At 15 restaurants across Sardinia, families are being invited to leave their phones aside and try something else at the table: a box of games, drawings and questions designed to get parents and children talking.
The one-month pilot, called A tavola senza schermi, or “at the table without screens,” responds to a pattern restaurant staff say they increasingly see. Families sit down together, but conversation can fade as people turn to their devices. Sometimes, a phone is handed to a child to keep them quiet. The project aims to make room for shared attention without treating screen use as a problem parents must solve alone.
Anna Cau, Sardinia’s children’s ombudsman and a former juvenile magistrate, developed the initiative with the island’s restaurant federation. The participating restaurants joined voluntarily. When families arrive, staff ask them to put their phones away and offer a “reunion kit” created by the Italian federation of pediatricians. Its games and prompts give adults and children a simple way to begin talking about their day and doing an activity together.
Cau says the goal is not simply to impose a ban. She wants the places families visit to help support parents and children. “The idea is not to rely solely on prohibitions or to place the burden of responsibility entirely on parents, but to ensure our broader environment supports parents in their role and helps minors integrate with others,” she said.
Emanuele Frongia, president of the Sardinian restaurant federation, described the change that prompted concern. He said lively conversation is increasingly replaced by silence as diners look at their devices, and that a child is often given a phone to keep them occupied. That detail matters: the pilot recognizes that children’s screen habits are shaped not only by what children choose, but also by the routines and settings adults create.
The kit is a practical bridge rather than a complicated solution. It gives families something to do together while they settle into a meal, and its prompts may be enough to get conversation going without anyone needing to follow the instructions for long. The restaurants are also part of the effort: instead of leaving families to manage the challenge on their own, they help make a phone-free meal easier to try.
For now, the trial runs for one month in 15 restaurants. The organizers hope to expand the approach on a voluntary basis. Whether families keep the phones away after the meal begins is up to them, but the pilot offers a useful starting point: a shared table, a small box of activities and a little space for everyday conversation to return.