The terrifying ways that social media is altering teenage brains

Social media is the perfect recipe for kids to become addicted to their smartphones because it's hijacking a normal part of human development

Literally thousands of engineers for social media companies, it is their job to make social media as addictive as possible

because the profit model is to profit off of users' time, attention, and data

And so the user is the profit. My name is Claire Morrell. I'm a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

And my new book is The Tech Exit, a practical guide to freeing kids and teens from smartphones

Childhood has changed from smartphones and social media because now children, instead of playing outside, riding their bikes

spending time with their family in person are often scrolling in their rooms on their beds

alone with a screen. The appeal of social media held out to us was that we can be more connected

with people than ever, and yet they're not spending time with their friends in person

The amount of time spent in person has decreased, and this kind of picture of childhood today

is a silent school bus, a silent school hallway. Kids are not laughing and making jokes and kind of

rousing each other up on the school bus. Instead, their heads are hunched over a phone scrolling

silently. And even while they're with each other, they're not talking to each other. And so this is

just a picture of what childhood looks like. These phones have really flattened childhood and

flattened the purpose of childhood because the message that the technology itself sends to kids

not about the content on the screen, but the medium of these technologies themselves

send the message that life is for constant entertainment and amusement. And it's an inherently self-focused technology

And so that's why we see kids hunched over these devices, scrolling their time away instead of interacting with each other in person

And as we know, humans, we're social creatures. We're made for relationships with other people

And so that's why we do see this epidemic of loneliness, anxiety, depression among kids today

because they're missing out on those real-life interactions and those real-life experiences

that give a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Social media is the perfect recipe for kids to become addicted to their smartphones

because it's hijacking a normal part of human development. So between the ages of 10 to 12, our brains as humans become more wired for what we call social rewards

which is a natural part of development. It actually helps children start to turn outward from their immediate family unit to really value the approval and feedback of their peers and other people

And it's supposed to help us form relationships with friends, with our communities

But the sensitive period of brain development where literally the dopamine receptors in our reward pathways are multiplying is being completely hijacked by social media

Because now social media is providing these artificially high bursts of dopamine

and making children increasingly sensitive to the kinds of social rewards that social media delivers

And what happens is that initial burst of dopamine provides pleasure, but immediately afterwards, your brain goes into a dopamine deficit

It actually crashes below your baseline of pleasure. And so it incentivizes you to do that thing again

And so instead of disconnecting and lifting up their eyes to the real world

they are just chasing constantly after the next dopamine high sucked into their devices

And so kids then are chasing likes and followers on social media

because they want that next hit of dopamine or that next video. And so then when they leave the offline world, they go into this dopamine deficit state

And what happens is addiction scientists explain this is called desensitization, where the brain gets used to this high level of dopamine

and that to maintain kind of homeostasis in the brain, it goes into a dopamine deficit state

And what then happens is children don't experience pleasure from the real world

The kind of natural rewards of life don't feel pleasurable to them

Instead, they crave going back online for that next hit of dopamine

And it will never be enough. Dopamine doesn't produce lasting satisfaction. It just produces craving

And so scientists are studying then the effects of social media on developing brains

A study out of the University of North Carolina in 2023, it measured sixth and seventh graders who were frequent checkers of social media, their brain development over time

And what they found was that those kids' brains actually became extra sensitive, overly sensitive in the reward pathways of the brain to the kinds of rewards that social media delivers

making them increasingly sensitive, wanting to continue to seek those types of rewards

more than children who didn't habitually check social media. Their brain kind of after this peak of kind of social rewards returned to a normal level

And so it actually is changing children's brains. This sensitive period of development where we're starting to become more wired for social rewards

is being hijacked by the social media features. and they actually experience less pleasure from the real life rewards that we were made to experience

pleasure from. Literally thousands of engineers for social media companies, it is their job

to make social media as addictive as possible because the profit model is to profit off of

users' time, attention, and data. And so the user is the profit. And the more time and attention

and data we spend on their platforms, the more money they make because they're selling that to

advertisers. And so what I try to explain in the book is that social media is inherently addictive

All of the features are meant to make us experience that craving for more. Things like variable

rewards, which is like a slot machine, right? Like you're not sure if you're going to win or not

every time you play. And actually that variable rewards makes it extremely addicting. And the

same is true of social media. You're not sure if you're going to get a new like or a new follower

when you next go back on to the platform. And so they design these features. They've attached

metrics to our relationships. It's all in the online world about how many likes your post gets

or how many followers you have. All of those features are extremely addictive, as I mentioned

to the social reward way that our brains are wired. We experience that burst of pleasure when

we get approval from our peers, when we get social feedback. And that's now being monetized

on social media. So it's not a matter of us having willpower. It is literally meant to hijack our

human brain vulnerabilities that we're wired for these social rewards that are on steroids

on social media, and on the part of willpower, particularly for children's brains, the part of

our brains responsible for our impulse control, our self-control, emotional regulation, is

our prefrontal cortex. It's not fully developed until age 25. And so it's actually very difficult

for a child to self their use They always going to want to be on it more And so one scientist explained a child brain on social media is like all gas with no brakes because they always going to want more and there

no kind of self-regulation developed yet in the brain. And in fact, the use of social media

stunts that development. More neuroscience research is coming out to show that kids who

are spending a lot of time on interactive screens have more sensitive reward pathways of the brain

but they actually have underdeveloped prefrontal cortex and the connections between the cortex and

the reward center, that part that is supposed to help us put on the brakes is underdeveloped

There's actually less neural connections between those parts of the brain and people who are heavy

users of screens or social media. And so actually the using of social media itself stunts our brain's

ability to develop that self-control and regulation. Imagine if there was a drug that

children were taking all the time that were producing these effects, making them disconnected

from their families, making them constantly crave it, go into this hyperactive state when they're

on it. I think any parent would say, there's no way that you're taking that drug. But why has the

smartphone and these social media platforms been so socially acceptable to us, despite over the

last several years continuing to see the negative effects on our kids and teens? Like, what is

happening? Why are we not able to kind of wake up to this epidemic? I would just hypothesize

I think part of the challenge is that these technologies do serve some type of function

For parents, they feel like, well, my child can stay in touch with me on the smartphone

It's also become the way that children socialize. And so individual parents feel it's extremely

difficult to opt out because this is how the kids talk to each other these days. Even parents

when I've tried to explain, well, just give them a dumb phone with texting, they say they're

actually socializing and messaging each other through the social media platforms. And so I think

the goods that these have held out of trying to connect us to other people being tools for

communication have made it difficult for us to disentangle that from the really harmful effects

that we're seeing. And I think, again, as social creatures, it's hard for us to resist peer pressure

and when we see everyone else is giving this to their kids

even as in the back of our heads, we're like, this doesn't seem good for them. The fact that everyone else is doing it

makes us feel like, okay, it must not be that bad or it must be okay

or I don't wanna be the parent that has to opt out and make my kid left out from these social settings

And so I think the particular challenge with smartphones and social media

is that because they're now how kids socialize today, their effects are not just individual, the way taking a harmful drug would be

but there are actually network group level dynamics to these technologies that individual parents find difficult to resist on their own

