Community Education

Thriving Generation group aims to get families to put their phones down

Posted on October 1st, 2025 By: Marsha Hart

A group of educators, health professionals and faith leaders want to encourage kids — and parents — to go offline and get outside.

They formed a grassroots organization called Thriving Generation under the umbrella of the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation. More than 20 local organizations are now on board with Thriving Generation and its mission.

“Our campaign is focused on education and supporting developmentally appropriate, healthy, safe use of smartphones and social media, as well as more outdoor, unstructured, unsupervised play,” said John Hellwich, one of the leaders of the group. Hellwich is the director of secondary teaching and learning for the Peninsula School District. “Our purpose is to get everyone on board with that.”

Thriving Generation will host a campaign kickoff event from 4 to 6 p.m. Oct. 10 at Gateway Park near Wauna. The event coincides with World Mental Health Day and will feature phone-free activities, contests and prizes.

The kickoff promotes a community-wide phone-free weekend, planned for Nov. 7 through 9.

Josiah Oliver and Ben Woolworth play a game at the arcade at Ocean5 during filming of a video to promote the campaign’s slogan contest. George and Charlie Judd submitted the winning slogan, “Swap Swipes for Sunshine.”

Wait Until Eighth

Thriving Generation supports the national Wait Until Eighth campaign, which encourages parents to wait until the end of eighth grade to give children smartphones. Thriving Generation members also emphasize that they aren’t trying to take anything away from anyone.

Gino Grunberg, retired pastor with Harbor Christian Center, said they’re not “telling people what to do.”

“It’s just about growing in our relationships,” Grunberg said. “It’s about a move from a screen-driven life to a playful, enjoyable, relational life.”

Instead of taking away phones and screens altogether, he said there are alternatives. Parents can still have the peace of mind that their child can contact them when needed, but with a phone that doesn’t have the capabilities of a smartphone, which connects to the Internet, social media, and apps that parents may not even know children are using.

“We over-protect in real life, and under-protect with technology,” said Mark Willson, pastor of Harbor Covenant Church. “We want to promote free play and interactive activities that are tech-free. So, we are going to have a calendar that collates all of the things happening in our community that are tech-free based.”

‘Anxious Generation’

Many members of Thriving Generation were inspired after reading a 2024 book called “The Anxious Generation.” In the book, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that the rise of cell phones and social media caused an “epidemic of mental illness” in children.

Recent medical and academic studies make similar cases. For instance, a University of Texas study on the effects of devices on mental health and learning showed that just having a smart device within reach reduced the ability to focus.

Local physicians and mental health professionals who are part of Thriving Generation believe a correlation exists between constant access to social media and information and a rise in anxiety and depression.

“Around 2016, I noticed that more of my adolescent clients were presenting with severe anxiety and there was also an increase in self harm and suicidal ideation,”said Sheri Lane, a licensed marriage and family therapist. “Many of my clients reported that they were on their phones all hours of the night and felt like they couldn’t get a handle on their phone use, but when we explored that their phone use might be contributing toward their anxiety they had a hard time making that connection. Many felt that scrolling on their phones actually helped reduce their feelings of anxiety.”

Fewer social interactions

While her clients reported that they felt connected to their friends, she said the time they spent with their friends outside of school had decreased.

Dr. Nathan Schlicher, an emergency room physician at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, is also part of Thriving Generation.

“The biggest change that I see as a result of the excessive use of technology is the impairment that it has on relationships,” Schlicher said. “Data shows that the time with friends and number of close friends is dropping. All of this leads kids to more isolation, anxiety and depression. This shows up in the ER, but also in interactions I watch as a parent of three teenage kids.”

Josiah Oliver, Meghan Webster, Ben Woolworth and Ruby Zech play air hockey at Ocean5’s arcade as part of a video production promoting in-person activities.

In the real world

Rebecca Maffei, the lead counselor for Peninsula School District, said young children don’t have the ability to regulate their online use. Even adults struggle with it. Small things suck them in, leading to a rabbit hole effect.

“Often kids are exposed to information that they are not developmentally ready to process on their own,” Maffei said. “Besides the more straightforward threats of predators and adult content, we often just don’t fully know what kids are viewing and how they are understanding what they see.”

Peninsula School District is a leader in implementing policies that limit students’ access to cell phones during the school day.

Having more tangible, tactile experiences with the physical world, and social interactions with the people in their lives can help children develop the ability to filter information, she said.

“Less real-life experiences makes it more difficult to place information in context, and judge the overall merits of information,” Maffei said. “It can easily lead to a sense of digital overload which over time impacts mental health and development. Kids need to learn skills of mindful attention and they learn and practice these skills more effectively in the physical world. One big cost to spending too much time interacting with technology is the missed opportunities to engage in real world physical activities and social interactions with peers as well as family, and real world community.”