By Paola Minekov

I am a painter and a mum. Those two things have shaped each other more than I ever expected.

When the conversation about children and screens comes up, and it always does, I notice it tends to split into two camps. One side says screens are rotting our children’s brains. That’s typically my camp. The other says technology is the future and we should embrace it. But let’s face it, both miss something important: it’s how we use it that makes it problematic. We now know that children who learn on a screen at school perform worse than previous generations and this trend is already being reversed in mainstream schools in some European countries but this hasn’t reached the UK yet and this year I have unwillingly found myself handing my 11yo his first laptop. That said, if we look beyond the obvious issues of blue light (there are filters for that) and eye strain, it is not the screen that matters, it is what the child is doing with it.

I grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria, in the 1980s. There were no tablets, no smartphones, no internet. I drew, I painted, I read books, and I spent hours making things with my hands. My father is a sculptor, my mother a designer and painter. Creativity was not an extracurricular activity in our house. It was the air we breathed. When I moved to London and later became a mother, I carried that instinct with me. I wanted my children to know the feel of paint between their fingers, the smell of a new book, the patience it takes to build something from nothing.

But I also live in 2026. Like I said, my children go to schools where computers are not optional. Homework arrives on screens. Research means the internet, or my phone. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I found that screens can also be a place where creativity lives, if you know how to use them.

Why hands and materials still come first

There is something irreplaceable about physical making. When a child pushes paint around a page, they are learning to make decisions with their whole body. The paint resists, it drips, it mixes in unexpected ways. Clay has weight. Paper tears if you press too hard. These are lessons no app can replicate sufficiently well, because they depend on the real, unpredictable behaviour of materials.

As an artist, I work in thick oil paint with a palette knife. I mix colours directly on the canvas. The texture, the resistance, the way paint responds to pressure, all of that is part of the thinking. Children experience the same thing when they finger-paint or build a collage from scraps. They are not following instructions. They are making choices and learning to live with the results.

I have always made sure my children have access to paper, pens, non-toxic paints (if you are not sure which art supplies are safe for children, I wrote a guide to choosing non-toxic art materials that covers what to look for on the label), and whatever scraps of fabric or cardboard are lying around. Not as structured “craft time” with a Pinterest-perfect outcome in mind, but as material to play with. Parents of my generation are used to providing endless entertainment for their children and I’m guilty of this too. But some of the best creative moments happen when a child is bored and the only option is a box of old magazines, some paint and a glue stick.

The physical world trains attention, making association and an out-of-the-box way of thinking, in a way that screens do not. When you are sculpting, drawing or painting, there is no notification pulling you away. The material is right there, and your hands are in it.

When a screen becomes a sketchbook

Here is the part where I break ranks with the “no screens ever” crowd.

For years, the one screen activity I actively encouraged was digital drawing on the iPad. We even used to restrict TV time to 15 minutes.

But I use the iPad myself for commissioned portraits of children and adults, working with a stylus the way I would work with a pencil, building up layers of colour and tone. It is drawing. The thinking is the same. The observation is the same. The hand-eye coordination is the same.

The only difference is the surface. And the undo option.

When my children first saw me drawing on the iPad, they wanted to try. And I let them, because I could see what they were doing with it. They were not passively consuming content. They were making something. They were choosing colours, making marks, rubbing things out and starting again. At least some of the creative muscles that matter were firing.

This is the distinction I keep coming back to: a child watching a thirty-second unboxing video loop is doing something fundamentally different from a child drawing a portrait of their cat on a tablet. Both involve a screen. Only one involves creating.

Digital drawing apps like Procreate or even basic drawing apps give children a space to experiment. The undo button is not laziness. It is permission to take risks. In my studio, I paint over old canvases all the time. The principle is the same.

So I would say to any parent reading this: before you ban screens entirely, look at what the screen is being used for. If your child is drawing, designing, composing music, animating, editing photos creatively, they are doing real creative work. The screen is just the tool.

The school question

When my child came home with a school laptop this year, I did not welcome it.