Even being knowledgeable of the harms, they feel pressured into it. And almost every, I mean, basically every parent I have spoken with

if you ask them why they gave their child a smartphone, it's usually, well, I wanted something to stay in touch with them to make sure they were safe

and every other kid in their class had one. I didn't want my child to be left out

I want my kid to have friends. And then the last reason I often hear is

I don't want my child to be unprepared for this digital age

I want them to know how to navigate technology. I want them to have tech skills

I want them to be able to thrive in a technological internet connected age

which are totally legitimate reasons. But I think that's the challenge is that parents do have these reasons for giving a smartphone

that it can be hard to separate from saying, wait a second, what are these phones actually doing to our kids

Are these great costs that they're bearing worth the potential benefits? And is there a better way

Is there another alternative? And that's what my book tries to hold out to parents

I want to show you that there's a better way that you can exit these technologies

and give your child a healthy, flourishing childhood, and that on the other side of exiting technology

is the life that you truly want for your child. So I've spent the last several years

working in the technology policy space trying to help pass better laws to protect our kids online

But I would frequently, in my policy work, speak to audiences of parents

and they would approach me afterwards and say, all the laws you're proposing sound great

but I'm on the front lines. Like, I can't wait for Congress to pass these laws or for my state to take up this type of bill

What can I do? From your research, what would you recommend that I do

And my research had convinced me that the harms were so great that I was not going to give smartphones and social media to my own children

And I shared that with them. But I also recognized my children are young. They're all under the age of five

And these parents shared the very real pressures that they faced in the teen years

And we're really looking for resources for how to navigate this. And was there a resource out there explaining how you can actually not give smartphones and social media to your kids, but how to successfully do that

So I started scouring nearly every book on technology and parenting I could find, and I found them all deeply unsatisfying

They were actually pretty accurate in describing the harms from what I had seen in my own research

But then the solutions they held out to parents fell far short of the level of harms

Things like set time limits, put parental controls in place, talk to your kids about the dangers

All of which, you know, sound like, okay, that could be helpful

But what my research had shown me was that the screen time limits were no match for the addictive design of these technologies

The challenge with screen time limits is that the time limit on the device does not map on to a child's mental or emotional time spent in the app

That kids carry the virtual world with them long after they leave it, constantly wondering who's liked my post, what new followers have I gotten, or even what's happening

What are my friends saying to each other on social media while I'm not there? And it creates the design of these technologies, creates this constant craving that they feel great

They feel these bursts of pleasure while they're on the app for even those 30 minutes

And as soon as they leave it, it crashes and they constantly crave going back on

That in their brain and physiologically, it induces this craving that affects their behavior and their mood, their attitude, their emotions the rest of the day, even when they're not on the app

And so the time limits just are no match for the addictive design and the compulsive behavior that these apps induce in a child

I spent so much of my time just studying how much the parental controls fell short of being able to really protect kids from dangerous content or from predators online

All the loopholes, all the difficulties with the settings staying in place, the bugs

And so I recognized that really we needed a resource to show parents that you actually

don't need to give smartphones and social media to your kids, that a smartphone-free

childhood is possible. And I wanted to prove that it was possible

So I had the hypothesis that a smartphone childhood is necessary but I could not find a book saying that And I couldn find a book showing parents how to do that And so that is why I set out to write this book The Tech Exit to both explain

why a smartphone-free childhood is necessary, but more than anything, I wanted to show parents

it was possible that other families had successfully done this, and their families were

flourishing, and their children were thriving. And so that led me on the path to do dozens of

interviews with these families, and I'd heard of hundreds more to find out how they had done this

how had they navigated the challenges of the teen years, or dealt with the pressures towards a

smartphone successfully. And so I could offer those practical steps and that advice to other

families and parents. The conclusion I came to in writing this book was that not only is the tech

exit possible, but it's fundamentally positive that all of these families who said no to tech

were saying yes to so much more in life, to so many real-world experiences, real-life relationships

for their kids that were truly setting their children up to flourish and succeed both in

childhood and as adults. And after interviewing these families, I became convinced that this is

the best possible thing we could do for our kids. A study found that the younger the age of her

smartphone, the worse the mental health as a young adult. And so they actually longitudinally

studied over time and children who got a smartphone younger between ages eight to 10

struggled with more mental health challenges as young adults between 18 to 25. And actually the

most significant mental health challenge, what decreased the most with older age of smartphone

was suicidality. So the older a child got a smartphone, the less likely they were to struggle

with suicidal thoughts as young adults. And so there is a correlation between when a child gets

a smartphone and how that sets them up for flourishing even into their young adulthood

particularly with mental health. So I think the safety concern, obviously that's parents

number one goal. They want to keep their children safe. But I think the problem is with smartphones

is that we haven't surfaced the hidden costs to child safety by handing them a smartphone

That giving them a smartphone actually gives bad actors, predators, dangerous content

easy access to our children. And while they're sitting in our living room on a smartphone

actually complete strangers online have incredible access to our kids in ways it's very difficult for

parents to effectively oversee or completely shut down. And so I try to explain that I think

this concept of safety that actually children are made less safe by handing them a smartphone with

all these portals to the internet where predators can reach them inside your home. And because of

the challenges we mentioned to their mental health and development, these are actually greater threats

to our kids' safety and well-being. And that there are other ways for parents to stay in touch with

their children without handing them a supercomputer in their pocket 24-7. And so I talk about the

alternative phone options available now. I often recommend to parents, instead of a smartphone

getting a child a dumb phone. And a dumb phone just means a phone that can call or text that

functions as a phone was originally meant to function. There are phones like the Gab phone

the Bark phone, Wise phone, allowing a child to call or text. Even some of them have tools like

GPS for when a child starts driving and you want to make sure they're safe. But without the internet

social media, addictive games that make the phone an addictive device instead of truly a tool for

communication. And so these alternative phones offer parents that ability to be in touch with

their child to keep them safe, but without actually handing them a really dangerous portal to the

internet that will make them less safe. And I will also just add a lot of these families said

they delayed the age of first cell phone as long as possible because they recognized their kids

could borrow the phone at school. They could borrow a friend's parent's phone

to get in touch with them. They were trying to really delay the age of their child

having a personal device on them all the time that even a dumb phone can still be very compelling

for a child to check constantly. But then when they opted for a cell phone

because now a child has more independence of movement, they're driving, they opted again

for these non-smartphone alternatives that still allowed them to keep their child safe

without introducing all these other dangers. The fear of a child not having friends

or being socially isolated is a very real concern. And what I will say is just three things

I've found from parents. The first was that their decision to not give smartphones and social media

they said was actually very friend filtering for their kids. Their kids found their real friends faster

because even if a friend had a smartphone or social media, a true friend was actually really willing

to accommodate their child's difference. They would find ways to get in touch with them

even if they weren't on the Snapchat app. And so one dad explained to me

honestly, our decisions around not giving our kids tech helped our kids find their real friends faster

because if a friend wasn't gonna reach out to them because they weren't on Snapchat, that's not a great friend

The second thing is it took more intentionality on the parents' part to help children build a social life

I think it is important. Children do need friends. And so what that looked like in a lot of these families

was trying to help their children spend time with friends in real life

One mom said, you know, they had a great friend that was 15 minutes away from our house

but it was an important friendship to my child. They also weren't on a smartphone

