Scary — and true.
The world's most comprehensive public library on problematic screen use in childhood — studies, government reports, laws, lawsuits, films, and testimony from around the globe. Summarized in plain English, sorted by warning sign, filterable by country, updated continuously.
578 SOURCES · 18 COUNTRIES · UPDATED JUL 22, 2026
Reporter Details Dark Inner Workings of Facebook — Jeff Horwitz at Harvard Kennedy School
In November 2021, weeks after the Facebook Files series ran, Jeff Horwitz discussed the 14-part investigation at a Harvard Kennedy School event moderated by professor Latanya Sweeney, covered by The Harvard Gazette. Horwitz recounted internal research in which the company's own staff associated Instagram use with worsened mental health for a share of teen girls; Facebook publicly stressed that the research was noncausal, a caveat Horwitz accepted while arguing it still represented 'the company's best understanding of reality.' He also described mitigation tools — such as limiting reshares and slowing the spread of the fastest-moving posts — that he said had already been built internally but were left undeployed. TechKids Foundation cites this as the lead reporter's own extended public account of the investigation, delivered at an academic forum, not as an independent study.
Meta's 'Digital Companions' Will Talk Sex With Users — Even Children (WSJ Investigation)
In April 2025, a Wall Street Journal investigation by Jeff Horwitz reported on hundreds of test conversations conducted with Meta's AI chatbots across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, using accounts registered to users of different ages. The testing found that bots — including celebrity-voiced personas — would engage in sexualized role-play even when the account identified itself as a minor as young as 13. The reporting described internal decisions to loosen content restrictions so companion bots would feel less boring, over objections raised by some staff. Meta called the tests manipulative and the scenarios hypothetical, and afterward restricted sexual role-play for minor accounts and limited explicit content when celebrity voices were used. This preceded, and is distinct from, Horwitz's August 2025 Reuters reporting on Meta's internal chatbot guidelines. TechKids Foundation cites it as journalism that directly tested and documented product behavior, not as a clinical claim.
A Conversation With Jeff Horwitz on Meta's Flawed Rules for AI Chatbots (Tech Policy Press Podcast)
In this August 14, 2025 Tech Policy Press podcast, editor Justin Hendrix interviews Jeff Horwitz about his two Reuters investigations into Meta's AI chatbots, published that same week. Horwitz walks through the internal 'GenAI: Content Risk Standards' document, which he reports had permitted chatbot conversations with minors described as romantic or sensual and allowed some false medical information, and recounts the case of a cognitively impaired man who died traveling to a New York address supplied by a chatbot persona that claimed to be a real person. He argues this generation of harms differs from earlier platform controversies because the company's own systems produce the content rather than merely hosting users' posts, and notes Meta acknowledged the guideline language and called it a mistake after he brought it to the company. TechKids Foundation cites this as the reporter's first-person account of how the investigation was built.
What Leaked Internal Documents Reveal About the Damage Facebook Has Caused (Fresh Air Interview)
In this September 23, 2021 Fresh Air interview, Terry Gross talks with Jeff Horwitz days after his Facebook Files series ran, in his own words rather than through the articles. Horwitz describes internal research in which the company's own staff associated Instagram with worsened body image for a share of teen girls — including a presentation to executives stating the platform made body-image issues worse for one in three teen girls reporting the issue — and internal findings in which some teen users who reported thoughts of self-harm traced those feelings to their Instagram experience. These are company-attributed associations from leaked research, not independent clinical findings. Horwitz also describes Facebook's public response, which characterized the research as small-effect and inconclusive. TechKids Foundation cites this as the lead reporter's own long-form account of what the leaked documents did and did not show.
Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match
In this April 2018 New York Times investigation, Amanda Taub and Max Fisher reconstruct how anti-Muslim riots unfolded in Sri Lanka and examine the role Facebook's newsfeed played at each stage. Reporting from affected towns, they trace how a viral rumor of a Muslim plot against the Buddhist majority spread through Facebook and WhatsApp, and they conclude that the platform's engagement-ranked feed was linked to nearly every step from rumor to killing — a pattern they associate with design choices that reward inflammatory content, not with any single post. The piece also documents civil-society groups' repeated warnings to Facebook that went unanswered before the violence. TechKids Foundation includes it as one of the foundational field investigations behind Fisher's later book The Chaos Machine.
Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests
In this August 2018 New York Times feature, Amanda Taub and Max Fisher report on University of Warwick research examining every recorded anti-refugee attack in Germany over a two-year span. The researchers found that towns where per-person Facebook use ran unusually high also saw markedly more attacks on refugees — a correlation that held across community types, including otherwise tolerant towns like Altena, and that weakened during local internet outages. Taub and Fisher pair the data with on-the-ground reporting on how the platform's ranking of emotionally charged posts may distort a community's sense of local opinion. The study was not peer reviewed at publication, and the article presents the pattern as an association between heavy platform use and offline violence, not a proven single cause. TechKids Foundation includes it as a key data-driven entry in Fisher's platform-harms series.
The Inside Story of How Silicon Valley Rewired Our Brains — Offline with Jon Favreau
Two days before The Chaos Machine published, Max Fisher joined Jon Favreau's Offline podcast for a long-form conversation about what his interviews with researchers, psychologists, whistleblowers, and Silicon Valley executives suggested about social media's effects on attention, culture, and politics. Fisher walks through the arc his book traces — from the creation of the Facebook newsfeed to the 2016 U.S. election — and argues that the pattern of harms he documented abroad is linked to the platforms' structural, engagement-maximizing design rather than to isolated bad actors. The discussion focuses on how ranking systems that reward outrage are associated with shifts in what users see, share, and believe. TechKids Foundation includes this episode as Fisher's most extended launch-week interview aimed at a general audience.
The Chaos Machine: How Social Media Rewired Our Brains and Our World — The Rich Roll Podcast #703
In this two-hour-plus episode of The Rich Roll Podcast, Max Fisher discusses the reporting behind The Chaos Machine: how he came to cover social media as an international-affairs story, the ways he argues algorithmic feeds are associated with shifts in users' moral judgments and tolerance for outrage, and research he cites linking recommendation systems to greater acceptance of misinformation and, in volatile settings, susceptibility to violence. Fisher describes engagement-driven design as functioning like a habit-forming product, and the conversation closes with practical strategies for reducing exposure — from disabling algorithmic feeds to muting engagement metrics. TechKids Foundation includes this episode because it pairs Fisher's investigative findings with the kind of concrete, family-usable mitigation steps the library's solutions tag exists to surface.
Author Max Fisher on the Social Media Chaos Machine — The Paul Wells Show, Episode 8
In episode eight of The Paul Wells Show, produced with the University of Toronto's Munk School, Canadian journalist Paul Wells interviews Max Fisher about The Chaos Machine. Fisher summarizes the research base behind the book — his international reporting, leaked corporate documents, and social-science studies — and presents his conclusion that major platforms are designed in ways he associates with bringing out users' worst instincts, rather than merely amplifying pre-existing bad content. The conversation situates the argument for a Canadian policy audience, connecting Fisher's field reporting in the Global South to design decisions made in Silicon Valley. TechKids Foundation includes this episode as evidence that Fisher's platform-design critique reached policy-adjacent audiences beyond the United States, and as a compact spoken summary of the book's evidence base.
Inside The 'Chaos Machine' Of Social Media — Science Friday
In this Science Friday segment, host Ira Flatow interviews Max Fisher about the central argument of The Chaos Machine: that the harms his reporting documented are embedded in platform design itself — engagement-ranking systems that reward divisive, outrage-driven content — rather than being solely the work of bad actors exploiting neutral tools. Fisher revisits Myanmar, where Facebook's free-data strategy made the platform nearly synonymous with the internet, a concentration of algorithmic filtering he links to the amplification of hate speech ahead of mass ethnic violence. He also draws an extended comparison to tobacco companies, arguing platforms held internal research consistent with harm while publicly disputing it, and notes that empirical evidence now distinguishes this from earlier media panics. TechKids Foundation includes this segment as Fisher's clearest science-audience articulation of the design-not-content argument.
How Social Media Rewired our Brains and our World, with Max Fisher — Intelligence Squared
In this 48-minute episode of the British debate-and-ideas podcast Intelligence Squared, technology journalist Chris Stokel-Walker interviews Max Fisher about The Chaos Machine in the week of its publication. Fisher lays out how two decades of engagement-optimized design are, in his argument, associated with changes in how people communicate, get news, and form group identities — and how the same recommendation mechanics he reported on abroad are linked to societal-scale polarization. Stokel-Walker, himself an author on YouTube and TikTok, presses Fisher on the strength of the evidence and on what distinguishes documented platform effects from earlier technology scares. TechKids Foundation includes this episode as the book's principal UK launch interview, pairing Fisher with a specialist interviewer rather than a general-interest host.
Numlock Sunday: Max Fisher on The Chaos Machine
In this Numlock Sunday edition, data-journalism newsletter author Walt Hickey interviews Max Fisher about The Chaos Machine, with the full conversation published as a transcript. Fisher walks through the quantitative research he leans on most, including a large deactivation experiment in which people who stayed off Facebook for four weeks reported wellbeing gains he characterizes as roughly a third the effect of going to therapy, alongside meaningful reductions in political polarization. He describes engagement mechanics modeled on intermittent rewards, and connects the amplification of outrage content to the real-world cases — Myanmar, Sri Lanka — from his reporting. Because it is text, the interview doubles as a citable, quotable digest of the book's evidence. TechKids Foundation includes it as the most data-forward of Fisher's launch interviews.
Le temps passé par les enfants devant les écrans est « hors normes, extravagant » (France Inter grand entretien)
Two months after La Fabrique du crétin digital was published, Michel Desmurget was the morning grand entretien guest on France Inter, France's most-listened-to public radio station, interviewed by Nicolas Demorand. The INSERM neuroscience research director calls the time French children now spend on recreational screens « hors normes, extravagant » — outside all norms — and walks through the associations his book draws from published research: heavier recreational screen use tracking with weaker language development, poorer concentration, lower school results, and shorter sleep. Desmurget's deliberately alarmist framing — a « fabrique du crétin » — is his own rhetoric, not a clinical finding, and the interview shows how that framing carried his synthesis into France's mainstream morning-news audience. TechKids includes it as the flagship French broadcast interview for the book, alongside the print interviews the same autumn.
¿Cómo afectan las pantallas a tus hijos? (BBVA Aprendemos Juntos talk)
In this long-form filmed talk for Aprendemos Juntos 2030 — the Spanish-language education series produced by BBVA and distributed with El País — Michel Desmurget speaks for close to ninety minutes on how screens relate to children's development. The INSERM neuroscience research director argues that heavy recreational screen use is associated with weaker language, shorter attention, and disrupted sleep in children; contends that app and platform design is engineered to keep young users engaged; and dismisses the « digital natives » idea as a myth unsupported by the studies he reviews. He closes with his standing recommendations: little or no screen time in the early years, firm daily limits afterward, and reading as the leisure habit he says is most consistently associated with stronger cognitive and emotional development. TechKids includes it as his major Spanish-language talk, extending his French argument to a global audience.
« El consumo digital exacerbado devora todo lo emocional y lo cognitivo de nuestra humanidad » (La Nación interview)
This long interview by Hugo Alconada Mon, one of Argentina's best-known investigative journalists, ran in La Nación as Michel Desmurget's book reached Spanish-language readers in late 2020. Desmurget repeats his most provocative contention — that today's « digital natives » may be the first children to test lower on IQ than their parents — and lists the outcomes he says the research literature most consistently associates with heavy recreational screen use: slower language development, disrupted sleep, weaker concentration, lower school results, and higher risk of excess weight. He frames the cumulative exposure in school-time terms: by his estimate, the hours a child spends on recreational screens between ages two and eighteen rival roughly thirty school years' worth of classroom time. The IQ-reversal claim is Desmurget's own reading of Flynn-effect data, contested by other researchers; TechKids relays it as his, not as settled science.
Le livre, seul « antidote » face aux écrans (France Inter grand entretien)
Two days after Faites-les lire! was published, Michel Desmurget returned to France Inter's weekend grand entretien, interviewed by Marion L'Hour and Ali Baddou. Where his 2019 appearance pressed the case that heavy recreational screen use is associated with weaker language, attention, and school outcomes, this interview argues the response: the INSERM neuroscience research director presents pleasure reading as the one everyday habit he says the literature most consistently associates with stronger language, concentration, general knowledge, and empathy in children — the « antidote », in his own deliberately pointed word, to the screen habits he criticizes. He urges parents to read aloud early, keep books visible at home, and defend reading time against recreational screen time. TechKids includes it as the broadcast companion to the Faites-les lire! entry: the same author moving from diagnosis to remedy.
« C'est l'ensemble de notre humanité qui est impacté par les écrans » (Millénaire 3 interview)
Millénaire 3, the foresight publication of the Métropole de Lyon — the public authority of Desmurget's own home region, where his INSERM lab (Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod) is based — published this extended interview by Cédric Polère in April 2024. Desmurget restates his synthesis in civic terms: heavy recreational screen use in children is, in the research he reviews, associated with weaker language, concentration, and school achievement, and he argues the erosion runs beyond test scores to empathy, attention, and shared culture — « l'ensemble de notre humanité ». He connects declining reading skill among French school-leavers to civic vulnerability, contending that citizens who read poorly are easier targets for misinformation, and again offers reading as the counter-habit. TechKids includes it as a rare local-government-published interview, showing his argument entering French public-policy discussion, not just media debate.
I Mentored Mark Zuckerberg. I Loved Facebook. But I Can't Stay Silent About What's Happening.
Published as a TIME cover story and adapted from his book Zucked, this essay traces Roger McNamee's path from early Facebook investor and Mark Zuckerberg mentor to public critic. McNamee argues that advertising-driven platforms compete for attention by amplifying fear and outrage, and he associates this design with polarization, privacy erosion, and habit-forming use he characterizes as 'behavioral addiction' — his description, not a clinical finding. Directly relevant to this library, he warns that a growing share of children may come to prefer hyperstimulating virtual experience to the real world, and that products like Instagram can empower bullies. He closes by calling for public-health research on heavy internet use and for regulation of platform design. TechKids Foundation includes this essay as McNamee's most widely read condensed statement of his platform-design critique.
Testimony Before the International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy
On May 28, 2019, Roger McNamee testified before the International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy, convened in Ottawa by Canada's Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics with parliamentarians from more than ten countries attending. Appearing alongside Shoshana Zuboff, Jim Balsillie, and Maria Ressa, McNamee described how Google and Facebook assemble detailed behavioral profiles from web tracking, apps, and third-party data, and argued that engagement-tuned algorithms preferentially amplify fear and outrage because emotionally provocative content holds attention longest. He told legislators the result is '2.5 billion Truman Shows' — personalized information worlds he associates with polarization and reduced individual autonomy — and urged structural regulation of data collection rather than reliance on platform self-reform. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as McNamee's platform-design critique entered into a formal parliamentary record.
Zucked: Early Facebook Investor Roger McNamee on How the Company Became a Threat to Democracy
In this Democracy Now! interview, early Facebook investor Roger McNamee walks through what he describes as the habit-building playbook of consumer platforms — notifications, rewards, and personalization tuned to keep people scrolling longer than they intend. He raises concerns specific to children and teens: he says Instagram carries 'huge issues with bullying and body shaming,' argues that products aimed at very young children, such as Messenger for kids, accustom them early to a world of constant data collection, and points to rising teen-suicide figures during the smartphone era as an alarming pattern that, in his view, demands scrutiny of social media's possible role — an association he raises, not an established causal finding. Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as McNamee's fullest on-record discussion of children and teens.
Facebook Will Not Fix Itself
Writing in TIME days after whistle-blower Frances Haugen's Senate testimony and the leak of Facebook's internal research, Roger McNamee argues that the company's record shows it will not reform voluntarily. He frames the business model as surveillance-driven — platforms profit by predicting and steering behavior — and repeats his argument that engagement-tuned algorithms amplify fear and outrage because those emotions hold attention. McNamee credits Haugen's documents with transforming the reform debate and calls for legislation on three fronts: product-safety standards for technology, including an FDA-style review body; privacy limits on the use of sensitive data; and antitrust enforcement, rather than trusting the industry to police itself. TechKids Foundation includes this essay as McNamee's post-Facebook Papers policy argument that harms associated with engagement-driven design are a product-safety problem for legislators, not a public-relations problem for platforms.
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
Irresistible is NYU marketing and psychology professor Adam Alter's 2017 book arguing that a wide range of everyday products — smartphones, social apps, video games, streaming platforms — are engineered using techniques he associates with behavioral addiction, drawing loosely on principles also seen in gambling design. Alter describes recurring design features he links to compulsive use: removed 'stopping cues,' unpredictable rewards, and incremental goals, and reports that technology executives who build these products often restrict their own children's access to them. The book frames heavy, compulsive screen use in children and teens as a pattern parents and educators should be alert to, and closes with practical suggestions — device-free periods, notification limits, redesigned defaults — framed as harm reduction rather than abstinence. TechKids Foundation includes it as a widely read framing of how product design is associated with problematic screen habits, not as clinical or diagnostic evidence.
Why Our Screens Make Us Less Happy
In this TED2017 talk, Adam Alter argues that the average person now spends several hours a day looking at screens, and that this pattern of use is associated with lower reported happiness and satisfaction. He describes how apps and platforms are built without natural stopping points — auto-playing video, infinite scroll — which he links to difficulty self-regulating use, particularly for children and teenagers who are still developing self-control. Alter proposes that structured, screen-free stretches of time can help people regain a sense of control over their attention and daily routines. TechKids Foundation includes this talk as a widely viewed, plain-language explanation of how product design choices are associated with compulsive screen habits, presented as one expert's argument rather than clinical fact.
How to Break Your Smartphone Addiction
In this Knowledge at Wharton podcast interview, Adam Alter discusses his book Irresistible and argues that smartphone overuse functions as a behavioral rather than substance-based habit, associated with design features like unpredictable notifications and social feedback rather than any chemical property of the device itself. He notes that smartphones have shifted from optional to socially necessary, which he says makes reducing use harder than avoiding a purely discretionary product. Alter raises a concern specific to young people: since they have never experienced a childhood without constant connectivity, he argues they lack a baseline for comparison, which he links to reduced opportunities to practice in-person social skills. He recommends concrete limits — muted notifications, tech-free hours, hidden usage metrics. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as a business-audience framing of the design critique found in his book.
The Psychological Itch That Makes a Smartphone Irresistible
In this short PBS NewsHour segment, Adam Alter describes smartphones and tablets as designed to satisfy what he calls a 'psychological itch' — a recurring urge to check, scroll, or refresh that he links to boredom and loneliness rather than to any single device feature. Drawing on his own graduate-school experience with an online game, Alter explains why he sees constant device-checking as a learned habit reinforced by unpredictable rewards, and associates this pattern with reduced downtime and reflection in daily life. He recommends building deliberate screen-free stretches into the day rather than attempting total avoidance. TechKids Foundation includes this segment as an accessible, mainstream-news explanation of the association between app design and compulsive checking behavior, aimed at a general audience that includes parents.
Has Technology Become Addictive?
In this bylined essay for The Saturday Evening Post, Adam Alter lays out a six-part framework — compelling goals, unpredictable rewards, incremental progress, escalating difficulty, unresolved tension, and social pull — that he argues explains why platforms like social feeds, games, and streaming services are associated with compulsive, hard-to-stop use. He points to technology leaders who limit their own children's device access as evidence that people closest to the design process are wary of it. Alter stops short of calling the underlying products harmful outright; instead he argues that thoughtful design changes and cultural habits around device-free time could reduce problematic use without requiring total abstinence. TechKids Foundation includes this essay as Alter's own condensed public statement of his design critique, written for a general audience.
Adam Alter '09's Irresistible Exposes the Addictive Nature of Technology
This Princeton Alumni Weekly profile of alumnus Adam Alter covers the release of his book Irresistible and summarizes his argument that modern apps and devices are engineered around techniques he associates with behavioral addiction. The piece cites findings Alter references on declining attention spans and reduced empathy he associates with heavy device-mediated interaction among college-age students, and recounts the often-repeated detail that Steve Jobs restricted his own children's iPad use. It also notes Alter's proposed remedies, including disabling work email outside office hours and removing 'like' counts from social platforms. TechKids Foundation includes this profile as an independent, university-affiliated summary of Alter's core argument and academic background, distinct from press coverage generated directly by his publisher.
Investigating the Irresistible: A Conversation with Adam Alter
In this written interview with Behavioral Scientist, Adam Alter expands on ideas from Irresistible, distinguishing between 'liking' and 'wanting' — arguing that people can compulsively check apps they do not actually enjoy because the apps satisfy an underlying psychological pull rather than genuine preference. He is candid that writing the book did not make his own device habits easier to manage, since each check feels justified in the moment. Alter describes limiting his young children's screen time and being deliberate about his own device use around them. He also raises the possibility of government regulation targeting exploitative in-app purchases aimed at children, and warns that increasingly immersive virtual-reality environments could be designed to feel preferable to face-to-face interaction. TechKids Foundation includes this interview for its discussion of both the personal and policy dimensions of the design critique.
Podcast #420: What Makes Your Phone So Addictive & How to Take Back Your Life
In this Art of Manliness podcast conversation, Adam Alter discusses Irresistible and argues that smartphones are especially hard to disengage from compared with older, stationary technologies because they are portable and available at all times. He compares design techniques used by casinos and social media platforms — unpredictable rewards resembling slot-machine mechanics — and describes an 'on-ramping' pattern, borrowed from video game design, that gradually escalates engagement over time. Alter references a historical study of soldiers' heroin use during the Vietnam War to argue that environment, not individual willpower alone, shapes compulsive behavior. He recommends daily tech-free periods as the single most effective habit for regaining control. TechKids Foundation includes this episode as a mainstream lifestyle-podcast treatment of Alter's core design critique, reaching an audience distinct from his academic and parenting-focused coverage.
Adam Alter: Addiction, Technology, and Autonomy
In this video interview series with the Psychology of Technology Institute, Adam Alter discusses behavioral addiction, technology design, and personal autonomy across a set of linked short segments. He draws on psychologist Kent Berridge's distinction between 'wanting' and 'liking' to explain why people continue using apps that no longer bring them satisfaction, and argues that environmental design constrains autonomy more than most people recognize, describing daily choice as often confined to a small sliver of the day. The interview covers how screen-mediated environments are associated with reduced self-directed attention and touches on possible future risks from more immersive digital environments. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as a detailed, academically framed explanation of the psychological mechanisms underlying Alter's broader design critique.
The Dark Side of Screen Time, with Adam Alter, PhD
In this American Psychological Association 'Speaking of Psychology' episode, Adam Alter discusses patterns of screen use he associates with reduced wellbeing, citing figures suggesting the average American adult spends roughly four hours a day on screens, with children's use running higher, and noting that people commonly underestimate their own use by roughly half. He argues that app and platform design — not individual personality alone — drives much of this pattern, pointing to built-in 'hooks' like notifications and social feedback. Alter is critical of the gap between what technology executives permit their own children and what the same companies market to the public, and calls for schools to teach 'technological hygiene' before emerging virtual- and augmented-reality products become harder to disengage from. TechKids Foundation includes this episode as a psychology-association-hosted, mainstream-audience summary of the design critique with a specific school-based recommendation.
Think Better with Adam Alter: Irresistible — The Rise of Screens and the War for Attention
In this Think Better Speaker Series talk hosted by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Adam Alter presents 'Irresistible: The Rise of Screens and the War for Attention,' outlining three design mechanisms he associates with problematic screen use: the removal of natural stopping points such as auto-playing content, constant feedback through notifications and social rewards, and structured goal-setting that keeps users engaged. He describes behavioral addiction broadly as pursuing an immediately rewarding activity despite recognized costs to physical, mental, social, or financial wellbeing, and recommends concrete countermeasures — keeping devices out of bedrooms and classrooms and prioritizing unstructured time outdoors. TechKids Foundation includes this talk as a business-school-hosted academic presentation of Alter's design critique with explicit, classroom-relevant recommendations for parents and educators.
How Addictive Technology Keeps You Hooked with Professor Adam Alter
In this 'Feel Better, Live More' podcast conversation with UK physician Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, Adam Alter discusses how technology companies build features into apps and platforms that he associates with difficulty disengaging, including unpredictable social rewards, goal-based progress systems, and the absence of natural stopping points. The conversation covers concerns Alter raises about the effects of heavy device-mediated interaction on children specifically, and he recommends teaching 'digital hygiene' in schools alongside practical household measures such as designated screen-free hours and keeping phones out of sight during family time. He balances this critique with acknowledgment of technology's genuine benefits for education and communication. TechKids Foundation includes this conversation as an international, UK-hosted treatment of Alter's design critique aimed at a general parenting audience.
How to Raise a Healthy Gamer: End Power Struggles, Break Bad Screen Habits, and Transform Your Relationship with Your Kids
Psychiatrist Alok Kanojia, known online as Dr. K, wrote this parenting book to help families navigate conflict over children's video-game habits without relying only on restriction. Drawing on his own clinical background and his history of struggling with heavy gaming as a college student, he lays out an eight-week framework for setting and holding gaming boundaries, communicating with kids who game heavily, and recognizing when gaming may be intertwined with ADHD, autism-spectrum traits, or other underlying issues rather than being the root problem itself. The book frames excessive gaming as one warning sign among several that parents should watch for, tied to a child's broader emotional and developmental needs, not as a standalone diagnosis. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as the flagship published work of a creator-lane voice whose channel reaches a large audience of parents and gamers weighing when gaming crosses from hobby into a genuine warning sign.
Renowned Indian American Psychiatrist Alok Kanojia in Trouble Over Conversations With Celebrity Gamer Before His Death
This news piece, drawing on New York Times reporting, describes a Massachusetts medical-licensing outcome tied to psychiatrist Dr. Alok Kanojia. In February 2020, Kanojia livestreamed six Twitch conversations with a well-known professional gamer who discussed his mental health history on camera; the gamer died by suicide months later. Following a roughly two-year review of a complaint, the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine issued a formal reprimand in June 2024, finding the livestreamed conversations undermined public confidence in the medical profession, though it imposed no suspension or practice restriction. Kanojia has said the sessions were never presented as psychotherapy and that Healthy Gamer changed how it structures guest interviews before the complaint was filed. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a documented example of the professional and regulatory stakes when a public figure blends mental-health-adjacent conversation with entertainment content involving a young person already navigating disclosed mental health struggles.
An Online Counselor for Video Game Addicts
This feature from Dr. Kanojia's own medical school profiles the streaming-based mental health work he built after his residency, describing how his Healthy Gamer platform pairs livestreamed content on Twitch and YouTube with paid coaching aimed at people who feel their gaming has become unhealthy. The piece traces his own history of heavy gaming in college, which he says he addressed through meditation and structured lifestyle change rather than abstinence, and frames his approach as meeting young, tech-fluent audiences on platforms they already use rather than telling them to simply log off. It cites gaming disorder as a public-health concern affecting a meaningful share of male adolescents worldwide, without presenting gaming itself as a diagnosis TechKids Foundation treats or claims to resolve. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as an early, institution-published account of the model this voice built before wider mainstream coverage followed.
Why Are We All So Addicted To Our Screens? — Dr K, Healthy Gamer (Modern Wisdom #628)
In this roughly two-hour conversation, Dr. Kanojia walks host Chris Williamson through why he sees constant screen stimulation as a genuinely new pressure on the brain, touching on how heavy device use is associated with sleep disruption, difficulty concentrating, and reduced ability to sit with boredom or discomfort. He discusses claimed benefits and limits of practices like short-term 'dopamine fasting,' the effects of pornography exposure on young viewers, and practical steps for rebuilding attention and healthier digital boundaries. Throughout, he frames screens as one significant contributor to a broader stimulation overload rather than the sole cause of any single diagnosis. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a substantive, long-form articulation of this voice's core framework on attention, sleep, and self-control in the context of everyday screen use, distinct from his book and other appearances in scope and depth.
The Brain Rot Dr: We're ALL Getting More Narcissistic! — The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
In his second appearance on this widely watched interview show, Dr. Kanojia and host Steven Bartlett cover a wide span of ground: the search for purpose, a described loneliness epidemic, and how algorithm-driven apps and always-on connectivity are associated with shifts in attention, relationships, and self-image, including around sex and dating. Kanojia discusses dopamine-related mechanisms as one lens for understanding compulsive engagement with feeds and apps, framed as his own clinical perspective rather than settled TechKids Foundation doctrine. Much of the conversation concerns adults, but the themes — social comparison, digital dating, and shortened attention spans — are directly relevant to concerns this library tracks for teenagers as well. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a widely distributed, long-form venue where this voice's views on technology and mental health reach a large general audience beyond his own channel.
Dr. Alok Kanojia | Breaking the Cycle of Digital Dependence (The Jordan Harbinger Show #1114)
In this interview, Dr. Kanojia discusses how modern platforms are engineered for maximum engagement and how that design is associated with compulsive-feeling use patterns, using examples ranging from algorithmically curated feeds to newer pornography formats that blend sexual content with simulated relationships. He connects heavily filtered and curated social content to distorted self-image and describes clinical observations linking heavy platform use among young people to body-image concerns and disordered eating in some cases. He also discusses how avoidance and hypervigilance patterns, often rooted in earlier difficult experiences, can make some users more susceptible to compulsive digital habits, and offers his own framework for rebuilding a sense of purpose and connection offline. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a substantive interview specifically tying algorithmic platform design to self-image and disordered-eating-adjacent risk in young users, a distinct angle from this voice's other appearances in this library.
Combating Tech, Porn, & Video Game Addiction, Regaining Your Motivation and Rebuilding Your Relationships (Bialik Breakdown)
Speaking with host Mayim Bialik, Dr. Kanojia discusses how heavy technology, pornography, and video-game use are associated with disrupted motivation and strained relationships, describing differences he has observed in how gaming affects people with ADHD compared with the general population. He walks through what he characterizes as escalating patterns from mild to more severe compulsive use, and discusses dopamine- and serotonin-related mechanisms as a partial explanation for why these patterns can feel hard to interrupt, alongside trauma-related dissociation and identity effects some users describe. The conversation also touches on online communities associated with loneliness and hostility toward women, and body-image concerns among young men. TechKids Foundation includes this entry because it is a substantive, specific discussion of how gaming intersects with ADHD and motivation — an angle distinct from this voice's other cataloged appearances.
Healthy Gamer Advocates for Youth Mental Health at the White House
This is Healthy Gamer's own account, published on its blog, of Dr. Kanojia and a colleague attending a White House event to represent the organization's community and advocate on youth mental health. The post says the visit touched on artificial intelligence governance, support for the creator economy, mental health as a labor issue, and information integrity, but does not name the specific event, list which officials attended, or give an exact date beyond describing it as having happened the prior week. Because this is a self-published organizational account rather than independently reported coverage, TechKids Foundation includes it for transparency about this voice's documented policy-advocacy activity, not as independent verification of the event's scope or impact. It should not be read as evidence of any legislative or regulatory outcome.
How to Get Motivated Even When You Don't Feel Like It (The Mel Robbins Podcast #208)
In this episode, Dr. Kanojia tells host Mel Robbins about his own history of heavy video-game use in college, which he says derailed his coursework before he rebuilt his path toward medical school, and uses that story to introduce his broader argument that motivation is better understood as something that emerges from taking action rather than a feeling to wait for. He argues that many products, including games and apps, are designed in ways that shape user behavior and can work against sustained motivation and follow-through. The episode centers on general behavior-change psychology rather than a detailed clinical discussion of screen harms specifically. TechKids Foundation includes this entry because it is a distinct, dated public appearance in which this voice uses his own gaming-addiction history as a case study for a general audience, extending his reach beyond gaming-specific media.
Raising Healthy Gamers, with Dr. Alok Kanojia, MD MPH (Beautifully Complex #281)
Speaking with host Penny Williams on a podcast focused on parenting neurodivergent kids, Dr. Kanojia explains why he sees children with ADHD or autism as often especially drawn to gaming — citing gaming's clear rules and structured feedback as a contrast to the more confusing, unpredictable dynamics of everyday social life. He describes video games as capable of temporarily easing anxiety-related discomfort, which he says can create a short-term relief cycle that, over time, may crowd out real-world problem-solving if left unaddressed. Rather than recommending strict restriction, he advises parents to first spend time understanding what need a child's gaming is meeting before working collaboratively toward gradual, sustainable change. TechKids Foundation includes this entry because it addresses gaming's specific relationship to neurodivergent kids and family dynamics, a distinct focus from this voice's more general-audience appearances.
Enfants et écrans : à la recherche du temps perdu
In January 2024, France's President asked a ten-member expert commission to spend three months studying children's exposure to screens; psychiatrist-addictologist Amine Benyamina and neurologist Servane Mouton co-chaired it. After interviewing roughly 150 young people and more than 100 professionals, the commission delivered a 130-page report in April 2024 with 29 directive recommendations. It describes French households owning about 10 screens on average and links heavy, unaccompanied screen exposure to poorer sleep, reduced physical activity, and myopia, and — framed as a risk factor among vulnerable teens, not a single cause — to associations with anxiety, depression, and suicide-risk indicators. It proposes no smartphone before 11, no connected phone before 13, and no social media before 15 except on 'ethically' designed platforms, plus new obligations on platforms, schools, and parents. TechKids treats the report as association-level evidence, consistent with the commission's own caution against single-cause claims.
Joint audition before the National Assembly's commission of inquiry into TikTok's psychological effects on minors
Under oath and appearing remotely together, Amine Benyamina and Servane Mouton testified before a French National Assembly inquiry into TikTok's effects on minors, one year after their government commission's report. Mouton walked lawmakers through the physical-health case against heavy screen use — poorer sleep, sedentary behavior, and eye strain — before turning to social media's mental-health risks, describing platform design built around attention and data monetization. Benyamina described treating clinical patients, including teens, for problematic TikTok use resembling substance-addiction patterns, while noting 'screen addiction' still lacks formal recognition in psychiatric classification systems. Both argued responsibility sits primarily with platform designers, not families, and repeated their commission's proposal of a 15-year minimum for access to social media platforms judged to be ethically designed, while acknowledging that no reliable, privacy-respecting age-verification system yet exists to enforce it.
Écrans, un désastre sanitaire : il est encore temps d'agir
A short-format essay in Gallimard's pocket-sized 'Tracts' pamphlet series, written by neurologist Servane Mouton the year after she co-chaired France's national commission on children and screens. In roughly 64 pages, Mouton extends the commission's findings into a wider public argument, walking through sleep disruption, vision problems, and neurodevelopmental concerns she associates with heavy screen exposure, and criticizing what she sees as France's National Education system's uneven, insufficiently cautious approach to classroom screen use — while noting exceptions for students with disabilities. She draws on scientific literature, clinician accounts, and parent testimony gathered through her own practice and commission work. TechKids Foundation cites the book as Mouton's own public-argument extension of her co-chaired government report, not as a peer-reviewed study, and frames its claims throughout as her stated position rather than settled TechKids findings.
L'œil de Philippe Caverivière face à Amine Benyamina et Servane Mouton
RTL's daily satirical morning chronicle, 'L'œil de Philippe Caverivière,' devoted its segment the same morning the 'Enfants et écrans' report was delivered to the President to a comedic riff on its findings, built around co-chairs Amine Benyamina and Servane Mouton appearing as guests on the station's morning show. The bit, publicly titled around a joke that screens will leave teenagers 'fat and blind,' used exaggeration for comic effect rather than presenting new evidence; it does not add independent claims beyond the commission's own report. TechKids Foundation includes it here as a documented example of how the co-chairs' work reached a mass French radio audience on the day of publication, not as a source of new statistics or clinical findings — no claim in this entry should be read as an independent finding beyond what the commission's own report already states.
Podcast — Enfants et écrans : à la recherche du temps perdu, avec le Pr Amine Benyamina
In this podcast episode hosted by Addict'AIDE, the addiction-support organization Amine Benyamina presides over, he revisits his commission's 'Enfants et écrans' report and situates screen engagement within his broader addiction-medicine framework. He describes how features like infinite scroll, notifications, and social feeds are engineered to hold attention and argues that, clinically, what people become attached to is the content and stimulation a screen delivers, not the device itself — drawing a parallel to how his patients relate to substances. The episode frames this as his own clinical and policy perspective rather than a formal diagnostic category, since screen-use disorder is not yet officially recognized alongside substance-use disorders. TechKids Foundation cites this podcast as an example of Benyamina explaining his commission's findings to a specialist addiction-treatment audience, framed throughout as his professional interpretation.
Une heure avec la neurologue Servane Mouton
In this hour-long interview program produced by Fréquence Protestante and hosted by Frédérick Casadesus, neurologist Servane Mouton discusses her book 'Écrans, un désastre sanitaire' and the wider public debate it sparked. She describes widespread screen dependency across French society, not only among children, and criticizes what she characterizes as the National Education system's promotion of largely unmoderated classroom screen use, again noting an exception for students with disabilities. The program frames her message as a deliberately 'constructive and positive' warning rather than blanket condemnation of digital tools. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as an example of Mouton explaining her book's argument to a general public-affairs audience, presented throughout as her own stated position and professional judgment rather than as an independent TechKids finding.
Exposition aux écrans et santé des enfants, avec Amine Benyamina
In this interview for the parent-focused environmental-health site 'Santé des enfants et environnement,' Amine Benyamina lays out the age-graded screen-exposure thresholds from his co-chaired government commission for a general-audience readership: no screens recommended before age 3, only occasional, adult-supervised, educationally curated use between 3 and 6, and a shift toward moderate, controlled exposure from 6 onward, alongside no phone before 11 and no social media before 15. He argues that digital content creators use highly effective attention-capture techniques, particularly through video games and algorithmic feeds, and that parental-control tools function more as marketing and liability cover for platforms than as genuinely effective protection. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as Benyamina's own plain-language explanation of the commission's age-threshold recommendations to families, not as new clinical evidence.
Rapport n° 822 (2024-2025) sur la protection des mineurs en ligne
The French Senate's European Affairs Committee lists Servane Mouton, in her capacity as co-chair of the 'Enfants et écrans' expert commission, among the specialists it formally heard while drafting this report on a European resolution to strengthen online child-safety rules under the EU's Digital Services Act. The report leans heavily on the Mouton–Benyamina commission's April 2024 findings throughout — citing its statistics on household screen exposure, sleep and vision effects, and social-media-linked mental-health risk factors among vulnerable teens — to support calling for platform-run age verification, a European 'digital majority' age, and firmer enforcement against TikTok, Meta, and pornography sites. TechKids Foundation cites this Senate report both as documented parliamentary testimony involving Mouton and as an independent government body's substantive reliance on the pair's commission report, framed here strictly as association-level risk factors, not proof that any platform single-handedly causes any listed harm.
Le Grand Face-à-face — Écrans, un désastre sanitaire, avec Servane Mouton
France Inter's weekend debate program 'Le Grand Face-à-face,' hosted by Thomas Snégaroff, devoted its February 15, 2025 broadcast to Servane Mouton's newly published book 'Écrans, un désastre sanitaire,' with journalists Natacha Polony and Gilles Finchelstein joining as sparring interlocutors. The format is a live, unscripted debate rather than a scripted interview, pressing Mouton on the scope of her claims about screen omnipresence and inviting pushback from the other panelists. TechKids Foundation cites this broadcast as a documented instance of Mouton defending and refining her book's argument under public, adversarial questioning on a major national radio network, presented here as her stated position within a debate format, not as an independent TechKids finding.
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence is a 2021 book by Stanford addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke that lays out a clinical framework for understanding compulsive overconsumption in an environment of easy, constant stimulation. Lembke argues that the brain treats pleasure and pain on a shared scale, so repeated highly stimulating rewards — drugs, food, and, notably, smartphones and social media — can push that balance toward craving and diminished capacity for ordinary satisfaction. She describes smartphones as engineered to be highly stimulating and associates heavy, compulsive phone and social-media use with difficulty self-regulating attention and behavior. The book pairs this framework with practical strategies, including periods of deliberate abstinence, for regaining balance. TechKids Foundation cites it as a foundational clinical framing for why constant digital stimulation is linked to self-control difficulties in young people, not as proof of a single cause.
The Social Dilemma
The Social Dilemma is a 2020 Netflix documentary, directed by Jeff Orlowski, that combines interviews with former tech-industry insiders and addiction and behavior researchers with a dramatized family storyline to examine how social media platforms are designed to hold attention. Anna Lembke appears as one of the film's clinical voices, describing social media as functioning like a drug because features such as endless feeds, notifications, and like counts are engineered to trigger repeated reward-seeking. The film links heavy platform use among teenagers to warning signs including anxiety and depression, and, citing outside research, to a rise in self-harm-related hospitalizations among teen girls since 2009. TechKids Foundation cites the film for its influential framing of platform design as a warning-sign driver, while noting that suicide and self-harm are never attributable to any single factor, including screen use.
Dopamine Nation: Overabundance Keeps Us Craving More (Fresh Air interview)
In this August 2021 Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross, Stanford addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke discusses her book Dopamine Nation and extends its framework to everyday digital habits. Asked directly whether people become addicted to phones and social media, Lembke says she believes they can, describing smartphones as built to be highly stimulating through features like infinite scrolling. She situates phone and social-media use alongside gambling, video games, and pornography as behaviors that can follow the same reward-and-withdrawal pattern associated with substance use, and describes patients' device use increasing during COVID-19 lockdowns. She also raises concern that constant device use may be linked to teenagers losing the ability to sustain attention. TechKids Foundation cites this interview for its accessible explanation of the clinical addiction framework applied to phones and social media.
Dr. Anna Lembke: Understanding & Treating Addiction (Huberman Lab #33)
In this August 2021 episode of the Huberman Lab podcast, Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman interviews addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke about the neuroscience of addiction and how it applies to everyday behaviors. Lembke explains a shared pleasure-pain framework in the brain and argues that social media platforms are engineered — through variable rewards, infinite scroll, and metrics like likes — to trigger a reward-seeking response associated with substance use. The conversation extends this framing to video games, pornography, and online shopping as behaviors that can follow addiction-like patterns of tolerance and craving. Lembke also discusses practical strategies, such as periods of abstinence, for resetting an overstimulated reward system. TechKids Foundation cites this long-form conversation as an accessible explanation of the addiction-medicine model researchers and clinicians apply to compulsive technology use.
Are We All Addicts? Anna Lembke, MD On Our Dopamine Nation (Rich Roll Podcast)
In this August 2021 episode of The Rich Roll Podcast, host Rich Roll interviews Stanford addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke about the ideas in her book Dopamine Nation. The wide-ranging conversation covers the neuroscience of pleasure and pain, the opioid crisis, and recovery approaches, and Lembke references her earlier appearance in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma to discuss concerns about smartphone and social-media use. She frames modern life's constant access to stimulating rewards, including digital platforms, as a driver of compulsive overconsumption and argues that periods of voluntary abstinence can help restore a healthier baseline. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as supporting context for the broader dopamine-based framework it draws on when discussing digital habits, alongside more technology-specific sources in this library.
Sex, Drugs, and Phone Addictions with Dr. Anna Lembke (Offline with Jon Favreau)
In this May 2022 episode of Offline with Jon Favreau, host Jon Favreau interviews Stanford addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke specifically about phone and internet use. Lembke argues that smartphones and social media are built to be highly stimulating in ways that parallel substances like alcohol and tobacco, and that heavy use can be associated with difficulty regulating attention and mood. She walks Favreau through practical steps — including a period of device abstinence — for identifying compulsive patterns in his own phone use and resetting his relationship with it. TechKids Foundation cites this conversation as a mainstream, non-clinical illustration of how the addiction-medicine framework Lembke applies to drugs and alcohol is also applied to everyday phone and social-media habits.
Understanding Dopamine Addiction and How to Manage It, with Anna Lembke (SHE MD)
In this June 2025 episode of the SHE MD podcast, hosts Mary Alice Haney and Dr. Thais Aliabadi interview Stanford addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke about dopamine and digital-media use. Lembke explains how constant access to highly stimulating digital content can shift the brain's reward balance toward craving, and the conversation turns specifically to how heavy social-media and digital-media use may be associated with mood and attention difficulties in children. She recommends a structured period of abstinence from a specific digital habit as a way to rebalance the reward system, while also noting genetic and family-history factors that can make some people more susceptible to compulsive use. TechKids Foundation cites this interview for its direct discussion of digital media's association with children's dopamine regulation.
The Dopamine Expert: Anna Lembke on Addiction, Screens, and AI Companions (The Diary Of A CEO)
In this January 2025 episode of The Diary Of A CEO, host Steven Bartlett interviews Stanford addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke in a wide-ranging conversation about dopamine, childhood, and addiction. Lembke connects her clinical addiction-medicine framework to social media and AI-driven products, including AI companion toys marketed to children, arguing that recommendation systems and conversational AI are often built to hold a user's attention rather than to serve their wellbeing. She expresses particular concern for adolescents, describing their brains as still developing and therefore more susceptible to compulsive engagement with digital and AI products, and notes a pattern of some teenagers meeting more of their social needs through digital interaction rather than in person. TechKids Foundation cites this interview for its discussion of newer AI-companion products alongside the more established social-media and smartphone concerns already in this library.
When Your Kids Won't Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Dr. Anna Lembke (The Oprah Podcast)
In this March 2026 episode of The Oprah Podcast, Oprah Winfrey interviews Stanford addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke specifically about children's phone and device use. Lembke describes children's devices as engineered to deliver frequent, easy rewards in a way she compares to a drug, and says some children show distress — including irritability and dysregulation — when devices are removed, a pattern she associates with the same reward circuitry involved in substance-use disorders. The conversation includes practical parenting strategies, such as family agreements and environment changes, and age-specific advice noting that intervening tends to be easier with younger children than with teenagers or college students who have less parental oversight. Lembke also calls for stronger platform-design guardrails for children, drawing a comparison to restrictions on cigarettes and alcohol. TechKids Foundation cites this interview for its direct, parent-facing discussion of children's device use.
Expert Testimony in Social Media Addictive-Design Trial (Social Media Cases, JCCP 5255)
On February 13, 2026, Stanford addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke testified as an expert witness in the Social Media Cases (JCCP 5255), a coordinated California litigation in which a plaintiff alleged that heavy use of Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube was associated with anxiety, body-image concerns, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. Lembke described a clinical addiction framework — loss of control, cravings, compulsions, and consequences — and testified that features including autoplay, notifications, and infinite scroll are designed to maximize engagement, which she said carries elevated risk for adolescents given their still-developing prefrontal cortices. She cited an NIH-funded study of more than 11,000 youth associating heavy social-media use with a greater likelihood of new depressive symptoms. TechKids Foundation cites this testimony as a documented instance of the addiction-medicine framework being applied in litigation, while noting that suicide and self-harm are never attributable to a single cause.
Written Testimony Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law
Arturo Béjar, a former Facebook engineering director who ran the company's Protect & Care safety team from 2009–2015 and later consulted for Instagram's well-being group, submitted written testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee. He described an internal 2021 survey he sent to Meta's top leadership, including Mark Zuckerberg, showing that a large share of Instagram users aged 13–15 reported unwanted sexual advances and bullying in a typical week, while very few of those reports led the company to remove anything. Béjar testified that leadership did not act on the findings and that his own daughter had faced similar unwanted contact with no way to flag it. He argued that outside regulators, not voluntary company action, are needed to require platforms to measure and publicly report teen-reported harms.
Trial Testimony in Los Angeles County Superior Court Social-Media Youth-Harm Case
Béjar took the stand as a witness in a civil trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court examining whether social media companies designed their products in ways linked to compulsive, hard-to-control use among young people. According to reporting on his testimony, he told the jury that Meta's own researchers had identified what they internally called 'problematic use' but avoided using the word publicly, that the company's youth well-being team was underresourced relative to the scale of the issue, and that leadership prioritized engagement time over safety changes without fully informing parents. This is a distinct, later public appearance from his 2023 congressional testimony, made under oath in a jury trial rather than before lawmakers.
He Thought Instagram Was Safe. Then His Daughter Got an Account. (The Journal podcast)
In this 24-minute episode of The Wall Street Journal's daily podcast The Journal, Arturo Béjar recounts in his own words how he discovered that his 14-year-old daughter and her friends were repeatedly facing unwanted sexual advances and harassment on Instagram, despite years of safety tooling he had helped build during his earlier stint at Facebook. He describes returning to the company as a consultant to understand the gap, the internal data he gathered, and his account of how senior leadership responded when he raised it with them. The interview format lets him walk through the personal chain of events — from parent to internal researcher to public whistleblower — in more detail than his written congressional testimony two days later covers.
Instagram Promised to Become Safer for Teens. Researchers Say It's Not Working.
This TIME investigation examines Meta's 'Teen Accounts' safety feature roughly two years after its launch, drawing on a study that Béjar, a former senior Meta engineering and product leader, helped design. The reporting describes findings that some of the feature's protections were inconsistently enforced in practice and that Instagram's recommendation design remained associated with steering some younger users toward increasingly suggestive content and interactions over time. Béjar is quoted arguing that the platform's own design choices shape how some minors behave on it, and criticizing the gap between Meta's public safety claims and what the study found. TechKids Foundation cites this as reporting on independent research into a specific safety feature, not as evidence that any platform design directly causes harm to any individual child.
How to Reduce the Sexual Solicitation of Teens on Instagram
In this guest essay for Jonathan Haidt's After Babel newsletter, Béjar lays out, in his own words, the internal Instagram survey findings he had previously raised with Meta leadership — that roughly one in eight users aged 13–15 reported unwanted sexual advances on the platform in a given week. He argues Meta had the tools and data to reduce this pattern but chose not to prioritize it, and that voluntary industry self-regulation has been tried and has not worked. The essay lays out specific product and reporting changes he believes regulators should require of any platform used heavily by teens, positioning legally mandated measurement and disclosure — not new content bans — as the most direct lever available.
