The Fayetteville-Manlius School District is hosting two free film screenings of documentaries that explore the impact of screen time on kids and how parents and educators can help them achieve a healthy balance.
Attendees will also have the opportunity to provide the district with input regarding a school district cell phone policy. New York State Governor Kathy Hochul has mandated a “bell-to-bell cell phone ban,” which goes into effect in September 2025.
Screenagers: Elementary School Age Edition
A viewing of Screenagers: Elementary School Age Edition will be held Tuesday, May 27 at 7 p.m. in the Eagle Hill Middle School auditorium. No pre-registration is required.
The documentary is approximately one-hour long and is appropriate for parents, caregivers and educators.
Synopsis
Are you watching kids become too accustomed to using technology at too young an age? Physician and filmmaker Delaney Ruston saw that with her kids and learned that the average kid spends many hours a day looking at screens. She wondered about the impact of all this screen time and the friction occurring in homes and schools around negotiating screen time.
In Screenagers: Elementary School Age Edition, Dr. Ruston takes a deeply personal approach as she explores the vulnerable corners of family life, including her own, to explore struggles over social media, video games, academics, and internet addiction.
Through insights from authors, psychologists, and brain scientists, Screenagers: Elementary School Age Edition reveals how tech time impacts kids’ development and offers solutions for empowering kids to navigate the digital world and find balance.
Screenagers: The Next Chapter
The viewing of Screenagers: The Next Chapter will be held Wednesday, June 4 at 7 p.m. in the Eagle Hill Middle School auditorium. No pre-registration is required.
The documentary is approximately one-hour long and is appropriate for parents, caregivers and educators.
Synopsis
Filmmaker and physician Delaney Ruston uses a personal lens and professional eye to help us all flip the script on stress, anxiety, and depression. We follow Delaney as she finds herself at a loss on how to help her own teens as they struggle with their emotional wellbeing. Ruston sets out to understand these challenges in our current screen-filled society, and how we as parents and schools empower teens to overcome mental health challenges and build emotional agility, communication savvy, and stress resilience.
We witness Delaney as she finds her way from ineffective parenting to much-improved strategies. We follow other personal stories of families from an array of backgrounds with a spectrum of emotional challenges. We also observe approaches in schools that provide strategies relevant beyond the classroom setting. Interwoven into the stories are surprising insights from brain researchers, psychologists, and thought-leaders that reveal evidence-based ways to support mental wellness among our youth. The impact of social media and screen time in general is incorporated in topics brought to our attention in Screenagers NEXT CHAPTER, how it may be impacting our teen’s mental health, and what we can do to help support youth in the face of struggles.
Screenagers is a series of four documentaries that have been screened by more than nine million viewers worldwide.