Device Freedom: Helping Students Reclaim Their Attention and Agency

🧭 Campaign Summary

In classrooms across the country, educators are witnessing a shift. Students aren’t just distracted by their phones—they’re consumed by them. Even the most creative, engaging lessons can’t compete with the dopamine drip of infinite scroll.

Thinkering Fellow Michael Drezek saw this happening in his own classrooms. So he decided to do something about it.

His capstone project, Device Freedom, is a flexible, student-centered curriculum that helps learners reflect on their digital habits, explore what “healthy tech use” looks like, and create real-world projects that transform passive consumption into purposeful connection.

🔍 The Problem

This is not just about distraction—it’s about agency.

Students today are growing up with a device in their hand and little guidance on how to use it well. Banning phones, while well-intentioned, doesn’t address the deeper issue: students don’t always know how to choose a different relationship with their tech.

Michael’s project addresses that gap. Not by telling students what to do—but by giving them the space, language, and tools to figure it out for themselves.

🎯 The Project: Device Freedom

Device Freedom is designed for middle and high school students and built for flexibility. It includes:

Reflection activities to assess and track tech use
Classroom discussions around mental health, media literacy, and social behavior
Student-designed projects, like social campaigns, podcasts, or presentations
Modular lesson plans that can be adapted to ELA, Health, or Advisory settings
Opportunities for cross-school collaboration and community engagement

It’s aligned with movements like Screen-Free Week and Device-Free February, and it provides schools a constructive, non-punitive approach to phone use that supports—not undermines—student voice.

💡 Why It Matters

In Michael’s own words:

“Students aren’t misusing tech because they don’t care. They just haven’t been given the space to think about what it’s doing to them—and what it could be doing instead.”

This project meets students where they are—on their phones—and invites them to take back control of their time, focus, and emotional well-being.

And it doesn’t end in the classroom. As students build awareness and design solutions, they bring that learning home, into friendships, family dynamics, and online interactions.

💸 Your Support Will Help Fund:

Completion of the first full teacher implementation kit
Student journaling and campaign design tools
Launch materials for Device-Free February activation
Video and podcast editing support for student projects
Research and field testing with local classrooms
Access to guest speakers and partner programs like #SameHere Global

This is an early-stage but high-potential project. Your donation will help build the foundation for a model that can scale—and that schools are already asking for.

🙌 Join the Movement for Digital Wellbeing

Help us give students more than screen time. Help them discover their voice, balance, and power in a digital world that too often overwhelms them.

Donate today to support Device Freedom—and the students ready to reclaim their agency.

Changing the world one classroom at a time

Our Mission

As a 501c3 Nonprofit, our mission is to elevate a child’s creativity and interests alongside traditional academic metrics, fostering passion-driven learning with real community impact.

To be a Thinkerer is to be a curious changemaker, open to solving longstanding challenges with fresh ideas.

We collaborate with leading organizations, educators, and innovators to create pathways that nurture student passions. By humanizing education, we aggregate and analyze learning experiences, building a global framework that values creativity and curiosity as essential to academic and personal growth.

Device Freedom: Helping Students Rethink Their Relationship with Tech - Michael Drezek

How Thinkering Fellow Michael Drezek is empowering students to move from mindless consumption to mindful connection—one project at a time.

Team Members