We are raising the first generation expected to manage casino-level persuasion in the device in their pocket. Social media did not accidentally become addictive. Clare Morell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author of The Tech Exit, argues it was built that way, with thousands of engineers optimizing for attention and compulsion.
You can see the shift everywhere, from silent school buses to teens measuring themselves in likes. Morell says the answer is not more willpower or tighter screen limits. It is a deliberate exit plan that parents can lead, backed up by schools and policy.
Timestamps
00:00 Hijacking our children’s brains
00:42 Smartphones are hurting our children
02:27 Social reward wiring
03:25 Dopamine deficit
04:00 Desensitization
05:34 A child’s brain on social media
11:32 How to exit tech and give your kids a better life
13:14 Why screen time limits fail
14:52 Tech-free families
16:12 Smart phone and mental health quality
18:08 Dumphones
19:33 Social media and social isolation
24:57 Autism and ADHD and Electronic Screen Syndrome
26:46 How smartphones distract us
28:41 Technoference
31:20 How to free your child from the perils of smartphones
32:16 What to focus on after exiting tech
34:18 Getting your kids’ buy-in
45:18 What is a reasonable age for a smartphone?
55:25 Creating policy to protect our children
57:01 The decline of reading scores
1:01:58 Section 230 law
1:08:55 The pornography epidemic
Transcript
The below is a true verbatim transcript taken directly from the video. It captures the conversation exactly as it happened.
Hijacking our children’s 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. The user is the profit.
My name is Clare Morell. 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.
Smartphones are hurting our children
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. 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. That’s why we see kids hunched over these devices, scrolling their time away instead of interacting with each other in person. Humans, we’re social creatures. We’re made for relationships with other people. 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 reward wiring
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. 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.
Dopamine deficit
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. It incentivizes you to do that thing again. 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.
Kids then are chasing likes and followers on social media because they want that next hit of dopamine or that next video. Then when they leave the offline world, they go into this dopamine deficit state.
Desensitization
What happens is addiction scientists explain this is called desensitization, where the brain gets used to this high level of dopamine and, to maintain homeostasis, it goes into a dopamine deficit state. Children don’t experience pleasure from the real world. The natural rewards of life don’t feel pleasurable to them. Instead, they crave going back online for that next hit of dopamine. It will never be enough. Dopamine doesn’t produce lasting satisfaction. It just produces craving.
Scientists are studying the effects of social media on developing brains. A study out of the University of North Carolina in 2023 measured sixth and seventh graders who were frequent checkers of social media and tracked their brain development over time. What they found was that those kids’ brains became overly sensitive in the reward pathways to the kinds of rewards that social media delivers. This made them increasingly sensitive and more likely to continue seeking those rewards compared to children who didn’t habitually check social media. After this peak of social rewards, their brains returned to a normal level.
This is changing children’s brains. This sensitive period of development, when we’re becoming more wired for social rewards, is being hijacked by social media features. As a result, they experience less pleasure from the real-life rewards we were made to experience pleasure from.
A child’s brain on social media
Literally thousands of engineers for social media companies are employed to make social media as addictive as possible because the profit model is to profit off users’ time, attention, and data. The user is the profit. The more time, attention, and data we spend on their platforms, the more money they make because they sell that to advertisers. 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 craving for more.
Things like variable rewards work like a slot machine, where you’re not sure if you’re going to win every time you play, and that uncertainty makes it extremely addictive. 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 go back on the platform. They design these features intentionally. They’ve attached metrics to our relationships, so the online world becomes about how many likes your post gets or how many followers you have.
Get expert classes, premium print issues and exclusive events.
All of those features are extremely addictive to the social reward systems our brains are wired for. We experience a burst of pleasure when we get approval from our peers or social feedback, and that is now being monetized on social media. This is not a matter of willpower. These platforms are designed to hijack human brain vulnerabilities that evolved for social rewards, which are amplified on social media.
For children’s brains in particular, the part responsible for impulse control, self-control, and emotional regulation is the prefrontal cortex. It is not fully developed until around age 25. That makes it very difficult for a child to self-regulate their use, and they are always going to want more. One scientist explained that a child’s brain on social media is like all gas with no brakes, because the desire for more is there but the self-regulation is not yet developed. In fact, the use of social media itself stunts that development.
Neuroscience research shows that kids who spend a lot of time on interactive screens have more sensitive reward pathways in the brain but an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. The connections between the cortex and the reward center, the part that helps us put on the brakes, are weaker. There are fewer neural connections between those parts of the brain in heavy users of screens or social media. Using social media actively interferes with the brain’s ability to develop self-control and regulation.
Imagine if there were a drug that children were taking all the time that produced these effects, disconnecting them from their families, making them constantly crave it, and sending them into a hyperactive state when they were on it. Any parent would say there is no way their child would be taking that drug. Yet smartphones and social media platforms have become socially acceptable despite years of evidence showing negative effects on kids and teens. The question becomes why we have not been able to wake up to this epidemic.
