Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness

1200 29^th Street, NW, LL#1

Washington, DC 20007

202-333-9220

To:  Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Date:  May 8, 2007

  From TV-Turnoff Week to REM&G to Universal Screen-Time Reduction:

  A lifestyle for the 21st Century

Our grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation gave us an opportunity to explore ways to reduce screen-time.  After 11 years of promoting TV-Turnoff Week, this seemed like a reasonable task, but as we delved into this morass, it became clear that the screens in our lives were unlike any other tools in our lives.  These tools had a life of their own and impacted all aspects of our lives.

To do this correctly, we enlisted professionals from a variety of different fields, from representatives of the CDC, Boys and Girls Clubs, researchers and others.  We discovered that these groups rarely if ever spoke to each other and their perspectives on the screens and the screen’s impact were dictated by their personal (and professional) experiences.

During the grant period and based on a series of meetings with our advisory team, the concept of available alternatives to the screen became a must for any successful program.  This was something that was encouraged during Turnoff Week as well, but finding a way to make this a staple in our lives would prove to be more difficult.

This led to our report, featuring REM&G (Reducing Electronic Media & Games), a concept that took us beyond a “turnoff” week, and into a permanent change.  This change led us to explore ways to enlist others to provide more permanent screen-time replacements and look at Turnoff Week itself as a kickoff to a longer term change in our relationship with the screen.

With this in hand we approached governors in states across the USA and suggested that as a first step in challenging the obesity crisis, illiteracy and violence, they adopt the REM&G program, or at the very least implement Turnoff Week as part of their efforts.

New York State, Kentucky and Oklahoma found our arguments convincing enough to ask for formal proposals, with full-fledged projects being developed in NY and KY, and a task force being set up in Oklahoma.  Attached is the NY S plan of action for Turnoff Week 2007, which took place from April 21-29, 2007.

During the process of implementing programs in NYS and KY, it was now obvious that more needed to be done.  The screen was not only devouring us, but also dictated how we saw the instrument itself.  It told us how we should look, behave, what we should wear and eat and how to react to our family and friends.  Other electronic media devices replaced direct relationships in real time with indirect contact in virtual time.  If we were to have success, we needed to change the landscape and move for Universal Screen-Time Reduction: A lifestyle for the 21^st Century.

In short, the new program looks to take the appeal out of the screens in our lives and put them in perspective, providing a balanced view of our lives and the world around us.  In our current world the television, computer and games, the iPod, cell phone and video are currency for good and bad behavior, they are used as rewards and punishment, they control recreational time, meal time and bedtime.  If we wanted to reduce obesity, illiteracy and violence while strengthening families and communities, then our relationship with the screen had to change and change dramatically.

The process to arrive at this stage went beyond what we discovered during the grant period and extended through tours of both KY and NY, meeting with teachers, healthcare providers, extension service workers, people in business the arts and government.  We looked at how our communities reacted to crisis and how families interacted, how schools and families related and how people responded to their government.

We found many disconnects, we found a society that is marginally focused on the individual and not much else and we found that good information on living healthy was considered just too difficult to make part of the average family’s life.  We also recognized that with so much competing information, with so many mixed messaged, that it was impossible for anyone to take a step.  With Shrek PSAs saying one thing and Shrek the advertising king saying another, who was right?  The confusion of the American Academy of Pediatrics statement on children two and under with screens (none) and the fact that pediatricians have televisions in waiting rooms, who is right?  Testing in supermarkets with screens in shopping carts to entertain children while parents shop, right or wrong?  There were so many competing messages and a lack of hard information and support for families to do the right thing.

This is how Universal Screen-Time Reduction: A lifestyle for the 21^st Century was born.  To move this program forward for a fall 2007 roll out, we established additional task forces in the Bay Area in California and in Orange County, Florida, as well as a national task force of university professors.  Additional task forces will be formed, some by us and others by community leaders.

Universal Screen-Time Reduction: A lifestyle for the 21^st Century is about building blocks of support throughout the community and family structure, minimizing the importance of the screen, while not diminishing our need to master the technology.  By finding a balance and a relationship for healthy usage, we encourage stronger family relationships while offering ways to structure healthier communities. 

To do this successfully we need to build committees that include schools, government, the private sector and the nonprofits; the more community representation the better for success.  By engaging the engine of industry, the passion of nonprofits and the outreach of government we could challenge the screen and the ills it enables, while still getting the good things offered by these amazing devices.

Our next step is to continue building communities of businesses and nonprofits that provide alternatives to the screen, from the local supermarket to the bookstore, from the tennis instructor to the librarian and from the violin teacher to the Russian language expert.  Sporting good stores, painting, fishing and Frisbee are all just the start of building an infrastructure for change.  Getting people off the couch and into the streets, getting families to invest themselves in there neighborhoods, getting schools to encourage community-wide actions that improve the region are all essential to “replace” the sedentary and solitary power of the screen.  Making what we hear in the world around us as important, if not more so, than what we hear when tethered to a box is essential to moving forward and our experience now tells us it is possible.

Based on our new effort, we are now working with the government of Mexico, the University of the District of Columbia and strengthening our relationships with our task forces and the states we have been working with.

For us as an organization, it is the most exciting time in our history and it is clear that a small nonprofit can effect big changes.  By July of this year the FCC Task Force we pushed for will come out with a report, in the fall we will start the process of rolling out Universal Screen-Time Reduction: A lifestyle for the 21st Century and at this moment, thanks to a grant from RWJ, it will be possible to tackle the giants like obesity, illiteracy and violence in our communities and around the world.