The Boredom They Deserve

Evan Swensen
January 29, 2026

Cedar Valley News
January 29, 2026
The Boredom They Deserve
By: Chloe Papadakis
From the fictional town of Cedar Valley, where characters from Quiet Echo continue to respond to real-world events.

Parents across America are buying their children VHS players, landline telephones, and board games—and calling it progress.

They call it the “analog childhood” movement. Trade school enrollment is up, phone bans are spreading through schools, and families are rediscovering something their grandparents never lost: the gift of boredom.

I have a four-year-old and a baby. My house is not quiet. But lately I have been thinking about what kind of childhood I want to hand them—and what I want to hold back.

The research is clear enough. Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation” sparked a national reckoning about what screens are doing to our kids. Australia just banned social media for children under 16. Schools across the country are locking phones in pouches. Parents are forming “phone pacts,” pledging to wait until high school before handing over smartphones. One company is selling a “TinCan” phone—basically a landline for kids—and parents are lining up to buy it.

We are not going backward. We are remembering.

My generation had what one parent called “an analog childhood and a digital late-adolescence.” We climbed trees before we scrolled feeds. We learned to be bored before we learned to swipe. And somewhere in that boredom—in the long summer afternoons with nothing to do—we learned to make things, imagine things, become ourselves.

That is what we are trying to give back.

The parenting experts are noticing the shift. Families are stepping away from overscheduled weeks and Instagram-perfect everything. They are choosing backyard play over expensive camps, board games over streaming, unstructured time over curated moments. One psychologist put it this way: parents are moving “from preparing the road for their kid to preparing their kid for the road.”

That means letting them struggle. Letting them be bored. Letting them figure out what to do with an empty afternoon and a cardboard box.

In Cedar Valley, I see it happening. The park is fuller on Saturday mornings than it used to be. The library’s board game night has a waiting list. Parents are swapping tips on flip phones and dumb phones, and which apps to delete. We are building something together—not a perfect childhood, but a slower one. A realer one.

My daughter does not need a screen to be entertained. She needs dirt under her fingernails. She needs a friend to fight with and make up with. She needs to hear “no” and survive it. She needs the long, unscheduled hours where nothing happens except growing up.

Boredom is not the enemy. Boredom is the soil.

And maybe—just maybe—we are learning to plant in it again.

This editorial is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series. While the people and town are fictional, the national events they reflect on are real.

Want to know the full story behind Cedar Valley? Teresa, Caleb, Dan, and the community you’ve come to know in these editorials first came together in Quiet Echo: When Loud Voices Divide, Quiet Ones Bring Together. Discover how a small town found its way from fear to fellowship—one quiet act of courage at a time. Available on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3ME4nSs