Part of the challenge is that these technologies do serve some function. Parents feel their child can stay in touch with them on a smartphone, and it has become the primary way children socialize. Individual parents feel it is extremely difficult to opt out because this is how kids communicate today. Even when parents suggest a basic phone with texting, they are told that kids are messaging and socializing through social media platforms. The promise of connection has made it difficult to disentangle these tools from their harmful effects.
As social creatures, it is hard for us to resist peer pressure. When we see everyone else giving smartphones to their kids, even if we feel uneasy about it, we assume it must be acceptable. Parents worry about being the one who opts out and leaves their child excluded from social settings. The challenge with smartphones and social media is that their effects are not just individual but operate at a group level. That makes them especially difficult for individual parents to resist.
Nearly every parent I’ve spoken with gives similar reasons for why they gave their child a smartphone. They want to stay in touch for safety, they don’t want their child to be left out because every other kid has one, and they want their child to have friends. Another common reason is wanting children to be prepared for the digital age, to know how to navigate technology and develop tech skills. These are legitimate reasons.
That is the core challenge. It can be difficult to step back and ask what these phones are actually doing to our kids and whether the costs are worth the benefits. Parents struggle to ask whether there is a better way or an alternative approach. That is what my book tries to offer to parents.
How to exit tech and give your kids a better life
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. I’ve spent the last several years working in the technology policy space, trying to help pass better laws to protect our kids online. In my policy work, I would frequently 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. 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?”
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. I shared that with them, but I also recognized my children are young, all under the age of five, and these parents shared the very real pressures they faced in the teen years and were looking for resources for how to navigate this. I began asking whether there was a resource out there explaining not just how you can choose not to give smartphones and social media to your kids, but how to successfully do that. I started scouring nearly every book on technology and parenting I could find, and I found them all deeply unsatisfying.
They were accurate in describing the harms from what I had seen in my own research, but the solutions they offered to parents fell far short of the level of harms. They suggested things like set time limits, put parental controls in place, and talk to your kids about the dangers. All of that sounds like, “OK, that could be helpful.”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. I’ve spent the last several years working in the technology policy space, trying to help pass better laws to protect our kids online. In my policy work, I would frequently 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. 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?”
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. I shared that with them, but I also recognized my children are young, all under the age of five, and these parents shared the very real pressures they faced in the teen years and were looking for resources for how to navigate this. I began asking whether there was a resource out there explaining not just how you can choose not to give smartphones and social media to your kids, but how to successfully do that. I started scouring nearly every book on technology and parenting I could find, and I found them all deeply unsatisfying.
They were accurate in describing the harms from what I had seen in my own research, but the solutions they offered to parents fell far short of the level of harms. They suggested things like set time limits, put parental controls in place, and talk to your kids about the dangers. All of that sounds like, “OK, that could be helpful.”
Why screen time limits fail
What my research had shown me was that 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. 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?” They also wonder, “What’s happening? What are my friends saying to each other on social media while I’m not there?”
The design of these technologies creates a constant craving. Kids feel bursts of pleasure while they’re on the app, even for those 30 minutes, and as soon as they leave it, it crashes, and they crave going back on. In their brain and physiologically, it induces a craving that affects their behavior, mood, attitude, and emotions for the rest of the day, even when they’re not on the app. Time limits are no match for the addictive design and the compulsive behavior these apps induce in a child. I spent so much of my time studying how parental controls fell short of protecting kids from dangerous content or predators online. All the loopholes, the difficulties with the settings staying in place, and the bugs.
I recognized that we needed a resource to show parents that you don’t need to give smartphones and social media to your kids. A smartphone-free childhood is possible. I wanted to prove that it was possible.
Tech-free families
I had the hypothesis that a smartphone-free childhood is necessary, but I could not find a book saying that, and I couldn’t find a book showing parents how to do that. That is why I set out to write this book, “The Tech Exit,” to explain why a smartphone-free childhood is necessary. 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.
That led me to do dozens of interviews with these families, and I heard of hundreds more, to find out how they had done this. I wanted to learn how they navigated the challenges of the teen years and dealt with the pressures toward a smartphone successfully. 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. These families who said no to tech were saying yes to so much more in life, to real-world experiences and real-life relationships for their kids. Those choices were setting their children up to flourish and succeed, both in childhood and as adults. After interviewing these families, I became convinced that this is the best possible thing we could do for our kids.
Smart phone and mental health quality
A study found that the younger the age of first smartphone, the worse the mental health as a young adult. They longitudinally studied over time, and children who got a smartphone younger, between ages eight to ten, struggled with more mental health challenges as young adults between 18 to 25. The most significant mental health challenge, what decreased the most with older age of smartphone, was suicidality. The older a child got a smartphone, the less likely they were to struggle with suicidal thoughts as young adults. 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.
