As young people continue to be exposed to the rapid advancements of social media and artificial intelligence (AI), actress Phylicia Rashad told Observer Online it’s time for young people to live “unplugged”.

“Pay attention, young people. These things were created to take your time and attention,” she said, adding, “Your time is the most valuable thing you have. We don’t get that back. And your attention is your power to direct your focus wherever you choose. Don’t give it away.”

Speaking at the Plie for the Arts’ 10th anniversary event, Women of Vision: A Visionary Salon, on Friday, Rashad noted, however, that adults have the primary responsibility to ensure youth are measured in their usage of social media.

“It is not young people’s fault that they are being presented with all of these…so let’s not burden the young people with blame. Let’s see what we can do to unplug. Unplug, and be with the person next to you,” she urged.

In answering questions posed by Observer Online, The Cosby Show actress reflected on her own childhood, explaining that television had been all she had.

“In my generation, when I was a young person, it wasn’t the computer, it wasn’t the social media, it wasn’t the telephone, it was the television,” she said.

Rashad continued, “And what my mother did was— and I’m going to date myself and I don’t mind— she would take [the] tubes out of the set.”

Rashad shared that her mother, Vivian Ayers Allen, a Pulitzer-nominated poet, had had a deep love for the arts.

Allen created the project “Workshops in Open Fields”, which provided free, high-quality and accessible art classes for students in Houston. Rashad shared that under Allen’s direction, she purchased what remained of her mother’s college, the Brainerd Institute, where the classes are still offered.

A member of the final graduating class in 1939, Allen was buried on the renovated compound when she passed at 102-years-old last year.

Noting that it was under this sort of tutelage that she was raised, the actress maintained that she had not suffered for it, rather it had been beneficial.

“I grew up unplugged and in lieu of that, there would be music lessons, and we’d go to museums, and we’d read books, and we’d have conversations, and she’d [my mother] take us to lectures,” Rashad said.

She added, “We couldn’t possibly understand it, given the ages that we were, and she knew that…But [we] had to be there so a seed could be planted.”

Rashad shared another personal anecdote about the differences being observed in childhood socialisation in more recent times.

“I was with a group of creative people the other night, and one of the actors, a young man, who is the father of a child who was eight years old, was talking about the fact that his observation was that, young people especially, in seeing other people, kind of withdraw, but when they look at a screen, they light up,” she said.

In closing, she urged, “Unplug, and go out and be in nature. Unplug, and pick up a book and read it. Unplug, and go out and help somebody.”