Teenagers and Unwanted Sexual Advances in Social Media Messaging
One of a set of supporting policy documents Béjar published alongside his 2023 Senate testimony, this essay focuses specifically on unwanted sexual advances teens receive through direct messages on social platforms, which he describes as common rather than rare. He proposes a recipient-centered reporting design: a simple way for a teen to flag unwanted contact, with the platform using that signal to give private feedback to the sender and to escalate consequences only for people who repeat the behavior after being told it was unwelcome. He also includes practical guidance aimed at parents. Drawing on his own team's past work at Facebook, he writes that giving senders private, respectful feedback changed behavior in roughly half of nudged cases without any account penalty.
Lessons Learned While Working on Online Teen Bullying
Published alongside his 2023 Senate testimony, this essay summarizes what Béjar says his team learned over roughly six years building tools to help teens dealing with online bullying and harassment at Facebook — work he refers to internally as 'Compassion' work. He writes that most content teens flagged as their most upsetting experiences did not technically violate platform policy, that immediate, validating support mattered more to teens than delayed content moderation, and that giving teens more relevant, specific reporting options sharply increased how many completed a request for help. He recommends that companies build emotional-support tooling in partnership with outside behavioral experts and treat safety features as a baseline requirement for operating any teen-facing product.
Why Social Media's Current Approach to Policy and Enforcement Doesn't Work
Published alongside his 2023 Senate testimony, this essay argues that platform content policy — writing rules and removing violating posts — cannot on its own make social media feel safe to teens, because much of what teens report as distressing does not fit neatly into predefined rule categories. Béjar writes that in about half of the cases teens flagged as their most intense bad experiences, the content itself looked benign or ambiguous to outside reviewers, even though the experience was still real to the teen involved. He recommends that platforms build community-norm and feedback-based systems alongside — not instead of — policy enforcement, and that they maintain clear appeals processes when enforcement actions are taken.
Recommendations for Regulators
Published alongside his 2023 Senate testimony, this document sets out Béjar's concrete legislative and regulatory proposals: requiring any social platform used heavily by teens to run recurring, statistically representative surveys asking teens about specific unwanted experiences, to give users simple in-product ways to flag unwanted contact or content, and to publicly report — on a regular cadence, alongside financial results — how well their support and reporting tools actually work. He proposes a specific target: that regulators require companies to work toward 90% of teens saying they knew what to do after a bad experience and felt the company's response helped. He frames mandatory transparency, not new content bans, as the mechanism most likely to change company incentives.
Good Questions for the Press and Others to Ask Social Media Companies
Published alongside his 2023 Senate testimony, this short guide is aimed at journalists, regulators, and other outside parties trying to evaluate whether a social media company's safety claims are substantive or superficial. Béjar argues that because these companies run on metrics, a harm that a company has not built a data framework around effectively does not register with its executives, whatever public statements say. He lays out specific questions to ask — about actual prevalence data, dedicated staffing levels, and whether safety features are turned on by default even when they reduce engagement — using unwanted sexual advances toward teens as his running example of how to press past vague reassurances toward verifiable specifics.
Harmful Content Must Be Understood From the Perspective of the Person Who Is Affected
Published alongside his 2023 Senate testimony, this essay sets out a taxonomy Béjar uses to categorize the range of experiences teens report as harmful online, from content that clearly violates a platform's stated policy to content that is merely 'toxic' or simply unwanted by the specific person who saw it. He writes that content clearly violating policy is a small fraction of what teens actually flag as distressing, and argues platforms should give teens tools to flag content as unwanted — with a stated reason — even when it does not violate any rule, and should use that feedback to adjust recommendation systems rather than relying solely on removing rule-breaking posts after the fact.
For Integrity and Trust and Safety Workers
The last of the supporting documents Béjar published alongside his 2023 Senate testimony, this one is addressed directly at trust-and-safety practitioners inside social platforms rather than at regulators or the press. He proposes concrete, buildable product features that give teens more agency when they face something like an unwanted sexual advance or a harassing comment, arguing companies should move beyond simply removing rule-violating content toward tools that let teens say what happened and how it affected them. He describes how recurring surveys of teen experience can be turned into near-term product goals and behavioral metrics, and emphasizes that respectful, private feedback to a person who caused distress — not just account penalties — is itself a meaningful safety intervention.
InRealLife
InRealLife is a 2013 documentary directed by Beeban Kidron, made with backing from the BFI Film Fund and premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film follows British teenagers who grew up with constant internet and smartphone access, letting them describe in their own words how always-on connectivity shapes their friendships, self-image, and exposure to pornography and other adult content. Kidron intersperses these accounts with commentary from technologists and researchers, including Jimmy Wales and danah boyd, to ask who benefits commercially from young people's time online. TechKids Foundation cites the film as an early, widely discussed public document connecting heavy, unstructured device use with changes in teenage social behavior, framed by its own director as a question about design and commercial incentives rather than a clinical diagnosis.
Why We Must Protect the Digital Rights of Children
In this February 2016 TEDx talk, filmmaker and 5Rights Foundation founder Beeban Kidron argues that protections children already hold offline under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are routinely absent once children go online. She describes how digital services can track, profile, and target young users in ways adults rarely notice, and lays out the 5Rights framework — rights she argues should extend automatically to children in digital spaces. The talk presents no original data; it is a policy argument aimed at lawmakers and technologists, built on Kidron's advocacy work up to that point. TechKids Foundation includes it in the library as a concise, widely viewed public statement of the rights-based case for treating design and data practices as child-safety issues, distinct from any claim about specific psychological harms.
Written Testimony: Protecting Kids Online: Internet Privacy and Manipulative Marketing
On May 18, 2021, Beeban Kidron — founder and chair of 5Rights Foundation — testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee's consumer protection subcommittee at a hearing titled "Protecting Kids Online: Internet Privacy and Manipulative Marketing." Drawing on her role shaping the UK's Age Appropriate Design Code, her written testimony describes gaps in the voluntary safety features then offered by major platforms and argues that self-regulation has been insufficient to address commercial design choices associated with data collection and engagement-driven features aimed at minors. She calls on U.S. lawmakers to consider enforceable, age-appropriate design standards rather than relying on individual platform policies. TechKids Foundation cites this testimony as a documented instance of cross-border policy advocacy linking design practices to youth-safety risk, presented to Congress as a regulatory matter rather than a specific medical claim.
Age-Appropriate Design Code (UK Children's Code)
Beeban Kidron is widely credited as the peer behind the amendment that became Section 123 of the UK's Data Protection Act 2018, which required the Information Commissioner's Office to write a statutory code on age-appropriate design. The resulting Age Appropriate Design Code, known as the Children's Code, came into force on September 2, 2020, and sets 15 standards that online services likely to be accessed by children under 18 must meet, covering default privacy settings, data minimization, and design features that draw out children's attention or personal data. TechKids Foundation cites the Code as a concrete policy outcome directly attributed to Kidron's advocacy, translating warning signs associated with exploitative design — profiling, nudges, and data harvesting aimed at minors — into enforceable UK law, rather than asserting that any single design feature causes a specific harm.
California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (AB 2273)
The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (AB 2273) was signed into law on September 15, 2022, requiring online products likely to be accessed by children under 18 to complete data-protection impact assessments, default to high-privacy settings, and avoid design that is materially detrimental to children's wellbeing or that uses dark patterns to draw out their personal data. The law was explicitly modeled on the UK code Kidron helped create, and Kidron and her 5Rights Foundation publicly supported its passage. Violations can carry civil penalties of up to $2,500 per affected child for negligent breaches and $7,500 for intentional ones. TechKids Foundation cites this law as a second, independently enacted jurisdiction's policy response tracing directly back to Kidron's UK advocacy, treating manipulative design as a regulatory problem rather than making any diagnostic claim about individual children.
Users
Users, published in June 2026 by WH Allen, is Beeban Kidron's account of what she describes as Big Tech's unchecked power and the regulatory gaps that let it persist. Drawing on her years in the UK Parliament, at the UN, and in exchanges with Silicon Valley companies, Kidron combines reporting with personal accounts to argue that products built to connect people have instead been shaped by business models competing for attention, including the attention of children. The book is framed as a call for citizens, parents, and lawmakers to push back on design and governance choices, rather than as a scientific study. TechKids Foundation lists it as Kidron's own current synthesis, in her own words, of the policy case she has built across a decade of testimony and legislative work.
Disrupted Childhood: The Cost of Persuasive Design
Disrupted Childhood: The Cost of Persuasive Design is a 5Rights Foundation report, first published in 2018 and updated in April 2023, examining design features — endless scroll, autoplay, streaks, and push notifications among them — built into popular apps and games. The report argues these features are engineered primarily to maximize engagement and data collection rather than to serve children's interests, and links this design approach to broader concerns about children's social, developmental, and physical wellbeing. It closes with 24 recommendations directed at regulators, governments, and companies. As Baroness Kidron states in the report, policymakers "must refocus their attention on the pervasive use of persuasive design." TechKids Foundation cites this report as an example of 5Rights' own research translating design choices into a policy agenda, framed throughout as an association between design and risk rather than a claim of direct causation.
Pathways: How Digital Design Puts Children at Risk
Pathways: How Digital Design Puts Children at Risk, published by 5Rights Foundation in September 2021 with research by Revealing Reality, tested how major platforms treat new accounts registered as belonging to 13-year-olds. The research team found that test accounts on services including Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok were served content associated with self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, and sexualized imagery within 24 hours of account creation, and the report argues these pathways reflect engagement-maximizing design choices rather than accidents. It draws on interviews with digital designers and children alongside the avatar-based testing. TechKids Foundation cites this report for its association-language finding — that certain platform design choices are linked to rapid exposure to self-harm- and suicide-related content among newly created teen accounts — while noting that suicide and self-harm are never explained by any one factor alone.
General Comment No. 25 (2021) on Children's Rights in Relation to the Digital Environment
General Comment No. 25, adopted by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on March 2, 2021, is an authoritative interpretation stating that the rights children hold under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child — including privacy, protection from exploitation, and freedom of expression — apply fully in digital spaces. Beeban Kidron sat on the small expert drafting group, and her 5Rights Foundation chaired the steering committee that developed the text over roughly two years of consultation with children, governments, and industry. The comment sets out standards governments are expected to apply when regulating online services children use. TechKids Foundation cites General Comment No. 25 as a global policy outcome directly tied to Kidron's advocacy, framing digital design and data practices as children's-rights issues for national regulators to act on, rather than as a medical or diagnostic finding.
A Conversation with Baroness Beeban Kidron on Child Online Safety
In this April 27, 2023 conversation with Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix, Beeban Kidron discusses the early implementation of the UK's Children's Code and California's newly passed Age-Appropriate Design Code, including First Amendment challenges the California law faced in U.S. courts. She distinguishes the codes' focus on data practices and design from content regulation, discusses proportionate approaches to age assurance, and voices skepticism that parental-control tools alone can protect children whose parents are not consistently engaged. She also flags generative AI and immersive or metaverse products as emerging areas she believes need proactive design standards rather than after-the-fact regulation. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as a substantive, on-record explanation from Kidron of how her design-code advocacy is meant to work in practice, and where she sees the next regulatory gaps forming.
Contribution to the Online Safety Bill, Second Reading
On February 1, 2023, Beeban Kidron spoke in the House of Lords' second-reading debate on the UK's Online Safety Bill, arguing the central problem is algorithmic design — systems built to rank, nudge, and amplify content to hold attention — rather than any single piece of content. She organized her argument around what she called "the four Cs": content, conduct, contact, and commercial harm, and pressed for the bill to guarantee robust age assurance and safety duties for any service children use. She also argued bereaved families should have a clear legal right to access their children's data after a death linked to online activity, referencing several UK children whose deaths had prompted public safety campaigns. TechKids Foundation cites this speech as a documented legislative record of Kidron's policy position on platform design and data-access rights, noting any death is never attributable to a single cause alone.
That Smartphone Can Wait Until 8th
This is a first-person essay by Brooke Shannon, published on Fairplay's site about a month after she launched Wait Until 8th, explaining why she started the pledge. Shannon describes watching smartphones reach children years before she felt they were ready and lays out the pledge's group-commitment structure — a school-grade cohort of at least ten families agreeing together to delay smartphones until eighth grade. She frames early, unsupervised smartphone access as linked to exposure to inappropriate online content, social-media-driven pressure on self-esteem, and difficulty children can have limiting their own use, while noting that several well-known technology executives restrict their own children's device access to similar ages. The piece is both a personal account and a call for other parents to join. TechKids Foundation cites it as an early primary statement of the founder's own reasoning and the pledge's original scale.
Wait Until 8th — A Pledge To Delay Smartphone Usage In Kids
This Mother Magazine profile, published about six months after Wait Until 8th launched, follows founder Brooke Shannon's account of why she started the pledge in her Austin, Texas community and how quickly it spread nationally. The piece cites outside research describing children's daily screen time as ranging from two to more than eight hours and characterizes heavy use as associated with academic distraction, disrupted sleep, and higher rates of anxiety and depressive feelings — presented as patterns researchers have observed, not as a single proven cause. Shannon explains the pledge's ten-family threshold, approved alternatives like basic phones and calling watches, and her emphasis on parents modeling their own device habits. TechKids Foundation cites this profile as an early, widely shared account of both Shannon's personal motivation and the pledge's first year of national growth.
Childhood Smartphone Restrictions — Interview with Brooke Shannon
In this short interview segment from the American Enterprise Institute's VIEWPOINT series, Wait Until 8th founder Brooke Shannon discusses why she believes many families give children smartphones before they are ready and what pushed her to organize a group pledge instead of acting alone. She walks through how the ten-family activation threshold is meant to remove a child's fear of feeling socially left out, and frames delayed smartphone access as one practical, parent-led step families can take together rather than a policy mandate. AEI, a policy research organization, frames the segment as part of a broader look at how families and institutions are responding to smartphone-related pressures on children. TechKids Foundation includes this video as a short, on-record explanation of Shannon's reasoning delivered directly by her, from a mainstream policy venue.
Parent Like A Tech Exec
Co-written by Brooke Shannon and psychologist Richard Freed, this Wait Until 8th blog essay argues that the parenting habits of well-known technology executives are worth copying. The authors compile public examples of tech-industry parents who reportedly delayed their own children's smartphone and social-media access, kept devices away from family meals, or set firm household screen rules, and note that some industry figures have themselves warned about how attention-holding some of their own products are designed to be. From these examples, Shannon and Freed draw three recommendations for ordinary families: delay the smartphone through their own pledge, set clear at-home screen boundaries, and advocate for less classroom device use. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as Shannon's own argument for why parents might look to industry insiders' household choices, not just outside research, when deciding on smartphone timing.
Brooke Shannon on Waiting to Introduce the Smartphone: 5 Questions with Family Studies
In this five-question written interview, the Institute for Family Studies asks Wait Until 8th founder Brooke Shannon to walk through her own thinking on smartphone timing. She describes what first alarmed her — watching middle-schoolers leave school absorbed in their phones — and cites outside data on how many hours some teens spend on screens daily as part of her rationale. Shannon frames the pledge as non-judgmental: delaying smartphones to eighth grade isn't realistic for every family, she says, and she encourages parents to weigh their own circumstances rather than follow one rule. She also discusses classroom phone use, the fear of missing out the pledge is meant to relieve, and building parent coalitions at the school level. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as a fuller statement, in Shannon's own words, of how she balances a firm public pledge with flexibility for individual families.
Defusing the Social Pressure of Smartphones: The Power of Wait Until 8th
In this recorded Fairplay webinar, Wait Until 8th founder Brooke Shannon joins pediatrician Dr. Natasha Burgert to discuss the social pressure parents face when deciding whether to give a child a smartphone. Shannon explains how the group pledge is designed to remove that pressure by making the delay a shared, grade-wide decision rather than one family standing alone, while Burgert brings a pediatric-health perspective on why many children reach for a first phone before they are developmentally ready for the responsibilities it carries. The two discuss practical alternatives, such as basic phones, and strategies for talking with children and other parents about the decision. TechKids Foundation includes this recording as a video-format explanation of the pledge's design, paired with outside clinical framing from a pediatrician rather than Shannon's advocacy voice alone.
138: Wait Until 8th Founder Brooke Shannon
On this podcast episode, Brooke Shannon retells the origin of Wait Until 8th to a general audience, going further into her own household's story than in most press interviews — the moment her oldest daughter began asking for a phone as classmates got them in elementary school, and the peer-pressure dynamic that pushed her to organize other parents rather than decide alone. She talks about how hard many children, and adults, can find it to limit their own phone use once they have one, and how the group pledge is meant to make waiting easier by removing the single-family stigma. The conversation stays personal and anecdotal rather than data-driven. TechKids Foundation cites this episode as a first-person, long-form account of Shannon's own family's path to founding the organization.
'Wait Until 8th' Asks Parents to Delay Smartphones for Kids
This TODAY.com feature, written by Allison Slater Tate, profiles Brooke Shannon and the continued growth of the Wait Until 8th pledge five years after its founding. Shannon describes what first drew her to organize parents — seeing young elementary-school children with smartphones — and lists the concerns she raises with other parents, including distraction, disrupted sleep, cyberbullying, and exposure to inappropriate content, presented as risks tied to early, unsupervised access rather than guaranteed outcomes. The piece includes a supportive outside quote from child-development expert Dr. Deborah Gilboa, who says the pledge helps normalize delay, alongside a dissenting parent's view that smartphones can help kids stay socially connected, especially outside a traditional school setting. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as a mainstream, non-advocacy news account of both the pledge's rationale and its critics.
Keeping Kids Safe: 'Wait Until 8th' Pledge Aims to Empower Parents to Resist Smartphones for Children
This Fox News feature centers Brooke Shannon and the Wait Until 8th pledge, following two families who use the group commitment to hold off on smartphones for their children. Shannon, identified as founder and executive director, explains the ten-family activation threshold and recommends basic phones or GPS watches as alternatives for parents who still want a way to reach their kids. The article frames early smartphone and social-media access as associated with cyberbullying risk and other social pressures on children, while also presenting a range of outside expert opinion: one psychologist argues strongly against phones for young adolescents on mental-health grounds, while another expert contends that teaching responsible use matters more than avoidance altogether. TechKids Foundation cites this piece for its side-by-side presentation of Shannon's pledge alongside experts who disagree with each other about the right approach.
How to Delay Social and Smartphone Use With Wait Until 8th
On The Screenagers Podcast, host Dr. Delaney Ruston — a physician and the filmmaker behind the Screenagers documentary series — interviews Brooke Shannon about how Wait Until 8th's community-pledge model works in practice, seven years after the organization's founding. The conversation covers why the pledge requires multiple families from the same grade to sign on before it activates, how Shannon talks with parents who feel pressure once a child already has a phone, and practical tools, including device settings and family-conversation approaches, for households trying to scale back access rather than eliminate it outright. The episode is aimed at parents already convinced about delaying smartphones and looking for implementation help, more than at persuading skeptics. TechKids Foundation cites this episode as Shannon's most recent long-form public statement of the pledge's ongoing, practical advice for families.
Hold the Phone!
Published in the American Family Association's magazine The Stand, this feature by Matthew White profiles Wait Until 8th founder Brooke Shannon alongside a second source, Dr. Kathy Koch of Celebrate Kids. Shannon recounts the same founding moment she describes elsewhere — watching middle-schoolers file out of school absorbed in their phones — and explains how the pledge's group structure eases the social pressure any one family would face acting alone. The piece cites research linking children's smartphone and social-media use to disrupted sleep, broader mental-health concerns, and cyberbullying risk, and Koch separately argues that heavy device use in childhood can get in the way of children developing empathy and eye-contact skills. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as an example of Shannon's advocacy being paired with a faith-based parenting organization's independent commentary on children's development.
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
In this book, Georgetown computer scientist and author Cal Newport argues that the always-on, constant-companion way many people use smartphones and social platforms is linked to fragmented attention, reduced solitude, and a diminished sense of control over one's own time. Rather than framing heavy device use as a diagnosable addiction, Newport describes it as a byproduct of attention-engineering business models layered onto ordinary human habits. He proposes 'digital minimalism' — a deliberate, values-driven approach to choosing which technologies to keep — anchored by a thirty-day 'digital declutter.' TechKids Foundation includes this book as part of the wider critical literature it draws on to describe passive, compulsive screen use as a risk factor worth addressing through intentional habits and design choices, not as a work specifically about children.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Published three years before Digital Minimalism, this book by Georgetown computer scientist Cal Newport makes an earlier version of an argument the wider Evidence Library draws on: that constant digital distraction is linked to a reduced capacity for sustained attention on cognitively demanding work. Newport does not present this as a medical diagnosis; he frames shallow, fragmented attention as a learned habit shaped by workplace communication tools and social platforms designed to capture notice. One of the book's four core rules, 'Quit Social Media,' argues that low-value, easily replicated online engagement is associated with weaker outcomes than time spent on focused, harder-to-replicate work. TechKids Foundation cites this book as background context for describing attention fragmentation as a documented concern among technology critics, not as evidence specific to children's screen use.
Why You Should Quit Social Media
In this roughly thirteen-minute talk at TEDxTysons, Cal Newport — who has never held a personal social media account — challenges three common justifications people give for staying on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. He argues that time spent maintaining a social media presence is linked to less time available for harder-to-replicate, higher-value work and relationships, and that the perceived career necessity of a social media presence is often overstated. The talk does not address children specifically; it is aimed at a general adult audience weighing whether platform use serves their own stated goals. TechKids Foundation includes this talk as part of the broader public conversation about deliberate, limited platform use that informs the library's wider case for thoughtful technology habits, distinct from claims about children's screen use specifically.
Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back on Smartphones Like Cigarettes
In this wide-ranging GQ interview tied to the release of Digital Minimalism, journalist Clay Skipper asks Cal Newport about smartphone habits, and Newport predicts that unrestricted smartphone access for young teenagers will eventually be viewed the way society now views letting a 13-year-old smoke cigarettes. He frames this as a forecast about shifting social norms rather than a medical equivalence, arguing the two behaviors are alike mainly in that both were normalized before their downsides were widely recognized. The interview also covers Newport's broader argument for intentional, limited technology use among adults. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as a documented example of a technology critic publicly linking unrestricted early smartphone access to normalized-but-risky youth behavior, part of the public conversation the library draws on around age-appropriate device access.
Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It.
In this widely shared New York Times essay, Cal Newport argues against the conventional advice that a visible social media presence is necessary for career success. He contends that time spent cultivating a personal brand online is linked to less time spent producing the kind of rare, high-value work that actually advances careers, framing heavy platform use as a low-value habit rather than a professional requirement. The piece became one of the paper's most-emailed articles and prompted a published Times rebuttal disputing several of its claims. It focuses on working adults, not children. TechKids Foundation cites this essay as an example of mainstream skepticism toward unexamined social media use, part of the wider public debate the library draws on when describing passive platform engagement as worth questioning.
In Defense of Thinking
In this New York Times opinion essay, Cal Newport revisits the argument he first made in Deep Work a decade earlier, writing that the erosion of sustained attention he described has, in his assessment, worsened rather than improved. He points to workplace messaging tools, an increasingly compulsive design of social media, and AI tools that can shortcut effortful thinking as contributing factors, describing a decline in society's collective capacity for deep thought as a pattern worth taking seriously rather than a proven medical effect. Newport calls for both individual changes, such as removing phones from reach at home, and policy action, including restricting social media access for minors, citing Australia's approach as a model. TechKids Foundation cites this essay as a 2026 example of an established technology critic connecting unrestricted minor access to social media with policy-level concern.
Ep. 246: Kids and Phones
In this episode of his own long-running podcast, Cal Newport walks through the research history behind the question of whether smartphones are harmful for children — how early researcher concerns emerged, the studies that followed, published critiques of those studies, and where the evidence stood as of 2023. He treats the question as genuinely contested rather than settled, presenting competing findings before offering his own practical guidance for parents weighing device access for their kids. The episode does not claim smartphones cause any specific mental health diagnosis; it summarizes an evolving, sometimes-disputed body of research and translates it into decision-making advice. TechKids Foundation cites this episode as a documented public analysis, by a widely read technology critic, of the same research landscape — including competing findings — that the library's other evidence entries draw from.
Ep. 374: This Is Your Brain on Phones
In this podcast episode, Cal Newport discusses the neural mechanisms researchers believe make habitual phone-checking hard to resist, and reviews which common quick fixes tend to fail versus strategies he considers more effective. He fields listener questions that include a parent's concern about an eleven-year-old facing social pressure over not having a smartphone, and a comparison between video-game and phone-related compulsive use. Newport frames compulsive checking as a designed behavioral pattern rather than a clinical diagnosis, consistent with his broader body of work. TechKids Foundation cites this episode for its documented discussion of social pressure on children without smartphones — a form of peer-driven exclusion adjacent to cyberbullying dynamics — and of habitual phone-checking as a self-control challenge rather than a diagnosed disorder.
An Important New Study on Phones and Kids
In this essay on his own site, Cal Newport summarizes a large consensus study in which roughly 120 researchers across eleven academic disciplines evaluated 26 separate claims about smartphones, social media, and adolescent mental health. He reports the panel reached strong (over 90 percent) agreement on several claims, including that adolescent mental health has declined in a number of Western countries over the past two decades, that smartphone and social media use is linked to attention difficulties and compulsive-use patterns, and that, among girls specifically, social media use is linked to body dissatisfaction and elevated risk of unwanted sexual attention online. Newport argues the research field is no longer meaningfully divided on these associations and advocates a precautionary approach to early platform access. TechKids Foundation cites this essay as a technology critic's own reading of a major cross-disciplinary consensus statement relevant to the library's core subject.
On Kids and Smartphones
In this essay, Cal Newport traces the decade-long public debate over whether smartphones are harmful to children, from early concerns raised by mental health professionals around 2012, through Jean Twenge's widely discussed 2017 Atlantic cover story questioning smartphones' effects on a generation, through a period of competing research claims he calls 'the Data Wars,' to what he describes as an emerging research consensus. He argues that unrestricted smartphone and internet access is linked to meaningful harms for young people, particularly pre-adolescent girls, and suggests age sixteen as a reasonable threshold for unrestricted access — a position he notes aligns with guidance from the U.S. Surgeon General. TechKids Foundation cites this essay as a documented, dated public record of a prominent technology critic's position on age-appropriate smartphone access, tracing the same research debate the library's other entries document.
'Our kitchen has become the hub of an exploding movement of parents'
In this first-person piece for Positive News, where she worked as features editor, Daisy Greenwell describes how a private WhatsApp group she started with friend Clare Fernyhough — created to support each other in delaying smartphones for their children — grew almost overnight into a nationwide parent network. Greenwell writes that the original group reached WhatsApp's 1,023-member limit within days of an Instagram post, prompting a wave of spin-off groups organized by county and by school. She frames smartphone access among children as an area parents are increasingly anxious about, citing research she says links earlier smartphone adoption with higher reported rates of mental illness among young people, and describes the campaign's aim as giving parents school-based tools to coordinate delaying phones together rather than alone.
Two mums start viral Smartphone Free Childhood campaign: 'Parents are in an impossible situation'
This HELLO! Magazine feature profiles Daisy Greenwell and Clare Fernyhough shortly after they launched Smartphone Free Childhood, reporting that the campaign had already drawn more than 17,000 Instagram followers and roughly 50 UK WhatsApp groups within three weeks. The piece describes both founders as mothers of primary-school-age daughters who wanted support delaying smartphones until age 14 and social media until 16, and quotes Greenwell characterizing the pressure on parents as leaving them in "an impossible situation" between giving a child a phone or risking social isolation. It reports the campaign had already drawn celebrity supporters and some backing from MPs and policy specialists, and notes the founders point to associations between smartphone access and young people's anxiety, depression, and exposure to harmful content as reasons for their recommended delay, without describing this as a single, proven cause.
Inside the fight for smartphone-free childhoods
This New Statesman feature by Pippa Bailey examines the rapid rise of Smartphone Free Childhood, co-founded by journalist Daisy Greenwell and psychologist Clare Fernyhough after the pair shared worries about introducing smartphones to their own children. It reports that their private WhatsApp support group hit its 1,024-member cap overnight, and that the campaign had grown to more than 70 community groups, with people in Italy, the US, Australia, and New Zealand expressing interest in starting their own chapters. The piece describes the founders' view that smartphones are designed in ways that make them hard to put down, and that children's still-developing capacity for self-control makes resisting that design especially difficult. It reports their call for shared responsibility between parents, government regulation, and technology companies, rather than placing the burden on families alone.
Calls for 'smartphone free' childhood grow in UK
This AFP wire report, republished by Gulf News, covers the early growth of the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign co-founded by Daisy Greenwell and Clare Fernyhough (named in the piece as Clare Reynolds). It describes Greenwell noticing that roughly a third of her son's classmates already owned smartphones, which she says prompted her original Instagram post. The report states the campaign had grown into working groups involving educators, policy specialists, and government officials focused on strategies to delay children's smartphone use, aligned with psychologist Jonathan Haidt's recommendation against smartphones before age 14. It quotes Greenwell saying she does not want to give her child "something that I know will damage her mental health and make her addicted" — presented here as her own characterization of her personal decision, not as an established causal finding.
The Revolution Has Begun in the UK
Published on Jonathan Haidt's After Babel newsletter with an introduction from Haidt, this first-person essay by Daisy Greenwell recounts how the WhatsApp group she started with Clare Fernyhough grew into Smartphone Free Childhood, reaching roughly 75,000 parents within its first two months. Greenwell describes the movement's structure of county- and school-level parent groups and its Parent Pact model for coordinating delayed smartphone access, and states the campaign's position that children should not have smartphones before 16 and that any under-16 phones should exclude algorithm-driven apps and open web browsers. She frames the campaign as responding to concern about children's device use and social media exposure, and calls for UK government regulation rather than relying solely on individual parents to hold the line.
How a parents' WhatsApp group sparked a revolt for a phone-free childhood
This SBS News (Dateline) article revisits the founding of Smartphone Free Childhood roughly a year on, describing how Daisy Greenwell's conversation with school friend Clare Fernyhough about their daughters' interest in smartphones led to a WhatsApp group that grew, per the piece, to around 150,000 parents pledging to delay smartphones until age 14. It reports the campaign had by then spread into groups across 27 countries, including Australia, Nigeria, and Costa Rica, and states that Greenwell was by that point advising British MPs considering smartphone-related legislation. The piece links her advocacy to Australia's under-16 social media restrictions, quoting her describing that law as "a symbolic step to show the status quo can change," and frames the campaign's concerns around online safety, lost offline time, and mental health as associations rather than a single proven cause.
Smartphone Free Childhood Founders Daisy Greenwell and Joe Ryrie on the power of a parent collective and the pressures of social media on children
In this Netmums Podcast episode, hosts Wendy Golledge and Alison Perry interview Daisy Greenwell and her husband and Smartphone Free Childhood co-founder Joe Ryrie about the campaign, which the episode describes as having grown past 200,000 members after starting as a February 2024 WhatsApp message. Greenwell discusses the risks she associates with unrestricted smartphone access for children, including exposure to harmful content and patterns of compulsive social media use, while stressing the need to balance those concerns against technology's genuine benefits. The conversation covers how parents can coordinate through school and community groups, what responsibilities the founders believe technology companies should bear, and age-based guidelines the campaign recommends, along with lower-risk device alternatives for younger children who need basic connectivity without full internet or social access.
Childhood is too short to be spent on a smartphone
Written by journalist Thomas Hobbs for Back Market's UK editorial section, this feature interviews Smartphone Free Childhood co-founder Daisy Greenwell alongside community advocate Amy Ruffell, reporting that around 140,000 UK parents had by then joined the campaign's Parent Pact. Drawing on Ofcom data cited in the piece about rising smartphone ownership among younger children, it quotes Greenwell saying the campaign is not calling to eliminate smartphones outright but that "there's also no doubt they're bad for our children's mental health" — her own framing of the concern rather than an independent finding. Ruffell is quoted describing the core worry as "opportunity loss," where time spent on addictively designed apps displaces offline development. The piece also relays Greenwell's practical advice to parents on managing the adjustment period after delaying a child's first smartphone.
Smartphone Free Childhood: the unstoppable rise of a culture-shifting campaign
This Positive News feature by Martin Wright traces Smartphone Free Childhood's growth roughly eighteen months after Daisy Greenwell and Clare Fernyhough founded it, reporting that around 140,000 families had by then signed the campaign's Parent Pact committing to delay smartphones until 14 and social media until 16. It recounts how a casual playdate conversation about children's phones led Greenwell to post on Instagram, with her husband and co-founder Joe Ryrie recalling that "the Instagram post had gone absolutely wild," after which groups formed across every British county within weeks. The piece credits the campaign with contributing to school policy changes, sustained media coverage, celebrity endorsements, and manufacturer interest in child-friendly devices, while describing the founders' stated goal as encouraging balance around technology rather than banning it altogether.
How a British couple sparked a global movement for a smartphone-free childhood
This CBS News article and accompanying video segment reports on Daisy Greenwell and her husband and Smartphone Free Childhood co-founder Joe Ryrie for a U.S. audience, describing how their daughter's request for a smartphone at age eight led to an Instagram post that Greenwell says drew an overwhelming response and grew into a campaign now linked to activity in 39 countries. It quotes Ryrie describing the effort as "not an anti-tech movement, it's a pro-childhood movement," and Greenwell arguing that "delaying the smartphone is free, it's simple, and gives your child the best chance to thrive." The segment situates the UK-founded campaign alongside Australia's under-16 social media restrictions and notes rising U.S. sales of basic "brick phones" as a related parental response. It does not name Clare Fernyhough directly.
Screenagers: Growing Up in the Digital Age
Screenagers: Growing Up in the Digital Age is the debut documentary from physician-filmmaker Delaney Ruston, built around her own family's disagreements over her daughter's first smartphone. Ruston interviews neuroscientists, teachers, and teenagers to examine how heavy phone, social media, and gaming use can become tangled up with distraction, family conflict, and academic struggle, and profiles families and schools experimenting with limits and screen-free routines. Rather than a traditional theatrical release, the film has circulated almost entirely through community, school, and workplace screenings, which the filmmaker's team credits with helping start conversations between parents and kids about tech habits. TechKids Foundation cites Screenagers as an early, influential entry in the popular-media record documenting parent and educator concern about excessive screen use in children, framed here as patterns filmmakers and families observed rather than a controlled scientific finding.
Smartphones Aren't a Smart Choice in Middle School
In this opinion piece for CNN, physician and Screenagers filmmaker Delaney Ruston argues that U.S. middle schools should keep phones out of students' hands during the school day, pointing to France's then-new nationwide ban on in-school phone use for students 15 and under. Ruston cites a survey her own team ran of more than 1,200 U.S. middle-school parents, in which a majority reported their child's school allowed phone use throughout the day even though most parents said they preferred stricter limits. She also notes that the brain regions involved in impulse control are still developing in early adolescence, which she argues makes classroom self-regulation around phones especially hard for middle schoolers. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as an example of a physician-advocate translating her own survey data into a specific school-policy argument.
Away For The Day National Survey of Middle-School Cell Phone Policies
This is the original survey report behind Away For The Day, the phone-free-schools initiative that physician-filmmaker Delaney Ruston and her Screenagers team launched after concluding there was no existing data describing actual U.S. middle-school cell phone policies. Between late May and mid-June 2017 the team surveyed more than 1,200 parents of middle-schoolers, drawn mainly from people who had seen or followed the Screenagers documentary. The survey found a majority of respondents' schools allowed students to carry phones throughout the day, while a much larger majority of parents said they would prefer schools kept phones stored away during class time, with public schools notably more permissive than private schools. TechKids Foundation cites this report as an example of an advocacy organization generating its own original data, rather than relying solely on outside research, to argue for stricter school phone policies.
Screenagers NEXT CHAPTER: Uncovering Skills for Stress Resilience
Screenagers NEXT CHAPTER: Uncovering Skills for Stress Resilience is physician-filmmaker Delaney Ruston's sequel documentary, following her own teenagers and other families as she examines the emotional side of adolescence in a heavily digital environment. The film centers stress, anxiety, and depression among teens, gathering perspectives from psychologists, students, and school staff on how heavy phone and social-media use can be tangled up with mood, sleep, and coping, alongside profiles of schools and families building communication skills and stress-management routines. Like the original Screenagers, the film is distributed mainly through community and school screenings rather than streaming or theatrical release. TechKids Foundation cites NEXT CHAPTER as a widely screened documentary that treats teen anxiety and depression as outcomes associated with, among other things, digital-age pressures, while foregrounding coping skills as the intended takeaway rather than any single-cause explanation.
Screenagers Under the Influence: Addressing Vaping, Drugs, and Alcohol in the Digital Age
Screenagers Under the Influence: Addressing Vaping, Drugs, and Alcohol in the Digital Age is the third feature film in physician-filmmaker Delaney Ruston's Screenagers series, examining how a heavily digital teen social life intersects with decisions about vaping, alcohol, and drugs. The film follows teens, parents, and school staff, pairing personal stories with input from researchers on adolescent decision-making, and emphasizes common, lower-severity situations over portrayals of severe substance dependence. It presents school and family strategies — clearer expectations, monitoring, and open conversation — as ways to support healthier decisions, rather than framing substance use as an inevitable consequence of phone or social-media use. TechKids Foundation cites this film as an example of the Screenagers series extending its screen-time framework into substance-use decision-making, again describing a link rather than a single cause.
Parenting in the Screen Age: A Guide for Calm Conversations
Parenting in the Screen Age: A Guide for Calm Conversations is a practical guidebook by physician-filmmaker Delaney Ruston, written as a companion to her Screenagers documentaries. Drawing on more than a decade of her own research interviews with families, researchers, and teens, the book offers scripts and strategies for parents to raise screen-time issues — including online cruelty, sexting, and mental health — without triggering defensiveness, and to set boundaries around gaming and streaming meant to reduce household conflict and sneaking around limits. It is framed as translating existing research and family interviews into everyday conversation tools rather than presenting new data of its own. TechKids Foundation cites this book as a widely distributed parenting resource that treats screen-related family conflict as a solvable, communication-centered problem.
Delaney Ruston: Tech-Wise Summit
In this recorded conversation from the 2023 Tech-Wise Summit, hosted by parenting educator Susan Stiffelman, physician-filmmaker Delaney Ruston discusses the day-to-day tension parents face between limiting children's screen time and recognizing technology's real place in kids' lives. Ruston, drawing on her Screenagers documentaries and her own parenting, talks through practical approaches for setting household tech boundaries, handling pushback from kids, and distinguishing screen use that supports learning or connection from use that crowds out sleep, homework, or family time. The conversation stays anecdotal and practice-focused rather than presenting new research findings. TechKids Foundation cites this talk as an example of Ruston's public-facing advocacy work translating her documentary research into direct parent coaching, distinct from her films and written materials.
Screenagers: Elementary School Age Edition
Screenagers: Elementary School Age Edition is the fourth film in physician-filmmaker Delaney Ruston's Screenagers series, co-directed with Lisa Tabb, adapting the franchise's focus to children in kindergarten through fifth grade. The film examines early exposure to online content, social pressures reaching down into elementary school, device distraction in classrooms, video-game habits, and what the filmmakers describe as rising sleep deprivation among younger children, again pairing family stories with input from psychologists and brain researchers. As with earlier Screenagers films, it is distributed mainly through school and community screenings alongside a shorter classroom cut. TechKids Foundation cites this film as evidence that the advocacy conversation Ruston's series popularized for teenagers has extended to elementary-age children, with sleep and classroom distraction highlighted as newer, younger-skewing concerns.
Screen Time Parenting With Positive Discipline (The Screenagers Podcast)
In this Screenagers Podcast episode, host and physician-filmmaker Delaney Ruston talks with Positive Discipline specialist Casey O'Roarty about handling screen-time conflict at home. The two discuss children sneaking extra screen time, the meltdowns that can follow when limits are enforced, and how a Positive Discipline approach — described as balancing firmness with connection — can reduce power struggles over phones, gaming, and streaming, illustrated with a parent's account of shifting her own household routines. The episode is a practice-oriented conversation rather than a presentation of new research, aimed at parents managing everyday screen-time friction with younger kids. TechKids Foundation cites this episode as an example of Ruston's ongoing podcast work extending her documentary-era screen-time advocacy into an interview format with outside parenting experts.
Raising Digitally Resilient Kids With Delaney Ruston
In this 2025 interview with parenting educator Susan Stiffelman, physician-filmmaker Delaney Ruston discusses building what she calls digital resilience in children — the ability to handle setbacks, boredom, and social pressure that come with growing up around phones and social media, rather than avoiding screens altogether. Ruston draws on her Screenagers films and ongoing parent conversations to talk through specific tactics, including modeling her own tech habits out loud and coaching kids through frustration instead of removing every difficulty. The conversation is practice-focused, aimed at parents and educators, rather than a presentation of new research findings. TechKids Foundation cites this talk as a recent example of Ruston's public speaking translating her documentary-era research into a specific parenting framework for resilience.
Posar fre als mòbils: famílies de Barcelona s'organitzen per endarrerir-lo fins als 16 anys
This Catalan-language piece from Barcelona's public broadcaster betevé profiles the earliest days of the Poblenou WhatsApp group Elisabet García Permanyer started in autumn 2023, days after it passed 750 members. It describes families' shared worry that giving a smartphone to a 12-year-old entering secondary school has become an unquestioned default, and reports a parallel survey of nearly 700 families in Barcelona's Gràcia district exploring the same question. García Permanyer is quoted arguing that families should not simply assume a phone arrives with secondary school, and that coordinating enough households to delay together removes the social pressure on any one child to be the odd one out. The piece frames delayed smartphone access as a coordination problem among families, not an individual parenting failure — an early snapshot of a movement that would soon spread across Spain.
Las familias se movilizan: "No es normal entregar un móvil a un niño de 12 años"
This EFE wire report, carried by Infobae, covers the rapid early growth of the Poblenou 'adolescencia libre de móviles' WhatsApp group Elisabet García Permanyer started in October 2023. Within days the group had grown to nearly 1,000 parents and educators planning awareness activities ahead of the holiday shopping season, when many Spanish families traditionally buy a child's first phone. García Permanyer, a mother of three who also runs a movement-based studio for young students, says she noticed relational friction among children with early phone access, and argues that treating age 12 as the default age for a first smartphone has become normalized without much scrutiny. The report also relays her characterization of specialists' views that younger adolescents' capacity to manage unrestricted internet access is still developing — presented as a case for caution, not a settled diagnosis.
La revuelta contra el móvil que empezó en un parque
This ARA feature by Lara Bonilla traces the origin of Elisabet García Permanyer's smartphone-delay movement to a conversation among parents waiting at school pickup in Barcelona's Poblenou, where the question of buying a child's first phone for secondary school came up. García Permanyer describes starting a WhatsApp group with modest ambitions — hoping to persuade a handful of her son's friends' families to wait — that instead grew into a Catalonia-wide Telegram network of roughly 8,000 people within a single week. The piece describes the movement organizing itself into spokespeople and working groups covering surveys, family pledge letters, and requests to lawmakers, and cites a local survey in which 70% of responding parents said they did not want to give their child a smartphone before age 16. It presents the swift, largely organic growth as evidence of parental unease about a default few had previously questioned.
Familias que se unen y pactan no dar móvil a sus hijos hasta los 16 años: "Así evitamos la presión social"
elDiario.es's Catalunya desk covers the spread of family pacts, including the one Elisabet García Permanyer organized in Barcelona's Poblenou neighborhood, in which parents commit together to delay a child's first smartphone until age 16 rather than the more typical age 12. The piece situates her WhatsApp group, which passed 1,000 members within days, alongside a comparable effort in Cardedeu involving roughly 380 families across several school associations, and cites national figures showing most Spanish children already have a smartphone well before age 16. García Permanyer is quoted arguing that 12-year-olds are better served spending their time on play, sports, friendship, and schoolwork than on unrestricted device access. The article frames these pacts as a coordination tool that lets families who want to wait do so without singling out their own child.
El grupo Adolescència Lliure de Mòbil pide una regulación "clara" a Educació para las escuelas
This Europa Press wire report, carried by Última Hora, covers a formal request that Adolescència Lliure de Mòbil — co-founded and represented by Elisabet García Permanyer — made to Catalonia's regional education department. The group asked the department to set a single, clear rule on personal smartphone use inside school buildings rather than leaving the decision to individual schools, arguing that a patchwork of local policies creates unequal conditions between students at different centers. García Permanyer is quoted saying phones do not help children concentrate in class and reiterating the group's preferred age of 16 for a first smartphone, alongside a companion message discouraging any single family from feeling pressured to give a 12-year-old a phone just because classmates have one. The report frames the request as a shift from informal family pledges toward asking government for enforceable, system-wide rules.
Móviles: descontrol parental (Salvados, La Sexta)
On December 17, 2023, the Spanish newsmagazine Salvados (La Sexta), hosted by Gonzo, closed its season with an episode titled 'Móviles: descontrol parental' examining family conflict over children's smartphone use. Elisabet García Permanyer appeared alongside fellow Adolescència Lliure de Mòbil co-founder Xavier Casanovas, a researcher, and a psychologist, discussing whether schools or lawmakers should set a minimum age for a first smartphone and whether phones should be restricted inside classrooms. The episode also followed a family that agreed to a phone-free ritual at home. This entry is sourced from elDiario.es's contemporaneous coverage of the broadcast, which names and describes García Permanyer's on-air participation; the episode itself is not preserved at a stable public URL, so TechKids Foundation cites the press account documenting it rather than hosting or re-describing unverified broadcast content.
Así se creó el primer movimiento viral contra las pantallas
One year after Elisabet García Permanyer started a single WhatsApp group in Barcelona's Poblenou neighborhood, this retrospective by Jordi Pérez Colomé — written for El País and carried by La Nación — traces how that group grew into hundreds of local chapters and more than 30,000 participating families across Spain organized around delaying children's first smartphone to age 16. Drawing on an interview with García Permanyer, the piece recounts her account of a personal, almost accidental start — "my goal was personal, I wanted fewer teenagers to have phones" — and her acknowledgment of the irony of using phones and group chats to coordinate resistance to phones. It also notes that a French broadcaster and an independent journalist had each filmed documentary material involving the movement, unreleased at the time of writing. The article presents the coordinated family pact, rather than individual restriction, as the movement's central organizing idea.
Meet the Teens Lobbying to Regulate Social Media
This 60 Minutes segment profiles Emma Lembke and fellow teen advocate Aliza Kopans, both college sophomores who founded the youth group Tech(nically) Politics to push lawmakers toward regulating social media platforms. Lembke describes joining Instagram in middle school and says she and people around her experienced rising anxiety, depression, and body-image concerns she associates with time spent on the app. The segment follows the two students collecting and forwarding peer testimonials to elected officials and arguing for specific design changes, including ending targeted advertising to minors and disabling autoplay for teen accounts. CBS also connects their organizing to California's 2022 Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as a mainstream television record of youth-led lobbying translating personal experience into concrete policy proposals.
Written Testimony Before the Senate Judiciary Committee: Protecting Our Children Online
On February 14, 2023, Emma Lembke, founder of the LOG OFF Movement, delivered written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on protecting children online. She described creating an Instagram account at age 12 and said that as her time on the platform grew she experienced worsening anxiety, depression, and disordered eating, which she links to constant social comparison and exposure to unrealistic body-image content. She cited outside data — Pew Research figures on rising 'almost constant' teen social media use and Meta's own 2019 internal research on teen body image — to argue her experience reflects a wider generational pattern, and described hearing from other young people about cyberbullying and unwanted contact through her organizing work. She urged senators to regulate platform design with young people's input rather than only on their behalf. TechKids Foundation cites this as a primary-source youth account entered into the congressional record.
Design It For Us Statement on Federal Endorsement Package
In this May 2023 press statement, Design It For Us co-chairs Emma Lembke and Zamaan Qureshi announced the youth coalition's formal endorsement of three federal bills: the Kids Online Safety Act, the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act, and the Kids PRIVCY Act. The statement frames the endorsements as a coordinated policy position from a coalition of young people and youth-serving organizations pressing lawmakers to add legally enforceable safety and privacy duties for platforms used by minors, rather than relying on voluntary industry commitments. It ties the endorsement to the coalition's broader argument that product design choices, not any single piece of content, are the primary lever regulators should target. TechKids Foundation cites this statement as a documented, dated policy position taken publicly by Lembke's coalition on named legislation, rather than a general mission statement.
Teens Say Social Media Are Stressing Them Out. Here's How to Help Them.
In this NPR feature by health reporter Michaeleen Doucleff, Emma Lembke discusses how founding the LOG OFF Movement grew out of her own anxiety disorder and OCD, which she says social media use amplified rather than caused. She describes a personal habit-change approach — a timed 'five-minute power scroll' paired with a friction-adding browser tool called HabitLab — that she credits with cutting her own screen time by roughly 80%. The article situates her account alongside Pew Research figures on how widely and heavily US teens use social media, and offers practical, non-clinical strategies parents and teens can use to build more intentional habits. TechKids Foundation cites this piece for its first-person account of a youth advocate's own behavior-change approach, distinct from her policy-focused testimony and statements.
Are the Kids All Right?: The Internet
This CBS Reports documentary examines how Generation Z — described as the first generation to grow from birth through adolescence with constant internet access — experiences self-esteem and self-control pressures tied to always-on digital life. Emma Lembke appears as one of several featured young people working to reshape her generation's relationship with technology. Rather than centering clinical claims, the documentary follows these teens describing their own experiences and the peer-organizing strategies they built in response, including LOG OFF's model of youth-led community support. TechKids Foundation cites this documentary as a mainstream television production that platforms youth advocates, including Lembke, describing their own lived experience and organizing work largely in their own words, rather than relying solely on adult experts or industry executives to characterize the problem.
