Hey friends,
It's been a few weeks and things may look different around here. We took a break from sending in order to revamp our newsletter.
Here’s what you can expect each week moving forward:
📰 A roundup of tech news
👍 Practical screen time habits
🥳 Something fun
Here we go!
These three stories popped up for me this week, unrelated to one another. Alone, each has something to say. Together, they tell a story. I'll unpack my thoughts in “The Reset” below.
83% of parents think kids' mental health is getting worse. A new Mott poll found social media and screen time now rank as top child health concerns above obesity, bullying, and drug use.
Johns Hopkins weighed in. The Bloomberg School of Public Health published a February briefing on the current science, showing where the evidence on social media and youth mental health is strong and where it's still murky.
Virginia puts a clock on it. Kids under 16 in Virginia are now capped at one hour per day on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. First law in the U.S. to put a hard time limit on social media companies directly.
Those three stories listed above crossed my feed this week. No connection between them. But I keep seeing a pattern and can’t stop thinking about the way they’re all connected… (not to sound like a conspiracy theory guy or anything).
But notice the pattern.
Parents and educators are alarmed at a problem.
Research eventually confirms what they fear.
The government finally starts to respond.
That's usually how systemic change works: someone feels it first, science confirms it, then policy responds.
We should celebrate that progress.
Something like this gives parents backup at a governmental/institutional level. Like smoking and drinking, they can say, “Our society agrees that kids aren’t legally allowed to use this because of how it can harm them.” That changes the conversation for parents.
But here are three reasons laws can’t replace the role of parents and teachers in this fight.
1. Policy change takes years
Parents figured most of this out years before a Johns Hopkins briefing.
Eighty-three percent of parents ranked screen time above obesity, bullying, and drug use as their top health concern in a national poll. They've been watching this for a while. Johns Hopkins eventually mapped the science but that briefing only landed in February.
Your kid's formative years don't pause while we wait for the research to publish and the law to pass.
2. These laws are nearly impossible to enforce
The law's biggest weakness is a dropdown menu.
Virginia's new measure requires social media platforms to verify users' ages using "neutral and commercially reasonable methods," but that definition is dangerously vague, and what actually passes for age verification on the internet today is usually a form that asks your birthday. A kid who wants around it can lie in about three seconds.
Don’t get me wrong. The law is a genuine step forward, but parents who've already locked down their kids' accounts get the most from it.
Its reach only extends as far as a parent's involvement does.
3. Business pressures on the US government
Australia, Spain, and the UK have all either passed or are actively pursuing social media restrictions for minors, and those laws are sticking.
America will almost certainly be the last country to catch up, and the reason is straightforward. Meta and Google are American companies with enormous lobbying power. NetChoice, a lobbying group that represents those companies, has already filed a lawsuit in Virginia arguing that limiting minors' screen time violates free speech. They've won similar challenges in other states.
When the companies being regulated are also among the most powerful lobbying forces in the country, the law won’t go unchallenged.
This feels like a step in the right direction. I’m glad laws are getting passed and how sets precedence moving forward.
But bottom line… the job of protecting kids still falls on the parents and teachers in their actual lives.
The goal is a kid who puts the phone down because they want to.
Laws can't enforce kids to have that kind of self control, but maybe loving parents and mentors can empower them to.
A few things we did this week that had little to do with work and everything to do with why this stuff matters.
🎬️ Over spring break, our family went to see The Pout-Pout Fish in theaters… it was not terrible. I think the kids liked it at least, haha.
🚵 We also built a bike ramp out of an old workbench top and some 2×4s. My son was obsessed and we kept adding obstacles to jump over.
📱 Should you set screen time limits for your kids?
Most parenting advice on screens falls into two camps: total ban or total surrender. Neither actually helps.
The Practical Parenting: Screen Time Series is a short video course that cuts through the noise with real science — so you can stop second-guessing every swipe and start making decisions you actually feel good about.
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