I think the safety concern is parents’ number one goal. They want to keep their children safe. The problem with smartphones is that we haven’t surfaced the hidden costs to child safety by handing them a smartphone. Giving them a smartphone gives bad actors, predators, and dangerous content easy access to our children. While they’re sitting in our living room on a smartphone, complete strangers online have incredible access to our kids in ways that’s very difficult for parents to effectively oversee or completely shut down.
I try to explain this concept of safety, that 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. Because of the challenges we mentioned to their mental health and development, these are greater threats to our kids’ safety and well-being. There are other ways for parents to stay in touch with their children without handing them a supercomputer in their pocket 24/7. I talk about the alternative phone options available now.
Dumphones
I often recommend to parents, instead of a smartphone, getting a child a dumb phone. 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 Gabb phone, the Bark phone, and Wisephone, allowing a child to call or text. Some of them have tools like GPS for when a child starts driving and you want to make sure they’re safe.
Without the internet, social media, and addictive games, these phones avoid making the phone an addictive device instead of truly a tool for communication. These alternative phones offer parents the ability to be in touch with their child to keep them safe, without handing them a dangerous portal to the internet that will make them less safe. I will also add that 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 a phone at school. They could borrow a friend’s parent’s phone to get in touch with them.
They were trying to delay the age of their child having a personal device on them all the time, because even a dumb phone can still be compelling for a child to check constantly. When they opted for a cell phone because a child had more independence of movement, they were driving, they opted again for these non-smartphone alternatives. These still allowed them to keep their child safe without introducing all these other dangers.
Social media and social isolation
The fear of a child not having friends or being socially isolated is a very real concern. What I will say is three things I’ve found from parents. The first was that their decision to not give smartphones and social media was very friend filtering for their kids. Their kids found their real friends faster. Even if a friend had a smartphone or social media, a true friend was 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.
One dad explained to me, “Honestly, our decisions around not giving our kids tech helped our kids find their real friends faster. If a friend wasn’t going to 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. Children do need friends. What that looked like in a lot of these families was helping their children spend time with friends in real life. One mom said, “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. I would spend the time driving my kid to their house to have them get time together.”
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. It will be beneficial to kids to have those real-life friendships. 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 they’re not getting oxytocin through a screen.
This is a hormone that bonds us with people in real life. It’s released through eye contact and physical touch, and forms deep bonds of trust and friendship. These kids who are off social media are 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. 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.” Not everyone had to share their tech restrictions in their child’s class or their team, but finding one or two other parents who were willing to also opt out made a huge difference. Their child had a few friends who also weren’t on the apps, and the parents felt like they had allies in the trenches making these decisions with them.
In response to parents who don’t want their children to be behind in this technological age, I will say that the smartphone and social media do not equal computer skills. They are not teaching children how to use the internet or the computer as a tool. They teach children how to scroll and jump between content and suck children into an immersive, addictive environment. These families I spoke with, while they didn’t give their kids smartphones and social media, 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.
In some of these families, 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. He’s very prepared now for the marketplace and college with these computer skills, and he never had a smartphone and social media. Sometimes we conflate that a child needs a smartphone or social media to be prepared to handle these technologies, but we can teach them how to use the technologies as a tool. With smartphones and social media, the user is the tool. We are being used by the product. We are not learning how to manipulate these things in a productive way.
A college professor explained to me that the students coming into her class know how to use smartphones, but they don’t know how to use Microsoft Excel or Google Scholar. They’re not prepared to use the computer and the internet in ways that would help them be prepared for handling college classes or entering the workforce. The habit formation that happens for a child, the brain development between zero 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. I interviewed grown children who had not had smartphones and social media, but then did get access to a smartphone in college. I asked them was there a temptation to binge on these technologies or were they not prepared to handle them well.
They said, no, like I’m not as addicted to my phone as my peers. Establishing those years of zero to 18 without these technologies allowed them to develop the habits to lay the foundation for their brain development. 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.
Autism and ADHD and Electronic Screen Syndrome
Dr. Victoria Dunckley has found in her practice that she treats patients struggling with autism and ADHD. 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. She coined the term electronic screen syndrome because these symptoms were induced, exacerbated, or mimicked by their use of interactive screens.
By eliminating interactive screens for 30 days, she would have all her patients do a 30-day digital detox before any other treatment. For many of her patients, taking the screens away eliminated the symptoms entirely. The symptoms they were exhibiting, poor focus, lack of attention, mood irritability, impulsiveness, mood swings, and tantrums, were being induced by the screen use. She explains that it puts a child’s nervous system, a developing nervous system, into a fight or flight response constantly. There’s no physical outlet for the adrenaline and cortisol to be released.
