There’s an epidemic spreading that may wreak more havoc than COVID, and it’s going largely unnoticed even though it’s happening right in front of our faces, quite literally. Screens. They dominate the hours that used to be spent exploring, experimenting, and discovering. They deliver constant dopamine hits: likes, notifications, and micro-rewards that are instantly gratifying. The results, however, are not nearly as nice. Kids are learning to chase short-term reward at the expense of long-term accomplishment. Their attention fragments. Their ability to focus on multi-step challenges dissipates. The fire that fuels them to achieve long-term success fizzles out. And if one looks closely, the signs are visible. Many children feel a quiet sense of failure, like they’re already falling behind in a world that seems to have everything figured out before they even start.
The mental and emotional consequences are real: apathy, frustration, anxiety, depression and more can take root when a child’s time and energy are dominated by passive consumption and media bombardment. Screens offer instant hits, but they rarely deliver mastery, understanding, or the joy of real achievement. The cure isn’t going to come from simply limiting screen time, it’s going to come from giving kids something deeper, more challenging, and more meaningful to engage with.
Initial Screening: Where does curiosity come from?
Curiosity, resilience, entrepreneurship, and innovation. These are all admirable and desirable traits. And one thing they all have in common is that they don’t spring forth from worksheets or lecture slides. They bloom and flourish when children encounter something entirely new and realize, through their own effort, that they can figure it out.
When a child builds a small robot that moves on its own, engineers a circuit that lights up, or designs a tiny water filtration system, they discover something profound: the world can be understood, influenced, and shaped through their own hands. Those moments when a concept stops being abstract and becomes something you can touch, test, and improve are where confidence, curiosity, and long-form attention take root.
Passive screen experiences rarely produce that arc. They reward short bursts of engagement and encourage quick turnovers. What children need instead are experiences that demand sustained focus, multi-step planning, experimentation, and iteration. They need the hard, messy work that teaches them how to solve problems that don’t come with an instruction manual.
Low Battery: The phones and the kids.
Now let’s be blunt: phones and apps were engineered to hijack and keep attention. Shiny rewards (the unpredictable “win” of a notification or a level-up), social comparison (constant viewing of highlight reels), and frictionless consumption all combine into a very powerful loop. For kids, those loops can quickly replace other forms of play that have built deeper skills for generations.
The short-term payoff is immediate: a burst of pleasure, a feeling of connection, a small rush of status. But these payoffs are hollow in a particular way, that they are not tied to real-world skills or any sort of lasting competence. When a game gives you a victory, nothing in your real life actually changes. When social media repeatedly shows the most polished moments of others, kids can internalize a sense of failure: “I’m not interesting enough,” or “I’m not keeping up.” Over time, that erodes self-efficacy, the belief that effort produces meaningful results, and replaces it with comparison-driven anxiety or numbness.
The combination of all these factors is dangerous: fragmented attention makes complex problem-solving harder; diminished self-efficacy reduces risk-taking and experimentation; and a steady diet of hollow rewards can leave kids feeling empty or hopeless. For some, this spirals into anxiety, depression, and other mental health struggles.
The remedy isn’t moralizing about phones and consoles or pretending that can (or even want to) make screens vanish. What is needed is an alternative ecology of engagement, something genuinely demanding and rewarding in the real world. Kids need places where effort maps to accomplishment, where progress is observable, and where failure is a step toward improvement, not a reason to quit.
Charging Curiosity: Lab Of Future’s approach changes things.
Lab of Future is designed to do exactly that. Every hands-on project is crafted to let children explore new concepts, understand how machines and systems work, and reflect on the why behind each challenge. Coaches guide learners through experimentation and iteration, helping them see the next steps and imagine what’s possible beyond the immediate task.
These projects are intentionally mission-driven: students work toward visible outcomes that matter: a functioning prototype, a small sustainability solution, a robot that completes a task. That visible impact rewires motivation. Instead of chasing hollow micro-rewards, kids experience mastery, ownership, and the social lift of collaborating on something real. Along the way they learn technical practices (design, prototyping, debugging) and meta-skills (systems thinking, perseverance, teamwork).
Crucially, LOF also opens doors. When children see what they can build, they begin to imagine careers and futures that once felt impossible or undefinable. That sense of possibility, the conviction that they can make a difference, does as much to cure apathy as any lesson on focus.
Closing the app: In conclusion.
Curiosity is the spark of innovation, and learning environments are the wires that carry it. Screens alone may deliver short jolts, but they rarely sustain the current needed to power real achievement. By giving children mission-driven challenges and projects with visible outcomes, we help that spark become a steady, illuminating force, one capable of lighting the path to discovery, mastery, and meaningful impact.