that jumped out the most was that kids really wanted their parents’ attention the second there wasn’t a phone in the way.
“If I’m sitting next to anyone, it’s my mom,” declared one middle-schooler. “Mom, will you play Tug of War with me?” asked another child, dragging his mother to a big purple rope. Others grabbed Dad for timed races or kite-flying.
“This is pure connection time, parents playing with their kids,” says the event’s founder, Mindfulness Practitioner Leah Ferrone, of Brave Lion Mind and the Nurtured in Nature after-school program. “Others play games with kids they don’t know. They don’t need instruction; they just play. Research shows that kids don’t want to be controlled by their phones and are relieved to be without one. But the parent sometimes has to be uncomfortable for a minute to make that happen, to get that teen to give it up for an event like this.
“In a group, no one wants to be the one person without their phone. So for this, we thought, ‘Let’s level the playing field.’”
Ferrone called last night a “happy-sad last hurrah,” but said it also paved the way for future events with the same no-phones mindset.
“We’ve talked about doing them once a month throughout the season so people can get tuned into that rhythm of nature,” she says. “However it works out, there are more to come. These pop-up events where people choose to unplug are not going away.”
As I looked around at the little girl in the hot pink tutu dress running through the meadow with a kite and bubbles of all sizes floating in the air, I was certainly grateful for that.
For more information on Nurtured in Nature, visit pitneymeadowscommunityfarm.org.
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