The screen is stimulating the amygdala in the brain, which takes over the brain and takes over the prefrontal cortex, and leads a child’s nervous system to be dysregulated. Dr. Dunckley found that electronic screen syndrome can be induced by regular use of screens. Time-limited use on a daily basis can still elicit these symptoms. It doesn’t have to be overuse or excessive screen time. She found that this is the case for any app with a reward component.
How smartphones distract us
Any type of online interactive game or tablet, even educational games that have reward components, can elicit a fight or flight response in the nervous system. Phones are also disruptive by their mere existence. Studies have found that the mere presence of a smartphone is distracting to our brains, and we have to exert self-control to not be constantly checking our device. We know that when it’s on us there could be something on that phone, a notification, a new like, a new follower, or a new text message. The presence of the phone itself, even if you’re not using it, is inherently distracting and reduces cognitive capacity and attention for the task at hand.
By eliminating interactive screens, nervous systems were able to recalibrate to a normal level. They were able to manage stress and the symptoms disappeared. For patients that did have one of those underlying conditions, the detox alone, without any other treatment, cut their symptoms in half. There is a catch-22 with screens, especially for children with autism or ADHD. Because of the behavioral difficulties parents face with children struggling with these conditions, it’s tempting to hand a child a screen because it initially calms them down and helps them regulate their emotions.
What Dr. Dunckley is finding is that cumulatively, over time, it exacerbates and worsens their symptoms because of the effects on the nervous system. This makes it difficult for a parent to imagine dealing with the child without a screen. Taking the screens away and doing a detox helps the child’s nervous system rebalance and the chemicals in the brain rebalance. It reduces their symptoms.
Technoference
There is a new body of research called Technoference, which studies the impact of technology interfering with parent-child relationships. The results are not good. Parents’ use of mobile devices or social media leads to poorer behavioral functioning, worse emotional regulation, and reduced attention spans in their children. The effects of a parent’s use are impacting their child’s behavior and emotions. Children exhibit worse externalizing behaviors, like tantrums and attention-seeking, when their parents are glued to their own devices.
It is also stunting their language development and their emotional regulation. Children get scaffolding from their parents. Our attention and interaction with our kids provide scaffolding to develop a new skill. Our interaction helps them develop new skills. 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 our use of technology. One study found that parents’ use of social media was increasing the likelihood of depression in teenagers. A teen was four times as likely to be depressed if their parent was a heavy user of social media. 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, it can lead a child to feel depressed and to not feel as valued.
Every time 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 the real-life relationship in front of us. It is convicting as parents that we 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. Asking ourselves, “Am I using my phone the way I would want my child to use their phone as an adult?” can be convicting. Asking ourselves, “Am I paying more attention to my phone than I am to my child?” can be convicting.
Any parent would say, “Of course I value the relationship with my child more than my phone,” but is our behavior matching that? As parents, we need to critically examine our own use of screens, especially when we’re with our children.
How to free your child from the perils of smartphones
If smartphones and social media are 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 opt out of smartphones and social media entirely for our children during both childhood and the teen years. On the other side of exiting these technologies is the life we want for our children. I want to explain 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.
What to focus on after exiting tech
If we’re fasting from technology, what are we feasting on instead? Let me give you the 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 we’re saying no to these screens. We want to work to get their buy-in so they can understand our rationale and be prepared for how to navigate these technologies as adults. 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. We can give our children dumb phones that allow them to call and text without introducing 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 we use technology in the home wisely. How can children use computers or a family enjoy television together? We want to think through our family screen 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. We want to have digital accountability in the home between parent and child to keep our children safe.
T: We trade the screens for real-life responsibilities and pursuits. 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 help them progress towards adulthood, not screens that stunt them from progressing towards adulthood.
Getting your kids’ buy-in
It’s important in living out this lifestyle in our families that as we’re restricting smartphones and social media, we’re working to get our kids buy-in and hearing them out if they have reasonable requests. All the families I spoke with said they wanted their children to understand the reasons and educate themselves on the harms. A lot of these children, when they realized what their parents were trying to protect them from, could understand why, even if they didn’t love it at the time. They recognized these restrictions came from a place of love and protection. As adults, these children say they’re grateful their parents made those decisions.
A key part of this is not starting with top-down restrictions out of nowhere, but starting with a conversation. Try to explain what you’ve come to observe and understand about the harms of these technologies and what you want to protect your child from. Do something together where you’re helping educate your children on these harms and the rationale behind these decisions. Many families shared that they read an article and talked about the harms of smartphones together. They tried to have a conversation and asked questions of their child.
Do you notice these effects among your peers? Do you notice how your peers or you are interacting with your phone? What do you notice? How do you feel about that? Try to engage children in a conversation about this in the context of a relationship where you’re walking these steps with your child. Come alongside them and explain what you’re trying to usher them into. What you want for them is a life of real-life relationships and friendships and connection and flourishing.
