MADELEINE WEST: 'I tested the theory that kids today wish they had a 90s childhood. It went terribly.'

My tribe delights in rummaging through pics and scratchy videos of my childhood. Not overtly special events, just the humdrum of your average Aussie kid growing up in the 80s. What's not to like?

Most kids now spend between six and nine hours a day online. Granted, a fair portion of that is on school-endorsed screens, but kids frequently match that, hour-for-hour, scrolling through social media, gaming, or endlessly trapped in the addictive cycle of group chat updates.

Watch: Parents in the 80s Vs now. Post continues below.

Accordingly, our childhood must register as some bucolic fantasy land. A Narnia of rope swings, catching tadpoles with a stocking over a coat hanger, exploring open fields of endless possibility limited only by our imaginations.

Now, social media, always alert to any promising trend that might draw more young eyes to screens, are repackaging the experience of your average kid from the 'before times' (being before online engagement became the principal mode of communication) for the delectation of kids today.

Our rites of passage are being recreated, dissected into utopic bite-size chunks set to stirring music and pithy captions. Curated grabs tailored for stories, reels, threads, TikTok and Facebook feeds.

Is this how our children and our children's children will experience the simple pleasures of the formative years? Feasting on sample-sized cuts of what we took for granted?

Are we ushering in a generation of children that will be nostalgic for our childhoods? Because they are too tied to the screen to have their own?

Are our offspring hankering for caravan parks, communal facilities and wearing thongs in the public shower? Floating down rivers in inner tubes, fishing with makeshift rods? Leaving the house after breakfast and not coming home till dinner time, even then under significant duress?

And would we as modern parents, well-heeled in the dangers lurking around every corner, be prepared to give our precious progeny the freedoms most of us grew up with? Is our kids' taste for screen time facilitated by us out of ease and, frankly, better the devil you know?

To test this theory, I threw down a challenge to a friend. We've both been grilled by our kids about our childhoods recently, prompted by cutesy Stand By Me-inspired digital snapshots of what childhood once looked like.

So, I suggested my friend perhaps recreate one of her favourite childhood memories, so her children would get to live it IRL. She did just that, booking into the still-operational caravan park in the tiny three-horse farming town where she spent many an idyllic summer throughout her childhood (and a few misspent ones in her teens).

What was the result? Catastrophe! Her kids liked the idea of those activities her 10-year-old self relished, but watching it on YouTube proved more compelling than the actual doing.

Like most, her kids boast an attention span equivalent to a goldfish, yet even a goldfish manages to entertain itself. Fifteen minutes into yabbying, hiking or just hanging out in the van park, and they were distracted, fractious, and whining for an online fix.

What have we done to our kids?

To see just how far the rot has set in, my colleague at the new online safety coalition Ctrl+Shft and 'Unplugged Psychologist' Dr Brad Marshall suggests introducing your kids to the retro digital game, Snake.

"Remember back to your childhood and the good old days of brick phones? Think Nokia 5110 or 3220! Where the only game available was SNAKE? I spent many a school lesson with it hidden in my pencil case trying to beat my highest score," Dr Marshall said.

"But that game has NOTHING on modern games and tech. I ran this experiment a few years back, recruiting a friend's teen boys to play on an old phone I resurrected. The chaos was nothing short of hilarious.

"They were bored in one minute flat. The look on their faces, followed by 'seriously? This is all you do? What's the point? I'm over it!' tells you everything you need to know about the phones of 20-25 years ago vs the modern smartphone."

So where to from here?

One simple solution is to offer easy-to-access activities that resonate with our childhoods. Stuff we will relish revisiting alongside our child. That is key: human engagement. It's something an electronic interface can never offer.

Think retro board games, a challenging LEGO build or jigsaw puzzle. If you have the time and the energy, planning for and executing a lemonade stand or garage sale can keep kids engaged for weeks and everyone has a role to play.

The bonding time in a shared, mutually enjoyable activity elevates oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin — the same addictive chemicals online engagement offers at the cost of our kids' mental fitness.

Experiment with activities that involve some online interaction but with a visibly productive outcome. I recently bought a second-hand sewing machine, and my kids' screen time allotment was taken up watching YouTube videos on how to set up and operate it, then on searching for patterns and designs. We similarly dusted off an old printer and used up online time creating wallpaper designs and printing them off.

Gaming with your child is one obvious example. Initially, it might have all the appeal of pulling teeth, but Friday night 'pizza and gaming' can become a family tradition. Kids gain positive self-esteem and enormous confidence when you step aside and let them teach you.

Brad also suggests that for younger kids, try and go old school when at restaurants.

"Waiting for dinner? Yep, that's an easy task if you give them a screen and let them watch YouTube. But at what cost? Heaven forbid we stretch their neural pathways to incorporate longer attention spans, reading social cues, or facial expressions with humans in a restaurant!" he said.

"Now sure, you are better off picking a family-friendly restaurant. But imagine your kids exploring the kids' facilities, drawing at the table, or even getting creative with a game of noughts and crosses using salt and pepper packets."

If you've booked a holiday, get the kids to research and create a tour guide, or if a country caravan park beckons, get the kids to discover the history of the town online and curate a list of destinations to visit.

And for kids on planes, for whom unlimited screen time can be de rigeur, create a 'backpack of surprises' instead. If a long flight looms, I raid a local $2 shop for play-dough, pencils, pads, novelty puzzles and load them into a backpack along with an assortment of snacks. Let them draw out one every 30 minutes lucky dip-style. Kids thrive on surprises, and it keeps them offline for longer than you would think.

The addictive nature of screens is a struggle, only compounded by FOMO in the playground. But what our kids are really missing out on is their own childhoods.

As parents, we do need to accept that we provided our kids with those devices in the first place. If we want them to have a library of vibrant memories to look back on, we need to help them build it.

Madeleine West is a child safety and victims advocate, mum of seven, actor and advisor to Ctrl+Shft, a new online safety coalition launched to support schools, workplaces and families in navigating digital risk.

Feature Image: Instagram @msmadswest / supplied.