We make comics and board games, so we spend a lot of time thinking about tables. This is a note about how that empty table happened, what the research actually says, and the small, honest thing a studio like ours can offer. It is not a lecture. We have the same phones you do.

How much, really

The numbers are larger than most parents guess. In late 2024, Pew Research asked American teenagers how often they are online. Nearly half, 46 percent, said almost constantly. Ten years earlier that figure was 24 percent. It doubled in a decade.

It starts young. Common Sense Media's 2025 census found children under eight spending about two and a half hours a day on screens. Forty percent of two year olds already have a tablet. Its most recent census of older children is from 2021. It put tweens at five and a half hours of entertainment screen time a day. Teenagers reached eight hours and thirty nine minutes. That is a working day, spent looking at a screen, before homework.

The part nobody likes to say

It is not only the children. Pew asked teenagers and their parents the same question in 2023. Nearly half of the teenagers, 46 percent, said a parent is at least sometimes distracted by a phone while they are trying to talk. Only 31 percent of parents said that about themselves. The children are noticing something the adults are not.

A study of families with children under six found that 48 percent of parents said technology interrupted time with their child three or more times on a typical day. Only 11 percent said it never did. More interruptions went along with more behaviour problems in the children. That study cannot prove one causes the other, and the researchers say so. But a two year old who is talking to the top of a bent head is learning something about how much they are worth an answer.

Eating alone

The table itself is disappearing, slowly. The World Happiness Report looked at twenty years of American time-use data and found that in 2023, one in four adults ate every meal of the day alone. That is up more than half since 2003. Among people aged 25 to 34, the age of many new parents, it has risen more than 180 percent.

Meals matter more than the food. A 2023 review gathered 41 earlier reviews on family meals. Children and teenagers who eat with their families more often tend to show less depression, higher self-esteem and less disordered eating. They also describe their own family more warmly. Again, these are associations, not guarantees. A shared dinner is not medicine. It is a place where people find out how each other's day went.

What the doctors said

In 2023 the U.S. Surgeon General issued a formal advisory on social media and young people. Up to 95 percent of 13 to 17 year olds use it. More than a third say they use it almost constantly. Nearly 40 percent of 8 to 12 year olds use it too, below the age most platforms allow. The advisory cited research linking more than three hours a day on social media to double the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms. It noted that the average teenager reports about three and a half.

Who this lands on

The two year old, talking to a bent head, in the 48 percent of homes where technology interrupts a parent three or more times a day. The ten year old, one of the nearly 40 percent already on platforms built for adults. The fifteen year old, online almost constantly, carrying a device that was designed to be hard to put down by people who were very good at their jobs. The parent, who believes they are present more often than their child says they are. And the grandparent, increasingly one of the adults who ate every meal today alone.

None of this is a reason to panic, and none of it is a reason to blame anyone. Parents are tired. Children are curious. The devices did what they were built to do.

What a table asks of you

Here is what a board game does that a feed cannot. It needs everyone in the same room. It has turns, so somebody has to wait while somebody else decides. It has an ending, and the ending is the same for everyone at once. When it is over, you are looking at the people you played with, not at the next thing.

A comic read out loud does something similar. One voice, two people looking at the same page, a pause to point at a drawing. A 2025 review looked at 28 studies covering almost 25,000 children. Reading together at home was strongly linked to children's language development. It found nothing about screens, because it was not looking at screens. It was looking at a lap and a book.

We do not think a board game fixes any of this. We think it gives an evening a shape.

Why this house exists

Jugl Studio makes original comics and tabletop games. Two of the comics are finished and free to read. One is about a boy who is told he is too slow and a bird that got left behind. One is about a girl with forty eight pencils and a new kid with four crayons. The board game, ROWWARD, is in development. It runs 45 to 60 minutes, for one to four players, and every turn asks one question. Spend the roll on speed, or hold something back for later.

We are an entertainment studio, not a clinic, and we will never tell you our games are good for your children's health. We can tell you what they are. They are things that need a table, a few people, and an hour with the phones somewhere else.

In the painting at the top of this page there is a bowl on the shelf with the phones in it. Nobody in the picture is looking at it. That is the whole idea, and it is the only piece of advice in this note. Put the bowl on the shelf. The table is still there.