To kick off the summer, I took my daughters to explore sprawling underground caves and dive into cenotes on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. The wildlife and natural beauty were surreal—hypnotic limestone caverns connected by clear underground rivers that Batman would envy—the eerie stillness of magnificence formed from meteorites when dinosaurs still walked the earth. But even in the presence of that wonder, it took us a few days to truly see it.
We were physically there, but mentally still scrolling and waiting for the next alert on our phones—maybe too frozen or conditioned to living through a screen to let go and truly see and be human.
It reminded me how hard it’s become—not just for kids, but for adults—to quiet the noise, pause long enough to notice what’s in front of us, to check in with how we feel, act, and think. We’re used to everything being instant: every answer a search away, every question answered before we’ve even fully formed it—scrolling past meaning before it can settle. But has all our optimizations and digitalization taken away the joys of discovery, deep learning and true connection? Exploration, by definition, means venturing where the map runs out. And it’s only in those uncertain, uncomfortable places that something greater becomes possible—not just insight, but transformation. Without friction, there’s no wonder. Without struggle, no resilience. Without uncertainty, no space for miracles.
The Grocery-Store Litmus Test
When I travel, I always wander through a local grocery store—the kind that doesn’t sell souvenirs. You can learn volumes about a culture—and spot the familiar threads that connect us—simply by watching how its people shop: what earns the checkout-lane spotlight, which brands get the premium shelf space, and who does the shopping.
I also make a point to eat in a hole-in-the-wall spot where I can’t read the menu and might not like what I’m served—but that gives me the chance to be pleasantly surprised or to appreciate what I already have.
So as usual, I meandered through food labels—matching Latin roots and guessing ingredients—at a local store. One of my daughters sighed, exasperated, probably embarrassed to see me “struggle in public, “Mom, just use Google Translate. You can just see everything translated right through your camera. Why are you doing this?”
“I know,” I told her, “but I actually like figuring it out on my own. We’re on vacation now. I don’t need to be 100% productive and as fast as possible. How do you think people traveled, did business internationally, and communicated before Google Translate?”
She blinked. “Uh, they didn’t?”
That was an epiphany moment for me. Not only did people communicate, trade, and fall in love long before Google Translate—we may have done it more intimately. Her question reflected a kind of cultural forgetting. We’ve come to believe that struggle is obsolete—and that connection can be algorithmically achieved–Her question revealed how much I have been outcompeted.
When they were little, they followed me through these kinds of experiences because they had no other choice. But then, their textbooks became digital. Homework was online. Friends lived in Discord chats and Snap streaks. Real-world rewards take time, but online ones are instant, visible, and socially validated. Their instincts—and discomfort tolerance—are being rewired by what’s fast, filtered, and algorithm-approved. Their digital world overpowered my influence and quash all my relentless efforts to limit screen time, social media
The Lost Art of Struggle
In captivity, animals often lose both mental and physical resilience. Take orcas: nearly 100 percent of adult males in tanks develop collapsed dorsal fins—damage rarely seen in the wild. Scientists believe this isn’t genetic—it’s physical deterioration caused by restricted space, artificial diets, and lack of challenges. Once lost, that strength rarely comes back.
I wonder if something similar is happening to us. When every struggle is smoothed away by a tool, an app, a swipe—what are we trading off?
After decades of asking How do I scale this? How do I cost it down? I’m only now admitting that value can evaporate when you optimize it to death. Some things shouldn’t be streamlined and mass produced. True transformations cannot be on-demand. Not every discomfort needs to be eliminated.
The necessity to persevere. The muscle of waiting. The ability to tolerate uncertainty. Adults may know better, but our kids are growing up believing every puzzle has a “skip level” button—and that’s where the real risk lies.
Seeing Takes Practice
Then, snorkeling with my daughters, I realized that seeing takes effort. Under water, you can’t just dunk your head and expect instant clarity. Seeing takes time. You have to let your eyes adjust and the sand settle; thrash too much and you’ll miss the creatures just beneath the surface. Checking in with your body—equalizing ear pressure, noticing breaths—literally keeps you safe underwater.
Learning—real learning—works the same way. It’s murky, slow, sometimes frustrating. But stick with it long enough and that’s where beauty emerges and transformations take place. I think the same thing can be said about life.
A Global Conversation
On the ride back from the cenotes, our Mexican taxi driver told me, “I also want to take my son next week. Try to get him off his PlayStation and take charge of his own life. It’s hard. He gets to be the superhero in his video games, fix everything with a click. In real life, everything’s harder and slower, so he doesn’t want to do anything.”
I’ve had that same conversation with parents in the U.S., France, Taiwan, China, Australia—parents everywhere saying our kids are losing the will to struggle. We’ve been promised that instant access and digital connection would make us more informed, more efficient, more connected. But instead, we’re seeing rising loneliness, anxiety, and a generation of young people less willing—or able—to tolerate uncertainty or effort. In large-scale studies, the National Institute of Health and Harvard School of Public Health both find screen time associated with less curiosity, more distractibility, lower self-control, inability to finish tasks, trouble making friends and a whole host of psychological issues.
And we’re not immune either. When the entire world is at your fingertips, why wander? Why wonder? Why wrestle with the unknown when there’s a virtual experience that makes it easier?
Yet every answer on those screens came from someone, somewhere, doing the hard work—the uncomfortable, trial-and-error kind of work. When we stop doing the hard, messy work of discovery, we stop evolving—not just individually, but collectively. We risk becoming consumers of knowledge, not contributors to it.
So What Now?
I don’t have a perfect answer. But I do know this: we have to practice the long way sometimes. We have to sit in the discomfort, let the sand settle, and be okay not knowing for a little while. That’s the only way we remember how to see again.
At curaJOY, we build technology to create controlled friction–the ones we have lost in our modern society. Through MyCuraJOY, youth practice difficult conversations—like setting boundaries or apologizing—in a safe space with AI coaches before they ever face them in real life. Parents guided to model positive reinforcement—even when they didn’t grow up with it themselves—so they can break cycles and offer their kids something better. Our skill-building quests aren’t one-click wins either. They are grounded in the root causes of each child’s behavior, helping families truly see what drives challenges before trying to change them. They often require multiple steps over time, helping kids develop emotional stamina, delayed gratification, and the resilience that’s often lost in instant-reward digital culture.
So the next time you’re tempted to click, swipe, or shortcut your way through a moment of not knowing—pause. Ask yourself:
What might I gain by struggling through this instead?
What kind of future are we creating if no one learns how to try?
If you’ve also tried everything to battle screen time and social media, join me at curaJOY to use technology for good. Let’s help people build the muscles of curiosity, resilience, and connection—skills they can’t swipe their way into.
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