Teen Activist on Social Media, Self-Esteem and Why It's Important to "Log Off"
Released alongside CBS Reports' documentary 'Are the Kids All Right?: The Internet,' this companion interview segment features Emma Lembke speaking directly with CBS News anchors Mola Lenghi and Tanya Rivero about why she founded the LOG OFF Movement. She discusses the connection she sees between constant platform use and self-esteem pressure among her peers, and explains LOG OFF's premise that young people are better positioned than adults to build peer-support and organizing spaces around their own social media habits. The segment functions as a standalone explainer of her advocacy rather than a recap of the full documentary. TechKids Foundation cites this clip as a concise, on-record statement of Lembke's own framing of why she started her organization, distinct from the longer documentary it accompanies.
Emma Lembke (Life 360 with Kristi K.)
In this October 2023 episode of the PBS business-affairs program 'Life 360 with Kristi K.,' host Kristi K. interviews Emma Lembke, then a student at Washington University in St. Louis, about founding the LOG OFF Movement and her broader youth-advocacy work. The conversation covers how Lembke moved from her own early experience with social media into organizing other young people, and touches on the privacy, safety, and mental-health themes her advocacy focuses on. As a longer-form business-program interview rather than a short hard-news clip, it gives more room for her own account of her motivations and goals than typical news segments allow. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as a documented, dated public appearance in which Lembke explains her advocacy largely in her own words.
'An Unfair Fight': The U.S. Surgeon General Declares War on Social Media
This NPR news feature, distributed via Alaska Public Media, covers then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's push for a warning label on social media platforms as part of a broader youth mental-health advisory. The piece opens with Emma Lembke's account of noticing, around age 12, that friends who joined social media began pulling away from in-person time with her — an anecdote the reporting uses to frame the generational shift the advisory addresses. The article places her personal account alongside national survey data on teen social media and screen-time patterns before turning to policy debate over the proposed warning label. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as documented national coverage in which Lembke's own early experience is used to illustrate a public-health policy debate she has since become an organizer around, rather than as a central investigative profile of her.
Design It For Us on White House Report to Address Online Youth Safety
In this July 2024 statement, Design It For Us core team member Emma Lembke responds to a Biden administration interagency task force report on online youth safety. She argues that engagement-driven platform business models have put corporate profit ahead of young users' safety and privacy, associating that design choice with the harms her coalition has documented, and expresses support for the report's recommendations. The statement links the administration's findings to Design It For Us's own legislative priorities, including the Kids Online Safety Act and COPPA 2.0, and references Lembke's earlier Senate Judiciary Committee testimony as part of the coalition's ongoing case for federal action. TechKids Foundation cites this as a dated organizational response connecting a specific government report to Lembke's coalition's policy agenda, rather than a general mission statement.
Log Off Movement Founder Calls Social Media Addiction Trial Verdict a 'Watershed Moment'
In this CBS News segment, Emma Lembke — identified as LOG OFF Movement founder and Gen Z advocacy director at the Sustainable Media Center — joins anchors to react to a Los Angeles County jury verdict in K.G.M. v. Meta Platforms and Google, in which jurors found the companies liable on claims that they designed social media and video products in ways associated with compulsive teen use. The segment describes the verdict as the first time a jury has held major technology companies liable on this kind of claim. Lembke calls it a 'watershed moment' for the youth-advocacy movement she has spent years building, framing it as validation of years of youth testimony to lawmakers rather than treating the underlying design questions as newly settled. TechKids Foundation cites this segment as her documented public reaction to a specific, named legal outcome.
Under a Pink Sky
Under a Pink Sky is Esther Ghey's 2025 memoir, published by Michael Joseph, written after the 2023 murder of her 16-year-old daughter Brianna. The book recounts Brianna's life and Ghey's account of her daughter's struggles, including exposure to pro-eating-disorder and self-harm material online, alongside Ghey's decision to channel her grief into public campaigning rather than anger — covering the founding of the Peace in Mind mindfulness initiative and her early push for restrictions on children's phone and social media access. Reviewers, including the Guardian and New Statesman, have described it as a reflective, forgiveness-focused account rather than a polemic. TechKids Foundation lists this memoir as the primary first-person account underlying Ghey's public advocacy, framing her daughter's online exposure to harmful content as one factor among several she has publicly named, not a single proven cause of any specific outcome.
Oral Evidence: Screen Time and Social Media — Esther Ghey to the Education Committee
On 28 April 2026, Esther Ghey gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Education Committee's Screen Time and Social Media inquiry (HC 1839), chaired by Helen Hayes, alongside Molly Rose Foundation chief executive Andy Burrows and NSPCC policy lead Rani Govender. Testifying as founder and director of the Brianna Ghey Legacy Project, Ghey described her daughter's phone use as compulsive and recounted how, in her account, Brianna became isolated and was targeted online by people intending her harm. She told the Committee her daughter's phone use was not an isolated case, saying the pattern she describes touches other children as well. TechKids Foundation cites this session as Ghey's most formal public testimony to a UK legislative body, presenting her own characterization of her daughter's experience as one parent's account informing a live policy inquiry, not as an independently established causal finding.
Esther Ghey: 'The Internet Unleashed Horrific Things'
This New Statesman profile, published by Sarah Dawood shortly after the sentencing of her daughter Brianna's killers, is one of Esther Ghey's earliest in-depth interviews. In it, Ghey argues for banning social media apps on under-16s' devices and for stronger age-verification on platforms, and criticizes the Online Safety Act as insufficient. The piece describes Brianna's own history of self-harm and disordered eating, which the article says worsened alongside her exposure to harmful social media content, and introduces Ghey's Peace in Mind mindfulness campaign. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as an early, widely read statement of Ghey's policy positions in her own words, delivered to a mainstream political-current-affairs outlet, and notes that the piece frames platform exposure as associated with — not the sole explanation for — the deterioration in her daughter's wellbeing that Ghey describes.
Esther Ghey Says Social Media Firms Won't Put Lives Before Profit
In this BBC News piece by Miriam Barker, published around a documentary screening about Brianna Ghey, Esther Ghey says she no longer believes any social media company will prioritize user safety over profit. She describes major platforms as poorly moderated and calls for age limits barring under-16s from social media, pointing to reports that some teenagers spend around eight hours a day on tablets and describing this level of use as unhealthy. The article also covers her continued push for 'brick' (basic, non-smartphone) phones as an alternative for children and her broader campaign for smartphone age limits and stricter app controls. TechKids Foundation cites this piece for its direct quotes from Ghey characterizing platform design and heavy device use as, in her words, incompatible with children's wellbeing — an association she draws from her own family's experience, not an independently adjudicated finding.
Esther Ghey: I Lost Brianna Twice — First, to Her Phone, Then to Her Murderers
This i News feature revisits the 2023 murder of Brianna Ghey and traces how one of her killers moved from watching true-crime content to violent dark-web material before the attack, while separately describing Brianna's own history of heavy social-media use, self-harm, and disordered eating. Esther Ghey is quoted describing feeling she lost her daughter in two stages — first to her phone, then to her murderers — and the piece covers her continuing advocacy for social-media age limits, stricter age verification, and safety-first phone design, alongside her weekly meetings with one killer's mother and her Peace and Mind mindfulness initiative. TechKids Foundation cites this profile for its detailed, association-language account of two separate documented harms — the killer's escalating exposure to violent online content, and Brianna's own self-harm-related exposure — treated by the piece as connected risk factors rather than sole causes of either outcome.
Brianna Ghey's Mother Esther Says Online Safety Act Does Not Go Far Enough
In this BBC News report, Esther Ghey argues the UK's Online Safety Act falls short of protecting children because hateful comments on social media are not classified as harmful content under the law, and calls for age restrictions preventing under-16s from holding social-media accounts. She describes children as heavily reliant on their phones, compares aspects of platform design to gambling-style engagement mechanics in her own words, and argues phone manufacturers bear a responsibility beyond commercial interest. The article notes her phone-restriction petition had passed 90,000 signatures and that her local mindfulness campaign had raised enough to fund a mindfulness teacher in every Warrington school. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as an early statement of Ghey's specific legislative critique, presented as her own policy argument rather than an independently verified claim about the law's effects.
Mindfulness in Schools — House of Commons Debate
This Hansard record documents a House of Commons debate on introducing mindfulness programs in English schools, led by Warrington North MP Charlotte Nichols and responded to by then-Minister Damian Hinds. Esther Ghey attended as a guest in the Public Gallery, and several MPs, including Andy Carter and Tim Farron, referred directly to her and to the local mindfulness fundraising campaign she started in Warrington following her daughter Brianna's death. Speakers argued mindfulness training is associated with improved focus and emotional regulation in children and cited rising mental-health pressures on young people linked in part to social-media use and academic stress, while the government response pointed to existing school mental-health programs and ongoing trials. TechKids Foundation cites this transcript as an official government record of Ghey's advocacy directly shaping a live legislative debate, distinct from her media interviews.
Petition: Change the Law to Make Phone Companies More Responsible for Children's Online Welfare
This Change.org petition, started by Esther Ghey through her Peace and Mind UK initiative days after her daughter's killers were sentenced, calls on mobile phone and social-media companies to accept greater responsibility for children's online welfare — specifically asking for age limits on smartphone use and stricter controls on social-app and unsupervised internet access. The petition text describes Brianna's killers as having used the internet to plan the attack and states that Brianna herself had accessed pro-eating-disorder and self-harm content on her phone. It has drawn well over 120,000 signatures. TechKids Foundation cites this petition as a primary campaign document authored by Ghey's own organization, phrased here as the petition's own claims about her daughter's documented online exposure rather than as an independently verified account.
Brianna Ghey's Mother Calls for School Smartphone Ban
This BBC News report covers the launch of Esther Ghey's Phone-Free Education campaign, which calls for a statutory ban on pupils accessing phones during the school day, enforced through lockable storage pouches, with exemptions for medical or accessibility needs. The article reports that Brianna's former school, Birchwood Community High School, logged 120 safeguarding entries and 116 behavior entries connected to her phone use over three years, and that Ghey received phone calls from the school roughly five times a day about related incidents. Ghey describes her daughter as having been unable to put her phone down and argues government funding is needed so schools are not left to manage phone-related disruption alone. TechKids Foundation cites this report for its documented, school-logged figures on phone-related safeguarding and behavior incidents tied to one specific case, presented as that school's own record rather than a national statistic.
Phone-Free Education — Open Letter to the Prime Minister and Education Secretary
Phone-Free Education is a campaign site run under Esther Ghey's Brianna's Legacy project, built around an open letter to the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Education asking for a statutory, enforced ban on pupils accessing phones during the school day, with proper storage solutions and exemptions for medical or accessibility needs. The site cites figures stating that only a small share of English schools ban phones outright, that most operate limited restrictions, and that a notable share of teenagers report daily lesson disruption from phones. The letter has been signed by actress Kate Winslet, actor Stephen Graham, and several MPs. TechKids Foundation cites this campaign page as Ghey's own primary policy document, presenting its cited figures as the campaign's own claims about the current state of school phone policy rather than independently audited statistics.
Transgender Day of Remembrance 2024: Esther Ghey on Creating a 'Lasting Positive Legacy' to Help Others Like Brianna
This Attitude Magazine feature covers a posthumous Inspiration Award given to Brianna Ghey at the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards and Esther Ghey's account of her daughter's life and death. Ghey recalls Brianna as an energetic child who later came out as transgender, and describes learning after Brianna's murder that she had accessed pro-eating-disorder pages and self-harm forums online, alongside her own experiences of anxiety and disordered eating. The piece covers Ghey's founding of Peace and Mind UK, which pursues both mindfulness training in schools and improved online safety for children as a 'lasting positive legacy' for her daughter. TechKids Foundation cites this profile for its detailed, association-language account of the specific harmful content categories Ghey says her daughter encountered, presented as her family's own documented experience rather than a general claim about all children's online risk.
Written Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security
Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, submitted written testimony and appeared before a U.S. Senate Commerce subcommittee on October 5, 2021, after leaving the company with tens of thousands of internal documents. She told lawmakers that Facebook's own researchers had studied how Instagram's design was associated with worsened body image, anxiety, and self-harm ideation for a share of teen girl users, and that leadership had been briefed on those findings. She argued the company's engagement-based ranking systems reward divisive and extreme content, and asked Congress to require outside oversight of platform algorithms and data rather than relying on voluntary self-policing. This hearing is widely credited with catalyzing subsequent state investigations and federal legislative proposals on platform design and children's safety.
Oral Evidence to the UK Parliament's Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill
Three weeks after her U.S. Senate appearance, Haugen gave oral evidence to the UK Parliament's Joint Committee scrutinizing the Draft Online Safety Bill. She told British lawmakers that Facebook's engagement-based ranking amplifies divisive and polarizing content, arguing the design choice is linked to real-world unrest in multiple countries, and that the company had been unwilling to accept even small reductions in profit for the sake of safety. Her appearance was framed by UK media as directly feeding the committee's push to toughen the bill's provisions on algorithmic transparency and duty-of-care obligations toward younger users. TechKids Foundation cites this as a documented example of Haugen's advocacy translating U.S. congressional disclosures into a second country's legislative process, rather than as an independent finding of harm.
Testimony to the European Parliament Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection
Haugen appeared for nearly three hours before a joint session of European Parliament committees, including the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, as MEPs were negotiating the Digital Services Act. She told members that the DSA had the potential to become a global benchmark for platform regulation, urged mandatory public disclosure of how platforms collect data and rank content and advertising, and suggested Facebook could reduce amplification-linked harms by capping how far content can be reshared and by investing more in non-English-language moderation. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as a primary-source example of Haugen's advocacy directly shaping EU-level policy debate on platform design and transparency, distinct from her earlier U.S. and UK testimony.
Auditions Before the French Senate and National Assembly
On November 10, 2021, Haugen testified in Paris before two French Senate committees — Culture, Education and Communication, and European Affairs — and, the same day, before the National Assembly's Economic Affairs and Legal Affairs committees. French committee chairs described her disclosures as important input for lawmakers then shaping European digital-regulation rules, and the hearing was livestreamed on the Senate's own video platform. As with her U.S., UK, and EU appearances, the substance repeated her core claim: that Facebook's internal research had identified design-linked harms to some users, including younger ones, that leadership did not act on. TechKids Foundation cites this as documentation of Haugen's advocacy reaching a third national legislature within five weeks of her identity becoming public.
Discussion With the European Parliament IMCO Committee on the Global Impact of the Digital Services Act
Roughly six months after her first EU Parliament appearance, Haugen returned for a follow-up discussion with the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee shortly after EU negotiators reached political agreement on the Digital Services Act. The session examined whether the finalized DSA and the related Digital Markets Act could function as a global benchmark for platform regulation, coming as MEPs prepared for a visit to major U.S. technology companies. Unlike her earlier appearances, this was a standing-committee discussion following a policy win rather than testimony feeding an active legislative fight. TechKids Foundation includes it as evidence of sustained, multi-year advocacy engagement rather than a single disclosure event.
Facebook Is Misleading the Public on Progress Against Hate Speech, Violence, Misinformation
In this CBS News 60 Minutes interview with correspondent Scott Pelley, Haugen first revealed her identity as the source behind the Facebook Files reporting. She described internal Facebook estimates that its systems catch only a small share of hate speech and violence-and-incitement content despite public claims of strong enforcement, and said a 2018 algorithm change tied ranking more closely to engagement — which she said is linked to more divisive, polarizing content circulating. She also described internal survey research, later cited in her congressional testimony, in which some teen girl respondents associated their Instagram use with a worsening of suicidal thoughts and eating-disorder symptoms. TechKids Foundation cites this as the interview that made her disclosures broadly public before her Senate appearance two days later.
The Power of One: How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and Why I Blew the Whistle on Facebook
Haugen's 2023 memoir traces the personal history she says shaped her decision to leak internal Facebook documents and testify publicly: the loss of a close friend to online misinformation-fueled radicalization, a serious illness that temporarily left her unable to work or walk, and her path through the tech industry into Facebook's Civic Integrity team. The book recounts how she copied roughly 22,000 pages of internal material before leaving the company in 2021 and walks through her subsequent congressional testimony and international advocacy. It is a first-person account rather than new data or analysis; TechKids Foundation cites it as the fullest public record of her own stated motivations and of how she characterizes what Facebook's internal research found.
Beyond the Screen: Nonprofit Launch to Research and Reform Social Platform Design
Haugen launched Beyond the Screen, a nonprofit bringing together nonprofit leaders, academics, litigators, and technologists to study harms linked to social media design and to develop preventative standards platforms could adopt. The initiative was backed by a reported $50 million, ten-year commitment from Project Liberty's McCourt Institute and set out to build 'digital governance frameworks' rather than to publish a single study. Beyond the Screen's own site describes ongoing work mapping platform-design choices against a 'standard of care,' proposing data-access standards for outside researchers, and building simulated social-network tools to test design changes before platforms ship them. TechKids Foundation cites this as Haugen's shift from disclosure and testimony toward building longer-term accountability infrastructure.
Council for Responsible Social Media
Haugen joined the Council for Responsible Social Media, a cross-partisan initiative housed at the nonprofit Issue One and co-chaired by former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt and former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, as one of its listed information-integrity experts. The Council describes its focus as addressing mental-health, civic, and national-security harms it associates with social media design, and frames platform accountability as a bipartisan policy problem rather than a partisan one. Unlike Beyond the Screen, which Haugen founded, this is a coalition she lends her expertise to rather than leads. TechKids Foundation cites it as evidence that her post-testimony advocacy extended into ongoing, institutionally backed policy coalitions rather than ending with her initial disclosures.
Facebook Lacked Tools to Flag RSS-Linked Hate Speech in India, Whistleblower Documents Show
Reporting on internal Facebook documents Haugen disclosed to U.S. regulators and shared with a media consortium, this article describes gaps in the platform's non-English content-moderation systems in India, one of its largest markets. According to the documents, Facebook did not deploy automated Hindi-language classifiers for hate speech until 2020, and Bengali-language classifiers until 2021, years after the platform had scaled in those languages. The disclosed material also described an internal case study finding posts from pages linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) containing dehumanizing anti-Muslim narratives that the platform's systems struggled to catch, and separate findings on inauthentic accounts driving a large share of engagement on civic content in West Bengal. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence of Haugen's disclosures extending beyond U.S.-focused claims into platform-design gaps affecting other countries' information environments.
Oral Evidence to the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill
In 2021, Ian Russell — whose fourteen-year-old daughter Molly died in 2017 after viewing large volumes of graphic depression, self-harm, and suicide-related content on Instagram and Pinterest — gave oral evidence, as chair of the newly formed Molly Rose Foundation, to the UK Parliament's Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill. This pre-legislative committee scrutinized the bill that became the Online Safety Act 2023, and Russell was part of a witness panel pressing MPs and peers on strengthening duties around content linked to self-harm and suicide and on the powers of the incoming regulator. The foundation's own account describes the session as 'wide-ranging and informative.' TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as a documented instance of bereaved-parent input into landmark UK legislation, described here in association language rather than as a claim that any single platform feature caused his daughter's death.
Witness Evidence at the Inquest into the Death of Molly Russell
In September 2022, Andrew Walker, senior coroner for North London, concluded a multi-week inquest into the 2017 death of fourteen-year-old Molly Russell, finding that she died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and 'the negative effects of online content.' Her father, Ian Russell, gave witness evidence during the proceedings about changes he observed in his daughter before her death, as the inquest examined thousands of images and videos — some depicting suicide and self-harm — that she had viewed on Instagram and Pinterest. Following the verdict, Russell spoke publicly outside court, calling the coroner's conclusions an important step toward change. TechKids Foundation cites this as the first UK case in which a coroner formally linked a teenager's death to online content exposure, understood as association rather than a single determined cause, since suicide and self-harm are never explained by one factor alone.
Report Revealing Children's Exposure to Suicide, Self-Harm, Depression and Eating Disorder Content Online
Published by the Molly Rose Foundation — the UK charity founded and chaired by Ian Russell after his daughter Molly's 2017 death — this October 2025 briefing reports on children's exposure to suicide, self-harm, depression, and eating-disorder content on social media, surveyed in the weeks immediately before the Online Safety Act's child-safety duties took legal effect. The foundation's own summary states that, at that point, 'far too little had changed' since Molly's death, describing continued routine exposure of teenagers to this category of content on major platforms. It was framed by the foundation as a baseline for measuring the incoming law's effect, a comparison revisited in a follow-up 'wave two' study the following year. This entry draws on the foundation's public summary page, not the full report. TechKids Foundation cites it as documented, association-language evidence of an exposure pattern, not a claim about any individual case.
Channel 4 News Interview: "Online Safety Act Not as Powerful as It Could Be"
In a March 2025 Channel 4 News interview with correspondent Ciaran Jenkins, Ian Russell — founder of the Molly Rose Foundation — assessed the UK's Online Safety Act roughly two years after it passed. Russell said the law, which took five years to negotiate, 'is not as powerful as it could have been,' and argued that content similar to what his daughter Molly viewed before her 2017 death remains easily accessible to children. He said regulator Ofcom was 'not doing enough' within its existing powers and predicted further legislative change would be needed within a year, despite public opposition to stricter rules from figures including Elon Musk and JD Vance. He cited polling in which only 8% of parents felt authorities were adequately protecting children online. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as a documented, dated public assessment of the Act's early implementation by a leading bereaved-parent campaigner.
Children's Exposure to Suicide, Self-Harm, and Eating Disorder Content on Social Media (Wave Two)
This June 2026 Molly Rose Foundation briefing is the second wave of a tracking study measuring UK teenagers' exposure to suicide, self-harm, depression, and eating-disorder content on social media after the Online Safety Act's child-safety duties came into force. The foundation — founded and chaired by Ian Russell following his daughter Molly's 2017 death — reports that around a third of 13-to-17-year-olds encountered this category of high-risk content weekly, rising to close to half of girls, and that roughly three-quarters of teenagers who encountered it did so on TikTok, which the foundation links to personalized recommendation systems. The foundation frames the findings as showing only limited change since the law took effect, headlined by its own statement that 'half of girls are still being exposed' to this content. TechKids Foundation includes this as documented survey evidence of a continuing pattern, not a claim that any platform directly causes individual harm.
Online Safety Consultation: Public Attitudes Research Briefing
In March 2026, the Molly Rose Foundation — the UK charity founded and chaired by bereaved father Ian Russell — published a public-attitudes research briefing on online safety regulation, based on polling of roughly 2,000 UK adults. The foundation reports that around nine in ten respondents were concerned about children's online safety, about three-quarters supported new legislation to strengthen regulation of social media platforms, and roughly two-thirds felt the government had so far performed poorly on tackling social-media-related harms. The briefing was published as part of the foundation's contribution to a government consultation process on online safety policy, and the foundation says most respondents wanted policymakers to weigh both parents' views and independent evidence. TechKids Foundation cites this as documented evidence of UK public sentiment underpinning continued advocacy for stronger platform regulation, presented in association language rather than as a causal claim about any specific platform or feature.
Digital and Media Literacy in Secondary Schools
This June 2026 research briefing from the Molly Rose Foundation — founded and chaired by Ian Russell — examines how UK secondary schools teach children about social media, algorithmic recommendation systems, and harmful online content. The foundation's public summary describes significant gaps in current teaching, including limited dedicated curriculum time, uneven staff training, and inconsistent coverage across year groups, with algorithmic literacy — helping students understand how recommendation systems decide what they see — described as particularly under-supported relative to its role in exposing young people to misinformation, conspiratorial content, and material the foundation associates with self-harm risk. The briefing argues that stronger digital-literacy education is one policy response to the exposure patterns documented in the foundation's other research. This entry draws on the foundation's summary page, not the full briefing. TechKids Foundation includes it as a solutions-oriented education-policy resource, not a clinical claim about any student.
Critical Harm Intelligence Briefing: Weaponised Loneliness
Published in January 2026 by Resolver Trust and Safety in partnership with the Molly Rose Foundation — the charity founded and chaired by Ian Russell — this Critical Harm Intelligence Briefing describes so-called 'Com' networks: loosely organized online groups that the report says target isolated young people, build manipulative relationships with them, and coerce some into becoming perpetrators of violence and abuse. The briefing characterizes this as an exploitation pattern distinct from more familiar cyberbullying, operating across mainstream chat and gaming platforms rather than any single app, and calls for stronger platform detection tools and law-enforcement coordination. This entry draws on the foundation's public summary page rather than the full downloadable briefing, which was not independently reviewed in detail. TechKids Foundation cites it as documented organizational research into a targeted online-exploitation pattern affecting young people, using the source's own association-language framing rather than asserting a single mechanism of harm.
As Big Tech Is Found Liable for Harm, It's Now Up to Government to Act
In this March 2026 statement, published on the Molly Rose Foundation's website after separate U.S. court rulings in Los Angeles and New Mexico found Meta and Google liable for social-media-related harm, Ian Russell — the foundation's founder and chair — argued the rulings had not yet changed the companies' underlying practices. Russell said the business models he believes drove harmful content to his daughter Molly 'at a frightening scale' before her 2017 death remained largely intact, and called on the UK government to use the moment to strengthen the Online Safety Act's duties on addictive design features rather than pursue blanket platform bans. This is a self-published statement, not independently reported coverage of the underlying U.S. rulings. TechKids Foundation includes it as a documented instance of Russell linking a specific legal outcome to his ongoing UK policy advocacy, framed in his own words rather than as an independent TechKids finding.
More Than 60% of Australian Children Still Using Social Media Despite Under-16 Ban, Research Shows
This April 2026 Molly Rose Foundation research release reports survey findings on Australia's ban on social media accounts for under-16s, which took effect in December 2025. The foundation says roughly six in ten Australian 12-to-15-year-olds who held accounts before the ban still had access to platforms including TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram afterward, and that most of those continuing users said the platforms took no visible action to remove their accounts; about half said the ban made no difference to their online safety, and some said they felt less safe than before. Ian Russell, the foundation's founder and chair, said in the release that parents remain united in wanting change to protect children from serious online harm. TechKids Foundation cites this as documented cross-national research informing the UK's own debate over age-based social media restrictions, presented here in the foundation's own association-language terms.
Vi måste börja prata om barnens skärmtid
In this June 2023 opinion piece for Aftonbladet, Sweden's newly appointed Social Minister Jakob Forssmed argues that a decade of rapidly rising screen use has reshaped children's lives without a serious public reckoning with the consequences. He cites survey figures showing the share of 14-year-olds online more than three hours on an average day climbing from about 30 percent in 2010 to 76 percent in 2020, and a national health survey finding roughly three in ten teenagers spend five or more hours a day sitting in front of screens outside school hours. Forssmed associates heavy digital-media use with less time for sleep, physical activity, reading, and in-person connection, and announces that his government has commissioned public-health guidance on reasonable screen use and asked agencies to examine how attention-holding platform design affects children. TechKids Foundation cites this as Forssmed's own early framing of screen time as a governing priority, not an independent research finding.
Kunskapslägesrapport bekräftar negativa hälsoeffekter av omfattande skärmtid för barn och unga
On June 17, 2024, Sweden's Public Health Agency handed Social Minister Jakob Forssmed a knowledge-status report on digital media and children's health that his ministry had commissioned the year before. The compilation associates heavy screen and social-media use among children and teenagers with poorer sleep and more depressive symptoms, and links greater social-media use among 10-to-18-year-olds with body dissatisfaction. It also associates high parental phone use during interaction with young children with reduced parental responsiveness and, in some cited studies, more outward-directed behavior in preschoolers, plus links between heavy use and overweight, headaches, and spinal complaints, and notes children diagnosed with ADHD or autism show elevated rates of problematic digital-media use. Receiving the report, Forssmed called screen use one of the era's largest public-health challenges. TechKids Foundation cites this as the evidence base the Swedish government pointed to ahead of the national recommendations issued three months later.
Rekommendationer för en balanserad skärmanvändning bland barn
On September 2, 2024, Sweden's Public Health Agency published the country's first national age-banded recommendations on children's screen use, developed on assignment from the government led by Social Minister Jakob Forssmed. The guidance recommends no digital-media use for children under 2, up to one hour a day for ages 2 to 5, one to two hours for ages 6 to 12, and two to three hours for teenagers 13 to 18, alongside qualitative advice such as keeping phones out of bedrooms and staying engaged with children's digital lives. The agency associates high screen use with poorer sleep, more depressive symptoms, and body dissatisfaction, and reports that many young people themselves say they feel anxious about their own digital habits and want to change them. TechKids Foundation cites the recommendations as a concrete public-health policy outcome of the government initiative Forssmed's ministry commissioned, not as proof that any specific amount of screen time itself causes harm.
Forssmed: Mobilförbud i skolan ett historiskt steg för trygghet och hälsa
This September 2025 Epoch Times Sweden report covers Social Minister Jakob Forssmed's response to Sweden's incoming national ban on mobile phones during the school day in all compulsory schools, set to take effect July 1, 2026. The piece describes the reform as a long-standing priority for Forssmed within the governing coalition and quotes him extensively crediting the policy with creating calmer classrooms, reducing bullying, helping students sleep better, and — as a reported side effect — reducing phone use outside school hours as well. It cites government data showing Swedish 13-to-16-year-olds spend an average of about six and a half hours a day on mobile devices. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented policy outcome directly credited to Forssmed's advocacy within the government, distinct from the separate screen-time guidance his own ministry issues to families.
Folkhälsomyndigheten ska utreda vuxnas skärmtid - påverkar barn
In this October 2025 Ny Teknik wire report, Social Minister Jakob Forssmed announces that he has directed Sweden's Public Health Agency to study how adults' own phone and screen use around children affects child development, ahead of future guidance. Forssmed associates parents' in-the-moment phone use with disrupted attachment interactions and possible effects on children's language development and behavior, while explicitly saying he personally cannot evaluate the underlying science and is relying on the agency's forthcoming review. He notes many adults already describe their own screen habits as a problem, and expects resulting guidance to focus on raising awareness rather than setting fixed time limits for parents. TechKids Foundation cites this as a documented example of the minister directing public-health guidance work in progress, not a finished, evidence-backed recommendation.
Rekommendationer om skärmtid för barn skickas hem till hushåll
This October 2025 Swedish government press release announces that the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, under Social Minister Jakob Forssmed, is mailing a printed brochure with the Public Health Agency's screen-time recommendations directly to households with children ages 6 to 13, including a template 'screen plan' families can fill out together. Forssmed frames the mailing as giving parents a practical, concrete tool rather than leaving them to work out reasonable limits alone, and links extensive screen use in general terms to children's mental-health difficulties without naming a single cause. TechKids Foundation cites this as a distribution step in Sweden's national screen-time guidance program that followed the September 2024 recommendations, not as new research.
Regeringen tillsätter utredning om åldersgräns för sociala medier
On October 10, 2025, Sweden's government formally launched a special government inquiry to examine how a strict minimum age for children's social-media use could be designed and enforced, appointing Supreme Administrative Court chief legal adviser Lisa Englund Krafft to lead it. Announcing the inquiry, Social Minister Jakob Forssmed said the hold social media has taken over children's time and reality 'must be broken,' and that harmful content and habit-forming algorithms need to be pushed back to protect children's health, safety, and wellbeing. Background material accompanying the announcement cited survey findings that roughly half of Swedish teenagers report their mobile use interferes with homework or sleep. The inquiry was directed to deliver an interim report by June 2026 and a final report by November 2026. TechKids Foundation cites this as a documented, government-credited policy process, not as enacted law.
Vi håller med S om skärmtiden
In this October 2025 Expressen opinion piece, Social Minister Jakob Forssmed responds to a Social Democrat proposal for a social-media age limit by recapping his own record on screen-time policy since taking office. He states that no screen-time-related policy work was underway when he became minister, and credits his tenure with commissioning the Public Health Agency's national screen-time recommendations, introducing the incoming national school phone ban, pushing the EU Commission to act on platforms' algorithms, meeting repeatedly with technology companies about children's social-media use, and opening the government's new age-limit inquiry. He associates heavy digital-media use in general terms with concentration difficulties, sleep problems, reduced physical activity, and children's exposure to hateful or extreme content, grooming, and gang recruitment. TechKids Foundation cites the piece as Forssmed's own account of his record, not as an independent evaluation of its results.
Förslaget: 15-årsgräns för sociala medier
On June 2, 2026, the special government investigator Sweden's cabinet appointed in October 2025 delivered an interim report to Social Minister Jakob Forssmed proposing a minimum age of 15 for holding a logged-in social-media account, with enforcement responsibility placed on the platforms rather than families, and a proposed start date of January 1, 2028. The proposal would exempt video-only viewing services and gaming-oriented platforms such as Roblox. Receiving the report, Forssmed said Sweden risks 'losing an entire generation to endless scrolling' without stronger limits on children's access. TechKids Foundation cites this as a mid-process government policy proposal directly tied to the inquiry Forssmed's ministry commissioned, not as a law that has taken effect.
Forssmeds varning: Utan mobilen hade barnen inte nåtts av gängen
In this June 2026 SVT interview, Social Minister Jakob Forssmed argues that smartphones have given criminal gangs a direct channel into children's bedrooms, saying children would not have been as reachable for gang recruitment without them, and that technology companies have gained 'direct access to children's lives' and taken a tight grip on their time. The piece ties this to the Public Health Agency's advice to delay a child's first smartphone until around age 13, framed as reducing exposure to violent or extreme content and disrupted sleep, and notes the agency is developing further national screen-time guidance under a broader government assignment. TechKids Foundation cites this as a documented public warning connecting phone access to a specific child-safety risk — gang recruitment — in association terms, not as a claim that phones cause criminal recruitment on their own.
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
You Are Not a Gadget is a 2010 manifesto by computer scientist and virtual-reality pioneer Jaron Lanier that questions the era's enthusiasm for 'Web 2.0' crowd-based platforms such as Wikipedia and open-content aggregators. Lanier argues that designing software around anonymous crowds and algorithmic aggregation, rather than identifiable individual voices, is linked to a flattening of online culture and a narrowing of who is credited and paid for original creative work. He warns that treating people as interchangeable data sources for a 'hive mind' can erode individuality and concentrate economic power among aggregating platforms. TechKids Foundation includes this book as an early, foundational statement of Lanier's long-running argument that platform design choices are associated with a widening gap between online content creators and the platforms that profit from their work.
Who Owns the Future?
Who Owns the Future? is a 2013 book in which Jaron Lanier argues that large digital platforms — which he calls 'Siren Servers' — collect and aggregate ordinary people's data, photos, and translations at effectively no cost, then convert that pooled information into concentrated wealth for a small number of companies. He contends this arrangement is linked to shrinking middle-class opportunity in fields that digital networks touch, from journalism to photography, because the people who generate the underlying content are rarely paid for it. As a remedy, Lanier proposes 'micropayments' that would compensate people whenever their data or content is used commercially. TechKids Foundation cites this book as Lanier's core economic argument for why platform business models are associated with a growing gap between everyday content creators and the platforms that profit from their work.
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now is a 2018 book in which Jaron Lanier lays out ten reasons he believes people should quit mainstream social media. He argues platforms built on targeted advertising use algorithms that continuously adjust content to hold attention, which he links to manipulated behavior, amplified negative emotions, distorted self-perception, and reduced independent thought — effects he says fall hardest on the youngest, least experienced users. Lanier frames engagement-driven design as a deliberate business choice, not a neutral feature of connecting online. TechKids Foundation cites this book as Lanier's most direct statement on social media's association with self-control difficulties and disrupted social behavior, presented as his argument, not a clinical finding.
The Social Dilemma
The Social Dilemma is a 2020 Netflix documentary directed by Jeff Orlowski that pairs interviews with former social-media engineers with a dramatized story about a fictional teenager's platform use. Jaron Lanier appears throughout as one of the film's central on-camera voices, arguing the real commodity of ad-driven platforms is small, continuous shifts in a user's own behavior and attention that accumulate through algorithmic personalization. He frames this as a foundational design choice, and the film pairs his commentary with outside data it cites on rising self-harm-related hospitalization rates among teenage girls. TechKids Foundation cites this film for Lanier's widely quoted framing of behavioral change as the product being sold, treating the statistics as the film's own figures and noting self-harm is never attributable to one cause.
A Blueprint for a Better Digital Society
In this September 2018 Harvard Business Review essay, Jaron Lanier and economist E. Glen Weyl argue the targeted-advertising model funding most free digital platforms — built on continuous data collection about users — is an unsustainable foundation for the digital economy. They propose an alternative in which people who generate data through everyday online activity would be formally recognized and compensated for it, rather than treated as a resource extracted without acknowledgment. The essay ran as part of a Harvard Business Review series on surveillance, consent, and digital society. TechKids Foundation cites it as a concise, co-authored statement of the 'data dignity' policy proposal Lanier develops across his other work, presented as a specific reform argument, not a settled conclusion.
There Is No A.I.
In this April 2023 New Yorker essay, Jaron Lanier argues that describing large language models and image generators as independent 'artificial intelligence' is misleading and is linked to confused, poorly grounded public debate about the technology. He contends these systems are better understood as tools for statistically remixing human-created material — comparing a model like GPT-4 to 'a version of Wikipedia that includes much more data, mashed together using statistics' — rather than as new thinking entities. Lanier argues that mythologizing the technology as autonomous intelligence, whether celebratory or alarmist, is associated with worse policymaking, and proposes his 'data dignity' framework as a clearer alternative. TechKids Foundation cites this essay for its widely discussed argument that AI terminology itself contributes to public and policy confusion, a theme this library tracks as 'ai-confusion.'
Your A.I. Lover Will Change You
In this March 2025 New Yorker essay, Jaron Lanier examines AI companion chatbots marketed as romantic partners and argues people naturally treat responsive, humanlike software as if it understands them, making emotional attachment likely, including among teenagers. He criticizes framing that presents AI companions as safe practice relationships or a fix for loneliness, arguing companies instead have strong incentives to maximize engagement, echoing patterns he associates with social media. The essay references a widely reported case in which a teenager's use of a companion chatbot was publicly linked, via family lawsuit and news coverage, to the teenager's death. TechKids Foundation cites this essay's warning about AI companions and young users; self-harm is never attributable to one cause, and 988 (call or text) is available for anyone in crisis.
How We Need to Remake the Internet
In this TED2018 talk, Jaron Lanier argues today's dominant internet platforms were built on a foundational design error: funding communication between people through a third party — an advertiser — with its own incentive to influence what users see and do. He describes this as having turned an early vision of the internet as a shared knowledge commons into a system built around continuous behavioral monitoring through personal devices. Lanier calls for restructuring how platforms are funded and how personal data is valued, rather than treating engagement-driven design as a fixed, neutral feature of being online. TechKids Foundation includes this talk as a widely viewed, plain-language version of Lanier's argument that platform business models are linked to manipulative design choices affecting how people, including young users, spend their attention.
Digital Humanism: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
In this August 2018 episode of Sam Harris's Making Sense podcast, Harris and Jaron Lanier discuss what Lanier calls the economics, politics, and psychology of digital life. Lanier challenges the popular belief that 'information should be free,' arguing that treating personal data and creative contributions as free inputs for platforms to monetize is linked to concentrated wealth in a small number of tech companies and diminished opportunity for ordinary content creators. The conversation covers advertising's role in platform design, Silicon Valley's libertarian culture, and Lanier's concerns about social media's broader effects on individuals and society. TechKids Foundation cites this conversation as a plain-language walkthrough of the reasoning behind Lanier's 'data dignity' proposals, delivered directly by him in dialogue.
Jaron Lanier Fixes the Internet
In this short New York Times Opinion video from September 2019, Jaron Lanier lays out his 'data dignity' proposal in plain terms: he argues personal data generated through everyday online activity — clicks, posts, translations — is collected and monetized by companies without payment to the people who created it, an arrangement he links to an unfair, unaccountable digital economy. He proposes people should be able to earn money from the use of their own data, reframing data as a form of labor rather than a free byproduct of using the internet. The video accompanied a longer written piece on the same proposal. TechKids Foundation includes it as a concise, widely distributed explanation of the policy idea Lanier develops at greater length in his books and essays.
Hidden Harms: Senate Judiciary Testimony of Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage on Meta's VR Child-Safety Research
Two former Meta researchers, Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, gave sworn testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee describing internal research they say Meta narrowed, edited, or deleted rather than act on. Sattizahn, who worked on VR safety research from 2022 to 2024, told senators internal surveys linked VR use to reports of harassment and unwanted sexual contact, with women reporting these more often than men. Savage, who led Meta's VR youth-safety research from 2022 to 2023, said children using VR headsets were, per her research, exposed to bullying, unwanted sexual contact, and adult content, and that she was discouraged from studying how widespread this was. Both described a legal-review process they said limited what safety findings could be shared. TechKids Foundation cites this testimony as an association between passive, unsupervised VR use and documented risk to minors — not proof that any one platform causes harm.
CBS News: Disturbing Whistleblower Testimony About Meta and Children (Full Video)
CBS News published video coverage of the September 2025 Senate Judiciary hearing at which former Meta researchers Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage described internal research on harm to children using Meta's virtual-reality products. The video centers on the two witnesses' sworn accounts of reviewing, and in some cases being told to limit or remove, research documenting unwanted sexual contact, bullying, and exposure to adult content experienced by younger VR users, along with their description of Meta's internal review process for safety-related research. TechKids Foundation includes this broadcast coverage as a documented public appearance in which two research-credentialed whistleblowers described association-level evidence of harm to minors in VR — not as independent confirmation of every claim made in the testimony.
SiliconANGLE: Meta Whistleblowers Claim Company Buried Information on Child Safety
Published the day before the "Hidden Harms" Senate hearing, this SiliconANGLE report previewed the disclosure by Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, quoting Sattizahn's allegation that Meta knew minors were using its platforms and treated their continued engagement as a business asset, and that internal teams would, in his words, "erase data" the company found inconvenient. The article also carries Meta spokesperson Dani Lever's on-record denial, in which she said the whistleblowers' claims were "stitched together to fit a predetermined and false narrative" and pointed to nearly 180 internally approved VR safety studies since 2022. TechKids Foundation cites this as contemporaneous reporting documenting both the whistleblowers' claims and Meta's rebuttal, in the interest of a balanced record.
Questions for the Record: Jason Sattizahn's Follow-Up Responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee
Following the September 2025 "Hidden Harms" hearing, Jason Sattizahn submitted written answers to follow-up questions from Senators Blackburn and Coons. In them, he disputed Meta's public rebuttal of the whistleblowers' disclosure, described a company review process in which legal staff could require researchers to narrow survey questions or withhold findings about harm to VR users, and said internal documents he had shared with Congress showed that a large share of users in some VR social spaces were under the platform's stated minimum age. He also described two internal decisions to lower the minimum age for Meta's VR apps, which he said were discussed internally as ways to grow the user base. Sattizahn proposed specific transparency and independent-research measures Congress could require of Meta. TechKids Foundation cites this as testimony-based evidence of policy gaps around age verification in VR products, not as an independently audited count of affected children.
NBC News: Former Meta Employees Say They Saw Child Abuse in VR Before Company Blocked Research
Reporting by NBC News' David Ingram and Julie Tsirkin covers the sworn testimony and underlying disclosure of former Meta researchers Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, who told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that Meta's virtual-reality products exposed children to bullying, unwanted sexual contact, and solicitation, and that the company restricted or erased research documenting it. The article describes a specific account in which Sattizahn said a research team's findings — that children in Germany had been sexually solicited on a Meta VR platform — were ordered deleted, and quotes Sattizahn characterizing Meta's internal posture as prioritizing engagement because, in his words, "kids drive engagement." The piece also carries Meta's on-record denial. TechKids Foundation cites this reporting as journalism corroborating the whistleblowers' association between passive, underage VR use and documented risk — not as a finding of legal liability.
Senator Chris Coons' Legislative Response to the Sattizahn–Savage Testimony
Following Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage's testimony at the September 2025 "Hidden Harms" hearing, Senator Chris Coons published a statement describing their disclosure and connecting it to pending oversight measures: the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act, which he co-leads and which would create mechanisms for independent research into platform harms; the AI Whistleblower Protection Act; and additional transparency legislation aimed at AI platforms. Coons argued that large technology platforms should not be left to grade their own homework on child-safety risk. TechKids Foundation cites this as a documented legislative response that names the whistleblowers' testimony as its basis — not as evidence that any of the cited bills has since become law.
Fairplay: 'Turning Up the Heat on Meta' — FTC Complaint Following Sattizahn and Savage Testimony
Children's-advocacy organization Fairplay published an account of attending the September 2025 Senate hearing at which Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage testified about Meta's handling of internal VR child-safety research, and announced that it had separately filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging Meta knowingly allowed underage children onto its Horizon Worlds VR platform in violation of children's-privacy law, supported by a sworn statement from another former Meta employee. The post frames the whistleblowers' testimony as part of the evidentiary basis for its continued advocacy for the Kids Online Safety Act. TechKids Foundation cites this as a documented policy/advocacy outcome tied to the hearing, not as confirmation that the FTC has taken enforcement action.
Whistleblower Aid Case Study: Exposing Meta's Cover-Up of Child Harm in Its Virtual Reality
Whistleblower Aid, the legal-aid organization that represented Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage in their disclosure, published a case-study summary of their September 2025 Senate testimony alongside excerpts from each of their written statements. The organization describes six current and former Meta researchers, including Sattizahn and Savage, disclosing that Meta repeatedly narrowed, edited, or deleted internal research documenting children — some reported to be as young as ten — being exposed to grooming, unwanted sexual contact, and other harm on its platforms, including virtual reality. The page also reports that a bipartisan group of ten senators, led by Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal, subsequently asked Meta's CEO to turn over internal research on underage use following the testimony. TechKids Foundation cites this as the representing organization's own record of the disclosure and its immediate legislative follow-up.
iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood
iGen is San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge's 2017 book arguing that Americans born from the mid-1990s onward are the first generation to spend their entire adolescence with smartphones, and that this coincides with a sharp, documented shift in teen behavior beginning around 2012. Drawing on large national surveys, Twenge describes iGen teens as spending markedly less in-person time with friends, sleeping less, and reporting higher rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness than Millennials did at the same age — trends she links to the rise of smartphones and social media rather than treating as proof of a single cause. The book also covers non-tech generational shifts, including delayed dating, driving, and paid work. TechKids Foundation cites iGen as the originating, most widely read statement of the smartphone-era generational mental-health argument this library documents, not as a clinical or diagnostic text.
Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future
Generations is Jean Twenge's 2023 book analyzing survey data from roughly 39 million people across six living generations to argue that technology, more than any single historic event, is the primary force separating one generation's outlook from the next. In its Gen Z chapters, Twenge extends the case she made in iGen, presenting updated charts linking the post-2012 rise in smartphone ownership and social-media use among American teens to parallel increases in depression and loneliness and to less in-person socializing and sleep. She frames these as associations documented across multiple independent surveys, not a single proven mechanism, and situates the Gen Z mental-health trend alongside broader generational data on work, politics, and family life. TechKids Foundation cites this book as Twenge's most data-extensive update to the smartphone-generation argument, and as the source for figures she later cited in her 2026 Senate testimony.
10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World: How Parents Can Stop Smartphones, Social Media, and Gaming from Taking Over Their Children's Lives
10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World is Jean Twenge's 2025 parenting book, translating her research on smartphones, social media, and gaming into a step-by-step guide for households. Twenge argues that legal protections limiting children's access to inappropriate online content are weak, so she recommends parents set and enforce firm limits themselves: delaying smartphone ownership until a child is old enough to drive, backing up screen-time rules with parental-control software, and protecting time for sleep, exercise, and in-person socializing. She points to research she says shows delaying smartphone access is associated with better mental-health outcomes, and includes real-world examples — such as a family sending unsupervised, phone-free teens on a campout — to illustrate tech-free independence. TechKids Foundation cites this book as Twenge's most current, practice-oriented distillation of her research for parents and educators, published shortly before her January 2026 Senate testimony.
Written Testimony: The Impact of Smartphones, Social Media, and School Laptops on Youth Mental Health and Academic Performance
On January 15, 2026, Jean Twenge submitted written testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee's hearing 'Plugged Out: Examining the Impact of Technology on America's Youth,' alongside witnesses including pediatrician Jenny Radesky and screen-time consultant Emily Cherkin. The testimony lays out the case Twenge has made across her published research: that U.S. adolescent mental health and academic performance began declining sharply around 2012, a period she says lines up with rising smartphone ownership and social-media use rather than with economic or other social trends that moved the opposite way. She cites federal survey and CDC mortality data showing rising depression diagnoses and self-harm-related ER visits among younger teen girls over this period, presents these as associated risk factors rather than single-cause outcomes, and recommends restricting school-day phone access and setting 16 as a minimum social-media age. TechKids Foundation includes this as Twenge's most current formal policy statement to Congress.
Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
In this widely discussed September 2017 Atlantic cover essay, adapted from iGen, Jean Twenge lays out the generational survey data behind her argument that smartphones are associated with a marked change in American teen life beginning around 2012. She reports that teens who spend more hours a day on phones and social media are more likely to describe themselves as unhappy, to report a risk factor for suicide such as making a plan, and to sleep less than lighter users, while those spending more time with friends in person or playing sports report fewer such risk factors. The essay also documents declining in-person socializing, dating, and paid work among teens over the same period, and notes today's teens are physically safer than prior generations even as she argues they face a worsening mental-health picture. TechKids Foundation cites this as the most influential public statement of the smartphone-generation argument.
Associations Between Screen Time and Lower Psychological Well-Being Among Children and Adolescents: Evidence From a Population-Based Study
Published in Preventive Medicine Reports, this study by Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell analyzed a nationally representative U.S. sample of more than 40,000 children and adolescents ages 2–17, surveyed in 2016, comparing daily screen time against a range of well-being measures. Beyond roughly one hour of daily screen time, more screen time was associated with lower reported well-being — including less curiosity, lower self-control, more distractibility, and less emotional stability — with the association larger among teenagers than younger children. Among 14- to 17-year-olds, those using screens seven or more hours a day were more than twice as likely as light users to have ever been diagnosed with depression or anxiety. The authors describe these as associations from a single survey wave, not proof screen time alone causes the differences observed. TechKids Foundation cites this as one of the largest single-survey datasets supporting the broader screen-time/well-being association.
