Why a Simple Task Gets Adults Talking: A Study of Screen-Free Creative Activity
What practitioners see when adults try open-ended, screen-free activity, and why the hardest part is the first minute.
Eighty-two percent of mental health practitioners say adults today have fewer chances for unstructured, screen-free, creative activity than they used to. Nearly half say far fewer.
That is one finding from a June 2026 survey of 121 mental health and allied practitioners across the United States. Among the 108 who use open-ended creative or tactile activities with clients, 68% say adults hesitate to engage in creative play activities at first, and 76% say the hesitation gives way to engagement once the client begins.
What practitioners are describing, underneath the clinical language, is an adult at play, and a population out of practice with it. A kind of activity most people last did freely as children has become something many adults meet again only when someone sets the materials in front of them.
Key findings
- 82% say adults have fewer chances for unstructured, screen-free activity than in the past (46% say far fewer).
- 76% say hesitant clients settle in and engage once they begin (21% almost every time).
- 69% see clients talk more openly once the activity is underway, the most-cited shift.
- 85% find these activities most useful for emotional expression (easing anxiety 75%, present-moment awareness 73%).
Who responded
The sample leans toward talk-therapy clinicians, with counselors, social workers, and marriage and family therapists. Experience runs across the full range, from early-career clinicians to those with sixteen years or more.
Professional role
| Role | % of 121 |
|---|---|
| Licensed professional counselor or therapist | 43% |
| Clinical social worker | 25% |
| Other allied professional | 15% |
| Marriage and family therapist | 11% |
| Psychologist, art therapist, or occupational therapist | 6% |
Years in practice
| Experience | % of 121 |
|---|---|
| 4 to 7 years | 33% |
| 8 to 15 years | 25% |
| 16 years or more | 20% |
| 1 to 3 years | 19% |
| Less than 1 year | 1% |
Of the 121 respondents, 108 use open-ended creative or tactile activities at least occasionally. A practitioner can only describe a shift in a session they actually run, so the findings about how clients respond reflect those 108.
Finding Screen-Free Time is a Real Challenge
The first finding is about opportunity. Most practitioners say adults have fewer chances for screen-free, unstructured activity than they did a few years ago.
Eighty-two percent said fewer.
Chances for unstructured, screen-free activity today, compared with the past
| Practitioner view | % of 121 |
|---|---|
| Far fewer | 46% |
| Somewhat fewer | 36% |
| About the same | 11% |
| Somewhat more | 8% |
Practitioners are more divided about their own use of these activities. Asked whether they reach for them more or less than they did five years ago, 44% said more, 31% said about the same, and 24% said less.
The hesitation, and what comes after
Ask practitioners how an adult first reacts to a box of colored pencils or a tray of sand, and the dominant first response is caution. Just under half describe it as mixed, and another fifth as openly hesitant. About a third say their clients are game from the start.
First response when the activity is introduced
| First response | % of users |
|---|---|
| Mixed | 47% |
| Generally open | 31% |
| Often hesitant | 20% |
| Usually enthusiastic | 2% |
Practitioners report that adults may:
- see the activity as childish,
- worry about doing it correctly,
- or hold play and serious work in separate boxes.
One practitioner shared it this way: “At first, they appear to believe it is childish, but once they begin, they buy in quickly.”
This concept, that once someone begins, they become engaged quickly, was consistent throughout the study. Once a client begins the activity, 76% of practitioners say engagement follows, often or almost every time. The hard part is beginning, and what happens in the first minute.
Figure 1. Practitioners report a process of play entry and creative activity for adults during client sessions. Hesitation transforms into engagement, the body loosens, and talk follows. Percentages are practitioners reporting each step, among the 108 who use these activities.
One practitioner, reflecting across years of sessions, described how reliable the pattern is: “Even if some adults are resistant at first, if they actually engage and try, they almost always feel better after. I can’t think of a single time when that wasn’t the case.” Another example from a practitioner is powerful:
“They didn’t say much when they sat down, just kept pressing the clay into a flat slab like they were trying to get it out of the way. After a bit, they stopped pushing so hard. Just started rolling it in their palms. Out of nowhere they said, ‘this is what my week feels like, just kind of mashed together,’ and kept working without looking up. They started shaping instead of flattening, talking in short bursts while they worked.”
The activity allowed for unstructured thought and free reflection during the session.
