Where Kids Choose STEAM, Not Screens

Photo by Andrey K on Unsplash

There’s a moment that every parent recognizes: the quiet click of an iPad turning on, the glow of a screen lighting up a child’s face, and the way the world seems to fall away as they slip into a digital tunnel as the real-world blurs at the edges. Devices aren’t the enemy. Devices are tools, entertainment, and they can feel social, but they’re often socially isolating. Devices are also sticky. They pull kids in and hold them there, often longer than anyone intended.

At the Grand Forks Children’s Museum, we’re building something powerful enough to pull them back out. Not with rules, guilt, or ‘less screen time’ lectures, but with wonder, the kind of wonder that lives in real, physical, hands-on STEAM experiences that make kids forget they even have a device in the first place. When a child steps into a wind chamber experiencing the force of prairie winds at different intensities, mixing colors on a giant light wall, discovering how gears transfer motion, or guiding harvested ‘crops’ as they move through cleaning, sorting, and refining, they’re not thinking about notifications. They are thinking about possibility.

Kids don’t actually need fewer screens. They need more curiosity. They turn to devices because devices are easy, predictable, and instantly rewarding. But curiosity, real curiosity, is even more rewarding. It just needs the right environment to flourish. Hands-on STEAM experiences gives children something to touch, something to build, something to explore, and something to share. Screens keep kids busy. STEAM helps them become thinkers, builders, and problem solvers. Screens offer entertainment; STEAM offers identity, the kind that comes from saying, ‘I made this. I figured this out. I can do hard things.’

Imagine a child walking into the museum with a tablet in hand and forgetting to ask for it back. Imagine a tween who usually scrolls TikTok for hours suddenly spending 45 minutes perfecting the angle of a paper glider. Imagine a family discovering that the best conversations they’ve had all week happened while launching rockets together, cheering as each one climbs past markers for earth’s atmosphere, the moon, and Mars. This is what hands on STEAM does. It doesn’t fight screens; it outshines them. It gives families a place to reconnect in ways that matter.

Kids today are growing up in a world where digital experiences are designed to be irresistible. That means real world experiences have to be even more irresistible, more immersive, more tactile, more social, and more surprising. These experiences have to feel alive. That’s the museum we’re building: a place where curiosity beats algorithms, where collaboration beats isolation, where creativity beats consumption, and hands-on beats hands-off. We are building a place where kids rediscover the joy of being fully present, in their bodies, in their imaginations, and in their community.

Ours will be more than a museum. It will be a reset button. For families. For kids. For the way we think about learning. When children step into the Grand Forks Children’s Museum, they step into a world that reminds them, and all of us, that the most powerful technology they will ever hold isn’t a device. It’s their own curiosity.

That’s the museum we’re building… a place where real wonder wins and kids rediscover the spark that screens simply can’t replicate.

Katie Mayer, Executive Director, Grand Forks Children's Museum