Why I Refuse To Raise ‘Well Adjusted’ Kids

How tech is (re)designing our kids’ lives.

Dear Friends,

What I know for sure is…

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

This is my battle cry as I wage war on the digital vortex hijacking my children’s - all of our children’s - time and attention, physical and emotional development, and ability to think complexly and problem solve.

We are allowing the lives and minds of modern adolescents and young adults to be completely designed by their technology.

Think about it for a minute. How has your technology shaped your day to day existence?

We are expected to be reachable in relatively real time during all hours. We buy most of our personal products on them, ranging from groceries to clothes to cars. We schedule our workout classes, and often do said classes over our screens. We pay bills, log on for Telehealth, and order in dinner. We smile for the selfie, filter our faces, and curate our life for likes. We numb out watching, scrolling, posting, gaming, procrastinating. We flirt, looking for love or hookups. We can’t fathom leaving the house without our device(s).

The biggest designer of how we choose to live our lives resides in our pockets or handbags.

For better, yes, when we are the architects choosing clear parameters of what, when, and for how long we will use our devices. And for worse, absolutely, when our technology controls and corrupts us, stealing time away from what is truly important, killing our ability to literally sustain focus and think critically, and eroding our sleep, social connections, and physical activity.

For our children, pondering, hypothesizing, debating, persuading, critically examining has gone by the wayside preferring the ease and instant gratification of asking Siri, the web, or their AI of choice. Instant gratification is chipping away at the development of our children’s executive functions including impulse control, delayed gratification, and focus. Cognitive flexibility and self-regulation is being undermined.

Tech companies refer to their customers as users. Just as society calls those who do drugs by the same name: users. And it is no coincidence. Most apps activate the human brain in the same centers as substance addictions such as alcohol and cocaine.

Phones have become the number one drug of our choice.

Adam Alter, NYU professor and renown researcher on judgment, decision making and social psychology, points out,

“Children are especially vulnerable to addiction, because they lack the self-control that prevents many adults from developing addictive habits. Regulated societies respond by refusing to sell alcohol and cigarettes to children — but very few societies regulate behavioral addictions. Kids can still play with interactive tech for hours at a time, and they can still play video games as long as their parents will allow.”

That is to say, our children are no match for the armies of savant minds tasked with creating cheap, round-the-clock, dopamine addictive amusements. Nor for hyper personalized algorithms written to hook, distort, and distance, skewing our children into believing they are fragile and righteous.

Neil Postman’s thesis in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, posited that our downfall would come from our own voluntary surrender to pleasure derived from modern media.

Andrew Trousdale

, in The Price of Mass Amusement published this week in

After Babel

, explores and builds upon Neil Postman’s book, succinctly contending:

“When a new communication tool becomes widespread, society naturally embraces its most obvious benefits - often ignoring the hidden tradeoffs that subtly alter our psychology and culture.”

So what are our kids doing on their tech and for how long are they using it?

The key findings of a new report released this week by Common Sense Media show,

“That digital media habits for children age 8 and under are evolving. Forty percent of children have a tablet by age 2, and nearly 1 in 4 have a personal cellphone by age 8. While their screen time remains steady at about 2.5 hours per day, there has been a shift in how screen time is being used. Gaming time has surged 65% in four years, and traditional TV viewing has declined, while short-form video platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts are on the rise, underscoring the increasingly complex media environment that parents must navigate in their children's early years.”

According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,

“Children aged 8 - 12 in the United States spend an average of 4-6 hours per day watching or using screens, and teens spend up to 9 hours.”

And how is this use impacting or changing our children?

Here are just a few research findings:

“The fast pace and rewarding nature of TikTok can lead to a reduction in attention span, especially for tasks requiring sustained focus.” ¹

“Watching TV or playing video games for ≥1 hour per day is associated with obesity in adolescents who did not meet the guidelines for physical activity.”²

“Seven longitudinal studies revealed a significant association between screen time and myopia development among children and adolescents.”³

“Screen exposure, especially near bedtime, directly leads to poor sleep quality and hence has numerous adverse physical and psychological manifestations.”⁴

Brain rot, defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging,” has so insidiously become part of our cultural experience that it was selected as Oxford University Press’ Word of the Year for 2024.

Cal Newport’s thesis in his seminal book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World centers on how critical, while also simultaneously rare, it is for people today to be able to focus undistracted, and long enough, to think and work deeply on cognitively demanding tasks. The type of tasks that actually produce valuable output. Output that makes a difference. Output that drives complex problem solving, creative, original thought, and innovation, not to mention feelings of flow, accomplishment, and satisfaction. A sense of purpose and fulfillment.

Do our kids realize that they are designing their lives with their screens?

And why are we, our children’s stewards, their protectors, not shielding their wellbeing more stringently?

My 14 year old, left to his own devices (pun intended) would likely design his daily life to include copious amounts of time playing Brawl Stars and watching movies plus YouTube shorts. I understand. It’s fun, and even more powerfully, it’s addictive. To say nothing of the case that his peers are engaged heavily with it.

To which I repeat often,

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

As I swim against the tidal wave of digital norms, I often examine my rules, reasons, fears, and hopes around tech use for my son. A constant dialogue runs between me, myself, and I. Yes, I want to honor his adolescent need to have agency over how he designs his life. I also can’t ignore the crescendo of alarms. Our children’s digital enmeshment is hurting them.

So as unpopular as it is, I stay the course. Folding in the good and fun of tech, I also continue to insist he is very intentional about when he can use it, what he will do, and for how long.

Yours, in the trenches,

xoxo, Francesca

1. The Impact of TikTok’s Fast-Paced Content on Attention Span of Students, Preprints.org, January, 2, 2025

2. Association between screen time and obesity in US adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Using National Survey of Children’s Health 2016–2017, National Library of Medicine, December 2022

3. The Relationship Between Screen Time and Myopia in Children: A Narrative Review, International Journal of Clinical Science and Medical Research, December 11, 2024

4. The Adverse Impact of Excessive Smartphone Screen-Time on Sleep Quality Among Young Adults: A Prospective Cohort, National Library of Medicine, January - March 2021