The power of play: Reconnecting childhood away from screens

Tereishang Khaling
My childhood, and not so long ago, was slower, messier, and wonderfully alive. We played marbles in the dust, tossed five stones, and leapt through endless rounds of hopscotch. We scraped our knees, made up rules, and turned old container lids into pots for our pretend kitchens. We looped strings through our fingers in cat’s cradle, turning thread into magic.
With nothing more than dirt and imagination, we built whole worlds together. Today, those sounds of laughter, thudding feet, and shared invention are replaced by taps, swipes, and the quiet hum of screens.
I recently saw a video that was deeply unsettling: a child so absorbed in a mobile game that she didn’t flinch as flies swarmed her face. Some even crawled into her ear. Her stillness wasn’t peace, it was disconnection. Scenes like this are no longer rare. They reflect a growing crisis in how childhood is unfolding in today’s digital world.
Childhood in the Age of Screens
Children today are spending significantly less time in interactive, physical, and imaginative play. This shift is quietly but profoundly affecting their emotional well-being, cognitive growth, and most critically, their ability to communicate and connect. In my work as a psychologist and therapist, I’ve seen this impact first-hand. For many children, especially those with speech or social difficulties, the absence of real play delays essential developmental milestones.
Play isn’t just fun, it is foundational. It’s how children develop attention spans, solve problems, regulate their emotions, interact and build human connection. In recent years, how- ever, even toddlers swipe screens with astonishing ease but often struggle with eye contact, engagement, or responding when called. Across homes and everyday spaces, devices now fill the spaces where stories, conversation, and companion- ship once lived.
A term now emerging in developmental psychology, “virtual autism,” refers to children displaying autism-like symptoms such as speech delays, poor social engagement, and limited eye contact not due to a neurological disorder, but as a result of prolonged screen exposure.
This phenomenon is becoming one of the quietest yet most concerning consequences of early and excessive gadget use.
The Forgotten Power of Play
Play is how children discover the world and how their minds learn to think, imagine, and connect. Through mud kitchens, chase games, tower building and pretend roles, children develop memory, empathy, self-control, and creativity. Most importantly, they learn to listen, to speak, to take turns, and to respond. These social communication skills often assumed to develop naturally are not taught through instruction. They are nurtured in the fluid, spontaneous, and often messy world of play.
Even early childhood theories recognized this. Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist known for his groundbreaking work on child development, observed that learning unfolds in stages from sensing the world through physical exploration to imagining it through symbols. At every stage, play is central. His insights continue to shape how we understand learning and child development even today.
Today, play is recognized not only as an educational necessity but also as a therapeutic tool. It is used in working with children facing speech delays, autism spectrum disorders, anxiety, and trauma. In therapy rooms, special education classrooms, and family interven- tions, structured and unstructured play helps children build trust, express emotions, and recover resilience. Yet the essence of play does not depend on expensive toys or digital programs. It thrives on freedom to run, to imagine, to belong. Whether it takes place under a tree, in a backyard, or with a handful of stones, the richest learning often happens through the simplest forms of play.
Rediscovering Our Roots
Before the arrival of digital games and rigid rou- tines, childhood was rooted in natural learning. Children piled stones, collected flower petals, made mud pies, or mimicked their parents in pretend household chores. These mo- ments may have been informal, but they were deeply developmental. In many rural communities, children still engage in these collaborative, sensory-rich games. They build memory, motor coordination, empathy, and resilience. Most importantly, these games are shared with siblings, friends, cousins, neighbors, and elders. Play was never meant to be solitary. Shared laughter, meaningful eye contact, and invented rules foster far more than any app ever could. If we want the next generation to grow into emotionally grounded, socially intelligent individuals, we must restore the kind of play that involves people, not just pixels.
What We Can Do
Reclaiming play doesn’t require big budgets or formal programs. It begins with simple, everyday choices that any parent, teacher, or community member can make. Encourage children to spend time outdoors whether in a field, a backyard, or a playground. Instead of handing them a phone, tell them stories from your childhood or read aloud from a favorite book. Let them help with everyday chores and turn those moments into playful adventures. Even thirty fewer minutes of screen time each day can make room for imagination, movement, and meaningful conversation.
What children need most isn’t constant entertainment, it's presence. A parent who pauses to listen. A teacher who joins in a game of catch. A neighbor who shares an old folktale. These seemingly small moments offer children something irreplaceable : connection, confidence, and joy.
The Childhood We Must Protect
The early years are when children build a sense of trust, autonomy, and confidence. These qualities grow not through instruction but through safe exploration and shared experiences. When children are given room to imagine, lead, fail, and try again, they are not merely passing time. They are discovering their strengths and stepping into their potential.
Let us bring back those days for the children of today and tomorrow: not ones spent in front of glowing screens, but running barefoot through grass and soil, exploring nature, and playing with friends face-to- face. Let us revive a time when imagination was boundless, and joy was found not in clicks and swipes, but in the simplest of things: scraped knees, shared giggles, and muddy hands. Because when we protect play, we protect childhood itself.
The writer is a Psychotherapist engaged as Asst Prof, Mount Mary College, Nagaland