There were a lot of interesting things being discussed at the Blue Earth Area School Board meeting last week.

You can read about many of them in a couple of stories in this week’s Faribault County Register. Things such as those much discussed possible new tennis courts, which now seems like they are not going to happen, a new policy to allow the school to have Naloxone – an opioid overdose reversal medication – discussion of block scheduling and a whole lot of end of the school year information.

There also was a very brief mention of something that caught my attention and is not in the story.

BEA superintendent Mandy Fletcher mentioned that one issue educators face in teaching kids the basic skills they need to learn are phones and screen time.

And she was not referencing use of phones in schools.

Even very young kids spend a lot of time on phones. Experts are now trying to get parents to limit screen time with kids under 13 years old. It has become a very real problem. It can affect their ability to learn to read and to understand grammar usage. I would think it might be hard to learn to read and spell if all you see are mispelled short, abbreviated text messages.

I am not sure how parents are going to be able to limit screen time, but I know some who do and make kids put down the phone during meals, limit usage after supper and do not allow the kids to have the phones in their rooms at bed time or a certain time at night.

It is sure not an easy task.

Kids (and adults) are connected to, and devoted to, their phones. And their computers, tablets, and maybe even their TV.

You have heard me rant on this topic before. Most people these days are spending a lot of time in front of a screen. If you honestly total up the number of hours you are looking at a screen of some type, it would scare you.

I know, as I am one of those people. It is 6 a.m. and I am sitting in front of my computer screen at home writing this column.

My job requires me to be in front of a screen every day for hours. Looking through my 200 emails a day takes a lot of time. Writing stories, manipulating photos, doing page layout, all consumes hours of screen time per day. Then there are text messages on the phone, maybe even TV watching at home, and well, you get the idea. Because you might have the same situation.

I try and walk away from the computer screen every hour, or at least every two hours. I try and not look at the computer at home at night, and I try to ignore my phone too. It is not easy to do.

I have mentioned in this space before how I am often chastised for not immediately reading a text message and responding within seconds, or to emails or phone messages. It happened to me several times this week, in fact. I tell people I sometimes don’t have my phone with me, and I am plenty busy with work so that I don’t check my emails or texts all the time. But I tell them I will get back to them at some point.

Just not immediately.

I can literally hear them gasp when I say that. But it is true. After checking emails and texts all day long, I might take the evening off and go outside and do something and not even have my phone with me.

Now I can hear some of you gasping at that thought. Others of you are chuckling and a few of you are nodding your heads in agreement.

But many kids, and a whole lot of adults, seem to be constantly on their phones – and I don’t mean talking to someone on their phone. They are texting and checking their Facebook account, Instagram, Twitter and whatever, and scrolling through countless TikTok items and playing a variety of video games.

For hours at a time.

Their thumbs must be incredibly strong and they would win any thumb war battle, if you remember what those were when you were a kid. (One-two-three-four, I declare a thumb war!)

Speaking of being a kid, some of us are old enough to remember a time when there were no cell phones, computers, tablets or barely more than one TV in a house.

Gasp!

My plan once again is to go camping on Memorial Day Weekend and get unplugged. And I will try not to look at a single screen for a couple of days. I admit it is a little harder to do these days than it used to be. But I will try hard, I promise.

Maybe you should as well. Even for one day.

I can hear you gasping.