I still do not like it. I will not pretend otherwise. But I have also accepted that this is our educational system, and I cannot fight it. Schools now expect children to use computers for classwork and homework. That is the reality, and spending my energy resisting it does not help my child.

What I keep reminding myself is that technology is just that: technology. It is neither good nor bad. A kitchen knife can prepare a meal or cause harm. A car can take you to work or be driven recklessly. A laptop is no different. What matters is how it is used, and that is where we as parents still have influence.

Here is the part that really gets me thinking, though. The tech industry is moving at a terrifying pace right now, especially with AI. Schools are teaching children how to use a laptop, how to search on Google, how to type up a document. But by the time these children enter the workforce, the tools will have changed completely. AI is already rewriting how we search, how we write, how we organise information. So what exactly are we educating them for?

I do question whether teaching a child to code is a skill with a long shelf life, when even today I can vibe code an app without having ever programmed anything complex in my life. What does have a long shelf life is the ability to think creatively, to solve problems with your hands and your imagination, to concentrate deeply on one thing. Those skills do not become obsolete. No software update replaces them.

So my approach is practical. The school laptop comes out for school work. When the homework is done, it closes. The rest of the evening is for other things: drawing, reading, talking, making. I cannot control what the school requires, but I can make sure the hours around it are filled with something more lasting.

Paper books are not nostalgia

I feel strongly about this one. Reading on paper is not a sentimental holdover from a pre-digital age. It is a different experience from reading on a screen, and the difference matters for children. They learn better on paper.

A paper book has no notifications. It does not suggest another video after you finish a chapter. It does not glow. It sits in your hands and asks for nothing except your attention. For children who are learning to concentrate, that simplicity is a gift.

There is also something about the physical relationship with a book. The weight of it, turning the pages, the way you can see how far you have got and how much is left. Children who struggle with reading find this especially helpful. Progress is visible and tangible.

I keep books in every room. When a book is within arm’s reach gets picked up. A book that lives on a shelf in another room does not. My children have always had free access to books and they love visiting book shops. The goal here is not literary sophistication. It is the habit of reaching for a book when you have a spare ten minutes.

I also read in front of my children, which I think matters more than most parenting advice acknowledges. Children mirror what they see. If they see you reading, they read. If they see you scrolling, they scroll.

What works in our house

Every family is different, but here is what I have learned from trying to raise children who make things rather than just consume them.

Ask “what are you making?” instead of “how long have you been on that?” The first question respects the child. If the answer is “I am drawing a dragon” or “I am editing a video of the garden,” you have your answer. If the answer is a blank stare, that is your cue.

Keep materials visible and available. A pot of pens on the kitchen table does more than an art cupboard in the spare room. The same goes for books, paper, and anything else you want your child to reach for.

Let them see you make things. I paint in my attic studio. My children have always wandered in and watched. Sometimes they pick up a brush. Sometimes they do not. But they know that making things is something adults do, not just a childhood activity.

Do not panic about school screens. Your child needs them for school. That is fine. What you can control is what surrounds the school work: the books on the shelf, the drawing materials on the table, the conversations you have over dinner.

Treat creative screen time differently from passive screen time. An hour of drawing on the iPad is not the same as an hour of watching unboxing videos. Make that distinction visible to your child, too.

Start a creative project together. It does not have to be complicated. A sketchbook you both draw in. A story you write together. A mural on a piece of lining paper taped to the wall. The doing matters more than the result.

About the author

Paola Minekov is a London-based painter, digital artist, and mother of two. Born and trained in Sofia, Bulgaria, she studied fine art and later communications and multimedia design in Israel and the Netherlands before settling in the UK. Her work spans bold impasto oil paintings of dancers and ritual movement, flat geometric cityscapes, and digital iPad portraits of children.

She co-founded Creations Atelier, a platform connecting artists and creatives with property and design professionals through curated events, exhibitions, and an online directory. She is also Creative Director of Elysium Lifestyle Magazine.

You can see her paintings and digital work at paola.art and follow her on Instagram.