And so I would spend the time driving my kid to their house to have them get time together

And so I think it is important to recognize saying no to tech will take more intentionality

on the part of parents to help a child build a social life, But it will be very, very beneficial to kids to have those real-life friendships

Because I think the irony is, okay, I don't want my child to be left out

I'll give them a smartphone. They may be more connected to their peers through the smartphone, but the depth of friendship

is extremely shallow. These kids are lonely online because, again, they're not getting oxytocin through a screen

And this is a hormone that bonds us with people in real life. it's released through eye contact and physical touch

informs deep bonds of trust and friendship. And so these kids who are off social media

are actually spending time with their friends in real life, forming deep friendships

much deeper and higher quality friendships than the kids who are all connected online

And the last thing I'll say is these parents said just finding one or two other families

to opt out of smartphones and social media with them really helped provide their kids with other friends

who also weren't on the devices. So not everyone had to share their tech restrictions in their child's class or their team, but just finding one or two other parents who were willing to also opt out of smartphones and social media made a huge difference because their child had a few friends who also weren't on the apps

And then they as parents felt like they had allies in the trenches making these decisions with them, helping them navigate the challenges

So in response to parents who don want their children to be behind in this technological age I will just say that the smartphone and social media do not equal computer skills They actually are not teaching children how to use the Internet or the computer as a tool They really just teach children how to scroll and jump between content and suck children into an

immersive, addictive environment. And so these families I spoke with, while they didn't give

their kids smartphones and social media, they allowed them access to a computer in the home

They allowed them access to use the internet as a tool. They used it publicly and purposefully

And so some of these families, you know, a child was really interested in computer science. He read a bunch of computer science textbooks, was allowed to use the family home computer, taught himself how to code, and then got a coding scholarship to college in Ohio because he had built these actual tech skills

And he's very prepared now for the marketplace and college with these computer skills that he has

And he never had a smartphone and social media. And so I think sometimes we conflate that a child needs a smartphone or social media to be prepared to handle these technologies

But actually, we can teach them how to use the technologies as a tool, whereas smartphones and social media, the user is the tool

We are being used by the product. We are not learning actually how to manipulate these things in a productive way

A college professor explained to me that the students coming into her class, they know how to use smartphones, but they actually don't know how to use Microsoft Excel or Google Scholar

They're not actually prepared to use the computer and the internet in ways that would help them be prepared for handling college classes or entering the workforce

that the habit formation that happens for a child, the brain development between 0 to 18

not growing up on these technologies and having healthy brain development, allowing that prefrontal

cortex to fully develop, to have emotional regulation and self-control, helps prepare

children for how to use these technologies well as an adult. And so I interviewed grown children

who had not had smartphones and social media, but then did get access to a smartphone in college

And I asked them, you know, was there a temptation to binge on these technologies or were you not prepared to handle them well

And they said, actually, no, like I'm not as addicted to my phone as my peers

That establishing those years of 0 to 18 without these technologies allowed them to develop the habits to lay the foundation for their brain development so that they could choose to use them maturely and operate them wisely as adults because they didn't have the addictive compulsive behaviors and habits built up from childhood

Dr. Victoria Dunkley has found in her practice, and she treats patients struggling with autism and ADHD, and what she found with the kids and teens coming to her practice is that often they didn't actually have these underlying conditions of autism or ADHD, but their bodies were exhibiting these symptoms

Their nervous system was going into fight or flight mode. And so she coined this term electronic screen syndrome because these symptoms were induced

exacerbated, or mimicked by their use of interactive screens. And that by just eliminating interactive screens for 30 days, she would have all her patients

do a 30-day digital detox before any other treatment. That for many of her patients, just taking the screens away eliminated the symptoms entirely

that the symptoms they were exhibiting of poor focus, lack of attention, mood irritability

impulsiveness, mood swings, tantrums, were actually all being induced by the screen use

And she explains it puts a child's nervous system, a developing nervous system, into a

fight-or-flight response constantly. And then there's no physical outlet for the adrenaline

and cortisol to be released. And so the screen is stimulating the amygdala in the brain, which then takes over the brain

takes over the prefrontal cortex and leads a child's nervous system to be dysregulated

And Dr. Dunkley found that electronic screen syndrome can be induced by even a regular

use of screens. So a time-limited use on a daily basis can still elicit these symptoms

It doesn't just have to be overuse or excessive screen time. And she found that this is the case for any app with a reward component

Any type of online interactive game or tablet, even educational games that have these reward components can elicit this fight-or-flight response in the nervous system

Phones are also disrupted by their mere existence. Studies have found that the mere presence of a smartphone is distracting to our brains

that we actually have to exert self-control to not be constantly checking our device because we know

when it's on us that there could be something on that phone. Because of the notifications

there could be a new like, there could be a new follower or a new text message. And so actually

the presence of the phone in itself, even if you're not using it, is inherently distracting

and reduces our cognitive capacity and our attention for the task at hand. Just eliminating

the interactive screens, their nervous systems were able to recalibrate to a normal level. They

were able to then manage the stress and the symptoms disappeared. And then for patients that

did have one of those underlying conditions, the detox alone without any other treatment cut their

symptoms in half. There is actually a catch-22 with screens, especially for children with autism

or ADHD, where because of the behavioral difficulties parents face with children struggling

with these conditions, it's very tempting to hand a child a screen because it initially

calms them down and helps them to calm down and regulate their emotions

But what Dr. Dunkley is finding is that cumulatively over time, it actually exacerbates and worsens

their symptoms because of the effects on the nervous system. And so it makes it difficult for a parent to imagine dealing with this child without a screen, but actually taking the screens away, doing a detox helps that child's nervous system to rebalance, the chemicals in the brain to rebalance, and reduces their symptoms

There is an entire new body of research called Technoference, which studies the impact of technology in interfering with parent-child relationships

And the results are not good. That parents' use of mobile devices or social media leads to poor behavioral functioning, worse emotional regulation, reduced attention spans in their children

that the effects of a parent's use is actually impacting their child's behavior and emotions

They find that children exhibit worse externalizing behaviors like tantrums and attention-seeking

when their parents are glued to their own devices. And it's also stunting their language development and their emotional regulation

because these studies explain children get scaffolding from their parents, that our attention and interaction with our kids

provide them the scaffolding to develop a new skill, that our interaction helps them develop new skills

and that without that scaffolding, when we're turning to our devices, children are not developing these skills

It's not just children's use of technology that is stunting or impairing their development

but it's our use of technology. And one study also found that parents' use of social media

was increasing the likelihood of depression in teenagers, that a teen was four times as likely to be depressed

if their parent was a heavy user of social media. And it's not hard to imagine why

because if a parent is spending that time on social media and not giving that real life relationship

and attention to their child, that it can lead a child to feel depressed

and to not feel as valued. I think every time a parent, we pull out our phone

when a child is trying to talk to us or interact with us, We're communicating by our actions that the phone is more important than this real-life relationship in person in front of us

And so it is very convicting as parents that we really have to think about our own tech use because of those negative impacts on our kids and because we're modeling for them how we would want them to use technology as adults

And I think asking ourselves that question, am I using my phone the way I would want my child to use their phone as an adult, can be quite convicting, as well as asking ourselves, you know, am I paying more attention to my phone than I am to my child

