A companion read to “Building Strong Minds in a Digital World” — a conversation between Dr. Liu of Nemours Children’s Health and ESF Camps & Experiences co-founder Michael Rouse. 

Your kid is spending more time on their phone than you’d like. You know it. They know you know it. And somewhere between the dinner table standoff and the 11pm bedtime scroll, you’ve probably wondered: Is this actually harming them? And what do I do about it? 

You’re not alone — and you’re not wrong to ask. 

In our latest podcast episode, ESF Camps & Experiences co-founder Michael Rouse sits down with Lian Liu, PhD Psychology at Nemours Children’s Health, for a conversation that resists the easy villain narrative. Because here’s the thing: technology isn’t the whole problem. And banning screens isn’t the whole solution. What kids are missing runs deeper than that — and understanding what they’re missing is where real change begins.

The Number That Stops the Room 

Michael opens the conversation with a statistic that’s hard to shake: teens who spend three or more hours daily on social media more than double their risk of anxiety and depression,  according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data. 

And yet, as Dr. Liu points out, the research is more nuanced than any single headline. There’s a meaningful difference between passive consumption – endless scrolling, comparison loops, notification chasing – and active or creative digital engagement. One depletes. The other can build. Age matters, too. The developmental risks of heavy screen use look different for a 7-year-old, a 12-year-old, and a 16-year-old, and the areas of real concern – social-emotional development, attention, sleep – are specific and addressable. 

What the Nemours clinical team sees in practice reinforces this. The behavioral health consequences of unchecked screen exposure are showing up in pediatric offices with increasing regularity — not as moral failure, but as a public health pattern worth taking seriously. 

One more thing Michael flags: the recent wave of state and federal court rulings around social media platforms and minors. These cases are moving fast. We cannot rely on platforms or tech firms to draw the lines for our children. That job belongs to parents, pediatricians, educators, and summer programs designed with exactly this in mind.  

What Happens Between Week 1 and Week 3

If you want to understand what kids are missing, watch the first day of camp. 

Michael has watched thousands of them. Kids arrive distracted, a little flat, reaching for a device that isn’t there. Some are anxious. Some don’t know what to do with unstructured time. A few haven’t been truly bored, in the productive, imagination-activating sense, in months. 

By Week 3, something has shifted. 

The developmental ingredients that screens quietly crowd out — boredom, physical risk, face-to-face conflict that has to be resolved in real time, the experience of failing at something and trying again — these don’t just feel good. They’re the actual building blocks of a resilient mind. Executive function. Emotional regulation. Social fluency. Self-efficacy. What ESF calls MaxJoy: the full-spectrum flourishing that happens when kids are challenged in the right ways, supported by people who believe in them, and freed from the performance pressure of being watched. 

ESF’s programming, across STEAM, multi-sport, social skills, and character development tracks, was designed in close collaboration with Nemours specifically around these developmental gaps. It’s not activity-filling. It’s intentional architecture for child development. 

Dr. Liu’s answer when parents ask what’s the one thing I can do this summer? might surprise you. Tune in to hear it. 

The Parent Trap (Yes, It’s About You Too) 

Parental anxiety about tech, while understandable, can paradoxically make the problem worse. Kids who sense panic around screens often develop a more fraught, high-stakes relationship with them, not less. And there’s the modeling problem, which Michael names directly: kids are not the only ones glued to their phones at the dinner table. 

ESF has a protocol for this. Staff and adults on-site operate under the same screen limits as campers. You can’t teach kids to be here when no one around them actually is. 

Dr. Liu’s framework for home is built around the same principle: not bans, but boundaries with intention. The goal isn’t to make screens feel forbidden, that just raises the stakes and the desire. The goal is to make offline life compelling enough that it competes. 

Michael also addresses one of the trickiest parenting moments of the summer: the re-entry. How do you preserve the momentum when a kid comes home from two weeks at ESF and the devices are back? There’s a playbook for that, and it’s worth hearing. 

It’s Not About Less Screen Time. It’s About More of Everything Else. 

The goal isn’t subtraction. It’s addition. When kids have enough challenge, enough connection, enough physical engagement, enough creative outlet, enough earned confidence, screen time tends to find its natural level. The phone becomes less magnetic because life has become more interesting. That’s the ESF philosophy in a sentence. 

Challenge and failure aren’t obstacles to child development, they drive important life skills including resilience, empathy, compassion and determination. A kid who has struggled with something real, who has felt the specific satisfaction of figuring it out anyway, carries that forward. That’s the executive function no app or screen teaches. That’s the self-efficacy that buffers against anxiety. 

The AI World Our Kids Are Inheriting 

The episode closes with a forward-looking conversation that neither Michael nor Dr. Liu pretends to have fully figured out, which is exactly why it’s worth having. 

Today’s campers will be parents navigating a technological future we can’t imagine – AI tutors, social avatars, and immersive VR so many other potential ideas. The question isn’t whether those tools will be powerful. It’s whether the kids using them will have enough internal structure to direct them wisely. 

The skills ESF builds, creative problem solving, comfort with ambiguity, collaborative resilience, the ability to be present with another human being,  aren’t just developmentally important now. They’re the durable skills in an AI-saturated world. 

Listen, Then Act 

“Building Strong Minds in a Digital World” is available now wherever you get your podcasts. 

If you’re ready to give your child a summer that builds something real, find your ESF Camps location to explore program offerings and dates to experience MaxJoy this summer. From STEAM and sports to multi-activity and social development, there’s a track designed for exactly where your kid is right now. 

And if you’d like to speak with a pediatric behavioral health specialist, visit the Nemours behavioral health page to book an appointment with Dr. Liu and her team. 

ESF Camps & Experiences has spent 40+ years designing summer experiences that develop the whole child. Our programs are built in partnership with Nemours Children’s Health and grounded in pediatric research on resilience, social-emotional learning, and child development.