"Lebo Unplugged" - Grassroot Parent Interest Group

I attended the first meeting for a Mt. Lebanon parent-direction action group - and here are my observations and takeaways.

On February 4, 2025, I attended the inaugural meeting of “Lebo Unplugged” - a grassroots parent-led action group in Mt. Lebanon, PA. The group seeks to address the digital-dependence issues facing youth today by focusing in three key areas:

1. Parent Education

2. Phone Free Schools / School Policy Advocacy

3. Government Policy & Legislation

Find the Facebook Group Here for residents of Mt. Lebanon.

This group is a chapter of MAMA - Mothers Against Media Addiction, but because MAMA is not yet well known nationally, the term “Lebo Unplugged” accurately depicts the intent of the group..

The local co-founders, Kristine Griffin and Jane Casella, are two residents who have children aged elementary through college. They leaned on a similar group from Sewickley - Sewickley Unplugged who started a similar MAMA chapter. Sewickley Unplugged was present with leadership members Collette Walsh and Kristen Heiman.

The main activity of the evening after some background setting and introduction of content was to have breakout groups exploring digital habits and problems across age groups - which I further expand upon in the next section.

Digital Wellness Across Age Groups: Parent Perspectives on Challenges and Solutions

Objective: To get a baseline understanding of what issues are being faced within Mt. Lebanon related to use of technology and media, parents from Pre-K through high school, including a virtual group, shared their perspectives on problems, the experiences they see as negative, and brainstormed potential solutions.

Method: Parents were organized into specialized groups based on their children's age levels: Pre-K, Elementary School (two groups), Middle School, High School, and a separate Zoom** group representing various ages.

Each group was given two prompts for discussion:

1. What problems do you see with tech media for this age group? Try to relay 3 problems.

2. What ways can we make a difference to improve tech media usage among kids in this age group, including one thing you can do at home? Try to relay 3 solutions.

This structured approach design allowed discussion to be split into “problem identification” and “solution ideation” - and kept a focused discussion allowing the parents to have general group consensus of three[ish] age-specific challenges and three[ish] possible solutions. While each group was asked to identify up to three key problems and up to three potential solutions, they were additionally tasked with discussing one actionable item that could be implemented in the home environment.

My observation was that it was easiest for the groups to toss out a litany of problems; slightly more difficult to propose solutions — but most difficult to bring up actionable items that could be implemented at home!

** While I appreciate the intent to include as many parents as possible, it does feel a bit counter to some of my own learnings about device dependence - convenience - and the impact on isolating behaviors that are part of the targeted issue. I further acknowledge that Substack has notifications and comment functions that are part of the addictive design of many social media platforms.

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Results: What emerged from these discussions was a good starting set of insights for unique age-specific challenges and concerns that span all age groups. Patterns generally emerged in both the challenges faced and the potential solutions, as follows.

Challenges

The Battle for Attention and Device Usage

Pre-K to high school, parents consistently report challenges with ‘transitions away from screen time’ — leading to fractured attention patterns, which intensify as children age. This manifests principally as negotiations over screen time - constant negotiations over screen time.

Specific to MTLSD school policies, High schoolers face a particularly complex transition challenge moving from ‘no devices’ and more structured middle school policies to high school policies that are much more open and allow devices in hallways, in some classes, and with loose enforcement of the policy. Parents noted that this is the age where these early-adults need to learn to self manage their own digital usage as they become more independent - but the education of how to do that is questionable (and seemingly an unmet community/society need).

The current device management policies of the school district were criticized. Most notably the middle school aged parent group identified the creativeness of children finding workarounds for any imposed technical limitations - e.g. when one ‘game site’ is blocked, another one is found - a whack-a-mole of management for the school district information technology staff.

Social and Academic Pressures

General agreement was achieved on the statement that “social dynamics of technology use create pressure at every level.” Kids of all ages are exposed to screens early, even when parents desire to limit or disallow screens.

Elementary school parents feel social pressure to provide devices earlier than they prefer, while middle school parents manage through the drama of group chats and AI tools being used [against policy] for homework completion. High schoolers face even less restricted environments while needing to maintain academic integrity.

Proposed Solutions

Consistency of School District Policy Enforcement

One of the most emphatically advocated solutions, particularly highlighted by the middle school group but echoed across all levels, is the need for consistent school district policy enforcement. This topic further highlighted a need for policy enforcement to occur both at school AND at home. Parents and educators need to find ways to work together to develop and enforce clear technology use boundaries.

For the next Lebo Unplugged meeting, an agenda item will explore “Wait until 8th” and “Wait until High School” - which are parent-centric solutions to gating device/media access (waiting until at least 8th grade to provide a smartphone, for example).

Educational / Social Approaches

A few strategies / solutions emerged from the discussions on how education can occur in healthy ways:

• Elementary groups emphasized ‘teaching by example’, with parents explaining their own technology use (example was: “mom is using her phone right now to order groceries so that we can have meals this week” to describe their use of their smartphone.)

• The non “school should consistently enforce the policy” solution provided by the Middle school group was “stop using Snapchat as the method for extracurricular group chats - whether sporting team or otherwise”. They also mentioned “appropriate usage education”, which may need to be more clearly defined (and is likely an opportunity for educational development) - and this seems to be a lacking part of tech literacy education for persons of all age.

• The High school group noted that it desired a data-driven approach to analyzing the problem. Seek to incorporate more usage data and analysis for informed discussions. Thoughtfully this group mentioned that no one truly knew answers to questions like - are the approved devices being used for 2 hours or 8 hours in classrooms? - and for what? Having data would inform potential policy change requests.

Concluding…

The Lebo Unplugged group desires to encourage the adoption of MAMA principles - as taken from the MAMA website are:

I see this as also highlighting the need for ‘community spaces’ for these non-digital engagements to occur.

From a policy and action perspective, the following were observed as consensus approaches that persons were willing to pursue further:

1. Implement the "Away for the Day" approach in school - that all school levels would have a phone-free policy from opening bell to ending bell. This may also be extended to the home - and might mean designating tech-free zones in your home or specific tech-free times of day.

2. Connect with other parents in the community to establish shared guidelines for playdates and gatherings (ask the question “how are screens used in your home?” at the start of playdates). As the elementary school parents noted, knowing and discussing technology policies between homes creates consistency and reduces friction.

3. Model the behavior you want to see - doing things like narrating your own technology use - and setting clear boundaries with your own devices. Our children are watching and learning from our example.

As the parent discussions clearly showed, the challenges of digital wellness extend far beyond individual families, the responsibility of schools, or the responsibility of government - they're community challenges that require community solutions. The success stories that are documented share common narratives that involved collaboration between parents, schools, and community members.

As I engage more in this group and with this topic, I’ll share my thoughts here for your further consideration… as these issues are with kids, but adults suffer from similar levels of media addiction…