Because I think any parent would say, of course, I value the relationship with my child more than my phone, but is our behavior matching that

And so I think as parents, we need to critically examine our own use of screens, especially when we're with our children

Chapter 2. How to Free Your Child from the Perils of Smartphones

If smartphones and social media are so harmful to children, and if screen time limits and parental

controls are not sufficient solutions for protecting them from these harms, then what

are parents to do? Is there another way? My book, The Tech Exit, explains there is another way

possible, that we can actually opt out of smartphones and social media entirely for our

children during both childhood and the teen years, and that on the other side of exiting these

technologies is the life we want for our children. And I want to explain to you how parents can do

this. I walk through the five key commitments to the tech exit lifestyle with the acronym FEAST

I wanted parents to know that this is a positive vision. And so if we're fasting from technology, what are we feasting on instead

So let me give you those five principles that make up the acronym FEAST

F, find other families. We can't do this alone. We need to reach out to our communities, to other parents in our neighborhood and schools

to invite them to opt out with us. E, we educate, explain, and exemplify

We want our children to understand the reasons that we're saying no to these screens

and we want to help work to get their buy-in so that they can understand our rationale

and prepare them for how to navigate these technologies as adults. And we also do that by exemplifying a healthy use of technology ourselves as parents

A, adopt alternatives. There are better phone options available than the smartphone

phone. We can give our children dumb phones that allow them to call and text without introducing

all these portals to the internet, social media platforms, or online games that are meant to

addict a child. S, we set up digital accountability and family screen rules. This is how do we then

use technology in the home wisely? How can children use computers or a family enjoy television

together. And so we want to think through our family's screen time rules, how we use these

technologies purposefully and intentionally in a way that brings the family together rather than

dividing us on our own devices. And we want to have digital accountability in the home between

parent and child to keep our children safe. And then T, we trade the screens for real life

responsibilities and pursuits. That as we restrict children's freedoms in the virtual world, we want

to allow them more freedoms in the real world. Real life activities, relationships, and

responsibilities that help them progress towards adulthood, not the screens that stunt them from

progressing towards adulthood. It's important in living out this lifestyle in our families

that as we're restricting smartphones and social media, that we're actually working to get our

kids buy-in and we're hearing them out if they have reasonable requests. So all the families that

I spoke with said they wanted their children to understand the reasons and actually educate

themselves on the harms. And a lot of these children then, when they realized what their

parents were trying to protect them from, even if they didn't love it at the time, the experience of

not being on the social media apps, they could understand why. And they recognized that these

restrictions came from a place of love and protection. And that now as adults, these children

say they're so grateful their parents made those decisions. They could understand the rationale

even at the time, even if they didn't love the implications of that. And a key part of this is

not starting with these top-down restrictions out of nowhere, but starting with a conversation and

trying to explain what you've come to observe and understand about the harms of these technologies

what you want to protect your child from, and even doing something together where you're trying to

actually help educate your children on these harms or these rationale behind these decisions

So I had many families share that they read an article and talked about the kind of harms of

smartphones together and tried to actually have a conversation and even asking questions of their

child. You know, do you notice these effects among your peers? Do you notice how your peers or you

are interacting with your phone? Like, what do you notice? How do you feel about that? And so try and

actually engage children in a conversation about this and doing this all in the context of a

relationship where you're trying to walk these steps with your child, not a top-down approach

but really coming alongside them and explaining what you're trying to usher them into, that what

you want for them is a life of real-life relationships and friendships and connection

and flourishing, and that exiting technology is part of ushering them into the life that they want

for themselves and the life that you want for them. And I had many families say they watched

the documentary, The Social Dilemma, with some of their teenagers. And the teens, once they realized

the business model behind social media, that these platforms were trying to addict them

manipulate their behavior, it was like they saw the light for themselves and they didn't want any

part of that. And so we as parents can be educators coming alongside our kids to try to have these

conversations and expose for them the business model and why we're trying to kind of keep them

safe from these types of addictions because we want them to have a flourishing, thriving

successful life as children and as adults. But another important piece of this was that these

were constant conversations between parent and child and that while the parents had certain

non-negotiables, no smartphone or no social media, they wanted to try to help accommodate

children's reasonable requests for staying in touch with their peers having a social life and so just

to give a couple examples you know one family said they initially had their two sons sharing one of

these dumb phones but the older brother was getting annoyed by the kind of silly texts that his younger brother was getting And he said sometimes it made him miss communications from his baseball coach So he asked you know could I now get my own non

And so they were like, that makes sense. That's reasonable. We will get you your own dumb phone

But they still had parameters around it. Like, you're not going to take it with you around the neighborhood

It's going to mainly live at home. You can use it for your general communication needs

But this isn't going to be some device that's tethered to you constantly. So they stuck to their principles, but accommodated his reasonable request

Another family mentioned their son had a dumb phone. He was getting very frustrated by its bad maps or the lack of GPS

He was driving more. He said, can I have another phone that just at least has better maps on it, a better GPS

And again, the parents said, that makes sense. Let's try to find a better non-smartphone alternative that can provide you the tools

that you need to drive well, navigate safely. but again, still didn't have the dangers of social media or the internet on the phone constantly

Another mom mentioned, you know, they didn't allow their son to have a smartphone or social media

but his classmates kept up through a Google chat group, and he was allowed to go on on a nightly

basis and check that chat to stay in touch with his friends from school. And so again, parents

trying to accommodate children's desire for communication with their friends in a way that

still protected them from the harms of smartphones and social media as the non-negotiables in their

family. It's never too late to reverse course on smartphones, social media, or interactive screens

that digital detoxes really work. Doing a 30-day digital detox actually chemically resets the brain

and that desensitization to real-world natural pleasures, that that can actually be undone by a

digital detox, that the brain comes back to a normal balance and homeostasis, and they actually

start to experience pleasures from the real world again. I have heard from family after family that

honestly thought it would be impossible. They said, I can't picture dealing with my child without the

smartphone or screen. But they had really reached this point of saying, you know what, we see all

these harms on our child, all these ill effects, we just have to try it. And so I always encourage

parents, maybe the tech exit seems daunting to do over the long term, just start with a 30-day

digital detox. Setting aside 30 days on your calendar, getting on board as a family, why we're

doing this. We want to establish a healthier use of technology in our family. We're going to detox

from these screens for 30 days. And instead, we're going to fill our calendar with all these other

non-screen activities. We're going to make this a team effort as a family that we're doing this

together and it's going to be fun and try and actually give children a vision for what we're

trying to do. And so many families even said for their teens, it wasn't too late to reverse course

on the smartphone, that even their 14-year-old son came to see the effect that the smartphone

had had on him by detoxing from it. And he said, wow, I didn't realize how much my phone had

changed me or the power it had over me and was actually able to exit these technologies even as

a teenager. I would encourage parents of teens, if you do take the smartphone away, giving them an

alternative phone where they can still communicate and text and call, and also trying to think of

real world freedoms you can replace it with. One family who reversed course on a smartphone with

their 17-year-old son, they had honestly just given him the smartphone and immediately within a week

saw the compulsive effects it had on him and said, wow, this was a mistake. And they had a

conversation and the dad said, this is not necessarily a parenting strategy I'd recommend

of giving a child a smartphone and immediately taking away, but they found it was necessary

