Whether to get your little kid an iPad, or get your middle-schooler an iPhone, or let your high schooler be an Instragrammer or sleep with her phone under her pillow, might seem like it’s technology’s question to answer. It might seem like another bland dictate from the governing power you have to go along with, but it isn’t. You don’t. You can answer that question yourself.
And grasping that you have this power, you might find the reasons for exercising it more persuasive. You don’t have to wait for Science’s final dredging of the statistics on whether social media is the true cause of the unhealthy outcomes. That people have designed the popular social media apps to circumvent your children’s human intelligence and induce repetitive rodent behavior in them to make money for themselves is bad enough. You don’t need to wait for Science to tell you this causes depression in them. It should cause depression in you.