Exiting technology is part of ushering them into the life they want for themselves and the life you want for them. Many families said they watched the documentary “The Social Dilemma” with some of their teenagers. Once the teens realized the business model behind social media, that these platforms were trying to addict them and manipulate their behavior, they didn’t want any part of that. We as parents can be educators coming alongside our kids to have these conversations and expose the business model. We’re trying to keep them safe from these types of addictions because we want them to have a flourishing, thriving, successful life as children and as adults.
Another important piece of this was that these were constant conversations between parent and child. While the parents had certain non-negotiables, no smartphone or no social media, they wanted to accommodate children’s reasonable requests for staying in touch with their peers and having a social life. One family said they initially had their two sons sharing one of these dumb phones, but the older brother was getting annoyed by the texts his younger brother was getting. He said it made him miss communications from his baseball coach. He asked if he could get his own non-smartphone, and the parents said that made sense.
They still had parameters around it. He wasn’t going to take it with him around the neighborhood. It was going to mainly live at home. He could use it for general communication needs, but this wasn’t going to be a device tethered to him constantly. They stuck to their principles but accommodated his reasonable request. Another family mentioned their son had a dumb phone and was frustrated by its bad maps or lack of GPS. He was driving more and asked if he could have another phone that at least had better maps, a better GPS.
The parents said that made sense and tried to find a better non-smartphone alternative that could provide the tools he needed to drive well and navigate safely. It still didn’t have the dangers of social media or the internet on the phone constantly. Another mom mentioned they didn’t allow their son to have a smartphone or social media, but his classmates kept up through a Google chat group. He was allowed to go on a nightly basis and check that chat to stay in touch with his friends from school. Parents were accommodating 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. Digital detoxes work. A 30-day digital detox can reset the brain, and the desensitization to real world natural pleasures can be undone. The brain comes back to a normal balance and homeostasis, and they start to experience pleasures from the real world again. I have heard from family after family that thought it would be impossible.
They said, “I can’t picture dealing with my child without the smartphone or screen.” They reached a point of saying, “We see all these harms on our child, all these ill effects. We have to try it.” I encourage parents, if the tech exit seems daunting to do over the long term, start with a 30-day digital detox. Set aside 30 days on your calendar and get on board as a family with why you’re doing this. Detox from these screens for 30 days, and fill your calendar with non-screen activities.
Make this a team effort as a family that you’re doing together, and try to give children a vision for what you’re trying to do. Many families said for their teens it wasn’t too late to reverse course on the smartphone. Even their 14-year-old son came to see the effect that the smartphone had had on him by detoxing from it. He said, “I didn’t realize how much my phone had changed me or the power it had over me,” and he was able to exit these technologies even as a teenager. I encourage parents of teens, if you do take the smartphone away, give them an alternative phone where they can still communicate, text, and call, and think of real-world freedoms you can replace it with.
One family reversed course on a smartphone with their 17-year-old son. They had given him the smartphone and within a week saw the compulsive effects and said, “This was a mistake.” 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 it away.” They found it was necessary. When they took the smartphone away, they gave their son access to a truck.
He used that truck to start a moving business with his brother, gained responsibilities, and had a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that was more satisfying than the smartphone. They gave him a dumb phone instead, and the power of giving him more responsibility and freedom in the real world was a replacement for the smartphone. It is possible to reverse course even in the teen years. Their son going off to college said, “I’m 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 recognized it had this weird power over me.”
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. We’re using it purposefully, and we’re doing it together.
I don’t 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. 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.
I recognize the pressures toward using screens are only going to increase. Their peers don’t yet have smartphones. That is why I set out to interview families of teenagers who had teens now and who have successfully launched teens to college, to find out how they navigated these pressures when all of a sudden their children’s friends started getting smartphones or getting on social media apps. I also wanted to understand how they navigated when their children were required to use the internet more for school assignments. This is what helped me flesh out this framework. It’s not only taking the steps I can now with my young kids, not allowing interactive screen time, keeping passive screen time of the television to a rare occurrence we use together, and giving up my own smartphone.
It’s also how to 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. It’s never too early to explain to your children the dangers they could come across online. I recognize there’s only so much I can do in my power, that if other kids they’re around start to have smartphones or internet connected devices, they could be shown something.
With our kids, we use a book called “Good Pictures, Bad Pictures, Jr.” 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. I want my kids to have tools to know how to navigate that. From reading that book, they know that if they see something, they turn away and they run and they tell me, and we’re trying to open that conversation from a young age. I want my children to be able to come to me and talk about that. I saw with these families of teens that these constant conversations and open channels of communication meant the parent was the resource a child could go to if they came across something that made them feel uncomfortable online or if a friend showed them something.
What is a reasonable age for a smartphone?
It’s never too early to start these conversations, even for young parents. They will gradually deepen and be explained more fully as children grow into the tween and teen years. When I’m asked what a reasonable age for a smartphone is, I find it’s a complicated question. What I’ve seen in these families is that they’ve rejected the premise of inevitability, the idea that at some point a child must get one. Families draw these lines differently. Many said it wasn’t about age as much as signs of maturity and whether their child could handle it well.
