What Kids Actually Want: A New Survey on Freedom, Friendship, and Screens

Ask most parents what they worry about with their kids and screens will come up fast. But a striking new survey suggests we might be aiming at the wrong target. Kids aren't asking for more screen time. They're asking for something we've quietly stopped giving them: unstructured time with friends, and the freedom to move through the world a little on their own.

What the survey found

In March 2025, The Harris Poll — working with Jonathan Haidt and his Tech and Society Research Lab at NYU — surveyed 522 kids ages 8 to 12 across the United States. The goal was simple: instead of asking parents what they think kids want, ask the kids directly.

The answers were remarkably consistent. Given a real choice between hanging out online, joining an adult-organized activity, or just playing with friends with no plan and no supervision, kids picked unstructured play by a wide margin.

Almost three-quarters (72%) of 8 to 12-year-olds say they would rather spend most of their time together doing things in-person, without screens. When given the option, 45% said they would participate in an activity with their friends in person that's not organized by adults — like a made-up game, playing cards, or exploring — compared with 30% who chose an organized activity and 25% who chose an online one.

The wish for connection went further still: 61% of kids said they want to play with friends in person without adults around, and 87% said they wish they could spend more time with friends outside of school. You can read the full survey results here.

The freedom gap behind the wish

The same survey uncovered something that helps explain why so much of that wish goes unmet: kids today have remarkably little independence. According to the kids surveyed, 62% have never walked or biked somewhere — a store, a park, school — without an adult. 67% have never done paid work like mowing a lawn or babysitting. 71% have never used a sharp knife, and 63% have never built something outside on their own, like a fort.

Put together, the picture is less about kids rejecting the modern world and more about what's disappeared from childhood without anyone quite deciding it should: long, unscheduled stretches of time, and small chances to do something real on their own. It's a theme that shows up again and again in the research on kids and connection — we've written before about what actually helps lonely kids, and independence and unstructured connection are consistently part of the answer.

A small, safe kind of independence

You don't have to hand your child the keys to the neighborhood to give them a taste of this. Writing and mailing a letter is one of the rare tasks that's genuinely kid-sized and genuinely independent. There's no adult narrating what to say, no screen managing the interaction, and no score to win — just a blank page, their own words, and a real errand at the end: sealing the envelope, adding a stamp, walking it to the mailbox.

That's precisely why a good snail mail kit works so well for this. It hands a child everything they need — paper, stickers, simple prompts — and then gets out of the way, letting the rest be entirely theirs. And a pen pal kit turns a single letter into an ongoing, low-pressure friendship that lives almost entirely outside a screen, exactly the kind of in-person-style, unstructured connection kids in the survey said they wanted more of.

A few ways to give kids more of what they're asking for

• Hand off the whole task. Let your child choose what to write, seal the envelope, and walk it to the mailbox themselves — the last small independent errand of an increasingly supervised day.
• Protect unscheduled time. An open afternoon with nothing planned is exactly what most kids in the survey said they wanted more of.
• Start a pen pal habit. A standing letter-writing friendship gives kids a form of connection that isn't mediated by a screen or a parent.
• Let them make the plan. Even something small — deciding who to write to, or what stationery to use — is a genuine choice that's entirely theirs.

None of this requires overhauling your family's routine. It just means noticing where a little independence and unstructured time can quietly slip back in.

Common questions

Isn't independence just a matter of the neighborhood being different now?

Neighborhoods have changed, but the survey suggests the gap is broader than geography — it shows up across urban, suburban, and rural families alike. Small, controlled doses of independence, like a solo trip to the mailbox, work almost anywhere.

My child says they're bored without their tablet. Now what?

That's a good sign, not a bad one — boredom is often where kids find their own ideas. Offering an inviting, screen-free option (a letter to write, a pen pal to hear from) makes the transition easier than simply taking a device away.

How is this different from screen-free activities in general?

Screen-free time helps, but this research points to something more specific: kids want that time to be unstructured and at least a little independent, not just device-free. A letter a child writes and mails entirely on their own checks both boxes.

Want to give your kids a small, independent ritual of their own? Explore our letter-writing kits, or read more in our research library.

With heart,
Sarah
Founder, Heartpost Studio