Something to focus on, somewhere else to look
When we asked what changes once a client engages, the most common answer was that they talk more. Open verbal communication is the shift practitioners observe most often, at 69%, and name as primary most often, ahead of engagement, relaxation, and emotional access.
The mechanism they describe is functional. A creative or tactile task gives the hands a job and the eyes a place to rest, which takes the pressure off face-to-face conversation. The work becomes a side path into talking.
“Having something to do with their hands made it easier to talk.”
“I think it’s possibly because she stares at the sand and doesn’t have to make eye contact with me. This woman is very shy, and it helps her open up noticeably more than without it.”
“A client was doodling during a session, and that simple act allowed them to relax and step into an uncomfortable conversation. Slowed breathing, less eye contact, but more communication.”
Several noted that this matters most when the subject is hard. A focused task absorbs the attention that would otherwise go to managing the discomfort of being watched, and the rest flows into the conversation. The body tends to lead and the talk to follow: shoulders drop, breathing slows, posture loosens, and then the words come. Just over half name visible physical relaxation as a shift they see, and many describe it as the thing that makes the talking possible.
The single change practitioners name most
| Primary shift | % of users |
|---|---|
| More open verbal communication | 26% |
| Better session engagement overall | 22% |
| Visible physical relaxation | 20% |
| Improved emotional access | 18% |
| Increased playfulness or humor | 14% |
All shifts practitioners report seeing
| Observed shift | % selecting |
|---|---|
| More open verbal communication | 69% |
| Improved emotional access | 65% |
| Better session engagement overall | 59% |
| Increased playfulness or humor | 52% |
| Visible physical relaxation | 51% |
What practitioners find it most useful for
When we asked practitioners what these activities help most with, they pointed first to emotion and regulation.
Figure 2. Play and creativity activity mechanisms. Multiple selections allowed.
Tactile materials, sand and clay and textured objects, show up most in the written answers, described as a way to help a stressed client settle into more comfort. “I’ve often seen very stressed adults use the sand and absolutely relax more during a session,” one practitioner wrote. Another described a client who “found the kinetic sand to have a grounding effect that helped them stay on topic without becoming distracted by intrusive thoughts.”
Drawing and coloring came up most often, with clay, collage, and sand trays close behind. The shared traits are an activity with no right answer, no screen, and no fixed outcome.
What practitioners find these activities most useful for
| Reported use | % selecting |
|---|---|
| Emotional expression | 85% |
| Easing anxiety | 75% |
| Present-moment awareness | 73% |
| Enjoyment, positive affect | 57% |
| Building distress tolerance | 33% |
| Breaking repetitive thought patterns | 28% |
| Restoring energy after mental fatigue | 21% |
What helps an adult begin
Because the hard part is getting started, the most useful practical answers focus on helping a client begin. First, having someone to do the activity with is critical, so practitioners report doing the activity themselves. Second, remind them that there is no right or wrong in the activity. Last, let them know they can stop any time.
Figure 3. One posture, three parts. The practitioner shares the activity, drops the standard of correctness, and makes stopping easy. Practitioners describe these working together. Each line is a respondent’s own wording.
How this survey was conducted
Olander Earthworks administered this survey in June 2026 to a sample of licensed and allied mental health practitioners across the United States, recruited through professional networks. All 121 respondents completed the full survey. Single-select items used categorical scales. Multi-select items allowed more than one choice. Written responses were reviewed and coded for recurring themes. Quotations appear in respondents’ own words, lightly edited for length and clarity and stripped of identifying detail.
This is a small panel size of self-reported practitioner perceptions. It is a snapshot, and it is not a nationally representative study. The survey asked about open-ended creative and tactile activity as a general category and referred to no product.
For journalists and researchers. The full anonymized item wording, frequencies, and coded open-text themes are available on request from Olander Earthworks for reporting, teaching, or secondary analysis.
Suggested citation: Olander Earthworks. (2026). Play, in Practice: What Practitioners See When Adults Try Open-Ended, Screen-Free Activity. Published June 2026. olanderearthworks.com.
About Olander Earthworks
Olander Earthworks is the original creator of the Wonderscape: a round Baltic birch tray of shallow sand with hand-carved designs reproduced as durable concrete objects you roll across the surface to create beautiful, impermanent textures. Patterns follow your path around the tray. No claims of clinical efficacy are made or implied. Olander Earthworks does not provide medical or mental-health advice and is not a substitute for licensed care.