Knowing your child is most important. In the example of the family that gave their 17-year-old a smartphone because they thought it was an appropriate age, they quickly observed compulsive behaviors and realized it wasn’t the right decision for him. Parents shouldn’t be afraid to say, “We made a mistake,” if they’re seeing addictive or compulsive behaviors. Watching your own child is the guiding principle. If those signs are there, it may be wise to undo the decision and wait longer.
Families have drawn lines in different places. Some chose senior year of high school to gradually introduce more responsibility before college. Others waited until college. Some incentivized their kids to stay on a dumb phone through college by paying for the phone plan and letting their child choose a smartphone later as an adult, with their own money. Those parents still felt they were in a guiding role even through the college years.
Part of the challenge with screen technologies is that the harms aren’t only individual. They change group social dynamics. Even if a child isn’t on the apps, a few peers using smartphones or social media can shift how relationships function and make kids feel left out, lonely, anxious, or depressed. Some parents push back by creating counter pressures, talking to neighbors and creating havens where kids can come home to play without phones. These spaces give children relief from the constant pull of screens.
In one suburb outside Washington, D.C., two moms started by talking across the street about the kind of childhood they wanted for their kids. They agreed they didn’t want phones and wanted their kids riding bikes together. That agreement created a positive vision that spread. Other kids started coming outside to play. Not every family shared the same tech restrictions, but they shared the same vision of childhood. The neighborhood became a place where kids played outside, worked through conflicts, rode bikes, and threw balls together.
That kind of environment draws more kids in. There is strength in numbers when parents talk to neighbors or a few families at school to create a positive social dynamic. It’s possible to create a neighborhood that feels like the 1970s, with no phones in sight and kids laughing and playing outside together. That energy becomes an antidote to screens.
Families who have exited tech told me their relationships are much closer. At the dinner table, they’re having real conversations instead of being distracted by phones. People aren’t mentally pulled away by what’s happening on a device. Taking tech away strengthened their family bonds. One mom said she thought giving her child a smartphone would reduce battles, but instead it introduced dozens more conflicts each day over time limits and enforcement. Removing the smartphone reduced tension and strengthened relationships.
These families fill their time with family walks, yard games, puzzles, board games, or watching a movie together intentionally. Many parents with smartphones say they can’t even watch a family movie without kids checking their devices. Without phones, entertainment becomes a shared experience again. Parents say they enjoy time together more, and children rediscover pleasure in real-world experiences that once felt boring.
Educators told me they can see the difference between students who have smartphones and those who don’t. Kids without smartphones make eye contact, engage in conversation, and are relational. Kids with smartphones often struggle with eye contact, feel anxious, and find real-life interaction difficult. The contrast is stark. Removing screens changes how children relate to others.
This lifestyle isn’t easy, and it can be more challenging depending on circumstances. Single parents, working parents, or families whose children have had smartphones for a long time may find it harder. Still, many parents facing those challenges took these steps and are grateful they did. There will be points of resistance, and some will be harder to overcome than others. It’s still one of the best things parents can do for their children.
Parents can start small. A week-long digital detox is a place to begin if 30 days feels overwhelming. Some families tried several shorter detoxes before committing to a longer one. Even a phone-free hour, meal, or walk helps children experience what life feels like without a phone. Schools can also play a role, and parents can advocate for phone-free school days. Many schools are eager to try these policies when parents support them.
Finding community support matters. Talking to friends, neighbors, or other parents can make this easier. After-school programs or extracurriculars that are phone-free can also help. Challenges exist, but they can be overcome. Taking small steps, starting conversations, and walking alongside your child makes this possible. On the other side of exiting tech is a flourishing life, and it can be done one step at a time.
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. They require collective solutions as a society. Schools can be a helpful force for change, helping parents push back against the harms of smartphones and social media by protecting students’ learning and social environment from the influence of these technologies. Schools are on the front lines as a level of collective solutions that can help parents.
On a broader level, policy changes can be helpful for providing collective solutions in the law to back parents up, both at the state level and the federal level. There has been a push to get screens into schools as a solution for educational inequalities and for helping children advance in education. It hasn’t panned out in the data. In the latest national study of academics in the U.S., scores for reading, math, and science are at their lowest levels since the 1970s. Despite the push for screens in schools, it has not resulted in better academic improvements.
The decline of reading scores
People like to point to the COVID pandemic as the reason for these low scores, but the decline goes back further than that. COVID and screen-based learning accelerated these trends, but starting back in 2012 we began seeing reading scores fall below where they had been for the last several decades. Now they’re returning to the lowest levels we’ve seen since the 1970s. Other research shows access to technology, including One Laptop per Child, did not notably improve educational outcomes or attainment. It did not lead to an increased likelihood of going to college or graduating high school. Putting a screen on every desk has not borne out in the data the results that were expected and hoped for.
