You've decided your child needs a little less screen time.
You switch off the tablet.
“Go play.”
Five minutes later:
“I'm bored.”
Sound familiar?
The problem may not be that your child doesn't want to do anything else.
It may simply be that “anything else” isn't interesting enough yet.
Taking something away is only half the job
A 2025 UAE survey reported by The National found that many parents were struggling with exactly this gap: 70% said children aged 9–14 spent most of their free time on screens, while almost half felt there weren't enough age-appropriate alternatives available.
One UAE expert interviewed for the article put the challenge simply: parents cannot only tell children to stop using a screen—they need to actively help them find something else to do.
That “something else” doesn't need to be expensive, complicated or another after-school class.
It needs to give children a reason to become curious.
Here are five ways to try.
1. Give them a mystery, not an activity
Instead of:
“Let's do something educational.”
Try:
“I found something strange. Come look at this.”
Pick an everyday object:
- a leaf
- seashell
- old coin
- feather
- piece of fabric
- spice
- rock
Ask your child to guess something about it before investigating further.
Curiosity starts with a question.
2. Turn your home into a discovery hunt
Give them 10 minutes to find:
Something rough.
Something transparent.
Something with a pattern.
Something from nature.
Something they can't explain.
Then put their discoveries together.
You have just transformed the same house they walk through every day into something they can investigate.
3. Let them build something badly
Give them cardboard, paper, tape or building pieces.
Then give them a problem:
Can you build a bridge that holds five books?
Can you make a paper plane land inside a box?
Can you protect an egg from a short fall?
Don't correct the first attempt.
The useful part is often:
“That didn't work. What should we change?”
Play gives children opportunities to experiment, solve problems and practice self-regulation. Harvard's Center on the Developing Child specifically recommends increasingly challenging games and playful activities for school-age children.
4. Make ordinary things look unfamiliar
One of the easiest ways to create fascination is to change the way a child sees something familiar.
Ask:
What does paper really look like?
Why does a leaf have tiny lines?
Does every piece of fabric look the same up close?
What is actually inside a handful of sand?
The object hasn't changed.
Their perspective has.
And suddenly the ordinary becomes something to investigate.
5. Give them tools, then get out of the way
Not every activity needs a parent standing beside it.
The goal is eventually:
“Look what I found!”
rather than:
“What should I do now?”
Provide materials that make experimenting, building, observing or discovering easy—and let children decide where the activity goes next.
Harvard's play guidance for older children specifically notes that adults can gradually step back as children become more independent in their play.
The best screen-time alternative may not feel like an “alternative”
Children aren't usually excited by the phrase:
“screen-free activity.”
That's a parent's category.
A child thinks:
Can I touch it?
Can I change it?
Can I figure it out?
Can I find something nobody else noticed?
That's the opportunity.
Not to declare war on technology.
Not to fill every free minute with another structured lesson.
But to give their curiosity something in the real world that's genuinely worth following.
That's the idea we believe in at ZEEKO:
Don't just tell children to look away from the screen. Give them something worth looking closer at.
Sources
- The National — Rethinking screen time this summer: UAE experts urge parents to focus on connection over control, June 2025.
- American Academy of Pediatrics — current screen-time guidance emphasizing balance and context rather than one universal hourly limit.
- Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University — Brain-Building Through Play.
- American Academy of Pediatrics — The Power of Play, reaffirmed January 2025.