Desperate To Unplug Kids

“10 Rules for Raising Kids In a High-Tech World

 

By Jean M. Twenge

 

Atria, 224 pages, $27

 

In the whirling madness that began when the smartphone achieved ubiquity around 2012, a great many parents did not know what to do. There was massive pressure to give children phones, laptops and tablets. Even schools were switching to portable screens.

 

There seemed no stopping the mass intoxication.

 

The American family reeled as children dwindled into crouched obsessives, scrolling and snapping and cultivating likes. It all felt too much, too fast, and not right, but many of us were knocked flat in the rush of events. We gave our children the addictive devices -- we were addicted to them ourselves -- and felt powerless to control the forces we had set loose in our own families.

 

It is convenient to say "we" but of course there were outliers. In the very teeth of the storm, the smartest couple I know had the wisdom to require everyone in their household, including themselves, to surrender their devices at 9 p.m. and put them to charge overnight in the master bedroom. In doing so, these parents removed the flashing connectivity that was wrecking sleep schedules, domestic harmony and peace of mind everywhere else. By the time my husband and I learned of their admirable practice, a worse one had taken hold for us. It is hard to justify now, but back then it seemed impracticable to claw back our family's time and tranquility. Tech devices migrated throughout the house, around the clock, and we let it happen.

 

While our family and countless others were struggling to find a tech-life balance, Jean Twenge was collecting data. Her research, at San Diego State University, pointed past the experience of individual children to their entire cohort.

 

Ms. Twenge was the first to document the degree to which devices and social media were shaping the children and teens of the early-2000s into a distinct, unhappy generation.

 

With the publication of her powerful 2017 book, "iGen," Ms. Twenge, a professor of psychology, became overnight one of the country's most important voices in the cultural conversation about youth and technology. In "10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World," she returns with breezy practical advice to help parents avoid the mistakes some of us made when we first grappled with the issue more than a decade ago. The book is heavy on bold-face prescription and relatively light on argument and anecdote, so it's more of a flip-through than a sit-down.

 

The advice is good, as far as it goes. In some respects, things are easier for parents now. There's a national move toward restoring a phone-free childhood (at least during school) thanks in part to research published by Ms. Twenge and campaigns by, among others, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and the free-range parenting advocate Lenore Skenazy. Groups such as Wait Until 8th, which encourages parents to delay giving their children smartphones until they finish middle school, and Away for the Day, which advocates cellphone-free schools, now exist to support those who want to reduce their children's access to technology. In the past decade, coders have created numerous apps that help mothers and fathers limit what sites their children can visit and for how long.

 

In other respects, though, parents have it harder. There's no escaping the screen now. Everything is online, artificial intelligence is here, children have proved to be nimble at parental-control workarounds, and unless you have the cash to send your boys and girls off to wilderness camps or tech-free private schools, you will be hard-pressed to keep them unplugged. And why should you? After all, we're all on devices now. Why shouldn't children and teens be too?

 

Ms. Twenge reminds us that with children "every single activity on a screen" is "linked to more unhappiness, and every single activity that didn't involve a screen" is "instead linked to less unhappiness -- and thus more happiness." She shows how teen tech use correlates with soaring rates of depression and plunging levels of adequate sleep and in-person socializing. With incidents from her own life -- she and her husband are raising three daughters -- she acknowledges how hard and unpleasant it can be to set limits. But she warns: "Until laws change or social norms shift, parents are the first and sometimes the only line of defense against devices taking over their children's lives."

 

About half of Ms. Twenge's recommendations are, as the saying goes, "actionable protocols" that families can put in place right away. These include committing to delaying giving children any devices of their own as long as possible -- no tablets, no gaming consoles, nada. The first phone, when it arrives, should be primitive. The first smartphone should only come when children have their driver's licenses (a twofer that postpones smartphone use while incentivizing independence). She favors installing parental controls, even though wily children can outwit them, on grounds that some thwarting is better than none at all. Other recommendations are gauzier, such as carving out no-tech family time and petitioning schools to go phone-free.

 

The best rule here, though, is the one I wish I'd imposed back in the day: "No electronic devices in the bedroom overnight." Its beauty is its simplicity. Getting the devices out means keeping out the importuning virtual world, with its entertainers and weirdos and cyberbullies, and creating space for psychic and physical rest. Of course, simple and beautiful things can have their own complexities. Even my virtuous friends sometimes had trouble when they tried to collect the goods at 9 p.m. "But I'm finishing a paper," a straight-A teen might say, in which case they would relent. Ms. Twenge approves of such flexibility: "It makes sense to give an occasional extension for homework. But if it's every night, you should probably have a discussion about time management with your kid."

 

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Mrs. Gurdon, a Journal contributor, is the author of "The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction."” [1]

 

1. Desperate To Unplug. Meghan Cox Gurdon.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 10 Oct 2025: A13.