Alternatives to Screens: What Jonathan Haidt gets right... and what to do about It.

Jonathan Haidt?

If you're a parent who's worried about the effect of screens on your child's creativity, then chances are you've stumbled across the work of Jonathan Haidt. He's a US social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, a book that's been doing the rounds lately on parenting forums and opinion pages alike. His basic thesis? That smartphones and social media have quietly dismantled childhood as we once knew it.

And, broadly speaking, I think he’s probably right.

Haidt presents some pretty stark data showing rising rates of anxiety and depression in young people — especially girls — that coincides almost perfectly with the rise of the smartphone. Correlated or causal? He argues it's the latter. That unstructured, real-world play has been swapped for passive scrolling and hyper-curated online personas. That boredom, once a fertile ground for imagination, is now filled instantly by TikTok. And that childhood has become less creative, less physical, and more anxious.

That broader unease is no longer confined to parenting forums or dinner-table debates. In Australia, the government has moved to restrict social media access for under-16s, placing the responsibility on platforms rather than families — a recognition that the architecture of childhood itself has shifted too far towards screens. Politicians such as Anika Wells have framed the issue not as nostalgia or panic, but as a question of how we protect the conditions in which childhood can flourish. Here in the UK it seems momentum is building behind similar legislation. Whatever one thinks of this, it points to a growing consensus: limits matter — but so do alternatives. Restriction on its own leaves a vacuum. Children still need something compelling to do instead.

The case for ‘doing something else’

Haidt’s good at diagnosis. But when it comes to prescription — the “what now?” — things get a little thin. The problem with smartphones is clear. But what, practically, should your child be doing instead?

This is where we think LEGO, and in particular LEGO combined with the Brickle have something to offer.

We didn’t build the Brickle to wage war on screen time. We built it because we wanted our own children to rediscover what LEGO can be: open-ended, creative, absorbing. Something you lose hours in — not minutes. Something you can do by yourself or together, but either way not as a performance for others.

Playing with a physical toy like LEGO might be a good antidote to many of the things Haidt worries about. It’s social (when shared), it’s physical (it lives in the real world, not behind glass), but most importantly — it invites your child to create rather than consume.

We’ve seen it ourselves in testers and customers: children who’ve long since stopped breaking down their old LEGO kits suddenly finding the confidence to disassemble and create again. Not because someone gave them a lecture about screen time, but because the storage and sorting made building fun again. And — whisper it — more fun than YouTube.

A healthy scepticism

Now, as a British parent, I do find some of Haidt’s rhetoric a bit dramatic. American academic culture does like its moral panics (see also: sugar, computer games, television, rock music…). And while the trends are real, it’s also true that not every child with an iPad is one swipe away from existential collapse.

Children are surprisingly resilient. But I think they do need alternatives.

That’s why the Brickle isn't part of some anti-tech crusade. We have Netflix in our house. One of my daughters built her own LEGO Dojo after watching the Ninjago series and being re-inspired. For us, it’s not about banning screens, but finding a balance with them. It reminds us — and our kids — that the best kind of fun doesn’t need a charger.

We’ve seen it ourselves, but also with our pilot families and early customers. Several parents told us their child now reaches for LEGO first on winter afternoons — without being prompted — simply because it’s accessible in the family room. Not tucked away. Not requiring a big setup. Just there, waiting.

That turns out to matter more than we expected.

The difference isn’t the LEGO itself — it’s that when every piece is visible and findable, starting feels easier than opening YouTube. There’s no hunt, no friction, no “I can’t find the right bit, so I’ll just watch something instead.” One small barrier removed can change what a child chooses to do with their time.

Brickle gives children something worth lingering over.

Final thought

Jonathan Haidt has done a real service by giving language to what so many parents have been feeling — that something isn’t quite right. But diagnosis only gets us so far. At some point, we need alternatives that actually work in the flow of family life.

That’s a point echoed increasingly by policymakers, too. Politicians are speaking out about the need to better protect childhood from the unintended consequences of an always-on, screen-first world. Not through panic or prohibition, but by re-centring real-world experiences that children can choose for themselves.

The Brickle isn’t the only answer. But it is one. A simple, elegant place for LEGO to live — and more importantly, to be played with again. For free-building. For sharing. For losing yourself in that wonderful loop of “what shall I build next?”

So yes — we agree with Haidt. But maybe the solution isn’t to panic, or pontificate.
Maybe it’s just to put a few more bricks back on the table.