The pandemic ended. The feed did not.

‘What have you done with this child?’ parents ask us after their return from camp. They describe a child who came home happier, more playful, as if briefly returning to a younger age. We observe a similar change during the stay. For the third time, we held a phone-free camp, and during those two weeks we again saw children beginning to play more and appearing more content.

For me, this is a powerful experience. I consider the phone ban one of the essential conditions behind what we saw. But camp also has a shared programme, people and a different environment from an ordinary day at home. Our observation cannot separate the effect of the ban itself from everything else. Even so, it reminds me that nothing irreversible need have happened to children's playfulness. It makes sense to create space for it.

When I think today about children's turn towards screens after the pandemic, I give more weight to changes in apps than to lockdown habits alone. I see the spread of an endless, personally recommended stream of short videos as fundamental. A stream someone enters without needing to know what they are looking for, which continually offers a reason to continue.

Meanwhile, something else arrived on the phone

The end of lockdowns could tempt us into a simple expectation: children would finally enjoy the friends and activities they had missed, and screens would retreat on their own. But an open school does not determine what the rest of the day looks like. And while we dealt with returning to face-to-face encounters, platforms were expanding ways to offer more content.

Infinite scrolling itself is not a pandemic invention. TweetDeck, for example, described it as early as 2010. ¹ More relevant to this reflection is the combination of continual recommendations, short videos and easy transitions to the next clip, which spread into other major services:

In August 2020, Instagram introduced Reels. Alongside sharing with followers, it offered discovery of videos by other creators in a personally tailored vertical stream. ²

In September 2020, YouTube announced an initial Shorts test in India. The announcement included a viewing experience in which a swipe could move from one short video to the next. This was not yet a worldwide launch. ³

And in July 2022, Facebook announced the split into Home and Feeds. It described the main Home page as a place increasingly used to discover recommended content alongside contacts. The separate Feeds, by contrast, offered chronological posts from followed people, pages and groups. ⁴

These dates establish a specific change in what was offered. They do not tell us how much of the change in children's lives it caused. When I give it the main weight here, I am presenting my own interpretation, not the finding of a study comparing all possible causes.

Another video does not need another friend

Why do I consider that change so significant? Content no longer has to come only from those you chose to follow. In its June 2020 explanation of recommendations, TikTok described a system that works with user responses, such as finishing a video. According to the platform, the creator's follower count was not a direct recommendation factor. ⁵ The selection can therefore consist of videos from people whose existence you did not know about before opening the app.

Imagine the difference between two visits to the phone. In the first, you want to reply to a friend or find instructions. You can recognise the point when you are done. In the second, you open a stream of recommended videos. The first does not interest you, the second does a little, the third you skip. You have no task that can be completed. You must decide to stop yourself, while another option is already waiting.

To me, this matters more than an argument about the value of an individual clip. Even a funny or explanatory video can be part of an evening someone did not want to spend this way. If we only ask ‘What are you watching?’, we miss the second question: ‘How did you decide when to stop?’

The offer of another video need not take away a child's interest in friends completely. An ordinary hypothetical situation is enough for this reflection: a child would like to go out, but first has to message the others, wait, agree a meeting place and get dressed. They can start a video while waiting. And then another. The opportunity for an afternoon together existed; something simply needed to happen to get it started.

A silent phone can still offer a feed

I would address notifications and viewing itself separately. In a laboratory experiment by Cary Stothart and colleagues, incoming notifications disrupted performance on an attention-demanding task even when participants did not interact with the phone. ⁶ This is a reason to remove unnecessary interruptions during work. It is not proof that everyone with a phone loses the ability to concentrate.

I therefore recommend preparing study without messages continually intruding on it. But I do not consider silencing the phone alone a solution to an evening spent watching videos. A child can have all notifications turned off and still continue for a long time after opening an app. We need rules for both situations: availability during another activity, and access to the feed and when viewing ends.

What changes when the whole group puts away its phones

At camp, the shared rule itself seems important to me. One child is not supposed to disconnect and watch everyone else remain on their phones. The whole group puts their phones away, and the same conditions apply to time together.