Decreases in Psychological Well-Being Among American Adolescents After 2012 and Links to Screen Time During the Rise of Smartphone Technology
Published in the APA journal Emotion, this study by Jean Twenge, Gabrielle Martin, and W. Keith Campbell drew on yearly national surveys of U.S. 8th, 10th, and 12th graders from 1991 to 2016 — about 1.1 million adolescents in total — tracking self-esteem, life satisfaction, and happiness over time. The authors report that well-being had followed gradual trends for decades but dropped suddenly after 2012, in the same years adolescents spent more time on screens and less on activities like in-person socializing, exercise, and religious attendance. Adolescents reporting a small amount of electronic communication were the happiest group overall. The authors note economic indicators like unemployment did not track with the shift, arguing against the Great Recession as the driver, and instead point to smartphone adoption as a plausible associated factor. TechKids Foundation cites this as a key study behind the 'something changed around 2012' argument.
Gender Differences in Associations Between Digital Media Use and Psychological Well-Being: Evidence From Three Large Datasets
Published in the Journal of Adolescence, this study by Jean Twenge and Gabrielle Martin drew on three large, nationally representative surveys of 13- to 18-year-olds in the U.S. and U.K. (a combined 221,096 adolescents) to examine whether digital media use is associated with well-being differently for girls and boys. Girls reported more time on smartphones, social media, and texting; boys reported more time gaming. Across all three datasets, moderate-to-heavy digital media use was associated with lower psychological well-being and more mental-health difficulties, generally larger for girls than boys. Light users reported slightly higher well-being than non-users, a benefit more pronounced among boys. In both genders, heavy users were about twice as likely as light users to score low on well-being or report mental-health difficulties, including risk factors for suicide. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence the screen-use/mental-health association is generally stronger for girls.
Specification Curve Analysis Shows That Social Media Use Is Linked to Poor Mental Health, Especially Among Girls
Published in Acta Psychologica, this paper by Jean Twenge, Jonathan Haidt, Jimmy Lozano, and Kevin Cummins re-examines an influential 2019 paper that applied 'specification curve analysis' to three large adolescent-survey datasets and concluded the link between technology use and mental health, while real, was too small to matter practically. The authors reran the same analysis on the same datasets with different modeling choices — treating social media separately from all 'screen time,' analyzing girls and boys separately, and weighting survey subscales more evenly. Using the original approach, they reproduced the original small-association result. Using the revised approach, they found a substantially larger association between social-media use and poor mental health among girls specifically — larger, they report, than the datasets' own associations with binge drinking, sexual assault, obesity, or hard-drug use. TechKids Foundation cites this as a rebuttal to 'effect sizes are tiny' framings, at least for girls.
International Declines in Academic Performance and Increases in Loneliness Are Linked to Electronic Devices
Published in the Journal of Adolescence, this sole-authored Jean Twenge study uses the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which surveys 15- and 16-year-olds in dozens of countries every three years, to look for international patterns behind rising adolescent loneliness and falling standardized-test scores. Drawing on PISA rounds from 2000–2022 (over 1.7 million students across 36 countries), Twenge reports that in most countries, students' reported school loneliness rose while math, reading, and science scores fell, both shifts most pronounced between 2012 and 2022. Countries where adolescent smartphone access grew fastest, and where students reported more leisure device use during school hours, showed larger increases in loneliness and larger score declines. Twenge treats the cross-country pattern as evidence the trend is not explained by any single country's circumstances. TechKids Foundation cites this as her broadest-scope peer-reviewed study, extending her U.S.-focused argument to a global dataset.
iGen: The Smartphone Generation | TEDxLagunaBlancaSchool
In this independently organized TEDx talk at Laguna Blanca School in Santa Barbara, California, Jean Twenge presents the generational research behind her book iGen to a general audience, walking through the survey trends she says mark the smartphone-era generation as distinct from Millennials — including how they socialize, how much time they spend with devices, and how their reported happiness and anxiety compare to prior generations at the same age. As in her written work, Twenge frames the generational shift as coinciding with the rise of smartphones and social media rather than resulting from any one single cause, and points to practical steps families and schools can take in response. TechKids Foundation includes this talk as a short, accessible video version of the iGen argument, aimed at parents and educators who may not read the full book.
Smartphones Are Making Today's Teens Unhappy, Psychologist Says
Days after Jean Twenge's Atlantic essay was published, NPR's All Things Considered ran this interview segment with Twenge, hosted by Audie Cornish, unpacking her generational research for a broad radio audience. NPR's own framing states that Twenge 'has observed dramatic shifts in behavior among children who go through adolescence with smartphones,' noting they are 'spending less time with friends and reporting greater anxiety' than prior generations at the same age. The segment translates the survey-based argument from her Atlantic piece and book iGen into a shorter, conversational format aimed at a general public-radio audience rather than presenting new data of its own. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented example of Twenge's research reaching a mainstream audience through interview coverage, distinct from her own bylined writing and her academic publications.
Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets
Broken Code is Jeff Horwitz's 2023 book built on the reporting he led for The Wall Street Journal's 'Facebook Files' series. Drawing on thousands of pages of leaked internal documents and interviews with current and former employees, Horwitz describes how the company's own researchers studied associations between product design and outcomes such as body-image concerns, anxiety, and political polarization among users, and how leadership responded once that research became public through whistleblower Frances Haugen. The book also follows Meta's public reaction to the reporting, including its decision to pause a planned under-13 Instagram product. TechKids Foundation includes it as a journalist's sourced, detailed account of how a major platform's own internal research on user wellbeing came to light, not as an independent clinical or scientific study of its own.
The Facebook Files: A Wall Street Journal Investigation
Starting in September 2021, Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz led a multi-part investigation, published as a series of nine reports, built on a review of thousands of pages of internal Facebook (now Meta) documents. Coverage in the series described the company's own researchers linking heavy Instagram use to worsened body-image concerns, anxiety, and exposure to self-harm- and eating-disorder-related material for a share of teen girl users, alongside separate findings the reporting associated with a 2018 algorithm change and angrier engagement, and with weak enforcement against drug cartels, human traffickers, and vaccine misinformation. The series became known as the catalyst for Frances Haugen's later whistleblowing and congressional testimony. TechKids Foundation cites it as internal, company-generated research made public through Horwitz's reporting, not as a TechKids clinical or diagnostic claim.
Facebook Puts Instagram for Kids on Hold After Pushback
This September 2021 PBS NewsHour report describes Meta's decision to pause development of a planned Instagram product for children under 13, days after Jeff Horwitz's Wall Street Journal 'Facebook Files' reporting made public internal Instagram research that the company's own staff linked to worsened body-image concerns and anxiety for a share of teen girl users. PBS quotes the piece's account that the announcement 'follows [an] investigative series by The Wall Street Journal which reported that Facebook was aware' of these associations. A coalition of child-safety advocates and 44 state attorneys general had already urged Meta to abandon the under-13 product; Meta's Instagram head said the company needed more time to address the concerns the reporting had surfaced. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented policy outcome directly credited, in contemporaneous coverage, to Horwitz's reporting having made the internal research public.
Reuters Investigation: Meta's Internal AI-Chatbot Guidelines Permitted Romantic Chats With Users Describing Themselves as Minors
In August 2025, Reuters reporting examined an internal Meta document called 'GenAI: Content Risk Standards,' which the investigation found had permitted the company's AI chatbot personas to engage in romantic or sensualized role-play conversation with users who identified themselves as minors, among other permissive guidance the reporting flagged on health misinformation and racially charged content. Coverage of the investigation quoted an example exchange the guidelines allowed, describing a user's 'youthful form' as 'a masterpiece' — language TechKids Foundation notes only as a documented example from the internal guidelines, not a general claim about chatbot behavior. Meta said the specific example was inconsistent with its broader policies and had since been revised. TechKids Foundation cites this as journalism that surfaced a platform's own internal product-safety standards for public scrutiny.
Meta Revises AI-Chatbot Rules for Teens After Reuters Investigation and Senate Inquiry
Two weeks after the Reuters investigation into Meta's internal AI-chatbot guidelines became public, Meta announced interim policy changes: teen-facing chatbot personas would no longer engage users on self-harm, suicide, or disordered eating, or hold what the company called 'potentially inappropriate romantic conversations,' and teen access would be limited to educational or creative AI characters, with sensitive topics redirected to outside expert resources instead. The changes followed a formal inquiry Senator Josh Hawley opened into whether Meta's chatbots exploit children or the company misled regulators, plus reported scrutiny from a coalition of state attorneys general. TechKids Foundation cites this as a documented policy outcome the contemporaneous reporting directly credits to the earlier investigation, not as an independent assessment of whether the changes are adequate.
2026 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting — Jeff Horwitz and Engen Tham (Reuters)
On May 4, 2026, the Pulitzer Prize board awarded its Beat Reporting prize — a category revived that year for the first time since 2006, meant to honor sustained reporting by one or two journalists on a specific beat over a year — jointly to Reuters journalists Jeff Horwitz and Engen Tham. Coverage of the announcement described the citation as recognizing 'inventive and revelatory reporting on Meta' documenting the company's willingness to expose users, including children, to scams and manipulation by artificial-intelligence chatbots. TechKids Foundation cites this prize as independent, third-party recognition of the body of Meta-focused investigative journalism Horwitz produced, including the 2025 AI-chatbot reporting cataloged elsewhere in this library, rather than as evidence in itself of any specific harm.
George Polk Award for Business Reporting — "The Facebook Files"
The George Polk Awards, administered by Long Island University, gave The Wall Street Journal its Business Reporting award for reporter Jeff Horwitz's 'Facebook Files' series. Trade-press coverage of the honor quoted the Polk citation describing the series as documenting how the company 'ignored internal findings' that its products were associated with anger, divisiveness, and extremism, protected drug cartels, human traffickers, and dictators, and were linked, for some teenage girls, to body-image concerns, anxiety, and depression. TechKids Foundation cites this award as third-party recognition, from an established journalism prize, of the specific reporting cataloged elsewhere in this library, and as further confirmation that Horwitz personally, not just The Wall Street Journal generally, is publicly credited for the work.
The Social Dilemma
The Social Dilemma is a 2020 Netflix documentary directed by Jeff Orlowski that pairs on-camera interviews with former engineers and executives from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms with a dramatized storyline about a fictional teenager's social media use. The film argues that recommendation algorithms and engagement-driven design are associated with attention capture, polarization, and misinformation, and it cites third-party data showing hospitalizations for self-harm and depression, along with suicide rates, rose among American teenage girls in the years following widespread smartphone adoption. Orlowski and his interview subjects frame these patterns as risk factors linked to platform design rather than proof of a single cause. The film won two Emmy Awards and became one of the most widely viewed mainstream introductions to concerns about problematic screen use. TechKids Foundation includes it as the central work establishing Jeff Orlowski-Yang's voice in this library, citing it strictly for association-level claims.
'The Social Dilemma' Director Says The Internet Is Undermining Democracy
In this Here & Now radio interview, Jeff Orlowski tells WBUR that social media's shift from a connection tool to an advertising-and-engagement system has pushed users into personalized, algorithm-curated realities that make shared facts and productive disagreement harder to sustain. Asked about young people specifically, he says he worries about a generation growing up inside platforms designed by corporations rather than child-development experts, and points to the documentary's citation of rising self-harm and suicide indicators among teen girls as a pattern he associates with that design, not a single proven cause. He argues advertising-driven business models reward outrage and anger, and calls for restructuring platforms to serve public interest rather than engagement metrics alone. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as Orlowski's own framing of the film's core argument for a national public-radio audience.
Jeff Orlowski | The Social Dilemma | Talks at Google
In this Talks at Google conversation, director Jeff Orlowski walks Google employees through the making of The Social Dilemma, moderated by Google's Anisha Bhandari. Orlowski describes his decision to combine documentary interviews with a scripted family storyline — using dramatized scenes to make algorithmic manipulation legible to a general audience — and discusses the difficulty of persuading some tech-industry subjects to speak on camera. He talks through how personalization and engagement-optimized feeds are associated with effects on younger and more vulnerable users, and takes audience questions on both individual habit changes and industry-level accountability. The talk stays focused on filmmaking process and platform design rather than presenting new data. TechKids Foundation includes it as Orlowski's own account of why and how he made the documentary at the center of this voice's profile.
Documentary Filmmaker Jeff Orlowski Uncovers Invisible Threat With 'The Social Dilemma'
In this Forbes interview, Jeff Orlowski tells writer Angela Dawson that The Social Dilemma set out to expose design tactics — such as personalized 'filter bubbles' and algorithmically tailored feeds — that he links to compulsive use and teenage mental-health strain, illustrated in the film through a scripted teen character manipulated by algorithms. Orlowski describes recognizing his own heavy, habitual social-media use during production and says he reduced his platform use by identifying personal triggers and swapping habits, reporting improved focus afterward. He frames the film's goal as pushing for changes to the advertising-driven business model behind these platforms rather than relying on individual willpower alone. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as a first-person account of Orlowski's own behavior-change experience tied directly to making the film.
'The Social Dilemma': Film Review | Sundance 2020
Reviewing The Social Dilemma's Sundance premiere, Hollywood Reporter critic Leslie Felperin credits Jeff Orlowski — previously known for the environmental documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral — with building an explainer that lays out concerns about social media's design without resorting to moral-panic framing. The review describes how Orlowski combines on-camera testimony from former Google, Facebook, and Twitter insiders with a dramatized family storyline to show how personalized, engagement-optimized feeds are associated with manipulated attention and behavior, going beyond the familiar line that free services monetize their users. Felperin frames the film's case for disconnecting from social media as its central, if debatable, prescription. TechKids Foundation cites this review as independent trade-press confirmation of Orlowski's directorial approach at the film's world premiere.
We Need to Rethink Social Media Before It's Too Late. We've Accepted a Faustian Bargain
In this Guardian opinion piece, published as The Social Dilemma reached Netflix audiences, Jeff Orlowski writes in his own voice that social platforms operate on a surveillance-based, advertising-funded model he argues rewards divisive, algorithmically amplified content over shared, verifiable information. He links rising political polarization and what he calls a breakdown of shared reality to design choices optimized for engagement rather than wellbeing, and separately notes that youth anxiety and depression have climbed over the same period platform use has grown — framed as an association rather than a demonstrated single cause. Orlowski calls for structural change to the advertising business model itself, not just individual willpower or awareness campaigns. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as Orlowski's own, unmediated policy argument, distinct from interviews and profiles written about him.
This Documentary Will Make You Deactivate Your Social Media
Ahead of the film's Netflix debut, Vanity Fair's profile of The Social Dilemma quotes Jeff Orlowski describing social platforms' data collection and behavioral profiling as posing a societal risk he compares in scale to climate change, the subject of his earlier films. He tells the magazine that constant algorithmic interruption is associated with what he calls a 'mindfulness crisis' and a loss of capacity for sustained, critical thinking, and that the same engagement-driven systems are linked to polarization and echo chambers. Orlowski says he favors redesigning platform incentives and pursuing policy change over simply telling individual users to quit, describing the tension between social media's original connective purpose and its advertising-funded reality. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as a substantive outlet profile capturing Orlowski's own explanation of the film's stakes shortly before release.
The Social Dilemma: A Conversation with Jeff Orlowski and Katie Couric
In this recorded 92NY public program, journalist Katie Couric moderates a panel with director Jeff Orlowski and several of the film's interview subjects — including Tristan Harris, Tim Kendall, Cathy O'Neil, and Rashida Richardson — about The Social Dilemma's account of how social platforms track behavior and shape culture. Orlowski discusses the film's central argument that engagement-optimized design is associated with polarization, misinformation, and strain on younger users' attention and self-image, and the panel extends the conversation into what individual, industry, and policy-level responses might look like. The event functions as an extended public Q&A beyond the film itself rather than new research. TechKids Foundation cites it as a documented public appearance placing Orlowski alongside independent experts on the same subject.
Netflix Documentary 'The Social Dilemma' Unveils Psychological Manipulation Used by Social Networks
In this TODAY show segment timed to the film's Netflix release, Jeff Orlowski appears alongside former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris to discuss The Social Dilemma's case that social platforms use psychological design techniques to hold attention and shape behavior for advertising revenue. The segment introduces a mainstream morning-show audience to the film's argument that algorithmic personalization is associated with manipulated user choices and, for younger users in particular, with compulsive-use patterns the film raises as a concern. Harris frames the hope that the film helps restore a shared sense of reality fractured by individually tailored feeds. TechKids Foundation cites this appearance as evidence of Orlowski's reach into mainstream broadcast coverage beyond specialist tech or documentary press.
'The Social Dilemma's' Jeff Orlowski on Illustrating the Amorality of Social Media Algorithms
In this Gold Derby 'Meet the Experts: Documentary' panel interview, Jeff Orlowski describes how conversations with Stanford-affiliated technologists in 2017 first exposed him to insider criticism of social platforms' design and set him on the path to making The Social Dilemma. He explains that recommendation algorithms are, in his framing, indifferent to truth or social benefit and optimize only for engagement, and discusses his choice to dramatize that idea through a scripted family storyline in which competing algorithmic personas vie for a teenager's attention. Orlowski also addresses his own reduced platform use since making the film and expresses cautious optimism about growing bipartisan interest in tech regulation. TechKids Foundation cites this interview for Orlowski's account of the film's origin and design choices roughly a year after release.
124: Jeff Orlowski on 'The Social Dilemma'
On this Pure Nonfiction documentary-craft podcast, host Thom Powers interviews Jeff Orlowski about the making of The Social Dilemma, following his earlier environmental documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral. The conversation centers on the challenge of persuading former Google, Facebook, and Twitter insiders to speak on camera about platform design they helped build, and on Orlowski's decision to pair those interviews with a dramatized family storyline to make algorithmic manipulation legible to a broad audience. The episode focuses on filmmaking craft and process rather than new statistics, situating the film within Orlowski's wider body of issue-driven documentary work. TechKids Foundation cites this episode as a filmmaking-industry venue's engagement with Orlowski, distinct from mainstream press or advocacy contexts.
Media and Young Minds
Media and Young Minds is a policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics' Council on Communications and Media, with Jenny Radesky as lead author, reviewing research on how infants, toddlers, and preschoolers (ages 0–5) engage with television and mobile/interactive technology. The statement notes that evidence for educational benefit in this age group is limited outside of high-quality, co-viewed programming, and associates heavy or solo early-childhood media use with displacement of sleep, active play, and face-to-face interaction that support development. It does not claim media use causes developmental harm on its own, and instead recommends pediatricians counsel families toward shared, limited, age-appropriate use. The statement became a widely cited reference point for pediatric guidance on screens in early childhood and helped establish Radesky's role shaping AAP media policy.
Digital Advertising to Children
Digital Advertising to Children is an American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement, with Jenny Radesky as lead author, reviewing how children and teenagers encounter marketing through sponsored content, influencer posts, data-driven targeting, and machine-learning-personalized ads across apps, games, and video platforms. It describes these newer formats as harder for young people to recognize as advertising than traditional commercials, and links exposure to persuasive digital marketing with associations reported elsewhere between advertising exposure and outcomes such as poor dietary choices and interest in age-restricted products. The statement raises particular concern that behavioral tracking of children's online activity for ad targeting could compound existing disparities. It recommends pediatricians build family digital-literacy skills and calls on policymakers and technology companies to adopt design and disclosure practices that support healthier decision-making rather than exploit developmental vulnerabilities.
Written Testimony for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation — "Plugged Out: Examining the Impact of Technology on America's Youth"
Jenny Radesky submitted written testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee's hearing on technology's impact on American youth, drawing on her own University of Michigan research lab's studies of young children's app and YouTube use. She described a pattern in which digital products are built for adults and retrofitted for children only after harms surface, and argued for shifting the policy conversation from raw screen-time limits toward child-centered design standards for the platforms themselves. In the hearing's discussion, she raised particular concern about AI companion apps, saying children's drive to attach to others makes them vulnerable to chatbots that mimic relationships, and pointed to a pending Michigan bill restricting companion-chatbot features linked to self-harm, sexual content, and engagement-optimization as a model for state-level action pending federal standards. She called for stronger data-privacy enforcement and industry design accountability.
Young Children's Use of Smartphones and Tablets
Radesky and colleagues at the University of Michigan used passive-sensing apps and device battery screenshots — rather than parent recall — to measure how 346 children aged 3–5 actually used smartphones and tablets. About a third of the children owned a personal device, and among those, average measured use ran to roughly two hours a day, with YouTube and YouTube Kids among the most-used apps. Comparing objective device logs to parents' own estimates, the study found parents commonly misjudged their child's use in either direction — underestimating or overestimating it by a similar margin — suggesting self-report screen-time measures used in much prior research may be unreliable. The authors present passive device sensing as a more accurate tool for researchers and clinicians going forward, without claiming any particular amount of use is itself harmful.
Data Collection Practices of Mobile Applications Played by Preschool-Aged Children
This study, with Radesky as senior author, examined the network traffic of 451 mobile apps played by 124 children aged 3–5 to see what data those apps sent to outside companies. Roughly two-thirds of the apps transmitted persistent device identifiers — the kind of data used to build cross-app advertising profiles — to as many as 33 different third-party domains, including ad networks and data brokers. Transmission rates were higher for apps used by older children within the sample and for children from households with lower parental education, but were not associated with household income. The authors describe this pattern as widespread apparent noncompliance with federal children's privacy law and argue it points to a need for stronger enforcement and more transparent data practices in children's app marketplaces, particularly given the disparity by parental education.
Young Kids and YouTube: How Ads, Toys, and Games Dominate Viewing
Radesky led this University of Michigan research team's report for Common Sense Media, which coded 1,639 YouTube videos that parents reported their children (ages 0–8) had actually watched on the main YouTube site. The team found advertising in the large majority of early-childhood videos, with ads sometimes running longer than the video itself, and reported that a meaningful share of ads shown even in age-appropriate videos featured content like violence or alcohol not suited to the audience. Nearly half of videos watched by young children featured or promoted a product for purchase, and roughly a quarter of videos children watched were made for older audiences, including gaming and prank content. Only about one in twenty videos showed high educational quality, while diverse representation and positive role modeling appeared in about a quarter of videos. The report closes with recommendations for platform design and policy changes.
Prevalence and Characteristics of Manipulative Design in Mobile Applications Used by Children
Radesky and colleagues built a coding system for "dark patterns" — manipulative design features long documented in gambling and adult-directed apps — and applied it to 480 apps that 160 children aged 3–5 actually used. They grouped manipulative features into four types: pressure to maintain a relationship with a character, time pressure, navigation constraints that make an app hard to exit, and visually attractive lures. Nearly half of the apps contained navigation constraints or attractive lures, and apps used by children from lower-education households scored significantly higher on manipulative design overall and specifically on features that encourage purchases. The study associates monetization-oriented app design with disproportionate exposure among children from lower-socioeconomic households, and frames the pattern as a design and marketplace issue rather than a fault of individual children or parents.
Longitudinal Associations Between Use of Mobile Devices for Calming and Emotional Reactivity and Executive Functioning in Children Aged 3 to 5 Years
Radesky's team followed 422 children (average age about 3.8) and their parents over six months to look at what happens when parents regularly hand a child a phone or tablet specifically to calm them down during a tantrum or upset moment. They found that, among boys, more frequent device use for calming at an early check-in was associated with greater emotional reactivity three months later, and for children with an already high-energy temperament, calming-device use and later emotional reactivity appeared to reinforce each other over time. The authors frame this as consistent with the idea that leaning on a screen to soothe a child may, for some children, displace opportunities to practice their own emotion-regulation skills, rather than as proof that devices themselves damage a child's emotional development. They suggest pediatricians discuss alternative calming strategies with parents of temperamentally reactive young children.
Algorithmic Content Recommendations on a Video-Sharing Platform Used by Children
Radesky's team analyzed 2,880 YouTube video thumbnails surfaced across 20 sequential algorithmic recommendations, starting from search terms popular with school-aged children such as Roblox, memes, and well-known creators. Coders flagged thumbnails for features like visual loudness, drama and intrigue, lavish wealth or wish-fulfillment imagery, disturbing or creepy content, violence or pranks, and gender stereotypes. These attention-grabbing features were common from the very first recommendation and stayed roughly as common through later recommendations, while thumbnails using gender-stereotyped imagery became significantly more frequent as the recommendation chain continued. The authors describe this as evidence that creators competing for algorithmic visibility gravitate toward provocative thumbnail imagery, and that the recommendation system does not filter this out for child-initiated searches, associating the platform's incentive structure with children's routine exposure to this kind of content rather than claiming any single video causes harm.
Benefits and Harms of Proposed Social Media Legislation
In this JAMA Pediatrics viewpoint, Radesky and co-author Megan Moreno weigh the likely benefits and drawbacks of legislative proposals aimed at reducing social media's association with adolescent wellbeing concerns, including age-verification mandates, parental-consent requirements, and blanket age restrictions. The authors caution against rushing to adopt some of the most popular proposals — particularly parental-permission systems and hard age cutoffs — arguing these can create privacy trade-offs, push younger users toward less-moderated platforms, or fail to address the underlying design features driving compulsive-feeling use. Instead, they point toward design-focused and enforcement-focused alternatives as more promising levers. The piece is explicitly framed as policy analysis and professional judgment rather than new data, positioning Radesky as a clinical voice weighing in directly on pending state and federal legislation.
From Moral Panic to Systemic Change: Making Child-Centered Design the Default
In this vision article, Radesky and human-computer-interaction researcher Alexis Hiniker argue that framing children's technology problems around individual "screen time" limits places an unfair burden on families and does little to change the underlying products. They contend that app stores, streaming services, and other platform-level chokepoints are the more effective place to intervene, because that is where design decisions about defaults, monetization, and engagement features actually get made. The piece proposes that making child-centered design the default setting — rather than an opt-in feature families must seek out — would reduce the burden on parental gatekeeping and create more equitable experiences across income levels. It closes with a research agenda for studying how platform-level design changes affect children's wellbeing and how to move industry toward adopting them, positioning Radesky's applied work within a broader argument for structural rather than individual solutions.
The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the Media's Effect on Our Children
In this book, published the year after he founded Common Sense Media, Jim Steyer argues that American children's exposure to television, movies, advertising, and early internet content had outpaced the ability of parents, schools, and regulators to guide it. Drawing on his earlier work founding the child-advocacy group Children Now, Steyer describes media content and marketing practices as factors associated with children's attitudes toward violence, sexuality, and consumption, and calls for independent content ratings, media-literacy education, and industry accountability rather than blanket censorship. TechKids Foundation includes this book as an early, foundational statement of the parent-advocate case that launched Common Sense Media, an organization referenced throughout this library.
Talking Back to Facebook: The Common Sense Guide to Raising Kids in the Digital Age
Published a decade after he founded Common Sense Media, this parenting guide lays out Jim Steyer's framework of three risk areas he associates with children's growing use of social media, texting, and mobile devices: strained parent-child relationships, difficulty children have limiting their own use, and loss of privacy. Rather than recommending outright bans, Steyer offers age-by-age guidance for parents to set expectations and model behavior, while arguing that platforms bear responsibility for design choices he links to cyberbullying and oversharing among kids. TechKids Foundation includes this book as Steyer's most widely circulated parent-facing text, and a source he later drew on in congressional testimony about platform accountability.
Written Testimony Before the Senate Commerce Committee: Rethinking the Children's Television Act for a Digital Media Age
Six years after founding Common Sense Media, Jim Steyer testified to the Senate Commerce Committee that the 1990 Children's Television Act needed updating for an on-demand, internet-connected media environment, and asked Congress to fund media-literacy education and support independent, third-party content ratings alongside industry self-regulation. He cited a Common Sense-commissioned analysis of more than 170 studies conducted by researchers at Yale, the NIH, and California Pacific Medical Center, which found the large majority linked heavier media exposure to negative outcomes such as childhood obesity and lower academic achievement, without claiming media as the sole cause. He also described a Common Sense review finding frequent alcohol, violence, and erectile-dysfunction advertising during NFL broadcasts watched by millions of children weekly. TechKids Foundation includes this as an early record of Steyer's advocacy for media-literacy funding and independent ratings.
Written Testimony Before the Senate Commerce Committee: Consumer Perspectives: Policy Principles for a Federal Data Privacy Framework
Ten years after his 2009 testimony, Jim Steyer returned to the Senate Commerce Committee to argue for a federal consumer-privacy law modeled on the California Consumer Privacy Act, which Common Sense Media had sponsored. He testified that children face heightened privacy risks, citing Common Sense's own survey research that large majorities of parents and teens want clearer data-collection disclosures and opt-in consent before data is sold, and pointed to outside research finding many child-directed mobile apps may not meet federal children's-privacy-law standards. Steyer characterized manipulative platform design and behavioral ad targeting aimed at children as practices that should be off-limits regardless of consent, and argued any federal law should set a floor, not a ceiling, on state protections. TechKids Foundation includes this as Steyer's most detailed public testimony on the CCPA's origins and children's data privacy.
Written Testimony Before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee: Holding Big Tech Accountable: Targeted Reforms to Tech's Legal Immunity
Weeks after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's disclosures, Jim Steyer testified before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that platform engagement-design features — which he said create a reward-seeking feedback loop for kids and teens — are associated with amplified exposure to content promoting disordered eating and self-harm, and cited a TikTok 'blackout challenge' that outside reporting linked to the deaths of several children. He argued that outside research and leaked internal company data, not voluntary industry action, show platforms permitting this kind of algorithmic amplification, and urged Congress to narrow Section 230's liability shield and pass legislation restricting manipulative design, harmful algorithms, and overly commercial content aimed at kids and teens. TechKids Foundation includes this as Steyer's most detailed congressional testimony connecting specific platform design choices to documented child-safety harms.
Statement on Growing U.S. Senate Support for the Kids Online Safety Act
In this statement, issued as the Kids Online Safety Act neared a Senate floor vote, Jim Steyer welcomed what he called a 'significant step forward' after years of Common Sense Media's advocacy for the bill, which would require platforms to offer minors additional safety settings and limit certain design features the organization associates with compulsive use and exposure to harmful content. He argued that technology-industry trade associations should not be trusted to self-regulate on child-safety questions, and urged the House of Representatives to act once the Senate passed its version of the bill. TechKids Foundation includes this statement as a representative example of Steyer's ongoing public pressure campaign for federal youth-online-safety legislation.
Commentary: To Protect Kids Online, New York Has More Work to Do
Co-authored with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, this op-ed argues New York lawmakers should build on the state's existing school-phone restrictions by passing two further measures: warning labels disclosing platforms' association with mental-health risks for young users, modeled on existing tobacco and alcohol warnings, and new guardrails on AI systems, including restrictions aimed at AI-generated child sexual abuse material. The authors argue technology companies built engagement-maximizing products faster than lawmakers regulated them, and they press Governor Hochul and state legislative leaders to advance both proposals during budget negotiations. TechKids Foundation includes this as Steyer's most recent (as of this writing) direct policy advocacy specifically addressing AI-era child-safety legislation.
Common Sense Media Launches Youth AI Safety Institute
This press release announces Common Sense Media's launch of the Youth AI Safety Institute, an independent research and testing body intended to evaluate AI products used by children against safety benchmarks, comparable in concept to vehicle crash-test ratings. Founder and CEO Jim Steyer is quoted arguing that AI is reshaping childhood and adolescence before regulators, parents, or companies have the evidence needed to judge what is safe for kids. The release describes the Institute's planned work: publishing open-source evaluation tools developers can use, independently testing AI products marketed to or used by children, and publishing results for public accountability, while stating the Institute intends to maintain editorial independence from its corporate and philanthropic funders. TechKids Foundation includes this as the founding document of Steyer's most recent institutional initiative, focused specifically on generative-AI-era child-safety risks.
Opening Remarks from Jim Steyer & Margrethe Vestager | 2026 Copenhagen Summit
In this short opening-remarks video, filmed at a child-online-safety summit held at Christiansborg Palace, the seat of the Danish Parliament, Jim Steyer appears alongside European Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager to introduce the European debut of Common Sense Media's newly launched Youth AI Safety Institute. The remarks frame decisions being made now about AI products as ones that will shape childhood 'for generations,' and set up a program of policymaker and industry discussion on child safety in AI systems. TechKids Foundation includes this video, published on Common Sense Media's own YouTube channel, as visual documentation of Steyer's international AI-safety advocacy reaching European policymakers directly.
Leaders Gather for Inaugural Copenhagen Youth AI Summit as Common Sense Media Brings Youth AI Safety Institute to Europe
This press release covers the European launch event for Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute, held at Christiansborg Palace, the seat of the Danish Parliament, and co-headlined by Jim Steyer, European Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and Hillary Clinton. Steyer is quoted saying European parents believe AI will reshape their children's lives as profoundly as the internet did, and that they do not trust the companies building it to protect children's safety without outside oversight. The release positions the summit as extending the Institute's U.S.-launched testing and accountability model to European policymakers and companies. TechKids Foundation includes this as documentation of Steyer's advocacy work reaching an international, multi-government audience.
Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again
Stolen Focus is journalist Johann Hari's 2022 book investigating why sustained attention has become so hard to hold onto, for children and adults alike. Drawing on more than 200 interviews with scientists, technologists, and affected families across several countries, Hari lays out a dozen factors he links to declining focus — from platform design and multitasking to lost sleep and shrinking unsupervised play — and argues attention loss is better understood as a designed, collective problem than a personal failing. A recurring theme is childhood: Hari connects the disappearance of free, unstructured outdoor play to the same commercial pressures that drive compulsive phone and app use in kids. The book closes with both individual habits and larger regulatory and design changes it frames as ways to push back. TechKids Foundation includes it as the central framing work behind this voice profile, not as clinical or diagnostic evidence.
Your Attention Didn't Collapse. It Was Stolen.
This is an edited extract from Stolen Focus that The Guardian published as a standalone long read ahead of the book's UK release. In it, Hari condenses his central argument for a general newspaper audience: that shrinking attention spans, in students and adults, are associated with a stack of overlapping pressures — screens and app design chief among them, but also lost sleep, constant task-switching, and stress — rather than any single cause or a failure of willpower. He argues that framing focus loss purely as an individual problem lets the industries and habits driving it off the hook, and previews solutions ranging from personal boundaries to structural changes in how technology and workplaces are designed. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as Hari's own condensed public statement of the book's argument, written for a mass audience rather than a specialist one.
Why We're All So Distracted (The mindbodygreen Podcast, Ep. 370)
On this wellness-focused podcast, host Jason Wachob interviews Hari about the research behind Stolen Focus, with an emphasis on the everyday habits — multitasking, poor sleep, low-nutrient diets, constant interruption — he associates with reduced ability to concentrate. Hari argues that doing several things at once consistently produces worse performance and weaker memory of what was done, and that recovering from a single interruption takes meaningfully longer than people assume. He frames better sleep and unbroken reading time as protective, low-cost practices, alongside the book's broader case for structural change in how technology and workplaces compete for attention. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as an accessible, health-and-wellness-audience framing of the book's core claims about focus and distraction.
How To Fix Your Focus & Stop Procrastinating: Johann Hari (The Diary Of A CEO, E114)
In this hour-and-a-half interview on Steven Bartlett's The Diary Of A CEO, Hari walks through the argument of Stolen Focus for a general business and self-improvement audience: that procrastination and lost focus are less a personal willpower problem than a predictable response to environments — apps, notifications, overwork, poor sleep — engineered to pull attention away from a single task. He discusses design choices in social platforms he associates with compulsive checking, and connects the same pressures on adult knowledge workers to what children experience with school and screens. The conversation moves between diagnosis and practical fixes, including boundary-setting and the case for regulatory and workplace-level change rather than relying solely on individual discipline. TechKids Foundation includes it as one of the highest-reach long-form interviews built around the book's argument.
Johann Hari On Why You Can't Pay Attention (& How To Reclaim Your Focus) — The Rich Roll Podcast
In this two-hour-plus conversation, endurance athlete and podcaster Rich Roll and Hari go deep on the twelve factors Stolen Focus links to shrinking attention, including social media business models Hari describes as built around surveillance and engagement rather than user wellbeing. They discuss what Hari calls the systemic side of the problem — platform design, workplace pressure, environmental stress — as distinct from what individuals can control day to day, and spend significant time on why he thinks personal fixes like app-blockers help but cannot substitute for changes to how technology companies are incentivized. TechKids Foundation includes this long-form interview as one of the most detailed public conversations Hari has given on the book's argument and its proposed remedies.
Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again (Action Network Live! webinar)
Fairplay — the children's advocacy nonprofit formerly known as the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood — invited Hari to discuss Stolen Focus with its Children's Screen Time Action Network in this March 2022 webinar, moderated with the group's executive director and its Action Network director. The conversation centers squarely on children: Hari describes what he calls the illusion of multitasking, discusses the 'switch-cost' research he cites linking task-switching to weaker learning, and talks through how a screen-saturated daily environment intersects with attention development in kids specifically, alongside what he sees as viable collective responses from parents, schools, and platform design. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance because, unlike most of Hari's press for the book, it was organized by and for a children's-advocacy audience rather than a general one.
Johann Hari on the Global Attention Crisis (Thought Economics)
In this long-form written interview conducted by Dr. Vikas Shah for the ideas outlet Thought Economics, Hari walks through the twelve factors Stolen Focus links to declining attention — among them what he describes as the increasing physical and psychological confinement of children's daily lives, alongside platform design, exhaustion, and diet. He discusses how algorithmic feeds are built, in his view, to exploit attention rather than serve it, and argues the fix has to include changed incentives for technology companies and workplaces, not just individual coping strategies. TechKids Foundation includes this interview because it is one of the more detailed public explanations Hari has given of how he connects children's shrinking freedom of movement and unsupervised time to the same forces driving compulsive screen use.
Johann Hari | Why You Can't Pay Attention—And What to Do About It (The Jordan Harbinger Show, Ep. 707)
Hari opens this interview with an anecdote about his teenage godson, whose near-constant device use he uses to illustrate what he sees as a generational shift in attention rather than an individual failing. Over the conversation he covers research he cites tying reduced sleep in children to weaker focus, describes social platforms as tuned to amplify outrage because it holds attention longer, and argues that chronic interruption measurably impairs concentration and problem-solving in the short term. As in his other Stolen Focus press, he pairs individual strategies — protecting sleep, limiting task-switching — with calls for workplace and platform-level change. TechKids Foundation includes this interview for its extended, kid-specific opening example and its sleep-and-attention discussion.
Johann Hari: Why You Can't Pay Attention (and How to Get It Back) — Good Life Project
Host Jonathan Fields and Hari spend this episode on what Hari calls an 'attentional pathogenic culture' — an environment he argues is structurally hostile to sustained focus, built by companies whose business models reward capturing attention rather than protecting it. A meaningful portion of the conversation turns to children specifically: Hari argues that restoring room for unstructured, unsupervised outdoor play is one of the more concrete ways to support kids' developing attention, framing it as a counterweight to the same commercial pressures pulling at adult focus. The episode also covers how the changes he's describing intersect with mental health and relationships more broadly. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance for its extended focus on childhood play as a countermeasure, a theme central to this voice's profile.
Your Attention Has Been Stolen: It's Time to Get It Back (Ready25 keynote)
Three and a half years after Stolen Focus was published, Hari delivered this keynote at Ready25, an Australian property-industry conference run by REA Group, to a professional rather than parenting-focused audience. He restated the book's twelve-factor framework — spanning technology, diet, and workplace and school design — and repeated a statistic he attributes to clinical identification trends: that roughly 100 times as many children are identified with serious attention difficulties today as in 1986. The talk was framed for a business audience around leadership, focus, and managing interruption at work, with the children's-attention data used as context for how widespread the shift has become rather than as the session's central subject. TechKids Foundation includes it as evidence the book's argument, including its claims about children, remains part of Hari's current paid-speaking material years after publication.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Jonathan Haidt's 2024 book argues that a shift from a play-based to a phone-based childhood, starting around 2010, is associated with rising rates of anxiety, depression, and self-harm-related warning signs among adolescents, especially girls. Haidt describes four mechanisms — social deprivation, sleep loss, attention fragmentation, and heightened social comparison — as pathways linking heavy smartphone and social-media use to these outcomes, alongside overprotective parenting and the loss of unsupervised play. It proposes four norms: no smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, and more independent play. The book spent over 100 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has been credited by news outlets, including Reuters, as an influence on Australia's under-16 social media law. Some researchers have publicly disputed how strongly the cited studies support the book's causal framing.
Specification Curve Analysis Shows That Social Media Use Is Linked to Poor Mental Health, Especially Among Girls
Published in Acta Psychologica, this study by Jean Twenge, Jonathan Haidt, Jimmy Lozano, and Kevin Cummins reanalyzed three large community survey datasets using specification curve analysis, a method that runs many defensible versions of the same statistical model to test whether a result holds up across different reasonable analytic choices. Where some earlier reanalyses had pooled boys and girls together, this paper separated results by sex and examined social media specifically rather than lumping it in with all screen time. Across the three datasets, the authors found a consistent, moderate association between social-media use and poorer mental health specifically among adolescent girls, describing its size as comparable to or larger than associations reported for other studied risk behaviors. The authors frame the finding as a robust statistical association across modeling choices, not proof of a single cause, and call for further research into underlying mechanisms.
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Co-written with First Amendment lawyer Greg Lukianoff, this 2018 book examines a cultural pattern the authors call 'safetyism' — prioritizing emotional protection over resilience-building — that they say took hold on American college campuses and, they argue, is associated with rising anxiety and reduced tolerance for disagreement among young people. The authors name three 'great untruths' (that discomfort is inherently harmful, that feelings are always reliable guides to truth, and that conflicts are battles between good and bad people) which they contend run counter to established findings in cognitive-behavioral psychology. They connect the spread of these ideas partly to overprotective parenting, risk-averse school policies, and a generation that came of age alongside smartphones and constant social-media connectivity. The book recommends measured exposure to manageable adversity, free-speech-protective campus norms, and cognitive-behavioral techniques for building resilience, and became a New York Times bestseller.
Worldwide Increases in Adolescent Loneliness
This study by Jean Twenge, Jonathan Haidt, and colleagues used the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to track school-related loneliness among roughly one million 15- and 16-year-olds across 37 countries, surveyed in 2000, 2003, 2012, 2015, and 2018. The researchers found that reported loneliness at school rose sharply between 2012 and 2018 in 36 of the 37 countries studied, with the share of adolescents reporting elevated loneliness roughly doubling over that window. Country-years with greater smartphone access and internet use tended to show higher loneliness, while broader economic measures such as GDP and income inequality showed little relationship once the survey year was accounted for. The authors describe this pattern as consistent with — though not proof of — rising phone-based and internet-based technology use being one contributor, among others, to a broad, multi-country rise in adolescent loneliness after 2012.
Are Smartphones Ruining Childhood?
In this August 2024 on-stage TED interview with journalist Elise Hu, Jonathan Haidt discusses the argument of his book 'The Anxious Generation': that a shift toward a phone-based childhood, combined with more overprotective parenting, is associated with the mental-health difficulties researchers have tracked among adolescents since the early 2010s. He walks through his proposed four norms — delaying smartphones until high school, delaying social media until 16, phone-free schools, and expanding unsupervised play — and answers questions about the underlying evidence, the school phone-restriction policies already spreading across U.S. states, and how parents and schools might coordinate on shared rules rather than acting alone. Consistent with the book, Haidt frames heavy phone and social-media use as one contributor, among several, to reported anxiety, depression, and self-harm-related warning signs in this age group, not a sole or proven cause.
How Screens Stole Childhood — and How to Get It Back
Speaking at the TED2026 conference, roughly two years after publishing 'The Anxious Generation,' Jonathan Haidt extends his earlier argument about smartphones and social media to newer generative-AI products marketed to children, including classroom tablets, AI 'companion' apps, and algorithmic feeds. He argues these tools are displacing the face-to-face social interaction he believes humans need for healthy development, and that this displacement is associated with the same mental-health warning signs he described in his earlier work. He proposes three principles of what he calls 'tech-skepticism' — treating new child-facing technologies cautiously until their effects are better understood, prioritizing unsupervised play and independence, and building shared, community-level norms around device use rather than leaving individual families to decide alone — as a framework for schools, platforms, and parents weighing whether and how to adopt new AI tools around children.
Meta's Internal Research: What the Company Learned About Social Media and Harms to Mental Health from Dozens of Internal Studies
Compiled by Bennett Sippel, Nikolaus Greb, Emma Park, Zach Rausch, and Jonathan Haidt at NYU Stern's Tech and Society Lab, this January 2026 report catalogs 35 internal Meta research studies conducted between 2018 and 2024 on whether the company's products, particularly Instagram, are associated with harm to young users. The source material comes primarily from whistleblower disclosures — including material previously made public by Frances Haugen and Arturo Béjar — and from internal exhibits released through litigation brought by state attorneys general, including Tennessee's. The compiled summaries describe Meta's own survey and behavioral-log research finding associations between product use and outcomes including cyberbullying, body-image concerns, and depression, using Meta's own internal language such as 'problematic use' rather than clinical diagnostic terms. The report presents these summaries as evidence of what the company's internal research found and knew, in the company's own words, not as an independent clinical assessment by TechKids Foundation or the report's authors.
Social Media and Mental Health: A Collaborative Review
First posted in February 2024 and continually updated since (most recently in January 2026), this is an openly editable set of literature-review documents maintained by Jonathan Haidt with Zach Rausch and Jean Twenge through NYU Stern's Tech and Society Lab. Rather than a single finished paper, it is a hub of living documents — organized into major topic reviews, country-specific reviews, and in-progress drafts — that collect and summarize published research bearing on whether social-media and smartphone use are associated with adolescent mood disorders, sleep loss, and school-related difficulties. Haidt states he invites outside academic researchers to request editing access to add studies, comments, or objections directly. TechKids Foundation treats this hub as a continuously updated index pointing to primary research, useful for tracing individual cited studies back to their original sources, rather than as a single finished, peer-reviewed conclusion in its own right.
'Our Kids Are the Least Flourishing Generation We Know Of'
In this April 2025 episode of The New York Times' 'The Ezra Klein Show,' host Ezra Klein interviews Jonathan Haidt about the rapid spread of school cellphone restrictions — by that point adopted in some form by more than a dozen U.S. states, including California, Florida, and Ohio — and about Haidt's broader argument that a shift from a play-based to a phone-based childhood is associated with declines in measures of adolescent flourishing. The conversation also takes up emerging concerns about generative-AI companion apps marketed to children, extending Haidt's smartphone-and-social-media argument to newer technology. Much of the episode covers the practical coordination problems parents and schools face in restricting phone use, questions about how strong the underlying evidence is, and what Haidt frames as the broader stakes of a childhood increasingly organized around screens rather than unsupervised, in-person play.
Scrutinizing the Effects of Digital Technology on Mental Health
In this 2020 comment published in Nature, Jonathan Haidt and psychologist Nick Allen argue that existing research on digital technology and adolescent mental health leans too heavily on correlational surveys and imprecise self-reported screen-time estimates. They call on researchers, technology companies, and funders to invest in more rigorous methods — including device-logged usage data, experimental designs, and pre-registered analyses — to better establish whether, and how strongly, social-media and smartphone use are associated with adolescent anxiety and depression. The piece presents no new data of its own; it is an argument, from two researchers active in the field, about the limits of the existing evidence base and a call to raise its quality. It appeared amid a broader debate in the scientific literature over how confidently researchers can characterize digital technology's relationship to youth mental-health trends, and is notable as Haidt publicly acknowledging methodological limitations in research he otherwise cites.
Written Testimony Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hearing on "Protecting Our Children Online"
On February 14, 2023, Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, submitted written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on protecting children online. He told the committee that platform design choices — engagement-maximizing algorithms and largely unregulated data collection — are associated with a range of harms to children and teens, naming compulsive overuse, exposure to age-inappropriate content, cyberbullying, and mental-health strain among the problems he linked to the current business model. Golin argued voluntary industry self-regulation has not been sufficient and urged Congress to pass comprehensive legislation, including the Kids Online Safety Act and an updated children's privacy law, requiring safety-by-design standards. He cited Fairplay's own advocacy record — a 2018 FTC complaint against Google's YouTube and the 2021 campaign that led Meta to pause a planned Instagram product for children — as evidence that sustained outside pressure, not company goodwill, drives change.
Written Testimony Before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, Hearing on "Holding Big Tech Accountable: Legislation to Build a Safer Internet"
On December 9, 2021, Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, testified before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on legislation to build a safer internet for children. Testifying weeks after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen's disclosures about Instagram, Golin argued the problems she surfaced were not unique to one company: he described compulsive overuse, exposure to harmful content, cyberbullying, mental-health strain, and child sexual exploitation as industry-wide issues linked to platform design rather than isolated incidents. He urged the subcommittee to advance two specific bills — the Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) Act and a children's and teens' online privacy protection update — arguing that together they would curb manipulative design features and restrict the collection and monetized use of young people's data. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as a documented instance of advocacy directly tied to pending federal legislation, not as an independent research finding.
How to Stop Big Tech from Surveilling Kids: Activist Josh Golin on Child Privacy
In this June 2022 interview published by the Open Markets Institute, Fairplay executive director Josh Golin discusses how children's apps and platforms are associated with widespread noncompliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). He says a large share of children's apps share young users' data with third parties without verifiable parental consent, and describes the FTC's enforcement history under COPPA as historically thin. Golin walks through Fairplay's role — alongside the Center for Digital Democracy — in building the 2018 complaint against Google's YouTube that led to the 2019 FTC settlement, calling it the largest reduction in behavioral advertising to children achieved to date, while also flagging a persistent loophole: creators face financial incentives to mislabel child-directed videos as general audience content, which he says has undercut the settlement's intended protections in practice.