And so instead, when they took the smartphone away, they gave their son access to a truck

And he talks about this incredible story that sometimes it takes a truck and their son

used that truck to start a moving business with his brother, gained real world responsibilities

had a real sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that really was much more satisfying than the

smartphone. And again, they gave him a dumb phone instead. But the power of actually giving him more

responsibility and freedom in the real world was an incredible kind of replacement for the

smartphone. And so it really is possible to reverse course even in the teen years. And their son going

off to college said, you know, I'm really not sure if I'm going to get a smartphone or not. Now that I

can as an adult, I'm not sure because I actually did recognize that it had this weird power over me

And I'm not sure that that's what I want as an adult. What the tech exit lifestyle looks like in my own home is that we don't have interactive

screens in our house. Our children don't have access to tablets. We don't have a smart TV

We do have a dumb TV that my husband pulls out on Friday nights for us to watch a family

movie, but it's not a daily habit in our family. And it's something that we're always using purposefully and we're always doing it together

I don't personally have a smartphone. I gave up my smartphone two years ago because I recognized it was too addictive and too powerful for me to resist checking it all the time when I was with my kids

And I recognized giving up a smartphone and having one of these alternative phones would allow me to be more present with my children and less distracted by what was happening on the device

We haven't had to navigate kids having to use screens for schools yet

all of my children are five and under. And so I recognize that the pressures towards using screens

is only going to increase. Obviously, their peers don't yet have smartphones. And so that is why I

really set out to interview families of teenagers who had teens now and who have successfully launched

teens to college to find out how had they navigated these pressures when all of a sudden, all their

children's friends started getting smartphones or getting on the social media apps, or they were

required to have their children using the internet more for school assignments. That is what helped

me to flesh out this framework was not only taking the steps that I could now with my young kids

of not allowing them to have interactive screen time, keeping passive screen time of the television

to a rare occurrence that was something we used together, me giving up my own smartphone, but how

to actually then navigate when children do need more access or have more access to technology and

when their peers have more access to those devices. The last thing I'll say is that even at a young age, we're trying to explain and educate

our children about the internet. And so it's really never too early to try to be explaining to your children the dangers

that they could come across online. Because I recognize there's only so much I can do in my power that if other kids that

they're around start to have smartphones or internet-connected devices, they could easily

be shown something. And so with our kids, we use a book called Good Pictures, Bad Pictures, Junior, where we talk about how they could see bad pictures online or someone could show them a bad picture and how to respond to that

Because I want my kids to have tools to know how to navigate that. And so now from reading that book, they know that if they see something, they turn away and they run and they tell me

And trying to open that conversation, even from a young age, that I want my children to be able to come to me and talk about that

And that was something I saw with these families of teens too where these constant conversations of open channels of communication so that the parent was the resource that a child could go to if they came across something that made them feel uncomfortable online or if a friend showed them something

And so even for young parents, it's never too early to start those conversations, and those

will obviously gradually deepen and be explained more fully as they grow in the tween and teen

years. When I often get asked, well then, what is a reasonable age for a smartphone

phone, I find it's a complicated answer. I think what I've seen in these families is that they've

actually kind of rejected the premise of that question, this sense of inevitability. Oh, at

some point, my child will have to get one. Families will draw these lines differently

Many families said that for them, it wasn't necessarily an age as much of signs of maturity

in their child of being able to handle it properly. And so I think knowing your child is going to be

most important. And like I said, with the example of the family that gave their child a 17-year-old

a smartphone, because they initially thought that that would be appropriate age, they observed in

him these compulsive behaviors towards it. And they went, okay, actually, this is not a good

decision for him right now. And so I really actually try to encourage parents to know your

child. And even if you give something, to not be afraid to then say, actually, we made a mistake

if you are observing these kind of compulsive, addictive-like behaviors. And that's really the guiding principle

I try to explain to parents is you have to watch your own children. And if you're seeing these signs in them

then it's probably wise to undo that decision and wait for longer to give it to them

And families have drawn the lines differently of, okay, senior year of high school

we wanna help you gradually start to take on more maturity and freedom as you prepare to go to college

Other families waited till college. Other families incentivized their kids to stay on their dumb phone through college by offering to pay for their phone plan and then said, if you want to get a smartphone, you're an adult, you can do that, but you'll have to purchase it and pay for your own phone plan

Because those parents, again, kind of said that we still felt like we were in a guiding role helping our child even through the college years as they gradually entered adulthood

Part of the challenge of these screen technologies is that their harms are not only individual

but they actually change the group's social dynamics, where even if a few of their friends or peers are using smartphones or social media

it can change the social dynamics for everyone because that's how their relationships are being mediated

And so kids who even aren't on the apps can still feel left out or still feel lonely or anxious or experience depression

a way that parents are pushing back against this is they're creating these kind of counter pressures

pushing the smartphones out of childhood by talking to their neighbors and trying to create a haven for their kids

to come home to at the end of the school day, where even if their peers at school were on these phones

that on their street, the kids are playing outside. There is a neighborhood in a suburb of DC

where just two moms, it started with two moms talking to each other

across the street about the kind of childhood they wanted for their kids. And they agreed it wasn't their kids growing up on phones

They wanted their kids riding bikes out in the neighborhood together. And so those two families agreeing to do this, creating this positive vision, became really

a compelling force on the street. And so they said other kids started coming outside and playing with their kids

And she acknowledged, you know, not every parent on the street shares their exact same

tech restrictions, but they all share this positive vision of what they want childhood

to be filled with. And so the dynamic in the neighborhood is kids playing outside, free of phones, working through conflicts together, no parents in sight, riding bikes, throwing balls

And it's created a really positive vision where that's the kind of dynamic where other kids want to be part of that

And so it's really powerful, the strength that we can find in numbers when we just talk to our neighbors, when we talk to a few parents in our school, to create that type of positive social dynamic that creates a counterpressure to push back against the negative dynamics that the smartphones and social media introduce

So it's possible, actually, to have a neighborhood that feels just like the 1970s, where there are no phones in sight, the kids are squealing and laughing and screaming outside together, and that ruckus on the street just draws more kids in, trying to create that type of positive force in your community to be the antidote to the screens

The families that have exited tech explain to me that their family relationships are now much closer from having taken the screens away

Because instead at the dinner table, they're having real-life conversations with each other

People aren't distracted to check what's going on in their phones or even just mentally distracted from the conversation thinking about what's on their devices or their phones

And so these families say that taking the tech away made their relationships stronger with each other

And the irony, I will just say, that was observed to me by one mom is she thought giving the

child the smartphone would reduce the kind of battles over the child wanting the phone

and the parent saying no. And she said, but actually what we didn't realize was giving the smartphone introduced

40 more battles a day over, hey, get off your phone, put your phone down, you know

trying to enforce these time limits or stay on top of these parental controls

And so then by actually just kicking the smartphone out of the house, it reduced the friction and tension in their relationship and allowed their family bonds to be much more strengthened

And a lot of these families fill their time instead of being on devices

They're going on family walks together. They're going out in the yard and playing a pickup game of soccer or badminton

They're enjoying a puzzle or board game together. Or they're just actually watching even a screen entertainment as a family activity

