The benefits of dress up play

In a world where children seem to be more and more sucked inside the realm of screens.  We need dress up and pretend play more than ever.  Recent research has shown that screens are taking up the space of imaginary friends in childhood.  Honestly, the long term impact of this terrifies me.   As Albert Einstein said "Imagination is the highest form of research." What is happening inside kid's brains if they aren't imagining?

Our 8 year old still does dress up play.  She dresses up and become a wolf, a lion, a dishwasher, a ice cream shop owner and she acts out dramatic scenes of wild animals.  She ropes her siblings and friends into all of this.  We have a persistent always overflowing dress up box in our lounge room (photo of said box below) and it is probably the number one accessed box in our entire house. Our kids and their friends love it.  I know this won't last forever, I know that I won't be able to keep the kids away from phones or off screens in the future (I'm thinking high school here, too optimistic??..) but I'm doing my best, while I can, to buffer the negative effects of screen time in childhood.   

Do you have a dress up box at home that the kids can access?  If not, you may want to think about creating one.  Most of the items in our box were gifted to us by other families.  Some we have purchased, and the butterfly wings can obviously be bought at the New Zealand Family Shop.   They wouldn't call me the "crazy butterfly lady" if I didn't also sell butterfly wings.