(The Center Square) – As he approaches the end of his second term, Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Tuesday stressed the state’s strengthening economy and expressed concern for the future health of its young people.
The governor, in his last State of the State speech, endorsed longer recess periods for public school students and worried about the effects of too much exposure to social media.
DeWine, speaking before a joint session of the Legislature, talked about the importance of a “play-based” childhood.
He quoted the author of a book “The Anxious Generation” who wrote that unstructured free play helps support a child’s mental health and contributes to life skills such as creativity, collaboration and resilience.
“An age-old form of unstructured play for children is recess,” the governor said.
Ohio schools allow up to two 15 minutes periods of recess each day for students in kindergarten through the sixth grade, DeWine said.
“That’s simply not enough,” the governor said.
He praised a bill introduced in the Legislature to require an hour each day of recess for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
He praised Ohio’s new ban on cellphones in schools.
“We know it makes a huge, huge difference,” DeWine said. “To do anything less, truly lessens our children’s ability to learn.”
But banning phones in schools is not enough, the governor said.
“It’s a larger issue about their access to screens and phones and social media and the internet when they are outside the classroom,” DeWine said.
In 1985, 35% of U.S. teenagers said they read every day in their spare time. Today, only 15% do, said the governor.
“What are they doing with their spare time?” DeWine asked. “An increasing number of teens are using social media more than seven hours a day. Fifty-nine percent of children said they have seen a violent video online this year. Sixty percent of children ages 8-17 say they are concerned about someone using artificial intelligence to make inappropriate pictures of them.”
Excessive screen time and social media are thieves, he said, “all stealing from our children the most precious thing in life: that is their time.”
“Kids grow up so fast,” DeWine said. “This stolen time, these lost opportunities can never be recaptured.”
He endorsed legislation to make it a crime to outlaw child pornography created by artificial intelligence. He also called for holding technology companies accountable if artificial intelligence encourages anyone to harm themselves or others.
“Ohio law needs real consequences connected with that,” he said. “The Ohio attorney general and country prosecutors must have clear legal tools to hold these tech companies criminally and civilly accountable.”