They're sitting down and watching a movie together and actually enjoying that experience where I can tell you a lot of families who have smartphones say they can't even watch a family movie together without the kids checking their phones or being immersed in their devices

It's not even a shared experience when they're taking that in together

And so these families exiting tech just explain that their family relationships, especially the parent-child bond, has been so strengthened by getting rid of the smartphones that were really coming between that relationship

And they actually just enjoy the time with each other more. And part of it is that the brain is desensitized by these constant dopamine hits

And so getting rid of that, the children actually experience and enjoy these real-world pleasures of being together in person, taking in a sunset, going for a walk, where they didn't enjoy those

Those felt boring and mundane when they were on these devices. And so these kids are flourishing

They're happy. And I can't even tell you the number of educators who observe to me that they can tell the difference in their students, the kids who have smartphones and those who don't

Because the kids who don't have smartphones make eye contact. they're able to engage in adult conversation they're very relational whereas the kids who

have smartphones struggle to make eye contact when they talk to their teachers they have a lot of

social anxiety and the real life relationships and interactions feel difficult for them and so

it's a very stark contrast getting rid of the screens what that does to the real life relationships

I not saying that this lifestyle of the tech exit is going to be easy and it can be more challenging given specific family circumstances that you may have If your child has had an access to a smartphone for

a long time or if you're a single parent or if you're working parents that are outside of the

home most of the day, it can feel more challenging of how can I do this digital detox. But let me

just assure you that so many parents, despite those challenges, have taken these steps and are

so grateful they did it. And I just want to say that there are points of resistance that we're

going to have to push through as parents. And for some of us, it's going to be harder to overcome

those points of resistance than for others. But it is the best thing we can do for our children

And we can start by just taking small steps. So I would encourage you to even just try to do a

week-long digital detox. Maybe 30 days feels too much at first. But talking to your child about

hey, we're going to take a break from this phone for the week and just trying to see how that goes

As I had some families say, they did a couple week-long detoxes over time, getting used to

the idea before then they dove into doing a 30-day digital detox and then eventually

leaving the phone behind. Even just trying to do a phone-free hour or a phone-free meal or going for a phone-free

walk with your child is helping to introduce that concept of this is what life can look

like without the phone. Obviously, schools can play a really critical role in helping parents protect the school day from the influence of phones

And I encourage parents to talk to their schools because often schools are afraid to make these changes because they worry about parents' reactions

And when they hear from parents that they would desire a phone-free environment during the school day from their kids, schools are eager and excited to try to adopt these policies

And then I would also say try to talk to your friends and your neighbors and find a community

of support for you to go walk through this with your child. It's really difficult to do it alone, especially if you are a single working mom and you aren't

at home as often with your child. Trying to find a neighbor or a friend who could walk through this with you, maybe have

your child over to their house where they're not on screens and they're providing that

type of social environment for your child. other after-school programs. And increasingly, some schools are offering extracurriculars after school that are phone-free

Trying to find options in your community to help support you is another help

And so I do recognize there are going to be challenges to this lifestyle

It is possible to overcome them and try to just start taking the steps that you can towards this

and starting those conversations with your child and engaging them to observe these effects in themselves

and then just not being afraid of the challenges you may face

because really on the other side of exiting tech is really a true life of flourishing

and it is possible to do this just one step at a time

Chapter 3, Creating Policy to Protect Our Children. Many of the negative effects and dynamics from smartphones and social media today are not possible for individual parents to fully address on their own, but require collective solutions as a society

And so schools can be a really helpful force for change to help parents push back against the harms of smartphones and social media by having schools try to protect students' learning and social environment from the influence of these technologies

So schools are kind of on the front lines as our next level of collective solutions that can help parents

And then on a broader level, there are actually policy changes that can be extremely helpful for providing the collective solutions we need in the law to back parents up, both on a state level and federal level

So there's been a big push to get screens into schools as the solution for solving our educational inequalities, for helping children advance in education

But it hasn't panned out in the data. The scores that we see in the latest kind of national study of academics in the U.S., their scores for reading, math, science, are at their lowest level since the 1970s

So despite the increasing push for screens in schools, it has not resulted in better academic improvements

And people like to point to the COVID pandemic as the reason for these low scores, but it's important to note that the decline in the scores goes back further than that

COVID and all the screen-based learning certainly accelerated these trends, but this was starting back in 2012 that we started to see these reading scores going back lower than they had been the last several decades and now returning to the lowest level we've seen since the 1970s

And other research shows that they've done studies that the access to technology, access to one laptop per child, did not notably improve educational outcomes or attainment, did not lead to an increased likelihood to go to college or to graduate high school

The one laptop per child or put a screen on every desk has actually not borne out in the data the results that I think were expected and hoped for

And some of the science behind learning, looking at the human brain and how we learn can explain why. More and more studies are showing MRI results show that children who read texts on a screen do not engage with it as deeply, do not comprehend the text as deeply reading it on a screen versus reading it on paper

And the same is true for learning their ABCs and learning their letters and writing and language skills, that it is that children actually learn their literacy more when they write letters out by hand as opposed to typing them or doing an activity on the screen

And so in all of these recent studies, paper proves to be better than the screen

Marianne Wolfe explains this is because screens actually encourage our brains to skim, that our eyes were naturally skimming on the screen rather than reading the complete sentences

And so reading texts on paper, children read more fully, comprehend more deeply, and develop fuller literacy

We are seeing some schools returning more and more to using books and paper as opposed to the educational screens on the desk

One of the most effective policy changes that schools can make to support parents is getting rid of phones from the school day

And not just during classroom time, but from bell to bell. And studies are showing that these smartphone bans are extremely effective

That not only are they seeing improvements in students' academic scores, but they're actually seeing improvements in student relationships and behavior

Many school districts mentioned they adopted these policies because of discipline issues they were dealing with, of children engaging in inappropriate behaviors on the phones or using them for bullying or to coordinate devious activities during the school day, meeting up in the bathroom

And so they were a disruption, not just to the learning environment, but actually to the social environment in the school and the pressures that students were under feeling like they could be constantly photographed during the school day and having pictures of them uploaded to social media

Getting rid of the phones from bell to bell improves students' mental health scores, their mental health well-being, and reduced discipline and other behavioral issues

And they started to say, like, the students really started to talk with their teachers again, to socialize during the lunch periods and at recess and in the hallways, that it created a vibrant social environment

Considering that children's main waking hours are spent away at school, not just protecting the academic environment for kids, but protecting their social environment was a really powerful supporting force to parents trying to opt out of these technologies and really counteracting some of those negative group dynamics that social media and smartphones create

And so more and more school districts, individual schools are doing these bell-to-bell phone bans

Even entire states like Virginia have gone just completely phone-free during the school day and are seeing the benefits

A study done in London back in 2016 found that not only did GPAs rise among all the students and their performance on the kind of national tests administered each year in England, but the lowest performing students had the greatest improvements

Their results basically doubled. This solution, more than any other, really actually helps address some of these educational achievement gaps that we're seeing

More than handing every child a laptop, getting phones out of the school day has had the greatest positive impact on helping especially the lowest performing students improve their academic outcome

that it's not on individual teachers to police this in their class, but it's a top-down school administration decision

where the kids turn the phones in at the start of the school day or have them somehow inaccessible to them

really protects the learning and social environment to pay the most full attention to the instruction

and the education happening in the classroom. The reason that social media has become so harmful to kids

is because there's been no legal accountability whatsoever for the social media platforms as an industry