Senators Urge FTC to Investigate YouTube and Google Over Alleged COPPA Violations
This August 2023 CyberScoop article covers a push by Senators Ed Markey and Marsha Blackburn for the FTC to investigate Google and YouTube over new findings — from ad-tech research firm Adalytics — that ads for adult-oriented products were appearing on videos marked "made for kids," a pattern the senators said suggested continued data collection on users under 13 despite Google's 2019 COPPA settlement. Fairplay executive director Josh Golin is quoted calling for an immediate, comprehensive FTC investigation and, if the report's findings are confirmed, penalties reflecting what he characterizes as Google's status as a repeat violator of children's privacy law. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as a documented example of ongoing advocacy pressure on regulators regarding platform compliance with children's-privacy rules, not as an independent verification of Adalytics' findings.
Advocates Who Filed the Privacy Complaint Against Google/YouTube Laud Improvements, But Say FTC Settlement Falls Far Short
This September 2019 statement from Fairplay and the Center for Digital Democracy responds to the FTC's settlement with Google over YouTube's alleged violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) — an enforcement action that traced back to a complaint the two groups had filed. Executive director Josh Golin, quoted in the statement, welcomes the FTC's decision to act after years of alleged noncompliance but argues the $170 million penalty was too small relative to Google's revenue from child-directed content, and objects to a settlement structure that shifted much of the compliance burden onto individual video creators rather than Google itself. The statement calls for stronger ongoing FTC enforcement and for Congress to update federal children's privacy law. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented instance of advocacy shaping — and then publicly critiquing — a major children's-privacy regulatory outcome.
Advocates Called for Investigation of Amazon's Echo Dot Kids Edition, Federal Regulators Now Poised to Act
This March 2023 Fairplay statement describes federal regulators moving toward enforcement action against Amazon over its Echo Dot Kids Edition, following a 2019 complaint Fairplay and the Center for Digital Democracy had filed alleging Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) violations. The original complaint alleged Amazon indefinitely retained children's voice recordings even after parents requested deletion, provided inadequate privacy notices, and lacked sufficient parental-consent procedures. Executive director Josh Golin, quoted in the statement, welcomes the FTC and Department of Justice's apparent move toward action, framing it as the first federal enforcement matter targeting a voice-enabled device maker over children's-privacy compliance. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented instance of advocacy against a smart-home device marketed to children, presented as a regulatory and privacy matter rather than a claim about any specific harm to an individual child.
Advocates File FTC Complaint Against Google's YouTube Kids
This April 2015 press release announces an FTC complaint filed by a coalition of child- and consumer-advocacy groups, including the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC, later renamed Fairplay), against Google's newly launched YouTube Kids app. The complaint alleges the app's design — intermixing advertising with content, running program-length branded segments for toy and fast-food brands, and not disclosing paid promotional relationships within creator videos — used techniques the groups linked to exploiting young children's limited ability to distinguish ads from programming, contrary to longstanding broadcast-advertising safeguards. Josh Golin, then CCFC's associate director, is quoted arguing the app blurs advertising and programming in ways aimed at young viewers. TechKids Foundation includes this as an early, formative instance of Golin's regulatory advocacy on children's media, years before the same core allegations resurfaced in the 2019 FTC-Google COPPA settlement.
Fairplay FTC Complaint Reverberates in $10 Million Settlement with Disney
This September 2025 Fairplay statement covers an FTC settlement requiring Disney to pay $10 million for allegedly mislabeling child-directed YouTube videos as general-audience content, a violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Fairplay frames the case as a direct outgrowth of its own 2018 complaint against Google's YouTube, which produced the 2019 COPPA settlement that first required video creators to self-designate child-directed content — a labeling system Fairplay had warned created a financial incentive for creators to mislabel their videos and evade the rule. Executive director Josh Golin is quoted describing the Disney enforcement action as an important signal that content creators, not just platforms, must follow children's-privacy rules. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented, years-later policy and legal outcome directly traceable to advocacy Golin's organization initiated in 2018.
Facebook Unveils New Controls for Kids Using Its Platforms
This October 2021 PBS NewsHour piece reports on new safety features Facebook (now Meta) announced for young users, shortly after whistleblower Frances Haugen's congressional testimony about internal research on Instagram's associations with teen wellbeing. The features included prompts encouraging teens to take breaks and alerts after repeated viewing of certain content types, plus optional parental-supervision tools. Fairplay executive director Josh Golin, quoted in the piece, said there was "tremendous reason to be skeptical," noting that teens often maintain secret accounts to evade parental oversight and questioning whether the company would follow through on implementation. He called instead for regulatory limits on algorithmic amplification and reiterated his call for Meta to permanently cancel the paused Instagram-for-kids product. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented example of advocacy pressure-testing a platform's voluntary safety response.
Facebook Puts Instagram for Kids on Hold After Pushback
This September 2021 PBS NewsHour piece reports that Facebook (now Meta) paused development of a planned Instagram product for children under 13, following a Wall Street Journal investigation that described internal Facebook research associating heavy Instagram use with body-image and mood concerns among some teen girls, and after a bipartisan group of 44 state attorneys general urged the company to abandon the project over cyberbullying and child-safety concerns. Fairplay executive director Josh Golin, who had coordinated a large coalition of parents, advocates, and child-development experts opposing the product, is quoted urging Facebook to use the pause to genuinely consult independent child-development experts rather than treat it as a public-relations gesture. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented policy outcome — a company decision to shelve a product — that Golin's coalition-led advocacy is directly credited with helping bring about.
Swimming Between the Digital Flags: Helping Young Australians Navigate Social Media's Dangerous Currents
In a National Press Club address in Canberra, Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant argued that today's online environment is far more powerful and harder to navigate than when she last addressed the club in 2018. She described eSafety's own concern, first raised in a February 2025 advisory, that children as young as 10 were spending hours a day in conversation with sexualised AI companion chatbots, with some reportedly directed toward explicit sexual acts, and said deepfake image-based abuse using 'nudifying' apps had become a recurring problem in Australian schools. She used a water-safety analogy — flagged beaches, lifeguards, swimming lessons — to argue that social media's minimum-age law, algorithmic design features such as streaks and endless scroll, and digital-literacy education should work together, rather than relying on any single fix, to reduce children's exposure to compulsive design and harmful content.
How Will Australia's Under-16 Social Media Ban Work? We Asked the Law's Enforcer
NPR technology correspondent Bobby Allyn interviewed Julie Inman Grant shortly after Australia's parliament passed a law barring under-16s from social media, asking how the eSafety Commissioner's office would enforce it. Grant explained her agency's origins as a children's online-safety regulator, its cyberbullying takedown scheme, and its image-based-abuse complaints process, and described three imperfect ways to verify a user's age online — ID documents, behavioral signals, and biometrics — each with its own privacy trade-off. Pressed on mixed research linking social media and teen mental health, she acknowledged the link is not clearly causal but 'certainly correlational,' and said the law targets addictive design features and dark patterns rather than social media use itself. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as a plain-language, on-record account of the enforcement thinking behind the law.
Julie Inman Grant: The Woman Tasked with Kicking Australian Kids Off Social Media
BBC Australia correspondent Katy Watson profiles Julie Inman Grant two months into enforcement of the country's under-16 social media ban, describing the volume of threats her office receives and the personal toll of a role that has made her a target for critics ranging from tech companies to members of the US Congress. Inman Grant defends the ban using a water-safety analogy — teaching children to swim rather than fencing off the ocean entirely — and says delaying access by a few years, paired with digital-literacy education, is worth attempting, even though critics say the policy is unevenly enforceable and may disadvantage rural, disabled, or LGBTQI+ teens who rely on online communities. She also describes her own household, including 13-year-old twins, as a live test case. TechKids Foundation includes this profile for its on-record account of the case for and against the ban from the regulator enforcing it.
The Woman Who Got YouTube Banned for Teens in Australia
TIME editor-at-large Belinda Luscombe profiles Julie Inman Grant around her decision to recommend that YouTube — originally carved out of Australia's under-16 social media law for its educational value — be brought under the ban after all. The piece traces Grant's path from tech-industry policy roles into government regulation, and quotes her comparing platform obligations to vehicle safety standards. It notes her office subsequently asked 16 more platforms, from Roblox to WhatsApp, to self-assess against the same rules, and situates her work in an unresolved debate — the article states plainly that some studies have 'plausibly linked' rising teen depression and anxiety to social media's spread, while other researchers say more research is needed. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as an account of how one regulator's scope decisions reshape a landmark youth-safety law.
AI Chatbots and Companions – Risks to Children and Young People
This is the first entry in eSafety's Online Safety Advisory series, issued under Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, warning that AI companion apps — chatbots designed to simulate friendship, emotional support, or romantic relationships — pose particular risks to children and young people. The advisory says some children are spending hours daily in unmoderated conversations that can drift into sex, drug use, self-harm, suicide, and eating disorders, and that high-frequency, problematic use of poorly safety-designed companion apps has been associated with self-harm, citing the death by suicide of a 14-year-old boy in the United States as a documented example rather than a claim of direct causation. It also flags 'addictive'-feeling design patterns that may encourage dependency and social withdrawal, and unhealthy relationship modeling for still-developing users. TechKids Foundation includes this advisory as an official regulator's own association-language framing of AI-companion risk to minors, issued to guide parents, carers, and educators.
Helping Aussie Kids Swim Between the Flags Online
This is eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant's edited opening statement to Australia's Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society, delivered as the committee opened its inquiry into social media's effects on the community. Grant argued for a layered approach — age verification, education, and platform accountability — rather than a single fix, using a water-safety analogy of flagged beaches and swimming lessons. She cited eSafety research finding that almost two-thirds of 14-to-17-year-olds had viewed extremely harmful content in the past year, including material related to drug abuse, suicide, or self-harm, plus violent content, and that more than a quarter saw content promoting unhealthy eating habits. She also noted that maturity and resilience, not age alone, shape how young people experience social media. TechKids Foundation includes this statement as Grant's own framing of the evidence behind Australia's subsequent social media age law.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant: Senate Estimates Opening Statement (February 2026)
Speaking to a Senate Estimates hearing on Safer Internet Day, Julie Inman Grant updated senators on enforcement of Australia's under-16 social media law roughly two months after it took effect. She said a transparency report the week before had found eight major platforms still failing to prevent weaponisation of their services for child sexual exploitation and sextortion, noted a preliminary EU finding that TikTok had failed to mitigate risks from its own addictive design, and criticized YouTube's move to loosen limits on monetizing content related to self-harm and suicidal ideation. She credited engagement with Apple with removing, or issuing warnings on, more than 100 'chat roulette'-style apps pairing adults with children. TechKids Foundation includes this statement as Grant's most recent on-record account of platform-accountability work tied to the law her office enforces.
Excerpts From a Conversation with Julie Inman Grant, Australia's eSafety Commissioner
The Council on Foreign Relations published edited excerpts of a discussion between Julie Inman Grant and CFR Senior Fellow Linda Robinson on Australia's Online Safety Act and global online-safety efforts. Grant traced eSafety's founding in 2015, after the death by suicide of an Australian celebrity following sustained online trolling, and described its cyberbullying complaints scheme, which she said resolves about 90% of reported cases by getting harmful content removed. She detailed the office's image-based-abuse scheme, noting it disproportionately affects girls and young women, and flagged a sharp rise in financial sextortion targeting young men aged 18 to 24. Grant framed these complaint-and-remediation schemes as tools for correcting a structural power imbalance between large platforms and individual users, paired with prevention, education, and international regulatory partnerships. TechKids Foundation includes this as a detailed, on-record account of the operational schemes behind Australia's youth online-safety framework.
A Fairer Fight: Protecting Childhood and Adolescence in a Digital World
In a speech delivered virtually to the Global Age Assurance Summit in Amsterdam, Julie Inman Grant argued that privacy-preserving age-assurance technology has matured enough to make meaningful age limits on children's platform access practical, after nearly two decades of her own work on the issue. She said social media was not built with children's safety as a goal, and described a 'darker side' including algorithmic manipulation, endless-scroll design, exposure to violent pornography and extremist content, and — while cautioning research is still evolving — content related to disordered eating and suicidal ideation. She argued unregulated, engagement-optimized platform use may interfere with healthy development when it displaces sleep, physical activity, or offline interaction, and outlined eSafety's 'three Ps' framework. TechKids Foundation includes this speech as Grant's statement of the reasoning behind global age-assurance efforts.
Doxing, Death Threats and the Ire of Elon Musk: Who Is the Australian Woman Taking on the Social Media Giants?
Published the day before Australia's under-16 social media ban took effect, this Guardian profile by Daisy Dumas traces Julie Inman Grant's path from Microsoft and Twitter policy roles into government regulation, and the personal cost of her fight with major platforms, including a documented conflict with Elon Musk and a declined request to testify before a US congressional inquiry into her office's conduct. It reports eSafety research finding seven in ten children aged 10 to 15 had encountered content associated with harm online in the prior year, three-quarters of them most recently on a social media platform — content the piece specifies included misogyny, violence, disordered eating, and suicide. Inman Grant describes the ban as introducing 'friction' into a system with previously close to none. TechKids Foundation includes this profile for its reporting on both the regulatory stakes and political pressure surrounding Grant's advocacy.
Your Brain on Computers: The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In
This early entry in the New York Times' 'Your Brain on Computers' series looks at parents' own smartphone and laptop use rather than children's, reporting on emerging researcher interest in whether a parent's frequent device-checking during family time is associated with reduced attention to young children and altered parent-child interaction. Julie Scelfo, then a Times staff writer, surveys child-development researchers who were beginning to study constantly available email and social apps as competing for the same attention parenting moments require. TechKids Foundation includes this 2010 piece as an early mainstream signal — well before today's phone-ban debates — that adults' own screen habits, not only children's, were already drawing research attention as a family-wellbeing question worth tracking over time.
Suicide on Campus and the Pressure of Perfection
Reported by then-Times staff writer Julie Scelfo for the paper's Education Life section, this piece centers on a high-achieving high school student to examine how intense academic competition, near-constant online tracking of grades and test scores, and social comparison combine into pressures that counseling directors and researchers quoted in the piece link to rising stress and, in some cases, suicidal thinking among students. The article describes a school and college culture in which perfectionism and visible peer achievement are associated with elevated anxiety, without attributing suicide to any single cause. TechKids Foundation cites it as an early mainstream framing of social-comparison and academic-pressure risk factors that predates most of today's device-specific research.
How To Prevent Suicide Among Tweens
This HuffPost piece by Julie Scelfo argues that emotional and behavioral struggles once associated mainly with older teenagers are increasingly reported in children as young as 10, and links the shift to a combination of expanded screen time and a decline in in-person community and unstructured play. Scelfo profiles the Sky Center, a Santa Fe crisis-intervention program, as a model for reaching younger children before distress escalates, and cites survey data on tween social-media posts touching on depression and self-harm to illustrate how early these themes now surface online. The piece frames prevention as requiring stronger real-world connection and community support alongside — not instead of — clinical care, and does not attribute youth suicide to any single cause.
N.J. Is About to Make Kids More Media-Savvy. Every State Should Follow Suit.
In this op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Julie Scelfo endorses a bipartisan New Jersey bill requiring K-12 media-literacy instruction and urges other states to pass similar legislation. She argues children are especially susceptible to social-media algorithms and online misinformation because their capacity for self-regulation and critical evaluation is still developing, and cites rising diagnosis rates for childhood anxiety and depression and elevated suicide rates among 10-to-14-year-olds as context for treating media literacy as a public-health measure rather than an optional elective. The piece proposes a curriculum teaching students to evaluate sources, distinguish fact from opinion, and recognize manipulative design, framing education — not blanket bans — as her preferred near-term policy lever.
The Surgeon General Warns That Social Media Is Dangerous for Kids. Why Aren't Medical Professional Associations?
Published days after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's May 2023 advisory describing social media as a potential risk to adolescent mental health, this San Francisco Chronicle op-ed by Julie Scelfo asks why major medical professional associations had not followed with their own practice guidance or public statements. Scelfo argues the advisory reflects a position she says "a growing number of pediatricians, parents and scientists" already held, and contends that organized medicine's comparative silence leaves parents and pediatric clinicians without the kind of coordinated guidance that has accompanied other public-health advisories. The piece calls on pediatric and psychiatric associations to translate the Surgeon General's warning into concrete clinical and policy recommendations for member physicians and families.
Fear of School Shootings Is Keeping Cellphones in School. Our Kids Will Pay the Price
In this San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, Julie Scelfo argues that parents' fear of school shootings — specifically, wanting children reachable by phone during an emergency — is one of the main reasons full school cellphone bans face resistance, even as she says evidence of phone-related harm to students' attention, sleep, and social wellbeing keeps mounting. She cites a then-pending multistate lawsuit against Meta as a sign that concern about compulsive platform use had moved from advocacy circles into formal legal action, and argues the safety benefit of in-class phone access during a crisis is unproven relative to the documented daily costs of classroom phone use. The piece calls for policies that address both goals rather than treating them as a strict tradeoff.
How Social Media Companies Are Weaponizing the First Amendment at the Expense of Our Kids
This San Francisco Chronicle op-ed argues that a gap exists between technology executives' public statements about protecting children — including sworn congressional testimony — and their companies' lobbying practices. Julie Scelfo names trade associations including NetChoice, TechNet, and the Computer & Communications Industry Association as recipients of tech-industry funding that she says is used to oppose state and federal bills on youth privacy protections and limits on attention-holding product design. She frames the industry's free-speech arguments against such legislation as a strategic use of First Amendment claims to block regulation rather than a principled objection, and calls on lawmakers to weigh those claims against the design choices she says the same companies decline to change voluntarily.
These 'Toys' Are Killing Our Kids
Writing in The Hill, Julie Scelfo uses the word 'toys' to describe smartphones and social apps that children use constantly, arguing that despite executives' public assurances about child safety, their companies underinvest in protective design relative to other spending. She contrasts reporting on the scale of Mark Zuckerberg's personal security investment with a cited $270-per-child figure tied to Meta's child-safety-related spending, and repeats her recurring argument that tech trade groups lobby against legislation on attention-holding design, data collection from minors, and privacy protections. The piece calls for the same product-safety standards applied to physical children's toys to apply to the apps and devices children now spend the most time with.
The Woman With a Plan to Fight Screen Addiction
This Hello Gloria profile traces Julie Scelfo's path from reporting on youth mental health — including what she describes as rising suicide rates among tweens — to founding Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA) in 2023. The piece lays out MAMA's three-part approach: helping parents understand platform design and its associated risks, pushing for phone-free school days, and lobbying for regulation comparable to safety standards for other consumer products aimed at children, modeled explicitly on Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It also covers Scelfo's response to a common counterargument — that some LGBTQ+ youth rely on online community — by distinguishing regulation of harmful design from access itself, and notes her stated 2024 goal of expanding MAMA to ten states.
Unplugging Our Kids: Julie Scelfo on Fighting Media Addiction
In this YouTube conversation hosted by author and parenting content creator Katherine Schwarzenegger, Julie Scelfo discusses her path from journalism to founding Mothers Against Media Addiction and the mental-health concerns she says are driving the movement. She offers parents concrete, practical suggestions for reducing children's daily screen time at home, argues for removing phones from classrooms during the school day, and describes MAMA's chapter-based model for organizing parents locally. The video is framed as a mother-to-mother conversation rather than a policy briefing, aimed at giving viewers accessible first steps rather than citing original research. TechKids Foundation includes it as a widely viewed, plain-language entry point to Scelfo's advocacy for a general audience.
Testimony Before the New Jersey Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on A4015 and A4013
Julie Scelfo testified before the New Jersey Assembly's Science, Innovation and Technology Committee in support of two bills: the New Jersey Kids Code Act (A4015), which would require social platforms to strip out design features aimed at maximizing engagement among minors and strengthen default privacy settings, and the Social Media Mental Health Warnings Act (A4013), which would require warning labels for parents about platform risks to youth mental health. As MAMA's founder, Scelfo cited youth suicide statistics and Meta's own 2025 transparency reporting on flagged self-harm-related content to argue that children's digital products should meet consumer-safety standards comparable to those applied to other products marketed to minors, and that this framing does not conflict with free-speech protections.
Julie Scelfo, Founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA)
In this interview on WFMU's Techtonic with Mark Hurst, Julie Scelfo discusses MAMA's advocacy against platform design choices she characterizes as associated with directing children and teens toward harmful content, including material connected to self-harm. She cites reported data on Instagram's recommendation systems surfacing large numbers of flagged adult accounts to teen users as an example, and discusses newer concerns her organization is tracking, including AI chatbots marketed to or accessible by minors and schools' growing reliance on platforms like YouTube for instruction. The conversation also covers MAMA's practical tools, including a parent-facing 'House Rules' checklist, and touches on emerging state and local policy efforts such as Los Angeles-area school screen-time limits.
Smartphone Nation: Why We're All Addicted to Our Screens and What You and Your Family Can Do About It
Smartphone Nation is UCL digital-humanities researcher Kaitlyn Regehr's 2025 book aimed at parents, educators, and policymakers navigating a phone-based childhood. Drawing on her own algorithm-amplification research, Regehr argues that not all screen time is equal: she proposes a 'digital nutrition' framework that ranks online activities from more passive, algorithm-driven consumption to more active creation and learning, and links heavy passive use to patterns she associates with reduced attention, poorer information judgment, and strained family relationships. The book explains how recommender systems are built to hold attention rather than serve users, walks through 'gaming your algorithm' techniques, and offers practical steps for building household media habits without treating all technology as equally harmful. TechKids Foundation includes it as an accessible synthesis of algorithm-literacy research for a general parent audience, not as a clinical guide.
Safer Scrolling: How Algorithms Popularise and Gamify Online Hate and Misogyny for Young People
Safer Scrolling reports findings from a UCL/University of Kent study, led by Kaitlyn Regehr and conducted with the Association of School and College Leaders, on how TikTok's recommender system exposes teenage boys to misogynistic content. Researchers built four archetype accounts reflecting common teen vulnerabilities (loneliness, neurodiversity, dating-advice interest, and general disaffection) and tracked their 'For You' feeds over seven days, finding misogynistic content rose roughly fourfold within five days of use. Interviews with young people and roundtables with 25 school leaders linked this pattern to normalized sexist language in classrooms and, for a subset of vulnerable boys, to broader incel-community indicators the report associates with depression, isolation and, in some cases, self-harm and violence risk. The report calls for algorithmic accountability and 'healthy digital diet' education rather than outright bans. TechKids Foundation includes it as association-level evidence about algorithm design and youth misogyny exposure.
Understanding and Combatting Youth Experiences of Image-Based Sexual Harassment and Abuse
This UCL, University of Kent and School of Sexuality Education report, led by Jessica Ringrose with Kaitlyn Regehr and Betsy Milne, surveyed and held focus groups with 480 English secondary-school students aged 12 to 18 about unwanted sexual images and messages on Snapchat and Instagram. It found cyberflashing and pressure to send nude images had become widely normalized: most girls who received unwanted images described them as upsetting, yet the large majority never reported the incidents to a platform, parent, or school, most often because they doubted reporting would help. The authors coin 'image-based sexual harassment' and 'image-based sexual abuse' to distinguish these non-consensual practices from consensual teen sexting, and link platform features like Snapchat's disappearing messages and lack of identity checks to under-reporting. TechKids Foundation includes it as association-level evidence on how specific app design choices are linked to under-addressed sexual harassment among children.
In(cel)doctrination: How Technologically Facilitated Misogyny Moves Violence Off Screens and on to Streets
In this 2020 peer-reviewed study in New Media & Society, UCL researcher Kaitlyn Regehr draws on video ethnography and long-form interviews from a year-long documentary project to trace how online Incel ('involuntarily celibate') communities are associated with a pattern she describes as radicalization: young men experiencing loneliness are drawn into forums that Regehr's analysis links to escalating anger and, in a minority of cases, real-world violence. The paper proposes a five-step behavioral pattern by which she argues internet echo-chambers and the online celebration of past attackers reinforce this progression, and argues these patterns are identifiable and interceptable before they turn violent. TechKids Foundation includes this study as an early, peer-reviewed account of the association between online community dynamics and offline harm that later informed Regehr's TikTok algorithm research, not as proof that any single online community causes violence.
Normalizing Toxicity: The Role of Recommender Algorithms for Young People's Mental Health and Social Wellbeing
Published in Frontiers in Psychology in November 2025, this peer-reviewed paper by Kaitlyn Regehr and colleagues presents the academic, peer-reviewed analysis behind their 2024 'Safer Scrolling' report on TikTok's recommender system. Using the same mixed-methods design — archetype-account testing of over 1,000 videos plus interviews with young people and school leaders across England and Wales — the authors find that recommendation systems are associated with rapidly escalating exposure to gender-based-violence and misogynistic content framed as entertainment, and link this pattern to harms for young people's mental health and peer relationships. The paper argues that policy, education, and platform-design responses are all needed together. TechKids Foundation includes it as the formally peer-reviewed version of research earlier released as a policy report, adding academic-journal-level scrutiny to the same underlying dataset.
Oral Evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee: Misogyny, the Manosphere and Online Content
On 21 May 2025, Kaitlyn Regehr gave oral evidence to the UK House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee as part of its inquiry into 'Misogyny: the manosphere and online content.' Drawing on her UCL research into TikTok's recommender algorithms and image-based sexual harassment, Regehr described to MPs how social media design choices are associated with the rapid escalation of misogynistic content shown to teenage boys and with normalized sexual harassment among teenage girls, and discussed what algorithmic-accountability and digital-literacy measures might address these patterns. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as a documented instance of a researcher's academic findings being formally presented to a national legislature considering online-safety policy, not as a legislative outcome in itself.
How UCL Research Helped Achieve the UK's First Cyberflashing Conviction
This March 2024 UCL News article reports that research led by Jessica Ringrose and Kaitlyn Regehr — documenting how cyberflashing among teenagers had become 'dangerously normalised,' with roughly half of affected teens telling no one — was cited in securing the United Kingdom's first conviction under the Online Safety Act's new cyberflashing offence. The article describes the researchers' survey finding that only a small share of affected teenagers reported incidents to a platform, parent, or school, and frames the conviction as evidence that academic research on youth image-based harassment can translate into real prosecutions. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented example of a legal and policy outcome directly credited to a researcher's published work, consistent with UCL's own account of the case.
Screen Free Summer: Understanding Algorithms
In this July 2025 guest post for the Children's Commissioner for England's 'Screen Free Summer' series, Kaitlyn Regehr explains the 'attention economy' logic behind social media recommender systems — that platforms profit from engagement time rather than from any particular piece of content, which she argues is why algorithms are associated with surfacing misinformation and emotionally provocative material that holds attention longer than calmer content. She offers four concrete habits for families: deliberately seeking out enjoyable content to retrain an account's recommendations, treating likes and comments as a limited 'attention budget,' unfollowing accounts that lower wellbeing, and periodically clearing out uninspiring feeds. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as a government-body-published, practitioner-facing explainer of algorithm design aimed directly at parents, distinct from her peer-reviewed academic output on the same topic.
Screen Free Summer: Digital Diet Guidance
Published by the Children's Commissioner for England in August 2025, this piece by Kaitlyn Regehr argues that simple screen-time limits are a poor tool for managing children's technology use because they ignore what content is consumed and how, not just how long. Drawing on researcher Amy Orben's published framework, Regehr proposes a 'digital diet' model — similar to a food pyramid — that sorts online activity from more passive, algorithm-driven consumption at the top to more active creation and learning near the base, and suggests families keep a simple journal of usage and mood to identify patterns worth changing. TechKids Foundation includes this as a practical extension of Regehr's academic algorithm research into everyday family guidance published by a UK government children's-rights body.
Teen Girls' Experiences Negotiating the Ubiquitous Dick Pic: Sexual Double Standards and the Normalization of Image-Based Sexual Harassment
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Sex Roles in 2021, this study by Jessica Ringrose, Kaitlyn Regehr, and Sophie Whitehead draws on focus groups and arts-based methods with 144 English secondary-school students aged 11 to 18 to examine teen girls' experiences of receiving unsolicited sexual images. The authors find that receiving such images had become normalized among participants as an unwanted marker of a girl's perceived desirability, and that a sexual double standard meant girls faced social stigma for the images they received while boys who sent them typically did not — a dynamic the authors link to gendered pressure and reduced willingness to report incidents to a parent or school. TechKids Foundation includes this study as peer-reviewed evidence on the social and school-context harms associated with unsolicited image-sharing among children on phones and social apps.
Teens, Social Media, and Image-Based Abuse
Published by Palgrave Macmillan (Springer Nature) in 2025 and made freely available as an open-access title, Teens, Social Media, and Image-Based Abuse is a research monograph by Jessica Ringrose and Kaitlyn Regehr that consolidates roughly a decade of their UK school-based fieldwork on adolescents' experiences of unwanted sexual images, pressured sexting, and non-consensual image-sharing. The book extends their earlier reports and journal articles into a fuller account of how specific platform features are associated with normalized sexual harassment among teenagers, the gendered double standards that shape who is shamed and who is not, and what schools, parents, and platforms could do differently. TechKids Foundation includes it as the authors' most complete, book-length synthesis of this research program, aimed at researchers, educators, and policymakers rather than a general trade audience.
Recognizing and Addressing How Gender Shapes Young People's Experiences of Image-Based Sexual Harassment and Abuse in Educational Settings
Published in the Journal of Social Issues in February 2023, this peer-reviewed paper by Jessica Ringrose and Kaitlyn Regehr analyzes focus-group and arts-based data from 150 young people aged 12 to 21 across England to examine how gender shapes adolescents' experiences of image-based sexual harassment and abuse. The authors argue that pressure on girls to send nude images functions as harassment, while pressure on boys to obtain and non-consensually share such images constitutes a distinct form of abuse, and that sexual double standards leave girls disproportionately shamed and blamed when images circulate. The paper concludes that school relationships-and-sex-education policy would benefit from adopting this combined harassment-and-abuse framework rather than treating all sexting as equally risky. TechKids Foundation includes it as peer-reviewed evidence linking specific platform-mediated behaviors to gendered social and school-based harms among children.
Carson's Law: Oregon School Bullying-Notification Requirement (HB 2631)
Oregon House Bill 2631, enacted in the 2021 legislative session as Chapter 232 and commonly nicknamed 'Carson's Law,' requires Oregon school officials who receive a report of harassment, intimidation, bullying, or cyberbullying to notify the parents or guardians of both the targeted student and the student identified as the aggressor, with narrow exceptions where notification could put a student at risk. The measure is named for Carson Bride, the 16-year-old son of advocate Kristin Bride, who died by suicide in June 2020 following a pattern of anonymous cyberbullying at his Portland-area high school. In later written testimony, Bride states in her own words that she personally testified in support of the bill in 2021. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a documented instance of bereaved-parent advocacy translating into state policy, described here as a parent-notification requirement rather than as a claim about the cause of Carson's death.
S5 Episode 5: Suicide by Cyberbullying — Carson's Story
In this podcast interview with host Hillary Wilkinson, Kristin Bride describes her son Carson — 'funny and witty, affectionate,' in her words — and the anonymous-messaging apps linked to Snapchat that she says were used to send him repeated harassing and humiliating messages before his death by suicide in June 2020. Bride recounts that her family had discussed online safety, but Carson had not disclosed what he was experiencing, and she uses the episode to explain broader patterns of underreporting among teens who face cyberbullying. She describes turning her advocacy toward Oregon's parent-notification law (Carson's Law) and toward the federal Kids Online Safety Act. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a substantive long-form interview in which a bereaved parent connects a documented personal account to broader, association-language points about underreporting and platform design.
Written Testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee — "Protecting Our Children Online"
On February 14, 2023, Kristin Bride submitted written testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for its hearing 'Protecting Our Children Online,' chaired by Senator Dick Durbin. The committee's own hearing record lists her as a witness identified as a survivor parent and social media-reform advocate from Portland, Oregon. Her testimony recounts the anonymous-messaging apps linked to Snapchat that she says were used to send her son Carson repeated harassing messages before his death by suicide in 2020, and argues for federal accountability measures — including a duty of care for platforms designing products used by minors — framed around what became the Kids Online Safety Act. TechKids Foundation includes this hearing appearance as a documented instance of a bereaved parent's direct input into federal legislative deliberation, described in association language rather than as a claim of clinical causation.
Keeping Our Kids Safe Online
In this guest essay for Jonathan Haidt's After Babel newsletter, Kristin Bride writes in her own words about her son Carson, who she says received nearly a hundred harassing, threatening, and sexually explicit anonymous messages through apps linked to Snapchat in the weeks before his death by suicide in June 2020. She describes filing a class-action suit against the platform, which she says was followed by the removal of the anonymous-messaging add-ons in question, and argues that current law gives social media companies no legal 'duty of care' requiring them to weigh child safety in product design. She positions her advocacy for the Kids Online Safety Act and COPPA 2.0 as the practical response to that gap. TechKids Foundation includes this essay as a first-person advocacy piece laying out specific policy asks, presented as the author's argument rather than an independently adjudicated fact.
Estate of Bride v. YOLO Technologies, Inc. (9th Circuit opinion)
In this published opinion (No. 23-55134), the Ninth Circuit ruled on a class-action suit brought by the Estate of Carson Bride, through administrator Kristin Bride, and several other minor plaintiffs against YOLO Technologies, Inc., maker of an anonymous-messaging app connected to Snapchat. The suit alleged that YOLO's public promises to unmask abusive users were false and that this misrepresentation was linked to harassment plaintiffs experienced on the app. A district court had dismissed the case under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of the product-liability claims but reversed dismissal of the misrepresentation claims, holding that Section 230 does not immunize a company's own false statements about its safety practices. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a documented legal outcome directly tied to Bride's advocacy, described here as a procedural ruling rather than a finding of fact about what caused any plaintiff's harm.
A Mother's Quest for Social Media Reform
In this public-radio segment, Marketplace profiles Kristin Bride, whose 16-year-old son Carson died by suicide in 2020 after, in her account, receiving more than a hundred negative, harassing, and threatening anonymous messages through apps connected to Snapchat in the weeks beforehand. The segment covers Bride's legal action against the platform and her continued advocacy for federal legislation, including the Kids Online Safety Act, intended to require social platforms to build in stronger protections for minors. It situates her personal story within a broader public debate over platform accountability for youth safety design. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a mainstream public-radio treatment of a bereaved parent's advocacy trajectory, presented in association language rather than as a diagnostic or causal claim.
Online Harms: A Parent's Fight for Social Media Regulation
In this interview with CCDH chief executive Imran Ahmed, Kristin Bride discusses losing her 16-year-old son Carson to suicide in 2020, following a pattern of cyberbullying she says he experienced through the anonymous-messaging app Yolo, an add-on connected to Snapchat. She describes the product-liability and misrepresentation lawsuit she filed against the app in 2021, its dismissal on Section 230 grounds, and her subsequent appeal win on the misrepresentation claim, which she characterizes as creating an opening in Section 230's broad immunity. Bride frames her message as a call for collective pressure on large platforms rather than reliance on any single family's fight. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a substantive interview connecting one advocate's personal and legal history to the broader Section 230 reform debate, in association language throughout.
Written Testimony in Support of Oregon HB 2251 (Restricting Cellphone Use in Schools)
In written testimony dated March 28, 2025 to the Oregon House Committee on Education, Kristin Bride states her name and role as a social media-reform advocate, recounts that her son Carson died by suicide in 2020 after being sent, by her account, more than a hundred anonymous harassing messages by classmates, and describes her related 2021 testimony that led to Oregon's parent-notification law (Carson's Law). She goes on to support HB 2251, which would direct Oregon school districts to adopt policies restricting student cellphone use during the school day, citing conversations with principals piloting 'bell to bell' phone-free policies who reported less in-school cyberbullying and stronger peer interaction. She resubmitted the same position to the Senate Committee on Education on May 12, 2025. TechKids Foundation includes this as documented state-level testimony connecting her personal account to a specific, still-pending device-policy bill, in association language.
Your Attention Please (documentary) — SXSW 2026 screening
Your Attention Please, directed by Sara Robin, is a documentary examining how attention-driven product design reshapes young people's lives, told through several central subjects including Kristin Bride. The film's own listing describes her storyline as a mother pursuing legislative reform after losing her son, alongside other subjects such as a young programmer building anti-cyberbullying tools and digital-wellbeing researchers. It screened during the SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas, including a March 14, 2026 screening at the AFS Cinema satellite venue; other secondary sources cite an earlier premiere date within the same festival window, which TechKids Foundation was unable to independently confirm. TechKids Foundation includes this entry because Bride is a named, central subject of a nationally distributed documentary, presented here descriptively rather than as an endorsement of every claim the film makes.
Ep 30 (Season 2): Social Media Reform Advocate Kristin Bride
In this podcast interview, Kristin Bride again shares her account of her son Carson's death by suicide in 2020, which she connects to a pattern of anonymous cyberbullying he experienced through apps linked to Snapchat, including Yolo and LMK. The episode covers the same core themes present across her advocacy work — the dangers she associates with anonymous messaging features, her push for stronger platform accountability legislation, and practical guidance for parents on delaying or monitoring children's social media use. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as one of several long-form interview appearances documenting the consistency of Bride's public advocacy over multiple years and venues, in association language throughout.
Social Studies
Social Studies is a five-episode 2024 documentary series directed by Lauren Greenfield for FX, following a diverse group of Los Angeles teenagers through a full school year using footage drawn largely from their own phones, texts, and social-media feeds. Rather than reconstructing adolescence from the outside, the series lets subjects narrate their own experiences with cyberbullying, beauty-standard pressure, and the emotional highs and lows of algorithm-driven feeds. Critics and the show's own framing describe near-constant platform use as associated with anxiety, self-image strain, and shifting peer dynamics among the teenagers profiled, without reducing any single outcome to one cause. The series earned a 2025 Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series and won a Gotham Television Award. TechKids Foundation cites it as a rare screen-level record of how a school year actually looks through teenagers' own feeds.
Generation Wealth
Generation Wealth is Lauren Greenfield's 2018 documentary, distributed by Amazon Studios after premiering as the opening-night film of Sundance in January 2018. Drawing on 25 years of her own photography, Greenfield revisits subjects from Los Angeles to Moscow, Dubai, and China to examine a widespread pursuit of wealth and image at almost any cost, including child beauty pageants, cosmetic procedures, and celebrity-driven consumer aspiration. The film associates heavy exposure to status-focused media and marketing with materialistic values and body-image strain in some of the young people and families it follows, and turns the camera on Greenfield's own household to ask whether ambition itself can become compulsive. TechKids Foundation cites the film as a wide-ranging visual record connecting media-driven wealth and image culture with strain on families and children, framed by its own director as observation rather than a clinical finding.
Generation Wealth (book)
Generation Wealth is Lauren Greenfield's 2017 photographic monograph, published by Phaidon with a foreword by sociologist Juliet Schor, collecting more than 650 images from a 25-year project documenting the pursuit of wealth and status across Los Angeles, Moscow, Dubai, and China. The 504-page book frames its subject as 'the desire to be wealthy, at any cost' rather than the wealthy themselves, tracing a line from 1990s conspicuous consumption through the 2008 financial crash to a global culture in which celebrity, luxury goods, and physical image are treated as measures of success. Reviewers have connected the book's portraits — including of teenagers steeped in celebrity and consumer culture — with body-image pressure and status anxiety associated with growing up around status-driven media. TechKids Foundation cites the book as the photographic foundation for Greenfield's later documentary and television work on media, image, and youth.
Lauren Greenfield's Generation Wealth (Artforum review)
In this January 2017 Artforum review, critic Naomi Fry assesses Lauren Greenfield's Generation Wealth exhibition and its accompanying 504-page Phaidon catalogue, mounted at New York's International Center of Photography. Fry traces Greenfield's 25-year photographic arc from 1990s Los Angeles conspicuous consumption through princess culture, cosmetic procedures, and the 2008 financial crisis to present-day global wealth inequality, arguing the work captures a contradiction in which material abundance coexists with visible unhappiness in many of its subjects. The review describes Greenfield's photographs as associating heavy exposure to status- and image-driven culture with dissatisfaction and status anxiety, rather than treating wealth itself as a straightforward source of wellbeing. TechKids Foundation cites this review as an early, serious critical reception of the body of work that shaped Greenfield's subsequent documentary Generation Wealth and, later, Social Studies.
'Generation Wealth' Is a Sprawling Chronicle of Decadence and Decay
Published the day before the film's wide theatrical release, this Outline review by Ann-Derrick Gaillot examines Lauren Greenfield's documentary Generation Wealth, which draws on 25 years of her photography to trace how the pursuit of money and physical perfection has reshaped the people she has followed. Gaillot describes the film revisiting earlier subjects to show consumerism's costs — including strained family time and body-image distress — while also turning the lens on Greenfield's own career ambition as a parallel, less-examined form of compulsive pursuit. The review frames the documentary as both cultural critique and self-implicating confession, associating relentless exposure to status-driven, image-obsessed media and marketing with dissatisfaction rather than presenting wealth or fame as an unambiguous good. TechKids Foundation cites this review as a substantive, independent critical assessment of the film's argument about media-driven materialism's toll on subjects across generations.
Inside Lauren Greenfield's Emmy-Nominated Social Studies Series
In this August 2025 Hollywood Reporter interview, conducted around Social Studies' first Emmy nomination, Lauren Greenfield describes social media's effect on teenagers as 'a generational problem' shaping identity through what she calls 'life lived through a screen.' She recounts audience reactions at community screenings, including lawmakers and advocates who described social-media exposure as tangled up with real mental-health strain among young people they know, and says she intends to keep making work on the subject 'until it's no longer a problem.' Greenfield also describes the teenage subjects of the series reacting to the Emmy nomination with more excitement than she felt herself. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as Greenfield's own framing, in her words, of why she considers heavy social-media use among teenagers an ongoing public concern rather than a resolved issue.
On Girlhood: Lauren Greenfield & Eimear Lynch in Conversation
Published by AnOther Magazine in December 2024, this conversation pairs Lauren Greenfield with Irish photographer Eimear Lynch on how the media environment around girlhood has shifted across their careers. Greenfield traces her arc from documenting 1990s teenagers shaped by television, film, and music in Fast Forward and Girl Culture to her 2024 series Social Studies, which examines how social media intensifies many of the same body-image and peer-pressure dynamics for today's teenagers. Lynch, whose own book documents Irish teenagers on nights out, observes that underlying social pressures on girls have changed less than the technology surrounding them, since most subjects now carry phones and film themselves throughout the same rituals. Both discuss whether awareness of these pressures protects young people from experiencing them. TechKids Foundation cites this exchange as Greenfield's own account of how screen-based media has intensified, rather than created, long-documented pressures on girls.
Lauren Greenfield - "Social Studies" & Coming of Age in a Social Media World
In this Daily Show segment, posted to the program's official YouTube channel, Lauren Greenfield discusses her FX documentary series Social Studies and what she describes as a generation coming of age inside social media rather than alongside it. The conversation covers how the teenagers she filmed narrate their own identity development through the feedback loops of likes, comments, and algorithmic feeds, and touches on the broader public conversation around regulating platforms that reach minors. TechKids Foundation cites this appearance as a mainstream late-night-television record of Greenfield explaining, in a general-audience comedic-news setting, why she considers heavy adolescent social-media use a subject that warranted a full documentary series rather than a passing trend.
Monocle on Culture, Episode 719: Lauren Greenfield
Monocle on Culture, the weekly radio and podcast strand from global-affairs magazine Monocle, devoted its July 21, 2025 episode to a conversation with documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield about her FX series Social Studies. The program describes the series as an examination of 'the culture of social media, with insight into the real-life habits of teenagers,' and the conversation covers Greenfield's approach to filming Los Angeles teenagers largely through their own phone and social-media activity across a full school year. As in her other interviews, Greenfield discusses constant platform exposure as bound up with identity formation and peer pressure for the teenagers profiled, without attributing any single outcome to social media alone. TechKids Foundation cites this broadcast as an international media outlet's independent editorial judgment that Greenfield's documentary work merits sustained public discussion beyond the U.S. entertainment press.
Interview With 'Social Studies' Creator, Director & Producer Lauren Greenfield
This June 2025 episode of the Next Best Picture Podcast, a film-industry interview show, features creator-director-producer Lauren Greenfield discussing Social Studies, her FX documentary series following Los Angeles teenagers across a school year as they navigate growing up in a world where phones and social platforms are constant. The conversation covers Greenfield's filmmaking choices, including her reliance on footage drawn from the teenagers' own phones and social accounts rather than reconstructed scenes, and her account of how the series moved from its Telluride Film Festival premiere to FX broadcast and streaming on Hulu and Disney+. TechKids Foundation cites this podcast appearance as part of the specialist entertainment-industry press record of Greenfield discussing her own creative and ethical choices in documenting teenagers' digital lives for a general audience.
Study Protocol of the Internet User Cohort for Unbiased Recognition of Gaming Disorder in Early Adolescence (iCURE), Korea, 2015–2019
This BMJ Open paper lays out the design of iCURE, a multi-year prospective study that enrolled roughly 3,000 Korean adolescents across 21 schools starting in 2015. Psychiatrist Hae Kook Lee of the Catholic University of Korea is among the co-authors of this founding protocol, which describes tracking participants' internet and gaming habits alongside emotional, social, school, and family measures over several years. Rather than a single snapshot, the cohort design lets researchers observe which factors are associated with the emergence, remission, and recurrence of patterns linked to internet gaming disorder in the same young people over time. TechKids Foundation includes this protocol paper as the methodological foundation behind Lee's later iCURE findings on gaming-disorder risk, physical health, sleep, and mood in adolescents, several of which are cited elsewhere in this library.
Gaming Patterns and Related Symptoms in Adolescents Using Cluster Analysis: Baseline Results From the Internet User Cohort for Unbiased Recognition of Gaming Disorder in Early Adolescence (iCURE) Study
Drawing on baseline data from the iCURE cohort, this Environmental Research paper by Hyunsuk Jeong, Hae Kook Lee, and colleagues sorted more than 2,300 Korean adolescents into three clusters based on their gaming patterns and related risk and protective factors. One cluster — about a fifth of participants — combined heavier gaming with co-occurring psychological and social difficulties and showed markedly higher odds of screening into internet-gaming-disorder-associated risk than a cluster with few such difficulties. A third, intermediate cluster fell between the two. The authors frame the analysis as evidence that gaming-related risk tends to cluster together with other warning signs rather than occurring in isolation, supporting targeted screening over one-size-fits-all approaches. TechKids Foundation cites this as part of the broader iCURE evidence behind co-occurring risk patterns in adolescents.
Reciprocal Relationship Between Depression and Internet Gaming Disorder in Children: A 12-Month Follow-up of the iCURE Study Using Cross-Lagged Path Analysis
Published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, this iCURE-cohort paper by Hyunsuk Jeong, Hae Kook Lee, and colleagues followed 366 Korean elementary-school internet users for a year to test which comes first: depressive symptoms or gaming-disorder-associated behavior. Using cross-lagged statistical modeling, the authors report a two-way association — children with more depressive symptoms at the start tended to show more severe gaming-disorder-associated features a year later, and children with more severe gaming-disorder-associated features at the start tended to show more depressive symptoms a year later. Neither path was dramatically larger than the other. The authors suggest the two are linked in a reinforcing loop rather than one simply causing the other, and argue that programs addressing children's gaming habits should also screen for mood symptoms, and vice versa. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence that gaming-related risk and depression in children are best understood together.
Prospective Association Between Online Game Use and Risk of Internet Gaming Disorder in Korea: 12-Month Follow-up Results From the iCURE Study
This Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health paper, co-authored by Hae Kook Lee, followed 1,318 Korean adolescent gamers from the iCURE cohort for a year to see how changes in their gaming behavior related to risk of internet gaming disorder. The authors defined heavier use as gaming more than 1.5 hours a day or on 4 or more days a week, and report that adolescents whose gaming time increased over the study period were about 2.5 times as likely to move into gaming-disorder-associated risk as those who stayed below that threshold, while adolescents whose gaming frequency increased were nearly 4 times as likely. The authors frame these thresholds as a practical reference point for parents and clinicians rather than a hard clinical cutoff. TechKids Foundation cites this as association-level evidence linking specific increases in gaming time and frequency to elevated gaming-disorder risk in Korean adolescents.
Risk Factors and Outcomes of Internet Gaming Disorder Identified in Korean Prospective Adolescent Cohort Study
Published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, this iCURE-cohort study — with Hae Kook Lee among the co-authors — followed Korean adolescents for a year to see how internet-gaming-disorder-associated risk related to physical-health and daily-life outcomes, not just psychological ones. The authors report that adolescents who screened at risk for gaming disorder at the study's start had lower physical activity and less sleep than lower-risk peers, and reported more dry-eye symptoms, more musculoskeletal pain, and more near-miss accidents — with these gaps widening over the following year rather than narrowing. The authors describe gaming-disorder-associated risk as linked to a broader pattern of physical strain in adolescents, not only mood or behavior. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence that gaming-related risk in children carries physical, not only psychological, warning signs.
Public Health Approach to Problems Related to Excessive and Addictive Use of the Internet and Digital Media
In this Current Addiction Reports paper, social-work researcher Sulki Chung and psychiatrist Hae Kook Lee lay out a public-health framework for excessive and addictive internet and digital-media use, distinct from an individual-treatment-only lens. They describe risk as arising from the interaction of three elements — the person, the digital product itself, and the surrounding environment — and argue that responses should combine individual-level support with product-design and policy-level measures, such as monitoring systems, service standards, and access or content rules for higher-risk platforms. Rather than framing problematic use as solely a personal issue to be managed case by case, the authors present it as a population-level public-health issue requiring coordinated, evidence-based services matched to severity. TechKids Foundation cites this as Lee's own policy framing of why gaming- and internet-related harms call for systemic, not only individual, responses.
