Oakland event held to get kids outdoors, away from social media

Late last month, Facebook's parent company, Meta, settled a multibillion-dollar lawsuit alleging that the company was purposely trying to hook kids on social media.  

There are growing concerns about online addiction, and on Sunday in Oakland, community organizations hosted an outdoor fun festival to get kids out into the sunshine and remind them that there is life off the screen and outside of social media.

As music blared from the speakers, there was nothing computer-generated about Oakland's Words of Wisdom dance team.  The effort the young women put in was 100% natural, and Kyatta Collins said she wishes others of her generation would join them.

"I feel like a lot of kids are losing their sense of community. They're all stuck on their phones and everything," she said. "When we get on the dance floor it's just you and the music. So, it's more real than that."

It wasn't a huge crowd at the Offline Oakland event, but those who showed up enjoyed an afternoon of back-to-basics physical entertainment:  4-square, cornhole, soccer and arts and crafts. 

Rebecca Goldberg manages a group called the Fund IRL Coalition, with the IRL standing for "In Real Life."

"All of us are on our phones all day — kids, adults — and sometimes you've got to take the time to actually be present with one another, get off our screens, get off our phones, and just experience life," she said.

"I typically use my phone quite a lot," said Darius Parker, a member of a group called Youth Speaks. "But I'm also just being mindful that there are folks that are using their phones in different ways, right? And the effects it's having on them aren't the same on me.  And so, I try to be mindful of my intake also. Like, I need to go outside and go be in community and with family, so I'm not just stuck on social media."

It's not just kids on social media, but they seem to be more vulnerable to its influences.  

The Meta settlement could provide up to $2 billion for California to battle the negative effects. It's not yet clear how the money will be distributed, but the youth advocates say they hope it will provide expanded learning and youth development opportunities, as well as reimburse some of the money currently being spent on youth mental health efforts.  

But what are the chances that things can really change?  Josefina Alvarado Mena, CEO of an organization called Safe Passages, compared it to the campaign against cigarettes.

"Nobody could imagine that people would stop smoking," she said. "People DID stop smoking, and young people stopped smoking.  And so, we need to think about that as a model for how we can help young people detox from social media, and get back to being in person, get back to real time, as opposed to virtual reality." 

Jonathan Brumfield prefers the real world over the virtual one. As a so-called "spray can artist," he creates artwork that some think of as graffiti. But he said he thinks there's value to getting his hands a little dirty doing it.

"That's the other joy in doing something with your hands that's artistic, is that you know it's not coming from a machine.  It's coming from a human being," Brumfield said. "No disrespect to AI or how people use machines today, but I just think we've gone too far with celebrating mediocrity and not really enjoying human excellence."

Those were meaningful words to a 7-year-old aspiring artist named Brandon. On Sunday, he stuck to the coloring pages they gave him but said he prefers creating his own original drawings rather than relying on something downloaded from a computer.

"You have to be in the environment, not just at home on your computer searching for pages you can print," he said. "I can draw things that just make sense."

Trying to make sense of the world can be a challenge these days.  It helps when young people can make real connections with other humans who won't just disappear if you hit Control, Alt, Delete.