A lot of this stems back to a law called Section 230

which is the main law that governs the internet, and it gives immunity to liability to platforms

for the third-party content that they host. And the law's purpose and intent makes sense

that a company shouldn't be sued for content that they host causing harm to someone else on the platform

But the problem has been that this law has been overexpanded in its interpretation by courts to even immunize companies for things that are their own wrongdoing

that are their product design, their features, like the likes, the metrics, the algorithms that

aggressively promote content to kids, like a blackout challenge being dumped into a 10-year-old's

feed without even looking for it. It fed it to her by an algorithm, and she accidentally took her

own life doing this blackout challenge. But these lawsuits that parents have tried to bring for these

harms that were not caused by the content hosted on the platforms, but by the design of the

companies themselves, have largely been tossed out of courts because of Section 230. The normal means

of holding companies accountable in our country is litigation. This is how we protect our consumers

This is not necessarily a lot of regulation on the front end, but that there is some means of

holding companies accountable at their products are harming consumers. And what's been so challenging

with the social media industry is that that main channel of accountability through litigation

has been completely blocked off to parents because of Section 230. There are many different angles to

trying to address the problem from a policy perspective, and it's important that those

solutions keep in mind the First Amendment rights of adults. One kind of bucket of solutions is just

trying to reform Section 230 and open up more liability for holding these companies accountable

And federal bills, the Kids Online Safety Act, COSA, was trying to do this to just actually

provide more accountability to say that these companies can be held accountable for certain

objective harms to kids from their product design, not related to content, but just opening up more

channels for litigation. And so that's a solution, protects the First Amendment rights of adults

but just actually tries to open these companies up to more liability and accountability

Other solutions at the state level have been trying to have age verification and parental

consent laws for social media accounts. And I think it's important to recognize there's been advances in age verification where this

can be conducted by a third party. There's no revealing of your personal information at all to the platform

States now increasingly have digital IDs. and a lot of these digital ID programs

actually have a verification software program that you can use where all you have to do

when you try to get onto an adult website or in the case of trying to do this for social media

you would just let the digital ID know you're trying to access this website

and it would just generate a token, sending this to the website

letting them know you're over 18 and that's it. That's the only information transmitted

is just a signal, yes, this person's above 18 or not. no other personal identifying information about you transferred, just like a two-factor

authentication method that takes about 30 seconds. The good uses of technology had been these advances in privacy-protecting anonymous ways

for adults to verify that they're an adult to inhabit the virtual world as an adult while

effectively protecting children. And so these solutions have been applied already to pornography websites but a similar approach could be taken if we trying to age restrict social media out of childhood or to require some type of parental

consent. So a parent is really overseeing whether or not a child gets on a social media account

since to date, right now, the current state of affairs is any child can create a social media

account, falsify a birth date, and a parent would never know. They could just make an account

check a box and they're on. And so having solutions that really try to give parents more

involvement in the process so that children are not just entering contracts with giant tech companies

who are extracting all their time, attention, and data without a parent being a part of that

process. A lot of these laws, again, are really trying to balance the First Amendment rights of

adults, their privacy, while also finding ways to protect our kids. Social media companies and

their algorithms are playing a role in facilitating child sexual abuse and exploitation and human

trafficking on the platforms. It's been difficult to hold them accountable for their role because of

Section 230, but their algorithms have been shown to actually connect predators more easily with

victims. The Wall Street Journal ran a story about how Instagram is predator's app of choice

because the algorithms actually help them to find the kind of child sexual abuse material they're

looking for and to more easily find their victims. An internal 2019 study and report investigation

that Meta did internally of their Instagram platform found that they had certain categories

of accounts that they designated as groomer accounts, which were adults exhibiting some

types of groomer behaviors looking for children, not doing anything to cross the line to be

quote-unquote illegal, but they actually had identified accounts that they viewed as groomers

So 27% of the accounts being recommended to these groomer accounts were minor accounts

And average adult accounts would only get 7% of recommendation accounts to be minors

And so there's actually a role that the social media companies themselves are playing

that their algorithms are making it easier for these groomers, these predators, to find children

Other studies show that for Instagram specifically, their internal research said that 100,000 minors a day were receiving sexually explicit messages from adults

Some type of sexually explicit material. 100,000 minors a day. And this was their internal research

And they have done nothing about it. And so that is the problem is that they know that their product design is resulting in these harmful effects to children

and yet because there's no accountability in the law, there is no incentive for them to change the business model

because they are profiting off of this. They are profiting off the user time and attention

of people using these platforms. And so their algorithms are resulting in these harmful, harmful results to children

and yet there is no accountability for the role that they're playing in facilitating

these abuses of our kids. There is a pornography epidemic afflicting our children and teens today in our country

Parents may not realize that the average age of first exposure for pornography

is now estimated to be between 7 and 11 years old. That children are being exposed young and often to pornography

often through online means, and many of them are coming across it for the first time accidentally

clicking on a link or being shown something by a friend on a smartphone

What we have to realize is the kind of pornography children are taking in

This is not your uncle's playboy. This is dehumanizing, violent, degrading pornography

And our children are taking this in. They're not even trying to go looking for it, but it's finding them on social media

and on smartphones because of how ubiquitous and accessible it is. And so we have to really grapple with this epidemic of pornography exposure

among our youth and how quickly that sucks children into dangerous addictions to this

extremely graphic and dehumanizing content. This is being actively served up to children in their

social media feeds itself, just extremely sexualized content being dumped by the algorithm

into their feed. And then what happens is if a child even just hovers over a TikTok reel of

some type of suggested dancing or sexual content for a few seconds, they're instantly barraged in

their feed by more and more aggressive content of that kind. And so they have done investigative

reporting to find that kids are actually really quickly sucked into rabbit holes of more extreme

content, that the feed becomes even more extreme over time. And so what's happening is that the

environment created on the social media accounts is hyper-sexualized for kids. And teen girls think

that this is how they garner more likes and followers, the more sexually suggested material

that they post. So it's become very normalized. The message that the platform send is that this

type of sexual content is normal and that everyone is doing it. And so it's no surprise then that

the effects this is having is now our teens, especially teen boys, are falling prey to these

sex-dortion schemes and it's because it's become so normalized to send sexually

explicit images and material to each other online and so they don't think

anything of it when they're approached by what appears to be a local girl in

their community asking for some type of sexual photo or interaction and then

they quickly it quickly revealed it a scheme and they being financially extorted threatened that this is going to be posted all over social media if they don pay the money And so these sextortion cases have been increasing rapidly

I mean, Snapchat alone says they receive 10,000 reports of sextortion a month

And that's just one app and it's probably underreported. Another survey found one in five teens said that they have been a victim of sextortion

And why is this happening? It's because the environment that the social media apps have created has become so sexualized that teens don't think anything of it, that this feels normal

A Harvard professor said that she did an investigation into TikTok and found that TikTok Live felt like going down the street to a strip club filled with 15-year-old girls who were performing acts that towed the line of child pornography being urged on by adult viewers who were offering them these TikTok gifts that they could use in the app or exchange for cash