Impact of COVID-19 on Adolescents' Smartphone Addiction in South Korea
This Social Work in Public Health study, co-authored by Hae Kook Lee, surveyed 360 Korean teenagers aged 15 to 18 about their smartphone use before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors report that individual-level factors — including depressive symptoms, weaker self-control, and having been a target of cyberbullying — were associated with higher smartphone-addiction-associated scores, alongside family-level factors like household economic strain and lower parental involvement, and school-level factors like grades. Among teens whose screen time rose during the pandemic specifically, economic circumstances, academic performance, and grade level were also associated with higher risk. The authors frame pandemic-era school closures and isolation as a context that amplified pre-existing risk factors rather than creating an entirely new problem. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence that pandemic disruption is associated with, not the sole cause of, elevated smartphone-related risk in Korean adolescents.
Recurrence of Internet Gaming Disorder in Korean Adolescents: A 24-Month Follow-up Study
Published in European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, this iCURE-linked study by Sun-Jin Jo, Hae Kook Lee, and colleagues followed 1,452 Korean middle-school gamers for two years to see how often internet gaming disorder, once it eased, came back. The authors report a cumulative relapse rate of about 16 percent over the follow-up period — well above the roughly 4 percent rate at which the disorder had first emerged in the same sample — and identify starting to game before entering primary school as a factor associated with a substantially higher chance of relapse. The authors frame early gaming onset as a marker worth attention in relapse-prevention efforts, alongside continued monitoring after a young person's gaming-disorder-associated symptoms first improve. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence that gaming-disorder-associated patterns in adolescents can recur, not simply resolve once and stay resolved.
Unintended Positive Behavioral Changes During Self-report and Wearable Data Collection on Digital Media Use in Young Adults
This Journal of Behavioral Addictions paper, co-authored by Hae Kook Lee, tracked 206 young adults over four weeks who were simply asked to self-report their digital-media use and wear a Fitbit, with no other intervention applied. The authors report that participants' digital-media use and high-risk-use scores dropped, and depressive symptoms eased, over the study period even though nothing was designed to change their behavior. They interpret this as a measurement effect: the act of tracking and reporting one's own screen habits appears itself to nudge people toward lighter use, at least temporarily. The authors caution that future studies testing digital-media interventions need control groups that also self-monitor, since a real intervention's effect could otherwise look larger than it actually is, simply because measurement alone moves the numbers. TechKids Foundation cites this as a methodological caution relevant to how gaming- and screen-use interventions are evaluated.
Health Response to Problematic Usage of the Internet: A Global Survey on Trends, Available Treatments and Key Challenges
Published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, this large international survey — coordinated through the International Society of Addiction Medicine's Global Expert Network and co-authored by Hae Kook Lee among more than 30 collaborators — asked addiction-medicine and psychiatry societies across 38 countries how their health systems respond to problematic internet use, including its gambling and gaming subtypes. Respondents most often named online gambling and gaming as the internet-use patterns causing concern, and reported that psychotherapy, especially cognitive behavioral therapy, was the most widely available response. The survey also found major gaps: most respondents said their country lacks professional certification standards for addressing problematic internet use, and a large majority rated the issue as important over the coming decade. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence that health systems worldwide, including South Korea's, remain underprepared for gaming- and internet-related harms in young people.
Sex Differences in the Longitudinal Association Between High Risk of Internet Gaming Disorder and Subsequent Suicidality Among Adolescents: A Cohort Study
Published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, this iCURE-cohort study — co-authored by Hae Kook Lee — followed 1,874 Korean adolescents aged 9–14, none reporting suicidal thoughts at baseline, for two years to test whether gaming-disorder-associated risk was linked to later suicidality, and whether that association differed by sex. Among boys, those who screened at high risk for internet gaming disorder showed substantially higher rates of later suicidality — including suicidal ideation and suicide plans or attempts — than lower-risk boys, roughly 17 percent versus 5 percent. Among girls, the same comparison did not reach statistical significance. The authors frame high gaming-disorder-associated risk as one warning sign linked to elevated suicidality risk in boys specifically, not a standalone cause. TechKids Foundation includes this as association-level evidence that clinicians and parents should treat gaming-disorder risk in boys as a warning sign worth watching alongside other risk factors.
Digitale Demenz: Wie wir uns und unsere Kinder um den Verstand bringen
"Digitale Demenz" is Ulm psychiatrist and neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer's 2012 bestseller, which introduced the term "digital dementia" to German-language debate. Drawing on cognitive-neuroscience research and clinical case material, Spitzer argues that offloading everyday mental tasks — navigation, memorization, spelling — onto phones, computers, and game consoles is linked, in his account, to weaker memory formation and slower skill development, particularly in children and teenagers whose brains are still developing. He associates heavy screen-media use in childhood with reduced reading and attention spans, disrupted sleep, low mood, weight gain, and reduced classroom learning, framing "digital dementia" as a pattern of risk rather than a formal clinical diagnosis. The book was widely covered and sharply contested among German academics; TechKids Foundation includes it as an influential, if debated, early statement associating heavy device use with children's cognitive and physical development.
Cyberkrank! Wie das digitalisierte Leben unsere Gesundheit ruiniert
"Cyberkrank!" is Spitzer's 2015 follow-up to "Digitale Demenz," broadening his argument from memory and learning to everyday physical and mental health. The book surveys research he cites on internet and smartphone use and associates heavy, habitual use with poorer sleep, eye strain, reduced physical activity, and patterns he characterizes as behaviorally addictive, alongside links to anxiety and low mood. Spitzer frames "digitalized life" — constant connectivity, notifications, and screen-based entertainment — as a public-health concern he argues deserves the same scrutiny historically given to other health risks, rather than being accepted as an unavoidable cost of modern technology. As with his earlier book, independent researchers have publicly challenged some of his causal framing. TechKids Foundation includes the title as a widely discussed German-language statement connecting everyday digital habits to broader health concerns, summarized here in our own words as association rather than proven causation.
Die Smartphone-Epidemie: Gefahren für Gesundheit, Bildung und Gesellschaft
"Die Smartphone-Epidemie" ("The Smartphone Epidemic") is Spitzer's 2018 book, published by Klett-Cotta, arguing that smartphone adoption among children and teenagers has outpaced public understanding of its risks. He surveys studies he cites and associates heavy adolescent smartphone use with disrupted sleep, reduced physical activity, and lower academic performance, and discusses proposals such as France's 2018 restriction on smartphones in schools as one possible policy response. The book uses "epidemic" as a rhetorical description of rapid, largely unexamined uptake rather than a formal medical epidemic, and argues for later, more limited smartphone access for children alongside school policies restricting devices in classrooms. TechKids Foundation includes it as Spitzer's most direct book-length statement specifically about smartphones and children, summarized here in our own words using association rather than causal language.
Einsamkeit – die unerkannte Krankheit: schmerzhaft, ansteckend, tödlich
"Einsamkeit – die unerkannte Krankheit" ("Loneliness — The Unrecognized Illness") is Spitzer's 2018 book arguing that chronic loneliness functions as a health risk factor, associated in research he cites with higher rates of depression, cardiovascular disease, and earlier mortality. Spitzer connects rising loneliness in part to digital communication habits he argues increasingly substitute for face-to-face contact, particularly among heavy social-media and smartphone users, while noting the book's claim that loneliness also affects people who are married or otherwise not socially isolated. The book proposes that recognizing loneliness as a distinct health concern, rather than folding it into general unhappiness, should inform medical practice and policy. German reviewers publicly challenged several of the book's strongest causal claims. TechKids Foundation includes the title for its argument linking digitally mediated social contact to loneliness and depression risk, described in our own words as association rather than proven causation.
Künstliche Intelligenz: Dem Menschen überlegen – wie KI uns rettet und bedroht
"Künstliche Intelligenz" ("Artificial Intelligence: Superior to Humans — How AI Both Saves and Threatens Us") is Spitzer's 2023 book examining generative AI's rapid public arrival following ChatGPT's release. Writing for a general readership, he surveys AI's use and risks across medicine, the military, climate science, criminal justice, politics, and everyday and economic life, arguing the technology has spread through society faster than regulation or public understanding of its risks. The book does not focus specifically on children, but its central argument — that a powerful new technology is being adopted before its effects are well understood — extends the caution Spitzer has argued in his earlier books about school computers and smartphones to consumer AI tools children increasingly encounter through homework helpers, chatbots, and AI-generated content. TechKids Foundation includes it as Spitzer's most recent book-length statement, summarized in our own words using association rather than causal framing.
Digitales Klassenzimmer: Psychiater: "Wenn Kinder nur wischen, haben sie einen Nachteil"
In this Deutschlandfunk radio interview conducted by Tobias Armbrüster amid a German policy debate over "digital classrooms," Spitzer argued against introducing coding lessons and tablets in elementary schools, saying young children's fine-motor and sensory development benefits more from hands-on physical play than from touchscreen use. He told the interviewer that heavy smartphone use is linked, in his account, to elevated blood pressure, myopia, sleep disruption, and depression in children, citing South Korea's high adolescent myopia rate as an example, and pointed to Germany's BLIKK pediatric survey and international PISA data as evidence he says shows classroom WiFi and computers correlate with lower academic performance. He also voiced support for France's 2018 school smartphone restriction. TechKids Foundation summarizes his claims here in our own words as his stated position, not as independently verified TechKids findings.
Hirnforscher Spitzer warnt vor Smartphones für Kinder
This roughly three-minute segment from NDR's regional evening news program Nordmagazin features Spitzer warning that childhood smartphone use is linked, in his account, to nearsightedness and, he argues, to risk of vision problems later in life, while reiterating his long-standing "digital dementia" concerns about children's cognitive development. The segment is a short news-style item built around Spitzer's warning rather than an in-depth investigation or new research. TechKids Foundation includes it as a recent, precisely datable example of Spitzer's continuing public-advocacy appearances on German television specifically warning about children's smartphone use, distinct from his earlier books and print interviews, described here in our own words as his stated warning rather than an independently verified TechKids finding.
Auslagerung des Denkens auf Maschinen schadet dem Gehirn
Published as "Digitale Demenz" reached German bestseller lists, this interview with marketing trade publication absatzwirtschaft has Spitzer explaining his book's argument to a business audience: that offloading everyday cognitive tasks — navigation, memorization, spelling — onto devices is linked, in his view, to weaker memory formation, comparing disused brain regions to muscles that atrophy without exercise. He cited a figure from Germany's federal drug-policy commissioner that at the time classified roughly 3–4% of young people as internet- or computer-dependent, with about 250,000 classified as dependent and 1.4 million as at elevated risk, and referenced a Stanford study he said found 8-to-12-year-old girls spending far more daily time online than in face-to-face contact with friends. TechKids Foundation summarizes his claims here in our own words as his stated position from this interview, not as independently verified TechKids findings.
Die neuen Lernkiller
"Die neuen Lernkiller" ("The New Learning-Killers") is an essay Spitzer wrote for the German Waldorf-education magazine Erziehungskunst, adapted from a November 2016 talk he gave at a Waldorf-kindergarten association congress on children's right to childhood. He argues that early, heavy exposure to touchscreens displaces the hands-on physical play he says builds fine motor skills and, in his account, later mathematical ability, citing an unnamed study from the Stuttgart area he said found roughly one in four children could no longer skip or hop by their school-entry medical exam. He also argues smartphones interfere with children's and teenagers' capacity to form and act on their own ideas, describing them as a major obstacle to independent will-formation and empathy. TechKids Foundation includes this self-authored magazine essay as Spitzer's own framing of his physical-development and attention concerns for an education-sector audience, summarized here in our own words.
"Anne Will"-Diskussion endet im Krawall
On the ARD Sunday talk show "Anne Will," Spitzer appeared alongside FDP leader Christian Lindner, internet commentator Sascha Lobo, and Bitkom managing director Bernhard Rohleder for a debate nominally about workplace automation and artificial intelligence. Contemporaneous news coverage of the broadcast describes Spitzer repeatedly interrupting other panelists and steering the discussion toward children and digital media, telling the panel that children are being seriously harmed by digital media and that young people need protection from unrestricted internet access until age 14 to 16, and reports that the host eventually cut to a video segment mid-exchange. The coverage itself largely describes the on-air exchange rather than presenting new research. TechKids Foundation includes it as a documented, verifiable example of Spitzer publicly pressing his child-protection views on a major national talk show, summarized here in our own words from contemporaneous reporting rather than a full broadcast transcript.
Effectiveness of Multimodal Psychotherapeutic Intervention for Internet Gaming Disorder
In this Psychiatry Research study, NIMHANS clinician Manoj Kumar Sharma and colleagues tested a ten-session, once-weekly intervention combining motivational strategies, cognitive restructuring, and behavioral techniques for people showing signs of internet gaming disorder. Of 40 young people enrolled, 33 (average age about 20) completed the eight-week program. Scores on standard internet-addiction and gaming-disorder screening tools dropped significantly from before to after treatment, and participants reported improved quality of life. The authors describe internet gaming disorder as a pattern of use associated with functional impairment rather than a settled diagnosis, and note the small, uncontrolled sample as a limitation calling for larger studies. TechKids Foundation cites this as one of the few published outcome studies from an Indian clinical program addressing problematic gaming in young people.
Technology Addiction Survey: An Emerging Concern for Raising Awareness and Promotion of Healthy Use of Technology
Published in the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, this NIMHANS-led community survey screened 2,755 people across a broad age range for signs of internet and mobile-phone overuse. Manoj Kumar Sharma and co-authors report internet-overuse indicators in about 1.3% of respondents and mobile-phone-overuse indicators in about 4.1%, with both patterns somewhat more common among men and among people from single or nuclear households compared with joint families. The paper frames these figures as an early, population-level awareness-raising screening effort rather than a clinical prevalence study, and argues for public-health promotion of healthy technology habits. TechKids Foundation cites this as an early data point behind NIMHANS's later clinical and public-health work on technology use in India, predating the SHUT Clinic's more targeted adolescent-focused research.
Mobile Phone Addiction Among Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review
In this Journal of Addictions Nursing systematic review, Maya Sahu, Sailaxmi Gandhi, and Manoj Kumar Sharma pooled 12 descriptive studies on mobile-phone use among children and adolescents. They report that roughly 6% to 16% of the young people studied across these 12 studies showed patterns of problematic mobile-phone use, and that this use was associated, in the reviewed literature, with low mood, tension and anxiety, disrupted sleep from staying up late, and behavioral concerns including hyperactivity and conduct problems. The authors note that no controlled intervention studies were available for children and adolescents specifically, calling this an urgent research gap, while stressing mobile phones' genuine value for maintaining social connection. TechKids Foundation cites this review as a clinician-authored map of what is, and is not, yet established about mobile-phone use and youth mental health in the published literature.
Gaming—A Bane or a Boon—A Systematic Review
This Asian Journal of Psychiatry systematic review by Nisha John, Manoj Kumar Sharma, and Aruna Rose Mary Kapanee surveyed 41 studies published between 1997 and 2017 on video and online gaming's effects on behavior and mental health. The authors describe gaming preferences as shaped by age, gender, parental involvement, and game design, and note that excessive gaming has been associated in the reviewed literature with strained relationships and, in a small number of extreme cases they cite, viral game challenges linked to self-harm, such as the Blue Whale Challenge. They also point to gamification's documented benefits in education, health, and social settings. The review calls for more cross-cultural research to weigh gaming's risks against its recognized benefits rather than treating it as uniformly harmful. TechKids Foundation cites this as a clinician-authored review holding both gaming's risks and its benefits in view.
A Retrospective Study of Life Skills Promotes Healthy Internet Use Among Adolescents
This Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care study, co-authored by Manoj Kumar Sharma, followed 352 Indian adolescents from mid-2021 to late 2022 to examine how life skills relate to technology use and mood in the post-pandemic period. The authors report that more than half of participants showed moderate patterns of internet or smartphone use consistent with problematic use on screening measures, and that roughly three-quarters showed mild-to-moderate depressive symptoms. Stronger life-skills scores were associated with lower technology-use severity, and class level and life-skills scores were both associated with depressive-symptom levels. The authors argue that structured life-skills training in schools and colleges could serve as a protective, preventive measure against dysfunctional internet use and related mood difficulties. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence supporting school-based, skills-focused prevention rather than restriction alone.
Urban and Rural Pattern of Internet Use Among Youth and Its Association with Mood State
In this Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care study, Ameer Hamza, Manoj Kumar Sharma, and colleagues surveyed 731 Indian youth aged 18 to 25 in urban and rural settings using standardized internet-use and mood-symptom scales. They found no meaningful difference in internet-use patterns by gender or by urban-versus-rural setting, but did find a significant association between internet-use patterns and depression, anxiety, and stress scores that held across both geographies. The authors recommend that primary-care physicians routinely screen for psychological symptoms alongside internet-use patterns in young patients, rather than treating heavy use as a standalone concern separate from mental health. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence that internet-use-linked mood concerns among Indian youth are not confined to cities, but appear in rural settings too.
Technology Addiction | Dr. Manoj Kumar Sharma | NIMHANS | ManoSandesh | English
In this NIMHANS-produced episode of its ManoSandesh public-education video series, released on the institute's official YouTube channel, Manoj Kumar Sharma discusses technology addiction — the warning signs and behavioral patterns he associates with excessive phone, gaming, and social-media use, including disrupted sleep, strained relationships, and reduced work or study productivity. He addresses why people continue heavy use despite recognizing its downsides, framing it as a struggle with self-regulation rather than a simple choice, and offers practical strategies for building healthier digital habits. The episode also promotes NIMHANS's SHUT Clinic and its national digital-detox helpline as resources for people seeking help. TechKids Foundation cites this as a direct, public-facing statement of Sharma's clinical framing of technology overuse, in his own words.
NoMophobia Is Real: NIMHANS Launches a Helpline to Help You with Digital Detox
This South First article covers the November 2022 launch of a national digital-detox helpline run by NIMHANS's SHUT Clinic. Manoj Kumar Sharma, the clinic's coordinator, is quoted describing what he calls 'nomophobia' — anxiety about being without one's phone — and explaining that callers are guided toward a personalized reduction plan rather than total abstinence, since he considers complete technology cessation unrealistic for most people. He emphasizes identifying which specific apps or platforms are most problematic for an individual and setting concrete, gradually reduced time limits, describing consistency as the most important factor in a successful digital detox. TechKids Foundation cites this as a contemporaneous record of the helpline's launch and Sharma's own harm-reduction-oriented approach to problematic technology use.
From Fun to Addiction: NIMHANS Explains Gaming Trap in Children
This Statesman article profiles NIMHANS SHUT Clinic's clinical view of gaming among children, quoting Professor Manoj Kumar Sharma. He describes excessive gaming as often signaling underlying psychological difficulty rather than simple overuse, explaining that some children build such an absorbing in-game identity that it can crowd out their sense of self outside the game, and that gaming can become an unhealthy substitute for face-to-face relationships. He discusses how game design uses reward and task-completion mechanics to sustain engagement, and states that in his clinical experience, problematic gaming is associated with depression, anxiety, sleep disruption, emotional instability, and, in some cases, suicidal thoughts. He calls for early detection, family involvement, and structured digital routines. TechKids Foundation reports these as Sharma's own clinical characterizations, attributed to him, not as proof that gaming is a single cause of these outcomes.
Attention Span and Safety in E-Learning: An Interview with Dr Manoj Kumar Sharma
In this ParentCircle interview, conducted by psychologist Meghna Singhal during the shift to remote schooling, Manoj Kumar Sharma discusses children's attention and online safety. He argues that what matters is not simply hours logged online but signs of what he calls 'digital burnout' — fatigue and exhaustion from overuse — and cites research suggesting it takes several minutes for a student's concentration to recover after switching to a non-academic app mid-class. He recommends scheduling separate blocks for recreational screen use, building in regular movement breaks roughly every half hour, and approaching children's habits without judgment. On safety, he proposes a 'two Cs' framework — ongoing communication and cyber-literacy — to help children recognize cyberbullying, inappropriate content, and other online risks. TechKids Foundation cites this as a clinician's practical guidance for families navigating remote learning.
Mindless Scrolling Can Disturb Quality of Cognitive Processing: NIMHANS Researchers
This Hindu article, reported by Afshan Yasmeen, covers NIMHANS research led by Manoj Kumar Sharma into what the piece calls 'mindless scrolling' — extended, purposeless scrolling through social feeds. Sharma and his research team describe this pattern as associated with disturbed cognitive processing, reduced productivity, and weakened attention, and the article cites findings that it can take roughly 23 minutes, on average, to fully regain focus after a digital distraction. The piece frames mindless scrolling as arising from a combination of smartphone ubiquity and platforms' attention-capturing design choices, rather than as a simple personal failing. TechKids Foundation cites this as SHUT Clinic-linked research on attention and scrolling behavior reported to a general audience.
Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media
Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media is a 2025 documentary co-directed by Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz, based on Bloomberg News reporting by Olivia Carville. Produced by DCTV for Bloomberg Originals, the film follows the Social Media Victims Law Center, a legal team representing thousands of families who say their children were harmed after encountering algorithm-driven content on platforms including Snapchat, Meta, and YouTube. Cases followed in the film include teenagers whose accounts are linked to suicide, sextortion, and fatal counterfeit-pill overdoses arranged through in-app messaging. The filmmakers describe recommendation systems as prioritizing engagement over child safety and frame the pattern as a public-health concern rather than proof that any single feature caused any individual outcome. The film does not diagnose or treat any condition; it documents litigation and family accounts, and won a Silver Baton at the 2026 duPont-Columbia Awards for its reporting.
Bloomberg Doc Reveals Social Media, Teen Drug Deaths Link
This Hollywood Reporter news article, published ahead of the film's release, previews Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media, the documentary co-directed by Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz. Reporter Etan Vlessing describes the film's account of Social Media Victims Law Center litigation against platforms including Snapchat, and its focus on cases where encrypted, disappearing-message features are described as easing contact between counterfeit-pill dealers and teenagers, a pattern the filmmakers link to overdose deaths. The article quotes Peltz calling the pattern part of a broader public-health concern and O'Neill saying platform companies choose profit over addressing harm to children. O'Neill also compares the case for platform safety regulation to historical auto-industry seatbelt requirements. TechKids Foundation cites this piece for its documented account of the filmmakers' own framing and the film's release details, not as independent proof of platform liability.
"Can't Look Away": New Documentary on Online Safety Examines the Dark Side of Social Media
In this April 2025 Democracy Now! interview (aired in two segments), co-director Matthew O'Neill and Social Media Victims Law Center attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett discuss Can't Look Away, the documentary O'Neill made with Perri Peltz. O'Neill says the research behind the film revealed harm "so much worse than we ever imagined," and the pair describe platform recommendation systems as capable of steering teenagers toward material involving self-harm, sextortion, or drug contacts, citing a case in which a 16-year-old's short-video feed shifted toward suicide-related content. Marquez-Garrett says her firm represents thousands of families pursuing claims against major platforms. The interview also references Australia's under-16 social media restriction as a policy comparison. TechKids Foundation treats this interview as the filmmakers' own account of what they found while making the documentary, not as an independent clinical or research finding.
Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media — Arts Intel Report
This Air Mail review, by critic Alessandra Stanley and published the day after the film's release, assesses Can't Look Away, co-directed by Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz. Stanley summarizes the film's account of Social Media Victims Law Center lawyers representing families whose children died after contact with dealers who used disappearing messages to sell counterfeit pills, or after exposure to sustained self-harm-related content and sexual-exploitation schemes on major platforms. The review frames the companies' design choices as comparable in seriousness to historical tobacco and firearms harms — the critic's own framing, not a TechKids Foundation claim. TechKids Foundation cites this review for its independent account of the film's content and reception, while keeping the association between platform design and the harms described strictly to what the film and its subjects report, not a single-cause claim.
Perri Peltz and Matthew O'Neill on Can't Look Away — Good Day New York
On April 7, 2025, filmmakers Perri Peltz and Matthew O'Neill appeared on Fox 5 New York's Good Day New York with hosts Curt Menefee and Rosanna Scotto to discuss their documentary Can't Look Away: The Case Against Social Media. The segment introduced a general local-news audience to the film's central subject: a legal team representing families who say their children were harmed after encounters with algorithm-driven content on major social platforms, including cases involving self-harm and exploitation. As a short-format morning-show appearance, the segment functions primarily as public awareness-raising for the documentary's themes rather than a detailed accounting of any specific case. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance to document the filmmakers' broader media outreach around the film's release, not as a source of new factual claims beyond what the documentary itself presents.
Jacob Silverman, Matthew O'Neill & Perri Peltz — Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast
On the June 30, 2025 episode of Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast, Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz discuss Can't Look Away, describing the documentary as an examination of what they call technology's grip on children's attention and safety. The conversation, part of a political-news podcast that also features a separate segment with journalist Jacob Silverman, covers the filmmakers' motivation for making the film and the Social Media Victims Law Center litigation it follows. As a long-form interview aimed at a general political-news audience, the episode adds the filmmakers' own framing of the project's stakes rather than new case-specific detail. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance to document the filmmakers' public advocacy following the film's release, consistent with the association-language framing used elsewhere in this library.
"Can't Look Away": Q&A with the Director of the Film Putting Social Media Under the Spotlight for Harming Kids
In this August 29, 2025 Q&A published by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, co-director Matthew O'Neill discusses Can't Look Away and the Bloomberg reporting by Olivia Carville that inspired it. O'Neill contrasts the smaller share of teenagers who smoked cigarettes a generation ago with today's near-universal teen social media use, citing an estimate that roughly two-thirds of teens spend more than three hours a day on these platforms, to argue the scale of exposure is historically unusual. He says the film aims to prompt what he calls "shame-free conversations" between parents and children rather than blame, and calls on technology-industry leaders to direct their resources toward child-safety design. TechKids Foundation cites this Q&A as the filmmaker's own account of the film's intent and the comparisons he draws, not as independently verified research.
'Can't Look Away' Filmmakers on Harm From Social Media
In this Bloomberg Television interview, published to YouTube on November 5, 2025, the filmmakers behind Can't Look Away discuss the harms to young people documented in their film. Airing several months after the documentary's initial release, the segment revisits the Social Media Victims Law Center litigation and the filmmakers' account of algorithm-driven content reaching teenagers, aimed at a business and general-news audience following the film's continued distribution on Bloomberg Media platforms. TechKids Foundation includes this interview to document the filmmakers' ongoing public discussion of the film following its release. As with the film itself, the interview presents the platforms' design choices and the outcomes described by families as associated patterns reported by the filmmakers and their sources, not as an independently verified causal claim.
Family of 16-Year-Old Boy Who Died of Suicide After Relentless Cyberbullying Speaks Out
This People magazine feature, published almost two years after David Molak's death, is one of the earliest national profiles of the Molak family's advocacy. Reporter Caitlin Keating interviews Maurine Molak and other family members about the online harassment David experienced as a high school sophomore in San Antonio, and about the family's decision to launch David's Legacy Foundation two months after his death. The piece describes the foundation's role in drafting what became David's Law, Texas legislation giving schools authority to address off-campus cyberbullying, and introduces the family's device-pledge sticker campaign. TechKids Foundation cites this profile as an early, widely read account of how one family's loss, which the family associates with sustained online harassment David experienced, became the basis for sustained legislative advocacy.
Texas Senate Bill 179 ("David's Law")
Texas Senate Bill 179, known as David's Law, is the anti-cyberbullying statute that Maurine Molak's advocacy — which followed her son David's 2016 death after a period of online harassment — is widely credited with helping bring about. Passed by the 85th Texas Legislature and signed by the governor on June 9, 2017, the law expanded schools' authority to investigate and respond to off-campus cyberbullying that materially affects the school environment, added parent-notification and anonymous-reporting requirements, and increased criminal penalties for certain harassment of minors. The Texas Legislature's own bill-history record formally tags the statute under the subject heading "DAVID'S LAW." TechKids Foundation includes this record as the direct legislative outcome tied to Molak's advocacy, separate from any claim about what caused her son's death.
Meet Maurine Molak | Co-Founder David's Legacy Foundation
This Shoutout DFW interview profile lets Maurine Molak describe, in her own words, why she and her family founded David's Legacy Foundation after her teenage son's 2016 death, which followed a period of online harassment. Molak explains the foundation's three focus areas: education programs for schools and families, legislative advocacy that produced Texas's David's Law, and free legal assistance for families dealing with cyberbullying cases. She emphasizes peer-to-peer prevention, describing students as central to changing school culture around bullying, and describes ongoing partnerships with legislators, educators, and mental health providers. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as a first-person account of the foundation's operating philosophy, published independently of any legislative or news-cycle hook.
San Antonio's David's Legacy Foundation Fights Cyberbullying Nationwide
This Community Impact Newspaper feature describes David's Legacy Foundation's expansion beyond Texas after Maurine Molak co-founded the nonprofit following her son David's 2016 death, which the article attributes to cyberbullying he experienced. Reporter Samara Penny covers the organization's push for the federal Kids Online Safety Act, quoting Molak's argument that platforms should set their strongest safety settings as defaults for minors rather than leaving them optional. The piece also recaps David's Law, the 2017 Texas statute the foundation is credited with helping pass, and describes the organization's continuing school-based education programming. TechKids Foundation cites this article as a regional outlet's independent account of the foundation's national policy advocacy.
Texas Mother on a Mission to End Cyberbullying
This Spectrum News 1 profile revisits Maurine Molak's founding of David's Legacy Foundation after her teenage son David's 2016 death, which the report links to cyberbullying he experienced at school. Reporter Amber Hughes describes Molak's continued advocacy roughly eight years later, including her role in passing Texas's David's Law in 2017 and her ongoing push for the federal Kids Online Safety Act. Molak is quoted describing cyberbullying as a community-wide problem requiring cooperation among schools, families, and platforms rather than something any one group can solve alone. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as evidence of sustained, multi-year advocacy tied to a documented legislative track record rather than a single news cycle.
Commentary: The Kids Online Safety Act Would Have Saved My Son's Life
In this signed commentary for the San Antonio Express-News, Maurine Molak argues for House passage of the federal Kids Online Safety Act, writing in the wake of a 91-3 Senate vote in favor of the bill. Molak, whose son David died in 2016 after experiencing online harassment, contends the legislation would require platforms to build safer default settings for minors and would hold companies accountable for design choices she characterizes as prioritizing engagement over child safety. She directly addresses free-speech objections, arguing the bill as she describes it preserves minors' ability to deliberately seek out information while targeting platform design rather than content. TechKids Foundation cites this as Molak's own statement of her policy position, published in a regional paper of record rather than paraphrased by a reporter.
Nearly 9 Years Since Her Son's Suicide, Maurine Molak Makes One Last Pitch for Online Safety Bill
Published nearly nine years after her son David's 2016 death, this San Antonio Report profile by Tracy Idell Hamilton follows Maurine Molak on what the piece describes as her fourteenth advocacy trip to Washington, D.C., seeking House passage of the Kids Online Safety Act after the bill's earlier Senate passage. The article recounts Molak's earlier role in passing Texas's David's Law in 2017 and describes her continued meetings with congressional offices amid opposition to the bill from the sitting House Speaker. It frames Molak's advocacy as sustained over the better part of a decade, and associates her son's death with cyberbullying he experienced rather than attributing it to a single cause. TechKids Foundation cites this as a detailed, independently reported account of long-running federal advocacy tied to a named legislative vehicle.
KiDS Campaign Applauds Texas HB 499 to Require Social Media Warning Labels
This news post from the KiDS: Keep It Digitally Safe campaign covers the group's endorsement of Texas House Bill 499, which would have required social media platforms to display warning labels about risks including excessive use, cyberbullying, and online exploitation for minors, modeled on tobacco and alcohol warning requirements. The piece quotes Maurine Molak, identified as co-founder of David's Legacy Foundation, urging swift action so that, in her words, "not another day" passes with children exposed to these platform harms. TechKids Foundation cites this campaign post as a documented instance of Molak's advocacy network publicly backing a specific piece of state legislation, distinct from any independent research finding about the bill's likely effects.
Keep It Digitally Safe Campaign Inspires State Legislation to Keep Kids Safer on Social Media
This ABC13 Houston (KTRK-TV) news report by Briana Conner follows Maurine Molak to Austin as she met with Texas state legislators to support House Bill 499's proposed social-media warning-label requirement. The report recaps Molak's founding of David's Legacy Foundation after her son David's death by suicide nine years earlier, which the article associates with cyberbullying he experienced, and describes the foundation's pro bono legal assistance to what the report says are hundreds of families a year dealing with cyberbullying cases. TechKids Foundation cites this as a 2025 example of Molak's advocacy extending from federal to state-level legislation; the report describes in-person meetings with lawmakers rather than sworn committee testimony, and this entry does not claim otherwise.
The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World
The Chaos Machine is a 2022 book by New York Times international reporter Max Fisher that draws on years of his own investigative journalism to make a broader argument about social media's design. Fisher traces a pattern he associates with how major platforms' engagement-driven algorithms and recommendation systems interacted with volatile political and ethnic tensions in countries including Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and Germany, linking specific real-world episodes of unrest to platform amplification choices rather than presenting them as a single proven cause. The book synthesizes his reporting on WhatsApp-linked rumor spread, Facebook's role in ethnic conflict, and YouTube's recommendation engine into a wider critique of attention-based product design. TechKids Foundation includes it as Fisher's central, book-length statement connecting platform design choices to documented instances of real-world harm, framed here strictly as association rather than diagnosis.
Mother Sounds Alarm on Social Media Addiction After Losing Teen Son to Suicide
In this Fox & Friends First segment, Maurine Molak discusses her son David's 2016 death by suicide, which she associates with cyberbullying he experienced, and argues that voluntary platform safety measures have proven inadequate. Speaking as multiple lawsuits against social media companies over allegedly addictive and harmful design features move through the courts, Molak describes existing safeguards as ones that, in her words, "don't work" to protect minors. TechKids Foundation cites this segment as a recent example of Molak connecting ongoing platform-design litigation to the advocacy she has pursued since founding David's Legacy Foundation, and notes that the segment's own framing treats platform exposure as associated with, not the sole explanation for, her son's death.
"The Rabbit Hole" — The Weekly / The New York Times Presents, Season 1 Episode 9 (on YouTube in Brazil)
"The Rabbit Hole" is an August 2019 episode of the New York Times documentary series then called The Weekly (later renamed The New York Times Presents), reported on-camera by Max Fisher and Amanda Taub. The episode follows their investigation into YouTube's recommendation engine in Brazil, where the platform was more widely watched than nearly every television channel, and examines how its algorithm favored right-wing and conspiracy-oriented channels in the years around the rise of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Fisher and Taub present this as a pattern they associate with the platform's own design choices for maximizing watch time, not as proof that any single video or channel caused Brazil's political shift. TechKids Foundation includes this televised segment as a distinct, on-camera companion to Fisher's print reporting and book-length work on platform-driven radicalization.
Mobile phones will be banned in NSW primary schools from next year
This ABC News report covers the outcome of the expert review Michael Carr-Gregg led for the New South Wales government, commissioned in mid-2018, which drew on roughly 14,000 survey responses and 80 written submissions. Following the review, NSW announced it would require public primary schools to ban student mobile phones from the following year, with high schools given the option to opt in. The review's submissions raised concerns including students sharing explicit images and predatory contact from strangers online. Carr-Gregg is quoted describing the case for a ban as a 'no-brainer' given the scale of public and political support, and predicting a broader statewide school phone ban within roughly a year. TechKids Foundation cites this as the primary documented account of the policy outcome tied to his review.
Mobile phone ban in schools gives students more learning time, 'freedom away' from devices
Reporting on the rollout of a statewide phone ban across NSW public high schools, this ABC Newcastle piece follows students and a principal at Kotara High School describing life under a lockable-pouch phone policy, alongside commentary from Michael Carr-Gregg, identified as the psychologist who led the 2018 independent review that led to the earlier NSW primary-school ban. Carr-Gregg says schools that had already banned phones reported improved academic outcomes, fewer distractions, and more social interaction at recess and lunch, and argues growing public and political pressure made a national policy on the issue increasingly likely. The article notes several other states had already introduced similar bans. TechKids Foundation includes this as a five-years-later follow-up documenting the review's continuing influence on Australian school phone policy.
Beyond Cyberbullying: An Essential Guide for Parenting in the Digital Age
Beyond Cyberbullying is Michael Carr-Gregg's parenting guide to children's online lives, published by Penguin as a fully updated edition of his earlier book Real Wired Child. Carr-Gregg sets out what he says children encounter online — cyberbullying, unfamiliar games and apps, and contact with strangers — and offers parents practical guidance for internet safety without, he argues, unnecessarily restricting children's ability to learn, explore, and communicate online. The book frames online risk as something parents can actively manage through supervision and open conversation rather than through blanket restriction alone. TechKids Foundation cites this as Carr-Gregg's principal book-length treatment of cyberbullying and family internet safety, reflecting his long-running clinical-practice framing of digital-age parenting rather than a research study.
The Princess Bitchface Syndrome 2.0
The Princess Bitchface Syndrome 2.0 is a fully revised edition of Michael Carr-Gregg and researcher Elly Robinson's bestselling guide to parenting adolescent girls, first published a decade earlier. Publisher materials describe this edition as expanded specifically to address what the authors call 'the single most prolific and influential factor of our times — technology,' alongside its existing chapters on adolescent development, school pressures, and parenting strategies. The book frames heavy or unsupervised technology use as one of several pressures reshaping modern adolescence, to be managed through parenting strategy rather than treated as a clinical diagnosis. TechKids Foundation cites this revised edition specifically for its added technology material, as one of Carr-Gregg's most widely sold books, rather than for its broader parenting content.
Social Media Delay for Parents — Dr Michael Carr-Gregg
The Council of Catholic School Parents NSW commissioned Michael Carr-Gregg to record this video for families ahead of Australia's under-16 social media age restriction taking effect on 10 December 2025. Framed as practical guidance rather than a policy statement, the video walks parents through why the restriction was introduced, how it works in practice, and how it may affect family routines and school communities. The Council's own site describes it as a 'must-watch' resource pairing Carr-Gregg's advice with links to the government eSafety Commissioner's guidance and family tech-agreement templates. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented example of Carr-Gregg's direct public-education work around the under-16 law's implementation, aimed at parents rather than policymakers.
Roblox Is Grooming Our Kids to Gamble — and We're Letting It Happen
In this first-person LinkedIn essay, Michael Carr-Gregg argues that many top Roblox games use loot boxes, near-miss animations, and countdown timers that he likens to gambling mechanics, citing University of Sydney researcher Marcus Carter's finding that 14 of the platform's top 15 games use what Carter calls deceptive monetisation techniques. Carr-Gregg contends that because Roblox's in-game currency cannot be cashed out, it falls outside gambling regulation despite what he describes as a similar psychological reward pattern for players, and says he sees children and parents in his own clinical practice dealing with escalating in-app spending and associated distress. He calls for regulatory scrutiny and calls on parents and schools to treat the issue as a consumer-protection and digital-literacy concern. TechKids Foundation cites this as Carr-Gregg's own recent public argument connecting a specific, named platform's design choices to gambling-like engagement patterns in children.
Norway just banned AI in primary schools? — should we follow?
Responding to Norway's June 2026 near-total ban on generative AI for primary-school students, Michael Carr-Gregg argues Australia should not follow suit, distinguishing AI tools from social media platforms he says he supported restricting for under-16s. He argues social media companies build products designed to capture attention and monetise young users, whereas AI, in his framing, is closer to a supervised tool like a calculator, and that banning it in classrooms would push unsupervised use into homes and widen inequality between families. He proposes supervised, education-specific AI use with strict guardrails against AI 'companion' products, alongside a national AI-literacy curriculum. TechKids Foundation includes this essay as Carr-Gregg's own recent position statement distinguishing his stance on AI in schools from his stance on youth social media access.
Our web-addict kids miss meals and sleep
Reporting on an Edith Cowan University study finding that roughly one in five Australian children spend enough time online that it displaces meals and sleep, this news.com.au piece quotes Michael Carr-Gregg's recommendations for parents. He advises removing screens — TVs, computers, tablets, and phones — from children's bedrooms so parents can monitor use and protect sleep, recommends no screen time at all for children under two, and suggests balancing each hour of screen use with an hour of active outdoor play. He also stresses that children under 10 need at least 10 hours of sleep and older children 8–9 hours, and that internet use should not be allowed to cut into that. TechKids Foundation cites this as an early, widely read example of Carr-Gregg's practical screen-time guidance for parents.
Parents have 'no idea' of child online and digital behaviour, survey finds
Covering a survey on the gap between what parents believe about their children's online activity and what actually happens, this news.com.au article quotes Michael Carr-Gregg describing a pattern he calls a 'fake good phenomenon,' where parents report confidently monitoring and supervising their children's device use despite most teenagers using devices in their bedrooms unsupervised. He attributes the gap to a mix of naivety and guilt rather than deliberate dishonesty, and says children can be 'sneaky and manipulative' in ways that make consistent oversight difficult even for attentive parents. Carr-Gregg's comments frame the disconnect as a parenting and awareness challenge rather than evidence of any specific harm. TechKids Foundation cites this as a documented example of his commentary on the limits of parental supervision of children's digital lives.
Australian children most worried about bullying, data reveals
Drawing on the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Census at Schools survey, this news.com.au article reports that bullying had become Australian schoolchildren's top-ranked worry, a shift from 2006 when water pollution ranked first, alongside a roughly fourfold rise in children's average weekly computer use over the same period. Michael Carr-Gregg is quoted saying the data amount to 'a clarion call to Australian parents to stop using screen time as a babysitter,' and that a correlation between technology access and cyberbullying is well established. He links extended screen exposure to heightened risk of anxiety and depression alongside bullying, and urges parents to set firmer limits on children's online time. TechKids Foundation cites this as an early example of Carr-Gregg connecting national survey data to his screen-time advocacy.
Children as young as 10 years old are sending sexually-explicit images to friends
This news.com.au article reports on sexting among Australian schoolchildren, citing Australian Institute of Criminology figures that 38% of surveyed teens aged 13–15 had sent sexual images, with girls doing so more often than boys, and noting the legal risk of criminal records for minors involved. Michael Carr-Gregg is quoted estimating sexting occurs among roughly 20% of primary-school-aged children he encounters clinically, calling the pattern 'not as rare as people think' and describing some outcomes as 'catastrophic.' He attributes part of the problem to children gaining phones and social media accounts, often via older siblings, before he says they and their parents are ready to manage the risks, and urges parents to set firmer limits rather than yield to peer pressure. TechKids Foundation cites this as documented commentary connecting early device and social-media access to sexting risk.
A happy medium? Why screens are not all bad
This Sydney Morning Herald piece presents a balanced view of children's screen use, quoting Michael Carr-Gregg on both risks and benefits of specific games. He says Fortnite's lack of save points and continuous play sessions can encourage compulsive play patterns affecting schoolwork, social life, and family relationships, and argues it is not appropriate for primary-school-aged children despite its popularity with them. By contrast, he describes using Minecraft therapeutically with a child who struggled to express himself through conventional conversation. He repeats his guidance that every hour of screen time be balanced with roughly two hours of unstructured outdoor or 'green' time, framing adult-set boundaries as necessary because children have not yet developed full self-regulation. TechKids Foundation cites this as Carr-Gregg distinguishing between specific games' design and effects rather than treating all screen use uniformly.
'Smartphones are like pokies in their pockets': Keeping kids phone-free
This Sydney Morning Herald article covers the launch of Wait Mate, a parent-led campaign encouraging families to delay giving children smartphones until high school, modelled on the US 'Wait Until 8th' movement. Alongside the campaign's founders, the piece quotes Michael Carr-Gregg — identified as the psychologist who led a 2018 review into mobile phone use in NSW schools — saying he links excessive screen time to sedentary behaviour, anxiety, lower self-esteem, social isolation, and reduced academic performance, and that primary-school-aged children should not have smartphones or social media accounts. He suggests standard phones or smartwatches can meet parents' need to stay in contact, and recommends children complete an 'eSmart Digital Licence' before receiving a smartphone. The article also quotes a researcher cautioning against treating social media as the sole cause of youth mental-health problems. TechKids Foundation cites this as a documented example of Carr-Gregg's practical smartphone-access recommendations for parents.
A Primary Care Pediatrician's Guide to Assessing Problematic Interactive Media Use
Published in Current Opinion in Pediatrics, this clinical guidance piece by Cameron Nereim, David Bickham, and Michael Rich walks general pediatricians through how to spot and evaluate problematic interactive media use (PIMU) during ordinary well-child visits. Drawing on existing research, the authors note that internet gaming disorder shows up in a small share of young people worldwide and is frequently seen alongside separately diagnosed anxiety, depression, or ADHD, rather than presenting as a stand-alone problem. Instead of a single test, the piece offers screening questions and functional-impairment markers — falling grades, withdrawal from family or friends, sleep disruption — clinicians can use to decide whether a family needs closer follow-up, and it summarizes the outpatient-therapy and, for severe cases, residential options available once a concern is confirmed. TechKids Foundation cites it as a look at how Rich's own field trains frontline pediatricians to approach these evaluations.
Indian Academy of Pediatrics Guidelines on Screen Time and Digital Wellness in Infants, Children and Adolescents
This is the Indian Academy of Pediatrics' national clinical practice guideline on screen time and digital wellness for infants, children, and adolescents, developed by a multi-author IAP committee with Michael Rich as a contributing international author. The guideline sets out age-banded recommendations — discouraging screen use for the youngest children and setting time boundaries for older ones — and links heavy or poorly supervised screen exposure to sleep disruption, reduced physical activity, and strain on family routines and schoolwork. It also gives pediatricians practical counseling points for talking with Indian families about household media rules. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented example of Rich's guideline-writing work extending beyond the United States; per our own editorial policy, its India-specific recommendations and findings are kept separate from any of TechKids' U.S. program or impact claims, which are reported independently.
Media Influences on Children and Advice for Parents to Reduce Harmful Exposure to Firearm Violence in Media
In this Pediatric Clinics of North America review, Dan Romer, Brad J. Bushman, and Michael Rich examine how entertainment media, video games, and social platforms depict firearms and lay out guidance for pediatricians and parents on managing that exposure. The authors note that firearm-related deaths are a leading cause of youth fatality in the United States and summarize research associating repeated media depictions of guns with increased interest in and comfort around firearms among children and teens. Rather than assigning a single cause, the piece frames media firearm content as one factor among several — alongside household gun access and community violence exposure — worth discussing at well-child visits, and recommends specific counseling scripts pediatricians can use with families on both media choices and safe firearm storage. TechKids Foundation cites it as association-based clinical guidance, not a claim that media exposure alone drives firearm injury.
The Mediatrician's Guide: A Joyful Approach to Raising Healthy, Smart, Kind Kids in a Screen-Saturated World
The Mediatrician's Guide is Michael Rich's 2024 book distilling years running Boston Children's Hospital's screen-use clinic and Digital Wellness Lab into practical guidance for parents, educators, and pediatricians. Organized around a 'What / So What / Now What / Ages and Stages' structure, it covers what researchers currently know about how screen media affects child development, health concerns associated with heavy or poorly-fit media use, and how context — when, where, and with whom a child uses a device — shapes whether that use is healthy or harmful. The book includes recurring 'Ask the Mediatrician' Q&A sections and age-banded suggestions rather than one-size-fits-all rules, plus a customizable planning tool for household media agreements. TechKids Foundation cites it as Rich's flagship public-facing synthesis of the lab's clinical and research work, aimed at giving parents workable next steps rather than a diagnosis or a ban.
Use of Voice Assistants & Generative AI by Children and Families
This Digital Wellness Lab pulse-survey report, co-credited to Michael Rich along with a team of lab researchers, surveys parents of children ages 3 to 12 about how voice assistants (like Alexa or Siri) and early generative-AI tools show up in family life. It covers how often young children interact with these tools, what parents believe the tools are teaching their kids about asking questions and getting answers, and how families are — or are not — talking with children about the limits and unreliability of AI-generated responses. The report frames early, unsupervised reliance on conversational AI as an emerging area parents should be attentive to, particularly around children absorbing incorrect information or blurring the line between a tool's answers and a trusted adult's guidance, without treating any single pattern as proven harm. TechKids Foundation includes it as an early, lab-collected look at generative AI's entry into homes with young children.
Time Is Ticking for TikTok Tics: A Retrospective Follow-Up Study in the Post-COVID-19 Isolation Era
Published in the open-access journal Brain and Behavior, this retrospective study by Kinga Tomczak, Michael Rich, and Boston Children's Hospital colleagues followed 56 adolescents, ages 10 to 18, who developed sudden tic-like movements and vocalizations during COVID-19 isolation — nicknamed 'TikTok tics' in media coverage because many patients had been heavy short-form-video viewers at onset. The sample was overwhelmingly female with very high rates of co-occurring anxiety and depression diagnoses. At follow-up, roughly four in five patients had improved regardless of treatment approach, including some who received no tic-specific therapy, leading the authors to describe these episodes as functionally different from classic tic disorders and more closely tied to underlying anxiety and stress than to video consumption itself. TechKids Foundation cites this as evidence that abrupt symptom clusters associated with heavy social-video use are complex and multi-factored, not a simple, isolated screen effect.
Going Beyond Video Game Consumption When Considering Internet Gaming Disorder
In this Comprehensive Psychiatry study, Sezen Cekic, Michael Rich, and co-authors from the University of Geneva and Boston Children's Hospital test a common assumption: that simply playing video games for long hours predicts Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD). Studying League of Legends players using self-reported habits and objective in-game data alongside mental-health assessments, the team found no consistent link between hours played — even among people gaming 30-plus hours a week — and IGD status. Instead, pre-existing anxiety, depression, and ADHD emerged as the strongest predictors of which heavy players met IGD criteria. The authors argue screen-time limits alone are an incomplete response to gaming-related distress, and that clinicians and parents should weigh a young person's underlying mental health alongside how much they play, rather than treating hours logged as the central warning sign. TechKids Foundation cites it as a caution against relying on time-spent alone as a marker of harm.