Here, I look for one possible reason for the change we observe. For a game to begin, one person with a free afternoon is not enough. They need someone else too. Putting phones away together can make such an encounter easier. This is my interpretation of the camp experience; we do not yet know how much of the observed change persists after the children return to their usual environment.

That is why I would not promise parents that they would get a different child back after two weeks without a phone. The experience gives me a reason to create similar conditions, not to establish a deadline within which everyone changes. And alongside the rules, I would ask whether children have someone to be with, somewhere to play and whether anyone takes their ideas seriously.

Why I support schools without personal phones

I work with AI every day and enjoy technology. Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation also changed my view of children's phone use. ⁷ Today, I openly tell teachers at training sessions that I support a ban on personal phone use throughout the school day, including breaks. I want to protect concentration and time in which children can start something together without a phone in hand.

At the same time, I want them to learn to understand and use AI at school. They can explore the basics from the first year of primary school through suitable activities and demonstrations guided by a teacher. I do not mean their own account and unrestricted independent conversations with a chatbot. For digital work, I recommend prepared school devices without distracting notifications, age-appropriate tools and a clear educational purpose. The teacher needs to know what the child is learning and what they should do independently; the school must assess data protection and the service's terms of use.

However, I do not expect a school ban to solve all difficulties on its own. The SMART Schools study compared 1 227 pupils in 30 English schools. Stricter rules were associated with less phone use at school, but not with better mental wellbeing or lower overall use. It was an observational comparison, not a randomly allocated experiment. ⁸ I therefore defend the school rule as a way of organising the school day, not as treatment for an entire generation's mental health.

The rule must include health-related and essential support exceptions, safe storage of devices and available contact for parents. It must also include work on classroom relationships. A child who is lonely among the others does not automatically gain friends when we take their phone away.

Do not wait for ordinary life to win by itself

I would not ask parents or teachers to devise a programme more attractive than the next video at every minute. Shared activities should make sense to children too, but part of the day can remain ordinary. Something need not always be happening. At camp and at home, I would leave time in which the child chooses how to occupy themselves and does not have to account for it to an adult.

I do not consider unrestricted access to a personalised feed the default state we must preserve. I recommend defining parts of the day without it in advance and extending independence with age. Watching a joke together or playing a game can remain a pleasant part of life. Boundaries should also protect activities that need time to get started and a period when nothing interrupts them.

When planning what follows with parents who contact us after camp, I would mainly ask what their child wants to do at home. Whom can they meet? When will they have time for it? Arranging such an afternoon and putting phones away during it seems a more useful continuation than waiting for the camp change to maintain itself.

Sources and supporting material

1. TweetDeck / Twitter (12 August 2010): TweetDeck on Android, come and get it. A contemporary description of infinite scrolling. Documents that the feature existed long before the pandemic; does not assess effects on children. Original announcement.
2. Instagram / Facebook (5 August 2020): Introducing Instagram Reels. Announcement of Reels and the personally tailored vertical video stream in Explore. Platform announcement.
3. YouTube (14 September 2020): Building YouTube Shorts. Announcement of the initial test in India and the way of moving between short videos. The date cannot be presented as a worldwide launch. Platform announcement.
4. Meta (21 July 2022): Introducing Home and Feeds on Facebook. Strengthening recommended discovery on the main Home page alongside the separate chronological Feeds. Platform announcement.
5. TikTok (18 June 2020): How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou. Description of recommendation signals according to the platform itself. This is not an independent study of the feed's effects. TikTok Newsroom.
6. Stothart, C.; Mitchum, A.; Yehnert, C. (2015): The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41(4), 893–897. A laboratory experiment with notifications and an attention task. DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000100.
7. Haidt, J. (2024): The Anxious Generation. The book is listed here as a personal inspiration for the article's author. We do not use it as a substitute for individual research sources. Official book page.
8. Goodyear, V. A. et al. (2025): School phone policies and their association with mental wellbeing, phone use, and social media use (SMART Schools). The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, 51, 101211. A cross-sectional observational study of 30 English schools. DOI: 10.1016/j.lanepe.2025.101211.

The camp experience is the author's own observation and feedback he describes receiving from parents, not controlled research. The interpretation of the feed's significance and the recommendations for families and schools represent the author's position. The timeline given does not itself establish that the spread of these formats was the main cause of changes in children's lives after the pandemic.