By Amy Miller

amiller@tnonline.com

Kids today get too much screen time.

I know I am guilty of sometimes letting my 5-year-old have the iPad longer than he should because I have something to do for work that requires my full attention or I’m trying to juggle a 1-year-old while making dinner for the family while my husband is still at work.

But, thankfully, Logan is a good kid and doesn’t submerge himself into the world of games and YouTube videos so much that the real world around him disappears. At least not yet, and I hope never.

When Bob or I tell him it’s time to close the iPad, he may whine a little if he is watching a show, but for the most part, he closes it, walks over to where the charger is and plugs the device in without a hassle.

So far, his favorite things to do on our iPads are either watching shows on Disney Now; playing the game Tag with Ryan, which challenges you to jump over or slide under obstacles while not getting tagged by a panda bear; learning with Dreambox, an online math program through his school; or watching the Unspeakable YouTube videos with his dad about a teen who does random clean challenges — like spinning an amusement-style wheel to see what toppings he has to put on his pizza or trying to build a two-story Lego mansion for his cats.

But as I watch Logan zoom left and right and over and under things in Tag with Ryan, I can’t help but think about how easy it is for this generation to miss out on everything generations before them had, or didn’t have, growing up.

When I was Logan’s age, I never imagined one day I would have a phone that was also a computer, a camera, a music player, an alarm clock and more, all wrapped up nicely in this case of metal and glass that tucks neatly into my pocket.

I had to know my friends’ phone numbers and actually had to pick up a corded phone and dial their home number if I wanted to ask them to play. I couldn’t text them, Facebook message them, Instagram them or whatever else kids are doing these days. And this was only 30 years ago.

It’s even scarier to think what phones will be like three decades from now if they can do all this today.

I watch as kids younger and younger get so addicted to mobile devices that they actually are missing the world around them because their noses are stuck downward, facing their devices in their hands. They actually are losing valuable communication skills because when you take the screen away, they have no idea how to talk to another person face-to-face.

This technologically advanced generation, where everything is simply a swipe of a finger, a tap of a button or a scan of their face, is missing out on what it means to be a kid.

More and more, you see fewer and fewer kids out riding bikes, jumping in the mud and just getting out and doing what kids do best — playing.

It’s sad because these are the things kids should be worrying about but instead are more concerned about the best angle for their selfie, the coolest video they can shoot, or seeing how many likes they can get on something they post.

So as winter melts away in the next few weeks (hopefully) and reveals spring, warm weather and hopefully abundant sunshine, I challenge you parents, take both your children’s and your own mobile devices, turn them off and get out and make sure the rite of passage called childhood is not lost sitting on a couch, staring at a screen that cannot give the same joy as the memories you can make through the adventures you take.

Your kids will thank you one day.