Some of the science behind learning can explain why. Studies using MRI results show that children who read texts on a screen do not engage with them as deeply and do not comprehend as well as reading on paper. The same is true for learning ABCs, letters, writing, and language skills. Children learn literacy more when they write letters by hand than when they type or do an activity on a screen. Across these recent studies, paper proves to be better than the screen. Maryanne Wolf explains this is because screens encourage our brains to skim, with eyes naturally skimming on a screen rather than reading complete sentences. Reading on paper leads children to read more fully, comprehend more deeply, and develop fuller literacy.
We are seeing some schools return to using books and paper instead of screens. One of the most effective policy changes schools can make to support parents is getting rid of phones from the school day, not just during classroom time but from bell to bell. Studies show these smartphone bans are effective. Schools see improvements in academic scores, student relationships, and behavior. Some districts adopted these policies because of discipline issues, inappropriate behaviors on phones, bullying, or coordinating activities during the school day. Phones were disrupting not only the learning environment but the social environment and the pressure students felt about being constantly photographed and uploaded to social media.
Getting rid of phones from bell to bell improves students’ mental health and reduces discipline and behavioral issues. Students start talking with their teachers again and socializing during lunch, recess, and in hallways. It creates a more vibrant social environment. Since children’s main waking hours are spent at school, protecting not only the academic environment but the social environment is a powerful supporting force for parents opting out. More and more districts and individual schools are adopting bell-to-bell phone bans.
Some entire states have gone phone free during the school day and are seeing benefits. A study in London around 2016 found that GPAs rose and performance on national tests improved. The lowest performing students saw the greatest gains, with results doubling. This solution helps address educational achievement gaps more than handing every child a laptop. Getting phones out of the school day has had the greatest positive impact, especially for the lowest performing students. It also takes the burden off individual teachers by making it a top-down decision where phones are turned in at the start of the day or made inaccessible, protecting the learning and social environment so students can pay full attention to instruction.
Section 230 law
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 gives immunity to liability to platforms for the third-party content that they host. 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. The problem has been that this law has been overexpanded in its interpretation by courts to even immunize companies for their own wrongdoing. That includes their product design, their features, like the likes, the metrics, and the algorithms that aggressively promote content to kids.
This can look like a blackout challenge being dumped into a 10-year-old’s feed without even looking for it. It is sent to her by an algorithm, and she accidentally took her own life doing this blackout challenge. Lawsuits that parents have tried to bring for these harms, which 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.
It’s not necessarily a lot of regulation on the front end, but there is some means of holding companies accountable if their products are harming consumers. What’s been so challenging with the social media industry is that the 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. It’s important that those solutions keep in mind the First Amendment rights of adults.
One bucket of solutions is trying to reform Section 230 and open up more liability for holding these companies accountable. Federal bills like the Kids Online Safety Act, KOSA, were trying to do this, to provide more accountability by saying that companies can be held accountable for certain objective harms to kids from their product design, not related to content, but opening up more channels for litigation. That solution protects the First Amendment rights of adults while trying to open companies up to more liability and accountability.
Other solutions at the state level have focused on age verification and parental consent laws for social media accounts. It’s important to recognize there have been advances in age verification where this can be conducted by a third party. There is no revealing of personal information to the platform. States increasingly have digital IDs, and many of these programs have verification software where all you do is let the digital ID know you’re trying to access a website, and it generates a token telling the website you’re over 18. That’s the only information transmitted, just a signal of whether the person is above 18 or not.
No other personal identifying information is transferred, similar to a two-factor authentication method that takes about 30 seconds. The good uses of technology have been these advances in privacy-protecting, anonymous ways for adults to verify they are adults in the virtual world while protecting children. These solutions have already been applied to pornography websites. A similar approach could be taken to age-restrict social media out of childhood or to require parental consent so a parent is overseeing whether a child gets a social media account.
The current state of affairs is that any child can create a social media account, falsify a birth date, and a parent would never know. They can make an account, check a box, and they’re on. Solutions that give parents more involvement prevent children from entering contracts with giant tech companies that are extracting their time, attention, and data without a parent being part of that process. Many of these laws are trying to balance the First Amendment rights of adults and their privacy while protecting kids.
Social media companies and their algorithms are playing a role in facilitating child sexual abuse, exploitation, and human trafficking on the platforms. It’s been difficult to hold them accountable because of Section 230, but their algorithms have been shown to connect predators more easily with victims. The Wall Street Journal ran a story showing that Instagram is predators’ app of choice because algorithms help them find child sexual abuse material and locate victims.
An internal 2019 study that Meta conducted on Instagram found certain categories of accounts designated as “groomer accounts.” These were adults exhibiting grooming behaviors without crossing the line into illegal activity. Of the accounts recommended to these groomer accounts, 27% were minor accounts, while average adult accounts only received about 7% minor recommendations. This shows that social media companies themselves play a role, with algorithms making it easier for predators to find children.