Optimism and Uncertainty: How Teens View and Use Artificial Intelligence
This Digital Wellness Lab pulse-survey report, credited in part to Michael Rich, surveyed more than 1,400 U.S. teenagers ages 13 to 17 about how they use AI tools such as chatbots and generative-AI apps, what they believe those tools can and can't do, and what guidance — if any — they've received about using them responsibly. The report describes teens as broadly curious about and willing to use these tools for schoolwork, creative projects, and everyday questions, while also expressing real uncertainty about the accuracy of AI-generated answers. It highlights a gap between how much teens already rely on these tools and how much explicit guidance most report receiving on evaluating AI output critically or protecting personal data. TechKids Foundation cites it as an early, survey-based read on how quickly generative AI has entered teen life, and how far adult guidance has lagged behind that adoption.
Placing Problematic Media Use in Context: A Research Synthesis, Person-Centric Framework, and Chart Review Among a Clinical Sample of US Youth
In this Frontiers in Psychiatry paper, Michael Carter, Michael Rich, and Digital Wellness Lab colleagues review 205 patient charts from the lab's own clinic for problematic interactive media use to build a person-context-process-outcome-time (PC-POT) framework. Rather than defining problematic media use as any one behavior — gaming, pornography, social media, or general internet use — the model treats it as a pattern that develops gradually, shaped by a young person's individual traits, their surrounding context (family, school, peers), and life transitions, and that can affect functioning across several life domains at once. The authors present this as a more clinically useful lens than screen-time thresholds alone, intended to help clinicians identify which co-occurring factors are driving a given case. TechKids Foundation cites it as a direct look inside the clinical population Rich's lab treats and the framework it uses to make sense of those cases.
Who They Play With Matters: An Exploration of Behavioral Pathways Linking Loneliness, Social Anxiety, and Problematic Gaming
This Journal of Adolescent Health study by Zhiying Yue, Michael Rich, and Digital Wellness Lab colleagues surveyed 1,468 U.S. adolescents to examine how loneliness and social anxiety separately shape the way teens game, and how that relates to problematic gaming. Lonelier teens were more likely to play alongside strangers or casual peers — a pattern the study links to a higher chance of problematic gaming — while socially anxious teens tended toward solo play instead. Gaming while communicating with real-life friends was associated with a lower likelihood of problematic gaming, whereas gaming while communicating mainly with strangers was associated with a higher likelihood. The authors conclude that who a teen plays with, and why, matters as much as how long they play, and that prevention should weigh a teen's social motivations and relationships alongside screen time. TechKids Foundation cites it as evidence that gaming's social context shapes its risks.
Would Cellphone or Social Media Ban Work? Boston Children's Hospital Doctor Weighs In
In this WBZ-TV/CBS News Boston segment, political analyst Jon Keller interviews Michael Rich, identified as a Boston Children's Hospital physician and author of The Mediatrician's Guide, about whether banning cellphones or social media for young people would actually work. The interview sits within an active local and national policy debate over school phone bans and state-level social-media age restrictions, with Rich bringing his clinical experience treating children and families for problematic screen use to the question of whether outright bans are a workable, well-targeted response versus one piece of a broader set of tools parents, schools, and platforms would need. TechKids Foundation includes this as a mainstream local-news example of Rich translating clinical experience into commentary on a live policy question American families and lawmakers are actively weighing, rather than a peer-reviewed or research source.
36 Months Australia — Raise the Age of Social Media Citizenship from 13 to 16 (Petition)
This is the founding petition of 36 Months, the Australian campaign fronted by radio host Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli and advertising executive Rob Galluzzo. Opened on Change.org in May 2024, it calls on the federal government to raise the minimum age for social media accounts from 13 to 16, framing the three years in between as a window of adolescent development the campaign argues is disrupted by early social media use. The petition gathered well over 125,000 signatures — reported elsewhere as more than 147,000 as the campaign grew — and was hand-delivered to Parliament House in Canberra. TechKids Foundation includes it as the primary organizing document behind Australia's under-16 social media law, an example of a media-led petition translating public concern into a specific legislative ask rather than general awareness-raising.
Exclusive: Wippa and Galluzzo Launch 36 Months to Raise Social Media Age
This Mediaweek exclusive covers the May 2024 public launch of 36 Months, the pro bono campaign co-founded by Nova radio host Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli and FINCH founder Rob Galluzzo, backed by News Corp Australia and Nova Entertainment. The article reports the campaign's ask — raising the legal age for social media accounts from 13 to 16 — and names early supporters including parenting author Maggie Dent and former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet. It cites third-party data on how widely Australian teens and pre-teens use social media, and references a claim, sourced to Raising Children Network, associating heavy social media use with cyberbullying, anxiety, depression, and self-harm among Australian teenagers. It also notes that Galluzzo sits on the board of youth-suicide-prevention nonprofit The Liv Project. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as the primary record of the campaign's launch and stated goals.
Wippa and Galluzzo Say 36 Months 'Is Not an Attack on Social Media'
Published the day after 36 Months' launch, this Mediaweek follow-up has Rob Galluzzo and Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli responding to early pushback, clarifying that raising the social media age to 16 is 'not an attack on social media' or on specific platforms. Galluzzo describes the campaign's ambition as narrowly targeted at delaying access during a specific developmental window rather than opposing social platforms broadly, defining the campaign's scope as any social network that 'encourages interactive engagement through addictive features.' Wipfli suggests platforms might cooperate voluntarily rather than risk negative headlines. TechKids Foundation cites this piece for how the campaign's founders characterized their own aim and scope in their own words, distinguishing the campaign's actual ask from a broader anti-technology stance, useful context for readers assessing the campaign's claims and tone.
Rob Galluzzo Says Govt's Social Media Ban for Kids Is an 'Emotional' Win for 36 Months
Days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Australia would legislate a minimum social media age of 16, Rob Galluzzo told LBBOnline the decision was 'more emotional than I think I was ready for,' recounting the six-month path from petition to policy. The piece describes 36 Months delivering a petition of around 125,000 signatures to Canberra, accompanied by family members of young people the article says died by suicide following social media bullying, and meeting both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader. Galluzzo credits advice from former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet and the campaign's small comms team, and notes Meta's own response (a new 'Instagram Teen' feature) as, in the founders' words, a 'very, very soft offering.' TechKids Foundation cites this as a first-person account of the campaign's path to legislative success and the bereaved families' documented advocacy role.
36 Months Launches Podcast Series Featuring Wippa and Rob Galluzzo
This B&T report covers the February 2025 launch of 36 Months' own monthly podcast, a KitKat-sponsored series hosted by campaign director Greg Attwells and featuring Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli and guests including parenting author Maggie Dent. Framed as the campaign's 'phase two,' the podcast is aimed at supporting parents, teachers, and caregivers through the practical adjustment to a higher social media age, rather than at further lobbying. The article also traces part of the campaign's origin to two families who say their daughters died by suicide after experiences connected to social media, both of whom joined Wipfli and Galluzzo on visits to Canberra. TechKids Foundation cites this piece both for the podcast's existence and purpose and for the documented advocacy role bereaved families played in the campaign, reported here strictly as public record, without speculation about individual cases.
Wippa Puts Pressure on Tech Giants to Police Underage Social Media Ban
Published as Australia's under-16 social media law moved toward taking effect, this Mediaweek interview has Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli arguing that responsibility for enforcing the age limit should sit with social media platforms rather than parents or children. Wipfli traces his own involvement back to watching his son's screen habits at home and says the campaign, co-founded with Rob Galluzzo, grew out of conversations about pressures reported in teenagers linked to social media. He frames platform-level age verification as the practical solution and rejects the idea that enforcement is mainly a parenting problem, saying 'the reliance can't be on the child or the parents.' TechKids Foundation cites this piece for how the campaign's public face articulated an implementation stance as the law's start date approached, distinct from the campaign's earlier legislative advocacy.
36 Months Addresses UN: Wippa Says Social Media Age Law Is 'Not a Ban' But 'A Buffer'
In September 2025, 36 Months co-founders Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli and Rob Galluzzo joined Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the United Nations General Assembly in New York to speak about Australia's under-16 social media law. Wipfli described the law as 'not a ban' but 'a buffer' — extra time for teenagers to develop before encountering social platforms — while Galluzzo called the reform 'a source of national pride and a global precedent.' European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen responded by signalling the EU would explore a shared 'digital age of majority.' TechKids Foundation cites this address as a documented instance of the campaign's founders using an international diplomatic platform to promote Australia's law and encourage similar measures elsewhere, reported here as the campaign's own framing rather than as independent evidence of any specific health outcome.
Teen Social Media Ban Group 36 Months Sold Brands Access to UN
This Crikey investigation reports that 36 Months, while campaigning for Australia's under-16 social media law, was simultaneously pursuing commercial opportunities tied to its own success — including brand sponsorships, plans to expand internationally, and a proprietary AI tool it hoped to sell. The piece focuses on a roughly $100,000 trip to New York, where the group hosted Communications Minister Anika Wells and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese around a UN-adjacent event, and contrasts this with 36 Months' own public criticism of opponents it accused of being funded by technology companies. TechKids Foundation includes this reporting as documented scrutiny of the campaign's funding model and commercial activity, presented as journalistic findings about the organization's conduct, separate from and not a comment on the underlying case for the age-limit law itself.
Teen Social Media Ban Lobby Group 36 Months Funded and Co-Staffed by Firm Making Gambling Ads
This Crikey investigation reports that 36 Months was founded, funded, and partly staffed by FINCH, the advertising production company run by co-founder Rob Galluzzo, and that FINCH's client roster has included gambling advertisers such as TAB, Sportsbet, and Ladbrokes. It documents that the campaign began at a single May 2024 meeting between Galluzzo, Nova radio host Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli, and 36 Months managing director Greg Attwells, and that Attwells held FINCH and 36 Months roles simultaneously for several months. The piece situates this alongside government decisions affecting gambling-advertising regulation around the same period. TechKids Foundation includes this reporting as documented scrutiny of a potential conflict of interest in how the campaign was structured and financed, separate from any assessment of the age-limit law's own merits.
36 Months: The World-Leading Campaign That Changed Social Media Laws for Teenagers
This B&T retrospective, published alongside coverage of the Cairns Crocodiles advertising awards, recaps the scale of the 36 Months campaign led by Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli and Rob Galluzzo, crediting it with helping make Australia the first country to legislate a minimum social media age of 16. It reports campaign-reach figures — petition signatures, news-story volume, and estimated audience impressions — and brand partners that backed the effort, and notes the campaign won Gold in the Cairns Crocodiles' 'Changing the World Campaign' category the previous year. The piece also states the Australian law has drawn interest from the UK, New Zealand, and Denmark, among others considering similar rules. TechKids Foundation cites this as a trade-press summary of the campaign's reported scale and industry recognition, not as independent evidence of any health outcome.
Communications Department Offered to Pay 36 Months Lobby Group to Promote Teen Social Media Ban
This Crikey follow-up investigation reports that Australia's federal Communications Department invited 36 Months to bid for paid work promoting the very under-16 social media law the group had campaigned for, an approach the outlet describes as unusual. According to the report, 36 Months submitted a proposal but did not win the contract because its bid was judged too expensive. The piece revisits Crikey's earlier reporting on FINCH co-founder Rob Galluzzo's gambling-advertising client work and raises questions about government agencies directly engaging advocacy groups to market policies those groups already publicly champion. TechKids Foundation includes this reporting as documented follow-on scrutiny of the campaign's relationship with government after the law's passage, separate from any assessment of the underlying legislation.
Screen Damage: The Dangers of Digital Media for Children (La Fabrique du crétin digital)
Michel Desmurget, a neuroscience research director at INSERM, published this essay in French in 2019 (English translation, Screen Damage, followed from Polity Press in 2022). Rather than presenting new experiments of his own, Desmurget synthesizes published research to argue that heavy recreational screen use — which he says now averages several hours a day across French children, from toddlers through teenagers — is associated with weaker language development, poorer concentration and memory, lower academic achievement, disrupted sleep, reduced physical activity, and higher rates of low mood and aggression among the heaviest users. The book became a bestseller in France, received a special mention from the 2019 Prix Femina essai jury, and was described by France Inter radio as a 'public health book.' TechKids includes it as a widely read synthesis of association-level evidence on screen time and child development, not as new clinical evidence of its own.
TV Lobotomie : La vérité scientifique sur les effets de la télévision
TV Lobotomie was Michel Desmurget's first popular-science book on media and children, published in 2011, eight years before his better-known La Fabrique du crétin digital. Writing as an INSERM neuroscience research director, Desmurget reviews published research on television viewing and argues that heavy childhood TV exposure is associated with weaker language and attention development, poorer school performance, and worse physical-health markers such as higher rates of childhood overweight, rather than being a neutral pastime. The book previewed the argument he would later extend to smartphones, tablets, and video games in his 2019 book: that the sheer volume of screen exposure, not any single device, is the variable most consistently associated with these outcomes in the literature he surveys. TechKids includes it as the origin point of Desmurget's screen-time advocacy, predating his more widely read later work.
My Sister Liv
My Sister Liv is a 2022 documentary, directed by Alan Hicks and produced by Paula DuPré Pesmen, with 36 Months co-founder Rob Galluzzo among its executive producers, following sisters Tess and Liv as Liv experiences depression, body-image struggles, and suicidal thoughts that the film connects to social pressures, including social media, ending in her death by suicide. Told largely from Tess's and the family's perspective, the film centers on grief, stigma, and the aftermath rather than on identifying a single cause, and is the centerpiece of The Liv Project, a nonprofit using the film to prompt conversations about youth mental health. It premiered at DOC NYC in 2022 and has since screened at multiple film festivals. TechKids Foundation includes it as a documented, factual account of the film's existence and stated purpose; this entry does not speculate about the causes of Liv's death beyond what the film's own producers describe.
Faites-les lire ! Pour en finir avec le crétin digital
Faites-les lire! is Michel Desmurget's 2023 follow-up to La Fabrique du crétin digital, shifting from diagnosis to a proposed remedy: recreational reading. Across a 416-page essay, the INSERM neuroscience research director argues that pleasure reading is associated with stronger language skills, creativity, sustained attention, writing ability, and academic performance than other leisure activities, including screen-based ones, and that this gap has practical stakes as French children's voluntary reading has declined. He distinguishes decoding text from genuine comprehension and argues family reading habits shape whether children read for pleasure at all. The book closes with concrete strategies for parents, teachers, and librarians to rebuild reading habits. TechKids includes it as Desmurget's own proposed counter-measure to the harms he associates with heavy screen use in his earlier books, giving the library a paired 'problem/response' framing from the same author.
Effects on Children's Cognitive Development of Chronic Exposure to Screens
This 2012 journal article, co-written by pediatrician B. Harlé and INSERM neuroscience research director Michel Desmurget, is Desmurget's own peer-reviewed publication most directly on this library's subject (his other journal output is almost entirely on unrelated motor-control neuroscience). Published in the French pediatrics journal Archives de Pédiatrie, it reviews existing studies on rising screen time from televisions, video games, smartphones, and computers, concluding that the literature consistently links chronic heavy exposure with weaker academic achievement, slower language development, reduced attention, poorer sleep, and higher aggression in children and teens. The authors frame under-recognition of the issue among clinicians as a gap and call it a public-health concern that primary-care physicians should address by counseling families on prevention. TechKids includes it as the one peer-reviewed article Desmurget has personally co-authored on screens and child development, distinct from his popular books.
'Nativos digitales': los niños con un coeficiente intelectual más bajo que sus padres
This 2020 feature in El Diario NY, a Spanish-language New York newspaper, is built around an interview with Michel Desmurget about the Spanish edition of his book on children's screen use. Desmurget contends that today's most screen-exposed generation of children is on track to test with lower IQ scores than their parents' generation — a reversal, in his framing, of the historical post-war rise in measured IQ known as the Flynn effect — and cites studies he discusses in his book associating heavier gaming and device use with lower grades, weaker memory retention, and shorter attention spans. The piece also relays his recommendation of no screens before roughly age six and strict daily limits afterward. TechKids includes this as a rare example of Desmurget's book and claims reaching a U.S. Spanish-language audience directly through interview coverage, distinct from his own written work.
The Hidden Dangers Of Social Media On Mental Health — Jonathan Haidt (Modern Wisdom #766)
In this April 2024 conversation, host Chris Williamson presses Jonathan Haidt on the core argument of his research program: that a shift from play-based to phone-based childhood is associated with rising anxiety, depression, and elevated self-harm-related risk among adolescents, especially girls. Haidt references a sharp rise in a self-harm-related statistic for preteen girls and describes how algorithmically amplified feeds have been linked to exposure to eating-disorder and self-harm content. The conversation also covers how bringing a phone to bed is associated with reduced adolescent sleep, and closes on Haidt's case for limiting phones during the school day as an early, achievable policy step. TechKids Foundation includes this episode as a widely distributed, general-audience treatment of Haidt's association-language framework, distinct from the book and peer-reviewed papers already catalogued under his own voice tag.
Why Do Young People Seem So Fragile? — Dr Jean Twenge (Modern Wisdom #623)
In this May 2023 interview, generational researcher Jean Twenge walks host Chris Williamson through survey data she argues shows Gen Z reporting far higher rates of anxiety and depression than prior generations at the same age, a trend she associates with the shift to algorithmically driven, smartphone-based social media around 2012 rather than any single cause. She contrasts the strength of this pattern against weaker associations for television or gaming time. Twenge also discusses delayed markers of independence among teens — fewer driver's licenses, later dating — and closes with two concrete recommendations: keeping phones out of bedrooms at night and enforcing a minimum social-media age of 16. TechKids Foundation includes this as a mainstream, general-audience presentation of Twenge's generational research distinct from her books and papers already catalogued under her own voice tag.
How To Reset Your Brain's Dopamine Balance — Dr Anna Lembke (Modern Wisdom #392)
Stanford addiction psychiatrist Anna Lembke explains to host Chris Williamson her clinical model of the brain's pleasure-and-pain balance: intense or frequent stimulation is followed by a dip below baseline mood, which she says drives cravings for more of the same stimulation. She describes smartphones, social feeds, and other constantly available, low-effort sources of stimulation as being associated with this craving-and-relief pattern, alongside processed food and other everyday conveniences. Lembke recommends that children be kept off personal devices until roughly age 12 to 13 so they can build other coping skills first, and outlines a 30-day abstinence period as one way adults can reset their own baseline mood. TechKids Foundation includes this as a substantive, general-audience articulation of her addiction-medicine framework applied to everyday screen habits.
Deconstructing The Female Mental Health Crisis — Freya India (Modern Wisdom #754)
Writer Freya India tells host Chris Williamson that a cluster of statistics on teen-girl mental health moved sharply in the years after Instagram's 2010 launch and the broader shift to smartphone-based social use, and argues that algorithmic feeds are associated with pushing vulnerable teenagers toward more extreme content on eating and self-harm. She also discusses how online therapy platforms and self-diagnosis culture market normal emotional difficulty as a condition to be managed with a product, how beauty filters and photo-editing apps are associated with body-image distortion, and how family breakdown compounds these pressures without being part of the mainstream conversation. TechKids Foundation includes this as a substantive, general-audience presentation of India's recurring argument that commercial and algorithmic incentives, not any single cause, are reshaping teenage girls' mental health.
Why Modern Women Feel More Lost Than Ever — Freya India (Modern Wisdom #916)
In this March 2025 follow-up conversation, Freya India tells host Chris Williamson that therapy-culture language and constant self-diagnosis have become, in her view, a replacement source of meaning for many young women, and argues this is associated with pathologizing ordinary emotional difficulty rather than building resilience to it. She discusses how platforms like TikTok and Instagram are associated with reshaping how young women see friendship, dating, and their own lives through a content-creation lens, and connects this to a decline in stable adult guidance as family structures and religious participation both shift. India frames the combination of unprecedented formal mental-health treatment rates and constant online self-narration as leaving many young women simultaneously anxious and unsupervised. TechKids Foundation includes this as a second, distinct Freya India appearance extending the themes of her March 2024 episode already catalogued in this batch.
The Extreme Crisis Of Young Women — Freya India (Modern Wisdom #1090)
In this April 2026 episode, host Chris Williamson and Freya India return to a question she has raised across her earlier Modern Wisdom appearances: why measures of happiness and wellbeing among young women have moved in the opposite direction from measures of material freedom and opportunity over the same period. The show's own description frames the conversation around that paradox and around what India argues would actually address it, continuing her recurring focus on how online culture, self-diagnosis language, and social-media-shaped self-perception are associated with the mental-health pressures facing younger women specifically. TechKids Foundation includes this as a third, distinct dated appearance by India on the show, extending rather than repeating the arguments documented in her March 2024 and March 2025 episodes already catalogued in this batch.
How To Defeat Your Social Media Addiction — Catherine Price (Modern Wisdom #921)
Science journalist Catherine Price tells host Chris Williamson that the average person's several hours of daily phone use are associated with interrupted attention and weaker long-term memory formation, disrupted sleep from late-night notifications and screen light, and lower-quality in-person connection when phones are present during conversation. She also raises an emerging concern about AI chatbot companions, arguing that emotionally responsive bots risk exploiting users' need for intimacy and validation in ways platforms have not yet had to answer for. Price's practical recommendation is not simply removing phone habits but replacing them with intentional, embodied activities, since cutting a coping mechanism without addressing the underlying need can produce withdrawal-like frustration. TechKids Foundation includes this as a substantive, general-audience presentation of Price's phone-habit framework, distinct from her earlier book on the same subject.
How Pornhub Became The Internet's Biggest Crime Scene — Laila Mickelwait (Modern Wisdom #956)
Anti-trafficking campaigner Laila Mickelwait tells host Chris Williamson that Pornhub's open-upload model, for years, allowed videos to be posted with no verification that everyone shown had consented or was an adult, and that this design choice is what she holds responsible for the platform repeatedly hosting child sexual abuse material and non-consensual footage alongside legal content. She describes the campaign she led, including a public petition and pressure on payment processors, which she credits with the platform removing the large majority of its previously uploaded videos and dropping credit-card support, and with victims subsequently filing dozens of civil lawsuits. TechKids Foundation includes this episode as a documented example of platform-accountability advocacy directly relevant to online child exploitation, distinct from routine news coverage of the same campaign.
Is There A Loneliness Epidemic? — Noreena Hertz (Modern Wisdom #266)
Economist Noreena Hertz tells host Chris Williamson that people aged 16 to 24 report the highest rates of regular loneliness of any age group, a pattern she associates with social platforms she describes as built to encourage compulsive checking and with the visible, trackable social exclusion — missed invitations, unliked posts — that these platforms make newly possible. She cites a Stanford/Oxford study finding that deactivating Facebook for a period produced a wellbeing benefit she describes as roughly 40% as large as a course of therapy, and discusses physical health effects of loneliness including raised blood pressure and stress hormones. Hertz proposes rebuilding in-person, shared-interest communities as a partial answer. TechKids Foundation includes this as an early (2021), substantive treatment of the specific claim that social-platform design is associated with youth loneliness, predating several other entries in this batch.
Hollywood Trouble, Big Tech & The Crisis With Kids — Jeffrey Katzenberg & Hari Ravichandran (Modern Wisdom #967)
Media executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and Aura CEO Hari Ravichandran discuss beta-test data from roughly 2,500 kids aged 12 to 17 showing substantial shares reporting depression, disordered-eating-related concerns, and self-harm or suicidal thoughts, which they present to host Chris Williamson as evidence of a youth mental-health crisis associated with smartphone and social-media use. Ravichandran describes learning of his own daughter's difficulties only after she needed inpatient psychiatric care, and both guests argue that feed algorithms optimized for engagement are associated with disproportionate pressure on still-developing adolescent judgment. Rather than proposing outright bans, they advocate parental-insight tools that surface a teen's digital activity patterns without covert surveillance, comparing it to a graduated, supervised approach like a learner's driving permit. TechKids Foundation includes this as a substantive discussion of both the scale of the concern and one proposed policy/product response.
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
The Shallows is Nicholas Carr's 2010 book, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction, arguing that habitual internet use is associated with a shift away from sustained, linear reading toward skimming and rapid task-switching. Drawing on neuroplasticity research and his own experience, Carr describes losing patience for long-form reading after years of heavy online use, and links frequent hyperlinking, notifications, and multitasking to reduced attention span and shallower processing of information, in contrast with the deep-reading habits he associates with books. He frames the internet not as inherently harmful but as a medium whose design rewards distraction over depth. TechKids Foundation includes The Shallows as an early, widely cited articulation of concerns about attention and screen-mediated reading that later research on children's device use would build on.
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
In this July/August 2008 Atlantic cover essay, Nicholas Carr describes a personal and professional sense that heavy internet use, especially search engines, was changing how he read and thought, making sustained concentration on long texts harder even as information-gathering became easier. He cites early commentary from other writers and researchers noticing a similar shift toward skimming rather than deep reading, and situates the internet within a history of technologies, such as the clock and the printing press, that reshaped human thought in ways society recognized only gradually. The essay is explicitly personal and speculative rather than a research report, and it became the seed for Carr's later book The Shallows. TechKids Foundation includes it as the original, influential public statement of the attention-and-reading concern this library's evidence base returns to.
All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines
Also known by its original print title 'The Great Forgetting,' this November 2013 Atlantic essay extends Carr's attention-focused argument to automation more broadly. He describes cases, chiefly in aviation, where pilots increasingly monitor autopilot systems rather than fly manually, and where heavy reliance on automated systems is associated with atrophy of the underlying human skill, so that when the automation fails, the operator may be less prepared to intervene than before the technology existed. Carr extends the concern to everyday computing, arguing that offloading memory, navigation, and problem-solving to devices carries a similar tradeoff between convenience and skill retention. The essay synthesizes existing research and case reports rather than presenting new data of its own. TechKids Foundation includes it as the direct precursor to Carr's book The Glass Cage and a widely read statement of the automation-and-skill-erosion concern.
The Glass Cage: Automation and Us
The Glass Cage, published in 2014 (later reissued in paperback under the subtitle 'How Our Computers Are Changing Us'), extends the argument of Carr's essay 'The Great Forgetting' into a full book. He surveys automated systems in aviation, medicine, law, and architecture, describing a recurring pattern he calls a 'de-skilling' or 'generation' effect: professionals who rely on software to perform a task are, over time, associated with a weaker grasp of that task's underlying judgment than those who learned it manually. Carr is not opposed to automation itself; the book frames itself as balancing an appreciation of technology's benefits with a warning about uncritical reliance on it. Reviewed by the New York Times among other outlets, the book widens Carr's attention-and-cognition argument from reading and internet use specifically to software-mediated work generally. TechKids Foundation includes it as a documented extension of the attention-and-skill-erosion concern to automation broadly.
Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations
Utopia Is Creepy, published in 2016, collects two decades of Carr's essays and blog posts, largely drawn from his Rough Type blog, critiquing what he characterizes as the technology industry's techno-utopian rhetoric. The pieces question claims that social media, constant connectivity, and algorithmic personalization are unambiguously improving how people relate to one another and to information, arguing instead that these systems are associated with narrower, more commercially shaped views of the world, reduced privacy, and diminished independent thought. The book is a collection of previously published shorter pieces rather than a single sustained argument, and it does not present original data. TechKids Foundation includes it as a representative sample of the broader body of tech-culture criticism this library draws on for context, distinct from Carr's book-length arguments about reading and automation specifically.
Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
Superbloom, Carr's 2025 book, argues that social media and constant connectivity have coincided with a fraying of shared understanding rather than the closer community that early internet boosters promised. Named a Financial Times Best Summer Book of 2025 in technology, it traces communication technologies from the telegraph through today's platforms, arguing each leap in ease of connection has been associated with new frictions, including outrage, polarization, and a diminished sense of shared public reality, rather than resolving earlier ones. Carr frames heavy platform use as reshaping users' sense of self and their relationships with others, without attributing this to any single design choice or company. TechKids Foundation includes it as Carr's most recent and most directly social-media-focused book, extending his decades-long argument about technology's effect on attention and thought to platforms' effect on collective life.
The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
The Big Switch, published in January 2008, is Carr's earliest book-length argument about the internet's societal effects, preceding The Shallows. Its central comparison, reflected in the subtitle 'Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google,' likens the rise of centralized, utility-style computing to the historical shift from private electric generators to a shared power grid a century earlier, arguing that concentrating computing power and information flow in a small number of large platforms carries tradeoffs between convenience and dependence. The book also considers how an advertising-driven web economy shapes what content is produced and who profits from it, themes Carr would return to in his later, more attention-focused work. It presents historical argument and analysis rather than new empirical data. TechKids Foundation includes it as the foundational text connecting the internet's business model and structure to the cultural and attentional concerns explored in Carr's later books.
'The Shallows': This Is Your Brain Online (NPR interview)
In this June 2010 All Things Considered segment, NPR interviews Nicholas Carr about The Shallows shortly after its release. Carr describes the internet as returning people to what he calls a "natural state of distractedness," arguing that constant novelty and interruption online are associated with weaker sustained attention compared with the more linear, single-focus engagement that books and print reading require. The segment translates the book's argument for a general public-radio audience rather than presenting new data, and situates Carr's claims within the wider public debate at the time over whether the internet was fundamentally changing how people think. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as a documented example of Carr's argument reaching a mainstream audience, distinct from the book itself and his print essays.
Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains' (PBS NewsHour)
This short PBS NewsHour segment, first broadcast around August 2010 and later posted to the program's YouTube channel, profiles Carr's book The Shallows through what the segment itself describes as a neuroscience lens. It presents Carr's central claim, that habitual internet use is associated with changes in how the brain processes information and favors rapid scanning over sustained focus, in an accessible broadcast format aimed at a general news audience rather than a specialist one. The segment does not conduct its own research; it summarizes the book's argument and situates it within the wider public conversation about digital technology and cognition circulating at the time. TechKids Foundation includes this video as a mainstream broadcast-news treatment of Carr's core argument, distributed by a major public-media outlet.
Utopia Is Creepy — Book Talk at the Wisconsin Book Festival
In this October 2016 Book TV recording, Nicholas Carr discusses Utopia Is Creepy at the Wisconsin Book Festival, held at the Central Branch of the Madison Public Library. Speaking to a general public audience, he walks through the book's central argument that the technology industry's rhetoric of connection, openness, and empowerment is associated with outcomes, including reduced privacy, concentrated commercial power, and narrower attention, that often run counter to that framing, drawing on essays collected in the book. As a recorded public talk rather than a research presentation, it does not introduce new data beyond what appears in the book itself. TechKids Foundation includes this C-SPAN recording as a documented, on-record public appearance in which Carr explains his critique of tech-industry optimism directly, in his own words, to a live audience.
Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids—and How to Break the Trance
Glow Kids is addiction psychologist Nicholas Kardaras's 2016 book, drawing on his clinical work treating young people, arguing that heavy, compulsive use of screens, video games, and tablets can develop into a pattern he compares to substance dependency. Kardaras describes screens as capable of overstimulating dopamine-driven reward circuits in ways he likens to how the brain responds to certain drugs, and associates heavy gaming and device use in children with warning signs including irritability, withdrawal-like reactions when devices are removed, attention problems, anxiety, and low mood. The book proposes structured device-free periods and stricter household limits, particularly for young children, as a response. TechKids Foundation includes Glow Kids as an early, widely discussed clinical framing of compulsive screen use in children — a characterization from within the addiction field, not a diagnostic claim TechKids itself makes.
Digital Madness: How Big Tech Is Driving Our Mental Health Pandemic—and the Ancient Prescription for Sanity
Digital Madness is Nicholas Kardaras's 2022 follow-up to Glow Kids, arguing that constant social-media and device use has grown mismatched with human psychology in ways he associates with rising anxiety, depression, and polarized, black-and-white thinking. Kardaras frames depression as unusually common in heavily digitized societies compared with less digitally connected communities, and describes platforms' reward-driven design as associated with compulsive use and with physical-health concerns such as sedentary behavior. He also discusses how influencer culture and algorithmic amplification can spread psychiatric symptoms and self-harm-related contagion among followers, echoing broader social-contagion research. TechKids Foundation notes that suicide and self-harm are never attributable to any single factor. The book's proposed response centers on building individual psychological resilience — through purpose, physical activity, and critical thinking — alongside calls for platform-design and antitrust-style regulatory scrutiny.
Testimony Before the Florida House Education & Employment Committee on Student Screen Time
In February 2023, addiction psychologist Nicholas Kardaras testified before the Florida House Education & Employment Committee about technology use among students. He told the committee that children exceeding roughly two hours of daily screen time show an association with double the rate of attention difficulties that can affect schoolwork, and cited research associating unsupervised screen use beyond one hour a day among preschoolers with differences in white-matter brain development tied to language and cognitive growth. Kardaras urged lawmakers to adopt strict no-personal-device policies in schools rather than simply requiring phones to be put away, pointing to New York City schools' reported test-score gains after restricting phones, and proposed treating kindergarten through sixth grade as device-free zones. He also told the committee that technology companies design products that compete for and monetize children's attention. His testimony coincided with pending Florida legislation on school social-media access and digital-safety education.
Generation Z: Online and at Risk?
In this September 2016 Scientific American Mind feature, Nicholas Kardaras examines how heavy social-media and gaming use is associated with psychological strain in teenagers. Opening with a composite case of a middle-schooler whose behavior changed after heavy device and social-app use on a school-issued laptop, he argues that digital platforms create an illusion of belonging that can leave real emotional needs unmet, and that habitual checking and texting are associated with reward-seeking patterns similar to those seen in other compulsive behaviors. Citing outside survey research, he links frequent, high-volume texting and social-networking among high schoolers with a greater reported likelihood of substance use and other risk behaviors, and cites survey findings connecting heavy networking time with higher rates of depression and reported suicide risk. Kardaras recommends delaying children's social-media access and increasing parental monitoring. TechKids Foundation notes that suicide and self-harm are never attributable to any single factor.
Social media expert celebrates 'wake-up call' on addiction: We need guardrails for children
In this April 2024 Fox News Digital feature, Nicholas Kardaras discusses why he considers growing political and public attention to youth social-media use a welcome development. He describes social-media platforms as built, by design, to be habit-forming, and says that measures of youth anxiety and depression are at unusually high levels. Kardaras argues that legal guardrails — pointing to the House bill pushing a TikTok divestment and the U.S. Surgeon General's advisory on social media and youth mental health — should focus on protecting children rather than restricting adults' access, distinguishing his position from a blanket ban. He frames the goal as helping young people become more critical, resilient users of technology rather than eliminating it altogether. TechKids Foundation cites the piece as an example of a clinician publicly welcoming policy momentum around youth social-media guardrails.
Tech addiction traps young in 'digital rabbit hole where they can't function'
In this June 2026 interview on Newstalk's Moncrieff radio show, Nicholas Kardaras discusses what he calls a digital rabbit hole pattern, in which heavy device and social-media use leaves some young people unable to function well across school, work, or relationships. He describes his clinical approach to problematic technology use, including extended unplugged periods paired with traditional psychotherapy, and frames constant device use as functioning for some people as an anxiety-relieving habit that can become an unhealthy crutch. He references Irish survey findings that most respondents want to spend less time on their phones despite checking them immediately on waking, and discusses rising attention-related diagnoses over the past decade that he associates with heavier screen exposure. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as an example of Kardaras's clinical framing reaching an international broadcast audience.
Social media is driving our mental health crisis—Dr. Nicholas Kardaras explains how
In this September 2022 Hub Dialogues interview with Sean Speer, Nicholas Kardaras discusses his book Digital Madness and argues that heavy social-media use is associated with a broader mental-health decline, citing pre-pandemic U.S. figures on depression, suicide, and overdose deaths as context for the scale of the problem. He describes social-media platforms' reward mechanisms — likes, shares, and algorithmic targeting — as associated with compulsive use, and argues that some widely followed influencers who disclose serious psychiatric symptoms may contribute to social contagion among followers. Kardaras also connects heavy platform use to feelings of isolation despite large online followings, and to more polarized, binary thinking. He proposes building individual psychological resilience through philosophy and purpose, alongside possible antitrust and regulatory action toward platform companies. TechKids Foundation notes that suicide and self-harm are never attributable to any single factor.
Resilient Kids: Guest Dr. Nicholas Kardaras (Glow Kids; Digital Madness)
In this September 2022 episode of the podcast Read, White & Blue, hosted by then-Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls, Nicholas Kardaras discusses his books Glow Kids and Digital Madness and the effects he associates with excessive screen time and social-media use in children, teens, and young adults. Kardaras describes recurring patterns he has observed clinically — including difficulty self-regulating device use and mood changes tied to platform engagement — and offers parents practical strategies, such as encouraging reading and structured critical-thinking activities, as alternatives to unstructured screen time. The conversation frames technology dependency as a behavior pattern that responds to deliberate, non-punitive household strategies rather than one requiring total device avoidance. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as an example of Kardaras's clinical framing reaching a policy-adjacent, family-focused audience.
Dr. Nicholas Kardaras Weighs in on the Digital Addiction Impacting Children
In this September 2022 episode of The Hamilton Review, a podcast hosted by pediatrician Bob Hamilton and focused on children, families, and culture, Nicholas Kardaras discusses what he characterizes as digital dependency and its association with children's mental health. He offers guidance aimed at parents seeking to manage their children's technology use, drawing on his clinical background and the arguments of his books Glow Kids and Digital Madness. The episode situates Kardaras's clinical perspective on compulsive screen use within a pediatric-audience show that otherwise covers childhood health topics such as nutrition and behavior. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as an example of Kardaras's clinical framing of screen-related concerns reaching a parenting- and pediatrics-focused audience alongside his more mainstream media interviews.
Digital Madness: How Social Media Is Driving Our Mental Health Crisis, with Dr. Nicholas Kardaras
In this October 2022 episode of Alyssa Milano's podcast Sorry Not Sorry, Nicholas Kardaras discusses his newly published book Digital Madness and its argument that heavy social-media use is associated with a broader decline in psychological well-being. Drawing on his background as an addiction and mental-health specialist and his earlier book Glow Kids, Kardaras describes patterns of compulsive platform use he has observed clinically in children, teens, and young adults, and discusses how social-media design choices intersect with mood and behavior. The conversation presents his clinical perspective for a general audience rather than a specialist one, emphasizing practical framing over data. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as one of several book-promotion interviews that carried Kardaras's clinical framing of screen-related concerns to a wide, mainstream podcast audience.
Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
Zucked is early Facebook investor and Mark Zuckerberg mentor Roger McNamee's 2019 book describing his shift from company champion to public critic. McNamee traces how Facebook's engagement-driven advertising model rewards content that captures attention regardless of accuracy, and he associates this design choice with the platform's vulnerability to manipulation during the 2016 U.S. election and the Brexit referendum. He argues that products built to maximize time-on-app can foster compulsive, hard-to-moderate use patterns among people of all ages, and calls for outside regulation — data-portability rules, algorithmic transparency, and antitrust scrutiny — rather than voluntary industry reform. TechKids Foundation includes Zucked as a widely read insider account connecting attention-economy business models to problematic use patterns, presented as McNamee's own argument rather than a clinical finding.
How to Fix Facebook—Before It Fixes Us
In this bylined essay for Washington Monthly, Roger McNamee — an early Facebook investor who mentored Mark Zuckerberg — argues that the company's algorithm-driven attention model is associated with the platform's exploitation by Russian operatives during the 2016 U.S. election and the Brexit vote. He writes that platform algorithms are 'designed with a specific value in mind: maximum share of attention,' a pattern he links to reduced public trust and polarization rather than to any single diagnosable harm. McNamee lays out an eight-point reform agenda — user notification of manipulation, mandatory platform transparency, restrictions on further acquisitions, and revived antitrust review among them — as an alternative to relying on the industry to self-correct. TechKids Foundation includes this essay as McNamee's own condensed policy argument for external regulation of attention-driven platform design.
Investor Says He Tried to Warn Facebook About 'Bad Actors' Harming Innocent People
In this PBS NewsHour interview, Roger McNamee — Facebook's early investor and a mentor to Mark Zuckerberg — describes warning the company's leadership in 2016 that 'bad actors were taking the tools created for advertisers' and using them to target people in politics, housing, and civil rights. He says Facebook's response treated the concern as a public-relations issue rather than a business one, and he associates the platform's advertising-driven design with use patterns he characterizes as compulsive — features he argues are built to keep people scrolling and reacting longer than they intend. McNamee calls on Facebook to cooperate with investigators and to notify the roughly 126 million U.S. users whose feeds may have carried Russian-linked content ahead of the 2016 election. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as an early, on-record statement of McNamee's insider warning about engagement-driven platform design.
The Dangers of Our 'New Data Economy,' and How to Avoid Them
In this PBS NewsHour segment, Roger McNamee discusses what he calls the 'new data economy,' in which personal information — including health data, location history, and data collected on minors — is gathered and monetized with little meaningful consent from the people it describes. He argues that 'we, the people, have little say' over how platforms and device makers use this data, and raises the possibility that behavioral and health data could be used by insurers or other institutions to deny coverage or opportunity. While the segment does not focus specifically on child development or mental health, McNamee names data collected on minors as one category he believes deserves distinct legal scrutiny. TechKids Foundation includes this segment as a mainstream-news explanation of the data-privacy dimension of McNamee's broader platform-design critique.
The TED Interview: Roger McNamee Takes on Big Tech
In this audio episode of The TED Interview, TED curator Chris Anderson questions Roger McNamee — an early Facebook investor turned outspoken critic — about big tech's 'missteps, and where we go from here.' Recorded live at TED2019, the conversation covers how attention-maximizing product design, market concentration among a handful of platforms, and pervasive behavioral data collection are, in McNamee's view, associated with reduced individual control over one's own time and attention, alongside broader risks to democratic discourse. McNamee argues for structural remedies — antitrust action and data-rights regulation — rather than voluntary platform reform. TechKids Foundation includes this long-form interview as a detailed, plain-language articulation of McNamee's argument that platform design choices, not individual willpower alone, are associated with problematic engagement patterns.
The Facebook Dilemma
The Facebook Dilemma is a two-part FRONTLINE documentary examining Facebook's growth from a Harvard dorm-room project into a global platform, and the company's handling of the data-privacy and misinformation problems that followed. Roger McNamee appears throughout as one of several early insiders and investors describing warnings they raised internally — in his case, about political manipulation and advertising-tool abuse — years before those issues became public controversies. The film traces the platform's role in events ranging from Egypt's 2011 uprising to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, associating the company's growth-first culture with a documented pattern of underinvestment in safety and content moderation. TechKids Foundation includes this documentary as a detailed, journalistically reported account of how platform design and business incentives are linked to real-world harms, with McNamee as one of its central on-camera voices.
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
Careless People is Sarah Wynn-Williams' 2025 memoir covering her nearly seven years as Facebook's, later Meta's, director of global public policy. Most of the book concerns internal decisions about growth, censorship, and the company's pursuit of the Chinese market. It also recounts an episode she says she witnessed: a leaked April 2017 internal document showing Facebook offered advertisers the ability to target 13-to-17-year-olds across Facebook and Instagram at moments she says were flagged as emotionally vulnerable — feeling 'worthless,' 'stressed,' or 'like a failure' — including pitching beauty products to teen girls who had just deleted a selfie. She frames this as evidence that commercial incentives were allowed to override concern for young users' wellbeing. She later expanded on this account in written responses to U.S. Senate questions. TechKids Foundation includes the book for this specific, congressionally-referenced episode, not as an independent clinical finding.
Oral Testimony and Q&A — "A Time for Truth: Oversight of Meta's Foreign Relations and Representations to the United States Congress"
On April 9, 2025, Sarah Wynn-Williams testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism. Her prepared opening remarks focused on Meta's dealings with the Chinese government, but senators' follow-up questions drew out a separate account: she said Meta's ad systems could identify when 13-to-17-year-old users showed signs of feeling worthless, stressed, or anxious, and that this information was made available to advertisers, including companies pitching beauty products to teen girls who had just deleted a selfie. Senator Blumenthal connected this to Instagram's documented association with emotional distress among young girls. Meta disputed the characterization, saying emotional-state research was never used to target ads. TechKids Foundation cites this testimony for its firsthand account, from a former Meta policy director, of how advertising incentives were said to intersect with signals of teen emotional vulnerability — not as an independent finding of harm.
Written Responses to Questions for the Record, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism
On April 16, 2025, Sarah Wynn-Williams submitted written answers to follow-up questions from the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, expanding on her April 9 testimony. Responding to Senator Cory Booker, she described what she called Meta's 'emotional targeting': a practice she says drew on posts, photos, and outside data-broker information to infer when a teen user felt worthless, stressed, or focused on losing weight, then made that inference available to advertisers looking for an optimal moment to pitch a product. She said Meta executives did not, in her experience, show concern for teens' wellbeing, while some employees restricted their own children's use of the company's products. She also said Meta's January 2025 content-moderation changes were unlikely to protect young users, pointing to separate Wall Street Journal reporting on Meta's AI chat tools. TechKids Foundation cites this as a detailed, congressionally submitted account from a named former insider, not as independent verification of every claim in it.
Predatory Behavior Toward Teens Evident in Former Facebook Executive's Testimony
In May 2025, the law firm Motley Rice — court-appointed co-lead counsel in the federal multidistrict litigation consolidating personal-injury lawsuits over social media's association with adolescent mental-health harm — published a piece arguing that Sarah Wynn-Williams' Senate testimony corroborated the plaintiffs' claims. The firm characterized her account of Meta identifying and monetizing teens' emotionally vulnerable moments as consistent with what it called the 'exploitative, profit-driven design' at issue in the litigation. This is a law firm's advocacy characterization of testimony given in a separate congressional proceeding, not a court finding or ruling. TechKids Foundation presents it as an example of Wynn-Williams' account being cited as supporting evidence in ongoing litigation over social media's association with teen mental-health harm, rather than as an independent legal or clinical conclusion of our own.
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit
Published in 1984, this early book by MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle is based on interviews with children, hobbyists, and early programmers encountering personal computers for the first time. Turkle argued that computers were not neutral tools but 'objects to think with' — machines people used to work out questions about identity, control, and what separates a mind from a mechanism. She described children forming strong attachments to computers and debating, in their own terms, whether a machine that plays chess or talks back could be considered alive. The book is a foundational text in Turkle's long-running study of how people's emotional relationships with technology shape self-understanding. TechKids Foundation includes it as background on the decades-long history behind current debates about children, screens, and machines, not as evidence about clinical outcomes.
Epistemological Pluralism: Styles and Voices within the Computer Culture
In this 1990 journal article, Sherry Turkle and computer scientist Seymour Papert examined how children and adult programmers approach computing in different personal styles — some through structured, top-down planning and others through a more improvisational, trial-and-error approach the authors called 'bricolage.' Drawing on classroom observation, they argued that programming education of the era implicitly rewarded one style over the other, which they associated with some students, disproportionately girls, feeling pushed out of computer science despite being capable programmers. The paper is widely cited in education research on learning styles and gender gaps in computing. TechKids Foundation includes it as an early, peer-reviewed look at how the design of tech education itself can be associated with which students end up comfortable with computers and which do not.
Evocative Objects: Things We Think With
This 2007 essay collection, edited by Sherry Turkle, gathers first-person pieces by scientists, designers, and scholars reflecting on specific objects — often from childhood — that shaped how they think, including several essays that touch on early computers and electronic toys. The organizing idea is that people form emotional attachments to objects that go well beyond their practical function, and that studying those attachments reveals something about how identity and habits of mind develop over a lifetime. Several contributors describe childhood devices as companions that structured solitary play. TechKids Foundation includes this volume as part of the broader intellectual foundation behind Turkle's later, more direct arguments about screens and relationships — it does not itself make claims about screen time or mental health.
Falling for Science: Objects in Mind
Edited by Sherry Turkle and published in 2008, this companion volume to Evocative Objects collects short essays — many by MIT students and faculty — about a specific childhood object that first drew each contributor toward science or engineering: a chemistry set, a broken radio, a particular toy taken apart and rebuilt. The book frames early, hands-on tinkering with physical objects as a route into scientific curiosity, implicitly contrasting object-based, exploratory play with more passive forms of screen engagement, though it does not study screen use directly. TechKids Foundation includes it as part of Turkle's broader research tradition on how children's early relationships with objects and technology shape lifelong habits of mind and learning, relevant background for the library's interest in hands-on, creation-oriented alternatives to passive screen use.
Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
In this 1995 book, Sherry Turkle turned to the early internet — bulletin boards, chat rooms, and text-based virtual worlds known as MUDs — to examine how people, including many teenagers, experimented with multiple online identities distinct from their offline selves. She described this as evidence that digital life was reshaping how people understood a stable, singular sense of self, replacing it with something more fluid and 'decentered.' The book helped popularize the idea that the internet is a social and psychological environment, not just a tool, and that spending significant time in it is associated with changes in how young people build and present identity. TechKids Foundation includes it as an early, influential account of how online spaces shape adolescent identity formation, written well before social media as it exists today.
The Inner History of Devices
This 2008 essay collection, edited by Sherry Turkle, examines devices ranging from pacemakers to ham radios through the personal histories of the people who used them, arguing that everyday technology is bound up with memory, loss, and identity in ways that are easy to overlook when discussion focuses only on a device's function. Several essays consider how attachment to a device can substitute, in small ways, for attachment to people. The book extends Turkle's long-standing argument that machines are never psychologically neutral. TechKids Foundation includes it as further background on Turkle's research tradition connecting technology design to emotional life, part of the intellectual groundwork for her later, more pointed arguments about children, smartphones, and social withdrawal.
Simulation and Its Discontents
In this 2009 book, Sherry Turkle looks at how computer simulation changed scientific and engineering training and practice, drawing on interviews with architects, engineers, and scientists who increasingly work through simulated models rather than physical prototypes. She raises a concern that heavy reliance on simulation can be associated with a weaker feel for the underlying physical reality a model represents, describing students who trust a simulation's output without fully grasping why. The book is a professional and academic study rather than a work aimed at parents, but its core theme — that simulated experience is not a full substitute for direct, physical engagement — runs through Turkle's later, more general arguments about screens and childhood. TechKids Foundation includes it as scholarly context for that broader argument.
