What happened? I watched the promise of the early internet give way to the reality of its potential for abuse. I had already become deeply absorbed in smartphones and social media. My wife, a pediatric nurse, was increasingly alarmed by the number of children hospitalized with issues linked to social media, including body dysmorphic disorder, cyberbullying, and other mental health challenges. We had become those parents—the ones whose child has a flip phone and isn’t on TikTok.
We are not alone. A surprising number of people I know who work for major technology companies limit their own children’s access to digital devices. If your child has a smartphone, many experts recommend using parental controls, locking the device, and keeping social media access limited. Even Mark Zuckerberg does not routinely share his children’s faces publicly on Facebook or Instagram.
What was once a growing concern about children’s technology use has become a national debate. Jonathan Haidt’s best-selling 2024 book, The Anxious Generation, helped bring the issue of social media and youth mental health into the mainstream, despite criticism of some of its conclusions from developmental psychologists. Australia became the first country to enact a social media ban for children under 16, and other countries, from Austria to Indonesia, have announced similar measures. In the United States, age-verification laws and state-level restrictions are also reshaping the conversation. School districts across the country are limiting educational devices such as iPads and Chromebooks in favor of physical books. Even children seem to be embracing a more skeptical view of technology: one of the most popular gadgets among Generation Alpha is the vintage Sony Walkman.
We must prepare our children to live in the real world that we actually created, not the world we wished for.
But we cannot simply hide technology from our children. It is woven into nearly every part of modern life, from education and communication to entertainment and work. Instead, parents must help children develop the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. How can we help our children survive and thrive in the digital world we have created—not the world we wish we had?
In the age of artificial intelligence, that question feels more urgent than ever. To explore it, we brought together our editors and Anyway, a fantastic magazine for tweens and young adults. Its greatest strength is meeting young people where they are. If you have teenagers in your life, I highly recommend it. The team helped us develop the stories in this issue, and we also invited children to share, in their own words, how they feel about AI and what they think may happen next. Their responses, published in Anyway, were complex, fascinating, thoughtful, and remarkably sophisticated.
Along the way, I have loosened my own digital restrictions. I still share very few photos of my children online, and I remain deeply concerned about the risks of social media, artificial intelligence, and unrestricted smartphone use.
However, when my older daughter started high school, we replaced her flip phone with an iPhone. My younger child now wears an Apple Watch. These devices have expanded our family’s world in meaningful ways. They help children build friendships and maintain relationships that move naturally between digital and physical spaces. They also allow my children to explore more independently—at least beyond the familiar places in our neighborhood and city.
Along the way, they are learning to navigate technology, test boundaries, and make decisions in the way children should. I think I am learning, too.
Source: www.technologyreview.com