And so it's an incredibly sexualized environment, which is warping children's own self-image, their own expectations of relationships, and is also making it easier for predators to prey on children because this has become so normalized in their social environments on social media

Another teacher in Ireland was sharing that he started to ask his 16-year-old students

what they think is expected of them in a romantic relationship because he's recognizing this

issue of pornography exposure. And he said, sadly, the young boys think that they should be aggressive and dominant

They should be with as many women as possible. And the girls think, on the other hand, they think that they should be dominated

And why is that normalized? Like, where are they getting these expectations

It's through pornography. And another young girl who has shared her story widely, she wrote a really compelling article about what she found when she encountered Pornhub accidentally as a 10-year-old

And she said, parents don't realize that the Playboy looks like an American Girl doll catalog compared to what I was exposed to

Part of it goes back to the brain science that the dopamine released by pornography desensitizes you to the real world pleasures and that actually over time your brain builds up a tolerance and you need ever more extreme content

The desensitization and the tolerance built up over time leads users to pursue increasingly violent and extreme forms of this type of sexual content to try to experience the same dopamine high that they had at first

unfortunately the reality for parents has been that it's been they have been told that it's all

on them to try to protect their children from pornography that they have to use filters as

really the only means available to them to try to protect their children but filters are really

ill-equipped for protecting children in this smartphone app-based ecosystem of technology that we now have and that's because on a smartphone there are hundreds of apps every

app has its own in-app browser. And often apps actually block external third-party controls or

filters from operating with inside their apps. And so when a child can click through to Pornhub

the Pornhub website, inside of the Snapchat app without ever leaving the app, a filter can't

necessarily block that content that they're accessing from the in-app browser. And so there

are so many challenges to the app-based ecosystem. A smartphone means that a parent now has to try to

effectively shut down all the thousands of portals to the internet on that device. And that often a

filter built for a web browser does not function well inside of apps. And if even in innocuous

educational game apps, there's an internet browser, children can be accessing pornography through

that. I can't even tell you all the stories I've heard of parent after parent saying, I had no idea

that they could get to this porn website through this educational game. And those haven't been

fixed or addressed. And so parents just lament to me how difficult it is to completely shut down

all the portals of access to a child that a smart device introduces. And the Supreme Court just

recognized this. The justices, even in their questioning over this recent case of a Texas

age verification law for porn websites, really focused on just how ineffective the filtering

has been. Children are tech-savvier than their parents. Smartphones are in their pocket 24-7

it's incredibly difficult for a parent to oversee, and filters really struggle to keep up with all the apps and in-app browsers

And so it's just, it's impossible. It's an impossible fight for parents to effectively cut off a child's access to pornography

on a smartphone or smart device. Parents will always be on the front line and trying to protect our kids

but there are critical policy solutions and laws that are needed to back parents up

We need to have laws that actually put the onus on the porn websites themselves

age-restricting their content so that if a child accidentally clicks on a link to Pornhub

they're not immediately sucked into all its obscene content. Or another child can't easily

pull up Pornhub on a smart device and stick it in my child's face. And so these are really

necessary collective solutions that we already have had in the physical world. So you can't go

to a brick-and-mortar store and purchase a pornographic magazine unless you verify you're

an adult. And yet in the online world, you can easily click through to Pornhub without having

to prove that you're an adult. These age verification laws for pornography websites

would critically bring the virtual world into alignment with the real world. And we had a

landmark victory in the United States in June 2025 when the Supreme Court upheld one of these age verification laws out of Texas as constitutional And so this provides a clear path forward for states to be able to legislate in this area

better able to protect children from online obscenity. And so this is a huge victory. It

pushes back against the kind of status quo of the last 20 years where it's been only on parents

to try to use filters to protect their kids, providing them now this critical layer of backup

and making it possible for states to pass more laws in this area of protecting kids from online obscenity

The court applied intermediate scrutiny, which said that the burden on adult speech was incidental

and that states actually need more nuance and more flexibility in being able to balance the First Amendment rights of adults

and the compelling state interest of protecting kids online, and that one law doesn't need to address every aspect of the problem

And so it actually opens a path for states to also pursue other laws to restrict kids' access to online obscenity

I've spent the last several years working on policy solutions to try to help support parents in their efforts to protect kids and also to ensure that all children are protected, not just those who have involved parents who can spend 40 hours a week trying to stay on top of all this stuff

And so it's just a couple buckets of solutions. At the state level, we've seen just tremendous victories and progress over the last several years. 24 states have passed successfully age verification for pornography websites laws to age restrict those portions of the Internet that are extremely harmful for children

Also, now numerous states have passed age verification and parental consent laws for social media accounts, recognizing that in the current state of affairs, because of a federal law called COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, that says that if you're under 13, a parent has to consent to your data collection

And so then social media's de facto age became 13 because these companies are collecting data

That's their business model. But parents are completely cut out of the equation and there's no real meaningful age enforcement or age verification

And so we know 8 to 12 year olds are getting on these platforms and that there's no parental involvement whatsoever when children are agreeing to these whole host of terms and services with giant tech companies

And so giant tech companies are entering contracts with our kids without parents being part of that process

And so these state laws are trying to, again, provide some type of age verification, parental consent for kids to get access to social media accounts

And then at a federal level, there's been a lot of reforms proposed and introduced around reforming Section 230 to try to allow for more liability, particularly when it comes to their design harms

the kids online safety act has been a big bipartisan bill introduced the last several years

that actually passed out of the senate in 2024 91 to 3 unfortunately didn't make it through the

house before the congress term expired but i think that is looking like it will be raised again it

would put a a obligation on the platforms to mitigate certain objective harms to kids in their

product design and again just opening up more channels of legal liability if they're not then

complying with the requirements of that law. There's been other proposals to try to update

COPPA to potentially raise the age of COPPA. Why was the age of internet adulthood set so low at 13

That law was passed back in 1998 before social media even existed. Another recent creative

solution that some states have been taking up is trying to require age verification and parental

consent at the app store level. And so Utah and Texas have passed these app store accountability

acts, which are just meant to put parents more in the driver's seat over a child's experience in the

app store. And so it would require a parent's consent for any app download or purchase. So

efforts to try to bring our regulations and laws more into alignment with the state of the internet

today and the harms of social media, just trying to protect children. And so efforts are exploring

raising COPPA to the age of 15 instead of 13. I also personally have been advocating for just a

national age restriction on social media. The country of Australia has done this, where they

have just banned social media for minors under 16. And that provides that collective solution

And so parents on their own aren't having to say no to the pressures towards social media, but instead it's just a non-option for kids under 16

The way we've age-restricted other harmful substances or technologies to children like motor vehicles or firearms, those are age-restricted

We recognize they take maturity to operate. Or the ways that social media acts on the brain like an addictive substance, we've likewise age-restricted tobacco and alcohol out of childhood

So we have these precedents in our laws to look at these solutions we've taken in the past and apply those to looking at social media today

Those are just some of the categories of solutions I've been working on the last several years

And I will say I'm excited by the possibilities because there's been a lot more attention by policymakers on the harms of social media

just the last several years, we see more and more states passing these laws, and we see Congress on a

bipartisan nature trying to find solutions that protect kids and empower parents in this digital age