Other internal research showed that for Instagram, 100,000 minors a day were receiving sexually explicit messages from adults. This was Meta’s own internal research. They have done nothing about it. The problem is that companies know their product design is resulting in harmful effects to children, and because there is no accountability in the law, there is no incentive to change the business model. They profit off user time and attention.
Their algorithms are producing harmful results for children, and there is no accountability for the role they play in facilitating these abuses of our kids.
The pornography epidemic
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. 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. 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.
We have to 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, extremely sexualized content being dumped by the algorithm into their feed. 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.
They have done investigative reporting to find that kids are quickly sucked into rabbit holes of more extreme content, that the feed becomes even more extreme over time. What’s happening is that the environment created on the social media accounts is hyper sexualized for kids. Teen girls think that this is how they garner more likes and followers, the more sexually suggested material that they post. It’s become very normalized. The message that the platforms send is that this type of sexual content is normal and that everyone is doing it.
It’s no surprise then that the effects this is having is now our teens, especially teen boys, are falling prey to these sextortion schemes. It’s because it’s become so normalized to send sexually explicit images and material to each other online. 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. Then it’s quickly revealed it’s a scheme and they’re being financially extorted, threatened that this is going to be posted all over social media if they don’t pay the money.
These sextortion cases have been increasing rapidly. Snapchat alone says they receive 10,000 reports of sextortion a month. That’s just one app. It’s probably under reported. Another survey found one in five teens said that they had been a victim of sextortion.
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. 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. He said, sadly, the young boys think that they should be aggressive and dominant. They should be with as many women as possible. The girls think that— they think that— on the other hand, they think that they should be dominated. Why is that normalized? Where are they getting these expectations? It’s through pornography.
Another young girl who has shared her story widely, she talks— she wrote a really compelling article about what she found when she encountered Pornhub accidentally as a 10 year old. 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. Over time, your brain builds up a tolerance. 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 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 the only means available to them to try to protect their children. Filters are ill-equipped for protecting children in this smartphone app-based ecosystem of technology that we now have. On a smartphone, there are hundreds of apps. Every app has its own in-app browser. Often, apps block external third-party controls or filters from operating with inside their apps.
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. 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. Often, a filter built for a web browser does not function well inside of apps. 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. Those haven’t been fixed or addressed. Parents lament to me how difficult it is to completely shut down all the portals of access to a child that a smart device introduces. The Supreme Court recognized this. The justices, even in their questioning over this recent case of a Texas age verification law for porn websites, focused on 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. Filters struggle to keep up with all the apps and in-app browsers. 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. 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.
There are necessary collective solutions that we already have had in the physical world. You can’t go to a brick-and-mortar store and purchase a pornographic magazine unless you verify you’re an adult. 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 bring the virtual world into alignment with the real world.
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. This provides a clear path forward for states to be able to legislate in this area, better able to protect children from online obscenity. This is a huge victory. It pushes back against the status quo of the last 20 years where it’s been only on parents to try to use filters to protect their kids. It provides this critical layer of backup and makes 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. One law doesn’t need to address every aspect of the problem. It 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. Just a couple buckets of solutions. At the state level, we’ve seen tremendous victories and progress over the last several years. Twenty-four states have passed successfully age verification for pornography websites laws to age restrict those portions of the internet that are extremely harmful for children.
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. Social media’s de facto age became 13 because these companies are collecting data. That’s their business model. Parents are completely cut out of the equation and there’s no real meaningful age enforcement or age verification. 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.
Giant tech companies are entering contracts with our kids without parents being part of that process. These state laws are trying to provide some type of age verification, parental consent for kids to get access to social media accounts. 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 passed out of the Senate in 2024, 91 to 3. Unfortunately it didn’t make it through the House before the Congress term expired.
I think that is looking like it will be raised again. It would put an obligation on the platforms to mitigate certain objective harms to kids in their product design. It opens 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. Utah and Texas have passed these App Store Accountability Acts, which are meant to put parents more in the driver’s seat over a child’s experience in the app store. It would require a parent’s consent for any app download or purchase. Efforts to bring our regulations and laws more into alignment with the state of the internet today and the harms of social media are trying to protect children. Efforts are exploring raising COPPA to the age of 15 instead of 13.
I also personally have been advocating for a national age restriction on social media. The country of Australia has done this, where they have banned social media for minors under 16. That provides that collective solution. Parents on their own aren’t having to say no to the pressures towards social media. It’s 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.
The ways that social media acts on the brain, like an addictive substance, we’ve likewise age restricted tobacco and alcohol out of childhood. 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. 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. The last several years, we see more and more states passing these laws. We see Congress on a bipartisan nature trying to find solutions that protect kids and empower parents in this digital age.