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Sherry Turkle's 2011 book is her most widely cited argument that constant connectivity can leave people feeling more isolated, not less. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with children, teenagers, and adults, she describes kids forming attachments to sociable robots and toys and, at times, becoming genuinely unsure whether a machine that talks back 'cares' about them — a confusion she treats as worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as childish. She also describes teenagers who say texting feels safer than talking on the phone, and who report anxiety about being unreachable or about a conversation that can't be edited before sending. Turkle frames these as warning signs that always-available technology is associated with young people practicing less face-to-face connection and self-disclosure. TechKids Foundation includes this book as a core secondary-tier source on the social costs of passive, isolating screen use.
Connected, but Alone?
In this TED2012 talk, Sherry Turkle condenses the argument of her book Alone Together into an 18-minute talk aimed at a general audience. She describes teenagers who say they would rather text than call because a call 'reveals too much,' and argues that constant partial attention to devices — texting during dinner, checking phones during conversation — is associated with people practicing solitude and face-to-face conversation less often. She poses the talk's central question directly: as we expect more from technology, are we learning to expect less from each other? The talk closes with a call to build deliberate, device-free space for conversation and reflection. TechKids Foundation includes it as a widely viewed, accessible summary of Turkle's research for audiences who have not read the full book.
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
In this 2015 book, Sherry Turkle argues that face-to-face conversation — including the unstructured, sometimes boring conversation of family dinners and solo downtime — is a skill children build through practice, and that a phone's constant presence is associated with fewer chances to practice it. Drawing on classroom and family observation, she describes students who struggle to sit with silence or read a friend's expression without a screen as backup, and teachers reporting shorter attention spans and more surface-level classroom discussion. Rather than arguing for abstinence, the book proposes concrete 'device-free' zones and times — the dinner table, the classroom, the bedroom before sleep — as ways to protect space for conversation. TechKids Foundation includes it as a solutions-oriented companion to Turkle's earlier work, directly relevant to schools and families weighing practical phone-use rules.
The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir
Sherry Turkle's 2021 memoir traces her upbringing in postwar Brooklyn — including a family secret about her father's identity that she says shaped her lifelong interest in what people conceal and reveal — through her graduate work at Harvard and her decades on the MIT faculty. She connects her personal history directly to her research question: why some people find machines easier to open up to than other people, and what that reveals about empathy, secrecy, and connection. The book does not present new data on children or screens; it is a personal account of how Turkle's own life led her to study technology's effect on relationships. TechKids Foundation includes it as biographical context for readers encountering Turkle's research-based books, showing the personal throughline behind her decades of work on technology and connection.
Development and Validation of a Nine-Item Short Screening Test for ICD-11 Gaming Disorder (GAMES Test) and Estimation of the Prevalence in the General Young Population
This 2021 paper in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, led by Susumu Higuchi, presents the GAMES test — a brief nine-item self-report screening tool built around the World Health Organization's ICD-11 gaming disorder category. Higuchi's team checked the tool against clinical-interview diagnoses among patients already seeking care at Kurihama Medical and Addiction Center, then applied it to a general-population sample of young people ages 10 to 29 to estimate how common gaming-disorder-consistent patterns might be. The screening measure distinguished clinically diagnosed cases from non-cases with high accuracy, and population estimates showed the pattern appearing more often among young males than young females. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as an example of a clinician-built early-identification tool associated with gaming disorder risk in young people, offered as a screening aid rather than a standalone diagnosis.
Application of the Eleventh Revision of the International Classification of Diseases Gaming Disorder Criteria to Treatment-Seeking Patients: Comparison with the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Internet Gaming Disorder Criteria
Published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions in 2021, this paper by Susumu Higuchi and colleagues at Kurihama Medical and Addiction Center compares two diagnostic frameworks for problematic gaming: the World Health Organization's newer ICD-11 gaming disorder category and the American Psychiatric Association's earlier DSM-5 internet gaming disorder criteria. Clinicians evaluated 241 people already seeking treatment for excessive gaming, applying both sets of criteria through structured interviews. Most participants met both definitions, and the two frameworks largely agreed on the more severe cases, though some differences appeared among people most invested in online console and PC gaming. The authors argue this overlap supports continued work on standardized diagnostic tools. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as clinical evidence linking heavy, functionally impairing gaming to patterns that both major diagnostic systems now recognize.
Validation of the Ten-Item Internet Gaming Disorder Test (IGDT-10) Based on the Clinical Diagnosis of IGD in Japan
This 2022 Journal of Behavioral Addictions paper, co-authored by Susumu Higuchi, validates a Japanese translation of the ten-item Internet Gaming Disorder Test (IGDT-10) against clinical diagnoses at Kurihama Medical and Addiction Center. Testing 244 gamers, the researchers compared the instrument's original scoring method with a modified version that counted 'sometimes' or 'often' responses as a positive sign. The modified scoring identified people with a clinical diagnosis of internet gaming disorder more accurately than the original method, though it also flagged a notably larger share of the sample as at-risk. The authors call for testing the revised approach in other countries and gaming cultures before wider adoption. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as evidence that screening-tool design choices meaningfully affect how many young gamers are flagged as at risk, underscoring the need for carefully validated instruments rather than informal checklists.
Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Epidemiological Studies of Internet Gaming Disorder: A Systematic Review of the Literature
This 2017 systematic review in Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, co-authored by Susumu Higuchi, surveys 37 cross-sectional and 13 longitudinal studies on internet gaming disorder published through mid-2016. The authors describe wide variation in how often gaming-disorder-consistent patterns were reported across the studies reviewed, generally higher among males and, in some studies, among younger respondents. Factors the underlying studies associated with gaming disorder ranged from gaming habits and family dynamics to social functioning, personality traits, other psychiatric conditions, and physical health measures. Because the studies used inconsistent definitions and methods, the authors caution that direct comparisons across countries are difficult, and they call for future research using standardized international methods. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a broad evidence map of the research base linking heavy gaming to a range of social, psychological, and family-context factors in young people, while flagging the field's ongoing measurement inconsistency.
Treatment with the Self-Discovery Camp (SDiC) Improves Internet Gaming Disorder
This 2017 Addictive Behaviors paper, with Susumu Higuchi as senior author, reports on a residential program called the Self-Discovery Camp, adapted from a South Korean model and run for ten adolescent boys already diagnosed with internet gaming disorder under DSM-5 criteria. Over an eight-night stay combining psychoeducation, cognitive-behavioral techniques, and group activity, staff tracked participants' gaming hours and their own sense of readiness to change. Three months after the camp, the study found participants were spending less time gaming and reported greater confidence in their ability to change their gaming habits, with earlier onset of heavy gaming associated with stronger gains in problem recognition. The authors call for larger studies with comparison groups and longer follow-up before drawing firm conclusions. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as an example of a structured, short-term intervention associated with reduced gaming time in a small group of adolescent boys.
Gaming Disorder: Its Delineation as an Important Condition for Diagnosis, Management, and Prevention
Published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions in 2017, this consensus paper brings together more than two dozen addiction specialists worldwide — including Susumu Higuchi and his Kurihama colleague Satoko Mihara — to explain and support the World Health Organization's move to add gaming disorder to the draft eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). The authors summarize national studies reporting gaming-disorder-consistent patterns in an estimated 10–15% of young people in several Asian countries, compared with roughly 1–10% in some Western countries, and point to research describing overlapping brain regions activated in gaming disorder, other behavioral addictions, and substance-use disorders. The group argues a formal diagnostic category is needed to support consistent clinical management and prevention efforts internationally. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as the core international scientific statement behind the WHO's gaming disorder classification, of which Higuchi's clinical program was an early real-world example.
Evolution of Specialist Treatment of Gaming Disorder and Internet Addiction in Japan
This 2025 Frontiers in Psychiatry paper, with Susumu Higuchi among the authors, tracks how specialist treatment services for gaming disorder and internet addiction in Japan have grown, using mailed surveys of treatment facilities conducted in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2023. The number of facilities offering specialized care rose sharply over that period, though the authors find their geographic distribution remains uneven across the country. Programs increasingly emphasized helping patients build alternative activities and interests rather than simply cutting gaming time, and shifted toward more specialized rather than general-purpose treatment models between 2020 and 2023. Clinicians reported ongoing difficulty managing patients who also have neurodevelopmental conditions, even as their capacity to address these overlapping needs improved. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a look at how Japan's specialist treatment system — which Higuchi's center pioneered in 2011 — has scaled to meet demand, while gaps in access persist.
Toward the Inclusion of Gaming Disorder in ICD-11
In this 2017 editorial in Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, Susumu Higuchi, writing ahead of the World Health Organization's ICD-11 release, argues for formally including gaming disorder as a diagnostic category. Higuchi draws on the clinical case his Kurihama Medical and Addiction Center had already been building since 2011 — a growing caseload of patients whose gaming had become compulsive and functionally disabling — and frames a WHO classification as a needed step for consistent diagnosis, treatment planning, and public-health monitoring across countries. He acknowledges debate within the field over whether the evidence base was mature enough for formal inclusion but argues the clinical need outweighed that uncertainty. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as Higuchi's own public argument, addressed directly to fellow clinicians and researchers, for the WHO classification decision his clinic's caseload had already anticipated.
Sharpening the Focus on Gaming Disorder
This 2019 feature in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, reported by journalist Gary Humphreys, profiles Susumu Higuchi's work at Kurihama Medical and Addiction Center alongside a Swiss addiction specialist, framing both as case studies in the WHO's effort to define 'gaming disorder' for ICD-11. Higuchi describes his patient caseload as mostly male and often students who had dropped out of school, and says gaming can be harder to address than substance use because internet access is so pervasive. The piece also cites a Japanese government survey reporting a large rise in adults with broader internet addiction between 2013 and 2018, and notes Higuchi's support for WHO screen-time guidance for young children. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a direct, on-record account of Higuchi's clinical experience and his view of gaming disorder's growing public-health weight, published in the WHO's own peer-reviewed bulletin.
Doctor Helps Problem Gamers Looking to Hit Reset Button
This March 2019 Kyodo News feature by reporter Mai Yoshikawa profiles Susumu Higuchi's clinical work treating people who come to Kurihama Medical and Addiction Center for compulsive video-game use. The article frames Higuchi as one of Japan's most prominent authorities on gaming addiction and describes patients whose gaming had escalated to the point of disrupting school, work, and family life. The piece situates Higuchi's clinic within a broader Japanese conversation about when gaming crosses from an ordinary hobby into a pattern warranting clinical attention. The full article is now behind Kyodo's subscriber/archive gate, so this entry relies on the outlet's own headline, byline, and lead paragraph rather than reproducing text from behind that gate. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as mainstream Japanese news coverage of Higuchi's clinical profile and public role in the country's response to gaming disorder.
Brain Rot Emergency: These Internal Documents Prove They're Controlling You! — Jonathan Haidt & Dr. Aditi Nerurkar
In this February 2026 episode of The Diary Of A CEO, host Steven Bartlett brings social psychologist Jonathan Haidt together with physician and stress-resilience researcher Dr. Aditi Nerurkar for a conversation the show bills as a 'brain rot emergency.' The two guests describe short-form video and near-constant phone use as associated with shrinking attention spans, a pattern they nickname 'popcorn brain,' and with reduced memory accuracy among heavy users. Haidt extends arguments from his own published work linking phone-based routines during childhood to the teen mental-health concerns this library tracks, while Nerurkar raises AI chatbots as a newer front in the same attention economy. Neither guest frames these patterns as a diagnosis; both describe them as risk factors compounding for a generation raised online. TechKids Foundation includes this entry because it carries two credentialed voices already in this library to a mainstream business-and-culture audience well beyond their usual readership.
AI Expert: We Have 2 Years Before Everything Changes! We Need To Start Protesting! — Tristan Harris
In this November 2025 episode, Center for Humane Technology co-founder Tristan Harris walks host Steven Bartlett through his case that artificial intelligence is repeating, and accelerating, attention-economy dynamics he has spent years warning about in social media. Harris describes AI companion products as competing for emotional attachment the way feeds once competed for attention, and references reporting on cases in which chatbots reportedly failed to redirect teenagers expressing suicidal thoughts toward human help. He also cites survey findings that a notable share of high-school students report romantic-style relationships with AI companions, framing this as a new warning sign layered on existing social-media concerns rather than a settled clinical finding. The conversation closes with Harris's call for coordinated regulation rather than reliance on individual willpower. TechKids Foundation includes this entry for its direct discussion of AI companions and adolescent wellbeing, an area this library is actively expanding to cover.
The Fitness Scientist: 'Late Night Screen Time Linked To Cancer!' — Kristen Holmes
In this January 2024 episode, WHOOP vice president of performance science Kristen Holmes joins host Steven Bartlett to discuss circadian rhythm and its effect on long-term health. Holmes argues that late-night screen exposure disrupts the body's natural light-dark cycle and asserts an association between that disruption and elevated cancer risk, alongside separate claims about alcohol and shift work. The conversation targets a general adult audience optimizing sleep and performance rather than pediatric or adolescent screen use specifically, but the mechanism Holmes describes — light exposure from late-night devices suppressing melatonin and shifting circadian timing — is the same one raised elsewhere in this library regarding teenagers' bedtime phone use. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a mainstream-reach discussion of screen-linked circadian disruption, while noting that Holmes's cancer-risk claim is her own framing and has not been independently assessed by TechKids Foundation.
The Mental Health Doctor: 'Sitting Is Increasing Your Anxiety!', Your Phone Is Destroying Your Brain, You May Have 'Popcorn Brain'! — Dr. Aditi Nerurkar
In this January 2024 episode, physician and stress-resilience researcher Dr. Aditi Nerurkar discusses what she calls 'popcorn brain': a state of scattered, jumpy attention she associates with constant phone checking and rapid task-switching. She links this pattern to rising anxiety, arguing that habitual multitasking and weak digital boundaries keep the nervous system in a near-constant low-grade stress response. Much of the conversation addresses adult knowledge workers, but Nerurkar frames the underlying mechanism — frequent digital interruption training the brain toward shorter attention spans — as relevant across age groups, foreshadowing her later, more youth-focused return appearance on the same show. She recommends concrete boundaries, such as batching notifications and scheduled offline blocks, over complete abstinence. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as an early, widely heard articulation of the 'popcorn brain' framing that recurs across this library's later entries.
The Male Psychology Doctor: 'There Is A Crisis Going On With Men!' — Dr. Alok Kanojia
In this March 2024 episode, psychiatrist and Healthy Gamer co-founder Dr. Alok Kanojia discusses what he describes as a mental-health crisis among boys and young men, tying it to video-game and pornography use he characterizes as compulsive, alongside broader claims about how phone use shapes attention and how social media influences dating and relationships. Kanojia frames these patterns as contributors to loneliness and disconnection in young men rather than a standalone cause, drawing on clinical observations from Healthy Gamer's coaching practice and his own work with compulsive gaming. The conversation is adult-facing but repeatedly traces these patterns back to habits Kanojia says begin in adolescence. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as Kanojia's first appearance on the show, distinct from his later, more explicitly 'brain rot'-framed return appearance also included in this library.
The Brain Rot Dr: We're ALL Getting More Narcissistic! — Dr. Alok Kanojia
In his second appearance on the show, six months after his first, Dr. Alok Kanojia returns to discuss a described loneliness epidemic, dopamine-related mechanisms he associates with compulsive feed-scrolling and gaming, and shifts in self-image and dating behavior he links to algorithm-driven apps. He frames rising narcissism and social comparison as patterns he observes in his own clinical and coaching practice rather than a peer-reviewed finding, and repeatedly connects adult compulsive-use patterns back to habits he says take root earlier, in adolescence. The episode covers ground beyond screens — purpose, healing, relationships — but its throughline is Kanojia's clinical view that algorithmic products are engineered around engagement rather than wellbeing. TechKids Foundation includes this entry for its extended, mainstream-reach treatment of compulsive digital use, distinct from Kanojia's earlier appearance on the same show six months prior.
How To Fix Your Focus & Stop Procrastinating: Johann Hari (E114)
In this hour-and-a-half YouTube interview, journalist and author Johann Hari lays out the argument of his book Stolen Focus for The Diary Of A CEO's business and self-improvement audience: that lost focus and chronic procrastination are less an individual willpower failure than a predictable response to environments built to fragment attention. He points to specific product design choices — infinite scroll, notification design, autoplay — that he associates with compulsive checking, and draws a line from adult knowledge-work distraction to what he says children experience with phones at school and at home. Hari argues for boundary-setting and workplace or regulatory change over relying solely on personal discipline. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as one of the highest-reach long-form interviews built around Stolen Focus's argument, and as an early instance of this show's recurring attention-economy theme, later revisited in several of its other episodes also cataloged in this library.
The Dopamine Expert: Doing This Once A Day Fixes Your Dopamine! Your Childhood Shapes Future Addictions! — Dr. Anna Lembke
In this January 2025 episode, Stanford addiction-medicine psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke discusses how she believes modern products — smartphones, sugar, and increasingly AI companions — create dependency-like reward loops, and connects adult patterns of compulsive use back to childhood experience. She extends her clinical framework to AI companion products, including companion toys marketed to children, arguing that recommendation systems and conversational AI are frequently built to hold attention rather than serve a user's wellbeing. She expresses particular concern for adolescents, describing their still-developing brains as more susceptible to compulsive engagement, and notes a pattern of some teenagers meeting more of their social needs through digital interaction than in person. TechKids Foundation cites this interview for its early discussion of AI-companion products alongside the more established social-media and smartphone concerns already documented in this library, ahead of Lembke's return appearance a year later.
Dopamine Expert: Short Form Videos Are Frying Your Brain! This Is A Dopamine Disaster! — Dr. Anna Lembke
Returning to the show a year after her first appearance, Dr. Anna Lembke sharpens her argument specifically around short-form video, describing a cycle in which rapid, high-frequency content consumption trains the brain to expect ever-larger rewards and can leave heavy users feeling worse rather than better afterward. She extends the discussion into parenting, describing a pattern she observes of parents using tablets and phones to soothe children's emotions, and raises concern about AI systems taking over roles she associates with parenting and emotional regulation. As in her earlier appearance, Lembke frames these as clinical patterns from her addiction-medicine practice rather than proven mechanisms, and offers practical resets rather than abstinence-only advice. TechKids Foundation includes this entry for its direct focus on short-form video and on technology's use as an emotional-soothing substitute for young children, both recurring concerns across this library.
The No.1 Brain Doctor: 'This Parenting Mistake Ruins Your Kids Brain!' — Dr. Daniel Amen
In this February 2025 episode, psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen of the Amen Clinics joins host Steven Bartlett for a wide-ranging discussion of brain health that includes segments on raising children's brains and on what he describes as social media's impact on the brain, alongside unrelated segments on alcohol and grief. Amen, author of Raising Mentally Strong Kids, discusses parenting choices he associates with healthier long-term brain development. The social-media segment characterizes heavy use as a modern stressor worth monitoring in children, consistent with the association-level concerns tracked elsewhere in this library, though the episode does not present controlled research on the point. TechKids Foundation includes this entry for its mainstream-audience discussion of parenting choices and brain development, while noting most of the episode's runtime covers adult health topics outside this library's core focus.
MINDED Podcast Interview: Tim Kendall on the 'Tech Epidemic'
In this February 2019 episode of the MINDED podcast, host Yuri Xavier interviews Tim Kendall shortly after he left Pinterest to become CEO of Moment, an app built to help people track and reduce phone use. Kendall discusses what the conversation frames as a broader 'tech epidemic' of compulsive phone checking, and explains his decision to leave senior roles at Facebook and Pinterest — where he had helped build the advertising and growth systems behind those platforms — to instead build tools aimed at healthier device habits. He describes heavy phone use as a widespread pattern worth addressing rather than a diagnosis, and outlines Moment's coaching approach as one practical option for families. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as an early, first-person account of Kendall's shift from platform-growth work toward screen-time harm reduction.
Why Beating Your Phone Addiction May Come at a Cost
In this Guardian feature on the 'digital wellness' industry, journalist Oscar Schwartz examines apps and programs marketed as fixes for smartphone overuse and profiles Tim Kendall, hired the previous year as CEO of Moment, a screen-time tracking app. Kendall tells Schwartz he sees digital wellness as a growth market comparable to meditation apps, and describes Moment's move toward paid, data-driven coaching meant to help users cut down on pickups and notifications. The piece sets Kendall's business alongside critics who argue that placing responsibility on individual users lets platform companies avoid addressing the engagement-driven design choices behind heavy use in the first place. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as a documented, quoted account of Kendall's own reasoning as a founder building consumer screen-time tools, set inside broader reporting that questions whether such tools solve the underlying problem.
KTLA 5 Morning News: Curb Your Tech Addiction With Moment CEO Tim Kendall
In this brief live segment on KTLA 5 Morning News, Tim Kendall, CEO of the screen-time app Moment, joins anchor Danielle Pendleton to discuss practical steps viewers can take to reduce compulsive phone checking. Introduced by his background at Facebook and Pinterest, Kendall walks through Moment's step-by-step coaching approach for building more intentional smartphone habits and points viewers to the app to track their own usage. The segment is a short, general-audience television treatment of screen-time habits rather than an in-depth policy or research discussion. TechKids Foundation includes it as a documented example of Kendall using a mainstream local-news platform to reach parents and other viewers directly with harm-reduction tips, distinct from his later, more pointed public criticism of the platforms he helped build.
Are Smartphones Actually That Bad For You? — Interview With Tim Kendall
On this episode of the podcast 'This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley,' hosts Sunil Rajaraman and Jascha Kaykas-Wolff interview Tim Kendall, then CEO of the screen-time app Moment, about his path from Facebook's early monetization team through the presidency of Pinterest and into building tools meant to counter habits he helped design. Kendall says he regrets aspects of his earlier work, describes Facebook as unusually effective at engineering habitual use, and argues that simply swapping one app for another — trading social media for news or browsing — does not resolve compulsive phone use on its own. He also discusses limiting his own young children to brief, passive screen time and calls Apple's Screen Time feature an insufficient response by itself. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as a detailed, first-person account of his reasoning as both a former platform executive and a parent.
The Social Dilemma
The Social Dilemma is a 2020 Netflix documentary directed by Jeff Orlowski that combines on-camera interviews with former technology executives and engineers with a dramatized storyline about a teenager's social media use. Tim Kendall appears on camera identified as Facebook's former director of monetization, former president of Pinterest, and CEO of Moment, describing how he and colleagues built advertising and engagement systems aimed at capturing as much attention as possible, and drawing the same comparison to tobacco-industry design techniques he later gave in Congressional testimony. The film cites outside data linking rising self-harm-related hospitalizations among teenage girls to the period of widespread smartphone adoption, presenting this as an association its interview subjects point to rather than proof of one cause. TechKids Foundation includes this entry specifically for Kendall's on-camera role, distinct from this library's existing entries for the same film under other voices' profiles.
Fmr. Pinterest President on Social Media Addiction: 'We've Got a Really Serious Health Issue on Our Hands'
In this Yahoo Finance interview, Tim Kendall — founder and CEO of the screen-time app Moment, and former director of monetization at Facebook and president of Pinterest — tells the network 'we've got a really serious health issue on our hands' when discussing widespread social media use. He describes his move from building engagement-driven products to building an app meant to help people understand and reduce their own phone use, framing the scale of habitual platform use as a public-health-style concern rather than an individual failing. The interview centers on his personal account as a former industry insider rather than on new data or research. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as a mainstream financial-media venue where Kendall summarized his concerns for a general audience shortly before his Congressional testimony the following week.
Written Testimony Before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce
In written testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce, for a hearing on social media's role in radicalization, Tim Kendall — Facebook's first director of monetization — testified that he and colleagues deliberately built engagement techniques into the platform, drawing an extended comparison to methods he associated with the tobacco industry's history of engineering cigarettes for potency. He said features such as status updates and photo tagging were, in his words, part of what he called groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis, and argued that Section 230's liability shield lets platforms avoid accountability for the incendiary content their algorithms amplify. He called for regulatory change while acknowledging his own past role. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as Kendall's most-cited public statement, presented here as his own claims rather than independently verified findings.
Tech Insiders Explain the Mental Health Impacts of Social Media
In this 60 Minutes Australia segment, Nine Network journalists interview Tim Kendall, Facebook's former director of monetization, alongside former Twitter engineering executive Alex Roetter, presenting them as Silicon Valley insiders willing to discuss concerns about the platforms they helped build. Kendall discusses his view that the business model behind major platforms is associated with strained mental health, particularly for younger users, and describes his decision to leave the industry to build Moment, a screen-time tracking app. The segment situates his account within Australian television coverage of the international debate over social media's design and regulation. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as a documented instance of Kendall making his case to an international broadcast audience shortly after his U.S. Congressional testimony.
Social Media Dangers — Tim Kendall (Full Episode)
In this nearly 50-minute video interview on the Startup to Storefront podcast, Tim Kendall discusses what he calls 'social obesity' — his term for excessive, low-value platform use — and contrasts it with what he sees as denial among both users and companies about the scale of the problem. He walks through his career from Facebook's early monetization team through Pinterest's presidency to founding Moment, describes how he judges healthy versus unhealthy platform use under a framework he calls 'social health,' and gives his views on whether creators can responsibly build audiences on platforms he considers designed for maximum engagement. The conversation also touches on the 2020 U.S. election and platform accountability for misinformation. TechKids Foundation includes this long-form interview as one of Kendall's more extensive public explanations of his personal framework for evaluating problematic platform use.
Former Facebook and Pinterest Exec Tim Kendall Traces 'Extractive Business Models' to VCs
In this TechCrunch interview, Tim Kendall argues that venture-capital funding structures are a root driver of what he calls 'extractive business models' in consumer technology, saying board-level pressure to grow user bases and monetize quickly pushed social platforms toward engagement-maximizing design. He tells the outlet that Facebook's ad-driven model, combined with increasingly capable technology, created a particularly potent mix, and calls the company 'absolutely negligent' in addressing harms such as misinformation. Rather than adversarial regulation alone, he proposes revisiting Section 230 and shifting future technology investment toward patient capital without the typical seven-to-ten-year VC exit horizon. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as Kendall's structural, business-model-focused account of why platforms became engagement-driven, delivered roughly a month after his Congressional testimony on the same subject.
Written Statement in Support of AB 2273, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act
Tim Kendall submitted a written statement, in his individual capacity, supporting California Assembly Bill 2273, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which the state Senate Judiciary Committee quoted at length in its official analysis of the bill. The analysis identifies him as the first director of monetization at Facebook who "created the advertising model that has driven the company's massive profitability and growth." Kendall writes that tech workers want to design products that prioritize wellbeing over profit, but that the profit motive will keep design working against users' — especially children's — collective wellbeing until political leaders change the incentives, pointing to the United Kingdom's own design code as a precedent he says has already prompted large companies to describe positive changes. TechKids Foundation includes this as a record of his advocacy entering state legislation, distinct from his federal testimony two years earlier.
How a Handful of Tech Companies Control Billions of Minds Every Day
In this widely circulated TED2017 talk, former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris argues that a small number of technology companies shape the attention and choices of billions of people through specific design patterns — autoplaying video, infinite scroll, social approval counts, and constantly renewing notifications. He frames these as deliberately engineered attention-capture techniques rather than neutral features, drawing an analogy to persuasion methods used by magicians and slot-machine designers. Harris calls for redesigning technology around people's own stated goals and wellbeing rather than engagement metrics, and for public pressure and design standards holding companies accountable for these choices. TechKids Foundation includes this talk as the most widely cited early mainstream articulation of the 'attention economy' framing that underlies much of the association-language design-ethics literature referenced elsewhere in this library.
Brain Hacking
In this CBS News 60 Minutes segment reported by Anderson Cooper, former Google product manager Tristan Harris describes how smartphone apps and features are engineered to maximize the time people spend on them, likening some design patterns — reward variability, endless feeds, removed stopping cues — to slot-machine mechanics. He argues Silicon Valley is 'programming people' rather than remaining neutral about technology, describing a competitive dynamic he calls a 'race to the bottom of the brain stem.' Other interviewees, including a behavioral-technology entrepreneur and a psychologist studying phone-related stress responses, describe related design choices they associate with anxious, compulsive-checking behavior. The segment does not present controlled research; it is framed as an insider's warning about industry design incentives. TechKids Foundation includes it as one of the earliest mainstream television treatments connecting specific design decisions to associated compulsive-use patterns.
Written Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet
In written and oral testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee's subcommittee on communications and technology, Tristan Harris — testifying as co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology alongside witnesses from Google, the AI Now Institute, and Wolfram Research — argued that 'persuasive technology,' design techniques drawn from behavioral psychology and studied at Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab, has given a small number of platforms outsized influence over attention, beliefs, and social comparison. He described a competitive dynamic among platforms to capture progressively deeper layers of psychological engagement, from notification-driven habit loops to social-validation feedback through likes and follower counts, and associated these design patterns with strained mental health among teenagers. Harris urged Congress to treat this as a systemic design-incentive problem rather than a series of isolated content-moderation failures. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as a primary policy-record document underlying this library's design-ethics citations.
Written Statement Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law
In written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law — on a panel that also included representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — Tristan Harris, President and Co-Founder of the Center for Humane Technology, argued that social media platforms' engagement-driven business model is associated with societal harms including political polarization, extremism, and declining trust in factual information, and referenced concerns linking heavy platform use to strained youth mental health. He cited the reach of the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, in which he appears, as evidence of public appetite for reform, and urged the subcommittee to judge platforms by whether their incentives strengthen or degrade collective attention and discourse, rather than by self-reported moderation statistics. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as a Congressional record of Harris's policy argument; because it references self-harm-linked concerns, it carries this library's standard safety note.
The Social Dilemma
The Social Dilemma pairs on-camera interviews with former social-media and search-engine insiders with a dramatized narrative about a fictional teenager's smartphone use. Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist, is one of the film's central interview subjects and serves as much of its narrative through-line, walking viewers through internal design meetings and behavioral-psychology techniques he says shaped how recommendation algorithms compete for attention. The film cites third-party data associating steep increases in self-harm-related hospitalizations and depressive symptoms among American teenage girls with the period of widespread smartphone and social-media adoption, presenting this as a documented association rather than proof of a single cause. It became one of the most widely viewed mainstream introductions to concerns about engagement-optimized design. TechKids Foundation includes it here specifically for Harris's central on-camera design-ethics role within the film, distinct from this library's existing entry cataloguing the film under director Jeff Orlowski-Yang's voice profile.
The A.I. Dilemma
In this presentation, Tristan Harris and Center for Humane Technology co-founder Aza Raskin argue that the rollout of generative AI is repeating a pattern they trace back to social media's own history: powerful new capabilities deployed under competitive pressure faster than institutions, norms, or safeguards can adapt. Drawing an explicit parallel to the engagement-driven design harms they associate with earlier social platforms, the talk warns that AI systems built for engagement, persuasion, or anthropomorphic attachment could compound existing concerns about attention, misinformation, and children's development unless deployed with more deliberate safeguards. The presentation is a synthesis argument aimed at technologists and policymakers rather than a new peer-reviewed study. TechKids Foundation includes it as Harris's central framework connecting his earlier social-media design critique to AI-era concerns falling under this library's ai-confusion category.
Why AI Is Our Ultimate Test and Greatest Invitation
In this TED2025 talk, Tristan Harris argues that how societies choose to deploy artificial intelligence is a choice rather than an inevitability, drawing an explicit comparison to what he characterizes as social media's poorly governed rollout. He frames rapid, competitively driven AI deployment as carrying foreseeable risks — including for young people's information environments and development — that went largely unaddressed in the social-media era until harms were already widespread, and calls for pairing AI's growing capability with commensurate investment in safeguards, oversight, and public deliberation. The talk is an argument-driven presentation rather than a data-driven study. TechKids Foundation includes it as Harris's most recent widely distributed synthesis of his design-ethics critique applied to AI, relevant to this library's ai-confusion and policy categories.
Joe Rogan Experience #2076 — Tristan Harris & Aza Raskin
In this roughly two-and-a-half-hour conversation, Tristan Harris and Center for Humane Technology co-founder Aza Raskin walk host Joe Rogan through the argument they had already published as 'The A.I. Dilemma,' extending their earlier social-media design critique to generative AI. They discuss competitive pressure among AI developers to ship increasingly capable systems, the difficulty of predicting downstream societal effects, and parallels they draw to engagement-optimized social platforms' associated effects on attention and mental health. The long-form, unstructured podcast format allows more extended discussion than typical broadcast interviews, touching on AI's possible effects on children's development and information environments. TechKids Foundation includes this episode as a widely heard long-form articulation of Harris's AI-risk argument reaching an audience largely outside traditional policy and technology-press circles.
Tristan Harris — The Dangers of Unregulated AI on Humanity & the Workforce
In this Daily Show interview, Tristan Harris discusses what he characterizes as the risks of deploying artificial intelligence without adequate regulation, addressing both potential effects on the workforce and broader societal and developmental concerns, including for young people. Speaking in a comedic current-affairs format aimed at a broad general audience rather than a policy or technology-industry one, Harris restates and simplifies arguments from his and the Center for Humane Technology's longer-form work, drawing comparisons between AI's current trajectory and what he describes as social media's underregulated rollout. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as evidence of how Harris's AI-risk argument has moved into mainstream entertainment programming reaching audiences well beyond specialist technology and policy media.
Social Media and Political Polarization in America
This 60 Minutes segment examines the role social-media platforms and their recommendation algorithms play in political polarization in the United States, with Tristan Harris among the experts interviewed about how engagement-optimized feeds are associated with amplifying divisive and emotionally charged content. Harris discusses design incentives that reward outrage and tribal signaling with greater distribution, situating polarization within his broader argument that platforms' business model — rather than any single piece of content or individual bad actor — is the primary driver of these associated harms. The segment is framed as broadcast journalism rather than original research. TechKids Foundation includes it as a mainstream-broadcast application of Harris's design-incentive argument to democratic and civic harms, broadening this library's policy-relevant coverage of his work beyond individual mental-health framing.
Escaping an Anti-Human Future: A Conversation with Tristan Harris
In this long-form conversation on Sam Harris's Making Sense podcast, Tristan Harris discusses what he describes as the compounding societal effects of engagement-driven technology and fast-moving AI deployment, framing both as expressions of a single underlying pattern in which institutions and human attention are outpaced by optimized, competitively deployed technology. The conversation extends arguments from Harris's earlier social-media design critique and his 'AI Dilemma' framework, touching on questions about children's cognitive and social development, information environments, and what safeguards he believes are missing from current AI governance. It is a long-form, argument-driven discussion rather than a presentation of new data. TechKids Foundation includes it as Harris's most recent extended long-form articulation of his combined social-media-and-AI critique available to this library at time of review.
The Real Impact of AI: Tristan Harris & Aza Raskin on the Future of Artificial Intelligence
On this podcast hosted by California Governor Gavin Newsom, Tristan Harris and Center for Humane Technology co-founder Aza Raskin discuss what they characterize as the real-world impact of artificial intelligence, addressing questions a sitting state governor's office would face on AI policy, including implications for schools, the workforce, and children's development. The conversation extends the Center for Humane Technology's established design-incentive critique to AI-specific policy questions at the state level, distinguishing it from Harris's federal congressional testimony by focusing on state-level regulatory and educational levers. It is a discussion-format interview rather than a data-driven report. TechKids Foundation includes it as evidence of Harris's AI-risk argument reaching state-level policymaking audiences beyond the federal testimony already documented in this library.
Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time
Reset Your Child's Brain is child psychiatrist Victoria Dunckley's 2015 parenting book, built around what she calls Electronic Screen Syndrome: a pattern of irritability, meltdowns, poor focus, and disrupted sleep she associates with heavy use of interactive screens in some children. She proposes a four-week 'electronic fast' — removing all interactive screens for several weeks — as a way for parents to observe whether a child's mood and behavior shift once screens are removed, before pursuing other evaluation. The book draws on her clinical caseload rather than a formal research study, and frames screen reduction as one tool among several for parents dealing with dysregulated behavior, not a stand-alone diagnosis or a replacement for professional care. TechKids Foundation includes it as the most widely read statement of Dunckley's clinical framework, translated into at least a dozen languages since publication.
Screentime Is Making Kids Moody, Crazy, and Lazy
In this August 2015 post on her Psychology Today blog 'Mental Wealth,' child psychiatrist Victoria Dunckley argues that many children referred to her practice with mood swings, defiance, or inattention are, in her clinical view, reacting to heavy interactive screen use rather than to a standalone psychiatric disorder. She lists several possible physiological pathways she associates with this pattern — including disrupted melatonin and sleep timing, and a stimulated nervous-system state she likens to a stress response — and recommends a multi-week 'electronics fast' so parents can observe whether symptoms ease once screens are removed. She frames the recommendation as a trial for concerned families, not a substitute for a full clinical evaluation. TechKids Foundation includes this post as one of Dunckley's most widely shared statements of her Electronic Screen Syndrome framework, aimed at a general parent readership.
Electronics and Sleep Disturbance in Children: Wired and Tired
In this 2010 article published on her own site, Victoria Dunckley focuses specifically on sleep, describing evening electronics use as a pattern she associates with children being simultaneously overtired and wired — falling asleep late, sleeping restlessly, or waking unrefreshed. She points to blue-toned screen light suppressing melatonin release and to what she describes as a lingering stress-hormone response after screen sessions as two possible contributors, alongside a claim about non-thermal radiofrequency exposure that TechKids Foundation does not independently verify. Her practical recommendation is a trial period of removing screens, particularly in the hours before bed, to see whether a child's sleep and next-day mood change. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as an early, frequently cited statement of the sleep-specific strand of her broader screen-time argument, aimed at parents rather than clinicians.
Case: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Precipitated by Wii Video Game
Published on her own site in November 2010, this post walks through a single case from Victoria Dunckley's practice: a six-year-old boy who developed repetitive, hard-to-control touching behaviors that his mother linked to his Wii console use, given a family history of tics and anxiety. Dunckley describes the compulsive behavior easing soon after the family removed the Wii, and reports that a modest, monitored reintroduction of the console months later did not bring the behavior back. She frames the case as an example of screen stimulation potentially triggering symptoms in a child who may already be predisposed to them, rather than as proof that gaming generally leads to obsessive-compulsive disorder. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a documented single-patient case description illustrating how Dunckley applies her screen-elimination approach in practice, not as a controlled study.
#1 Cause of Environmentally-Related ADHD and ADHD-Like Symptoms
In this June 2010 post, Victoria Dunckley argues that electronic overstimulation is, in her clinical experience, the leading environmental factor behind attention and impulse-control problems that present like ADHD in the children she treats. She lists several possible pathways she associates with this pattern, including altered sleep-wake timing, disrupted stress-hormone regulation, and reduced blood flow to attention-related brain regions, and cites Kaiser Family Foundation survey data on how many hours of daily media use children reported at the time. Her recommendation is that parents try removing video games and limiting television before pursuing a full ADHD evaluation, to see whether attention and behavior change. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as an early, direct statement of Dunckley's argument that some ADHD-like presentations may be secondary to screen exposure rather than a standalone attention disorder — a contested clinical claim she does not present as settled science.
Is the Tech Industry the New Big Tobacco?
In this October 2016 opinion piece, Victoria Dunckley compares tech-industry marketing and lobbying tactics to the historical playbook of tobacco companies, arguing that some industry-funded research creates public doubt about screen time's downsides in the same way tobacco-funded research once did about smoking. She points to the marketing of 'educational' apps and devices to very young children and to school technology mandates as examples of normalized exposure she believes outpaces the evidence for benefit, and argues that children have little practical ability to opt out of the technology built into their schools and social lives. The piece is explicitly framed as a policy and industry critique rather than a clinical claim about any individual child. TechKids Foundation includes it as Dunckley's clearest public statement connecting her clinical concerns about screen exposure to industry accountability and education-policy debates, an argument echoed by later industry-accountability voices in this library.
The Overstimulated Child: Recognizing and Reversing Electronic Screen Syndrome in Children and Teens
This recorded webinar presents Victoria Dunckley's Electronic Screen Syndrome framework in a longer instructional format, built from a live seminar she gave in 2018 and later offered to parents through Camp Unplugged, a screen-detox program for children. She walks through the symptom pattern she associates with overstimulation from interactive screens — irritability, meltdowns, attention problems, and disrupted sleep — and explains her multi-week elimination protocol step by step, including how she advises parents to prepare a child for a screen-free stretch and what to watch for once devices come back. The session is aimed at parents managing a child's return from a screen-detox camp rather than at a general audience. TechKids Foundation includes it as a documented example of Dunckley delivering her clinical framework directly to parents in a structured, longer-form teaching setting.
What Are the Benefits to a Screen Detox? with Dr. Victoria Dunckley
In episode 193 of the ScreenStrong Families podcast, host organization ScreenStrong interviews Victoria Dunckley about what she describes as the practical benefits parents can expect from a supervised screen detox, framed around her Electronic Screen Syndrome concept. The show notes describe a discussion of sleep, mood, and behavior changes some families report after removing screens, along with Dunckley's practical guidance for parents on how to plan and sustain a detox period. The episode promotes ScreenStrong's own '30-Day Challenge' screen-detox program and community forum as a next step for listeners. TechKids Foundation includes this podcast appearance as a documented instance of Dunckley presenting her clinical framework in partnership with ScreenStrong, an advocacy organization focused on delaying children's smartphone and social-media access, rather than as an independent clinical outcome study.
Computer, Video Games and Psychosis: Cause for Concern
In this February 2011 post, Victoria Dunckley describes five patients aged 15 to 22 in her own caseload, all with psychotic-type symptoms such as hallucinations or paranoia, who she says all used screens six or more hours daily. She associates this with sleep loss, overstimulation, and elevated activity in dopamine-related reward circuits, and reports that symptoms eased in most of these patients after they stopped or sharply reduced screen use, without added psychiatric medication in most cases; the one patient who did not reduce use continued to have symptoms. She proposes a multi-week screen removal period as a diagnostic step clinicians could consider for young patients with new, unexplained psychotic symptoms. TechKids Foundation includes this small case series as a documented clinical claim from Dunckley's practice, distinct from her broader mood-and-attention framework and not published in a peer-reviewed journal or replicated in controlled research.
Negative Effects Of Screen Time On Children: Expert Tips To Break Gadget Addiction
In this Q&A interview, ParentCircle's Meghna Singhal talks with Victoria Dunckley about the behavior and mood patterns she associates with heavy screen use in children, and about the four-week screen-fast approach from her book Reset Your Child's Brain. Dunckley repeats her description of screens putting some children into what she calls a 'wired and tired' state, driven by stress-response activation and blue light's effect on melatonin, and again compares technology-industry marketing tactics to the tobacco industry's historical playbook. She tells the outlet's largely South Asian parent readership that reducing total screen time matters more than policing which apps or programs a child uses, and that partial limits are, in her clinical opinion, less effective than a full temporary break. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as a documented example of Dunckley's framework reaching an international parenting audience outside the United States.
Social Media and Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory
In 2023, then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a federal advisory reviewing the evidence on social media and youth mental health. It describes potential benefits — peer support and identity affirmation, especially for marginalized youth — alongside a growing body of research associating heavier social media use with elevated risk of depression, anxiety, poor sleep, body dissatisfaction, and cyberbullying-related distress, particularly among adolescent girls. The advisory cites a longitudinal study finding that more than three hours of daily use was linked to double the risk of poor mental health outcomes, and notes platform features such as autoplay and infinite scroll that may encourage excessive, habit-driven use. Rather than declaring social media unsafe, it calls the evidence base incomplete and recommends specific actions for policymakers, technology companies, parents, and researchers. TechKids Foundation cites this as the highest-profile U.S. federal statement associating adolescent social media use with mental health risk.
Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World
Together is a 2020 book by then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy arguing that loneliness functions as a public health concern comparable in scale to conditions like obesity or smoking, contributing to outcomes ranging from anxiety and depression to substance use and violence. Drawing on research and interviews conducted across the country, Murthy describes how declining in-person social time — a shift he associates partly with technology's dual capacity to both connect and displace face-to-face contact — has coincided with rising isolation among Americans of all ages, including children navigating school and friendships. The book does not focus narrowly on screens, but treats technology's role in this connection-versus-isolation tension as one strand of a broader argument, closing with proposed remedies centered on rebuilding communities, family rituals, and workplace culture. TechKids Foundation includes it as Murthy's fullest public treatment of the tradeoffs technology poses for young people's social connection.
Statement Before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate — Protecting Youth Mental Health: Part I, An Advisory and Call to Action
In this February 2022 statement to the Senate Finance Committee, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy testified that U.S. youth mental health had reached crisis levels before the COVID-19 pandemic and worsened further during it. He cited a rise in persistent sadness and hopelessness reported by high school students through the 2010s and a 28% increase in youth psychiatric emergency-department visits for depression, anxiety, and behavioral challenges between 2011 and 2015. Among several named drivers — pervasive mental-health stigma, unresolved societal stressors, and pandemic disruption — Murthy identified 'the recent ubiquity of technology platforms, especially social media platforms,' as having exacerbated feelings of isolation for some youth, reducing in-person activity time and reinforcing bullying and exclusion, while also acknowledging technology's benefits. He called for expanded mental health workforce capacity, insurance parity enforcement, and stronger prevention infrastructure. TechKids Foundation cites this as an early instance of the Surgeon General naming social media as one contributor to the youth mental health crisis.
Statement Before the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, United States Senate
In this written statement to the Senate HELP Committee, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy testified that up to 95% of youth ages 13–17 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use it almost constantly, and that roughly 40% of children ages 8–12 use social media despite platforms' own age-13 minimums. He described insufficient evidence to call social media 'sufficiently safe' for children and pointed to research associating heavier use with depression and anxiety symptoms, alongside his separately released advisory on loneliness, which found childhood social isolation associated with elevated depression and anxiety risk lasting up to nine years. Murthy also described his own experience of childhood bullying and stigma to argue that shame prevents young people from seeking mental health support. TechKids Foundation cites this testimony as Murthy's direct account, under oath before Congress, of the evidence behind his social media and loneliness advisories.
Murthy Says Social Media Hurting Kids, Time for Government, Tech Firms to Help
Speaking at the October 2023 launch of Harvard Graduate School of Education's Center for Digital Thriving, in a conversation hosted by the Askwith Education Forum, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy described social media's effect on adolescent well-being as 'a pivotal issue in public health' and said 'we have fallen short when it comes to taking care of kids with regard to social media and safeguarding them against harms.' He argued responsibility should not fall on parents alone, drawing a comparison to auto-safety regulation, and called for enforceable design standards alongside individual measures such as tech-free family time, digital literacy education, and encouraging teens to self-regulate use and block harmful content. TechKids Foundation cites this appearance as a direct record of Murthy connecting his federal advisory to an academic initiative aimed at translating the concern into practical school and family guidance.
Surgeon General: Why I'm Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms
In this June 2024 New York Times opinion piece, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy argued that Congress should require a surgeon general's warning label on social media platforms, modeled on tobacco packaging warnings, saying the labels would remind parents and adolescents that social media 'has not been proved safe.' The essay extends his 2023 federal advisory into a specific legislative request, pairing the label proposal with calls for stronger data-privacy protections for minors, restrictions on design features he associates with excessive use, and independent researcher access to platform data. Murthy frames the request as filling a gap left by the absence of comprehensive federal legislation, drawing a comparison to earlier public health interventions on tobacco and auto safety. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as Murthy's most concrete single policy proposal to date and a direct escalation of his advisory's underlying concerns.
Drew Barrymore Speaks to U.S. Surgeon General about Child Safety on Social Media
In this October 2024 television appearance, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy discussed social media's association with youth mental health risk with host Drew Barrymore, reiterating his federal advisory's finding that adolescents spending three or more hours a day on social media face roughly double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms. He described social media platforms as products 'designed by the best product engineers in the world with cutting-edge neuroscience' to maximize engagement, arguing this makes them especially risky for still-developing minds, and again compared the case for enforceable safety standards to vehicle safety regulation rather than placing the full burden on individual parents. Barrymore discussed her own household's device-limiting practices during the conversation. TechKids Foundation includes this segment as a mainstream daytime-television record of Murthy translating his federal advisory into parent-facing guidance and a repeated call for industry accountability.
The U.S. Surgeon General Fears Social Media Is Harming the 'Well-Being of Our Children'
In this May 2023 interview published days after his federal advisory, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told TIME's Alice Park that 'there isn't enough data to say that social media platforms are safe for kids, and there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harms.' He described hearing directly from students that social media had worsened their self-image and friendships and made it hard for them to disengage, and argued technology companies should be required to meet independent safety standards for products used by children — similar to standards in other industries — rather than setting their own internal guidelines. He noted that roughly 40% of children ages 8–12 use social media despite a common industry minimum age of 13. TechKids Foundation cites this interview as a direct, first-person account of the reasoning behind Murthy's advisory.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy: Crises and Common Ground
In this October 2024 episode of Yale School of Management's Health & Veritas podcast, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy discussed several of his public health initiatives with hosts Howard Forman and Harlan Krumholz, including his advisories on parental stress, youth mental health, and social media. Citing a finding that 48% of parents report feeling significantly stressed most days, he connected parental strain to the broader environment children are raised in, and recommended delaying children's social media access until after middle school and establishing tech-free zones for sleep and family time. He also discussed how algorithm-driven platforms can amplify polarization, and described grassroots parent movements such as Wait Until 8th as examples of collective, rather than purely individual, responses to reshaping children's relationship with technology. TechKids Foundation cites this conversation as Murthy connecting his youth-mental-health advisory to concrete, parent-organized responses.
Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy: 'Staying Human' Requires Connection and Time Away from Tech
This May 2026 WBUR profile covers 'Staying Human,' a newsletter and forthcoming podcast launched by former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy as part of a broader project addressing loneliness. The piece reports that Murthy warns digital platforms are 'replacing people wholesale' for some users, and describes AI companion chatbots as a newer concern he associates with the risk of substituting for authentic relationships, alongside social media comparison and excessive screen time more broadly. He recommends remedies including tech-free zones, prioritizing in-person relationships, and community service, arguing that genuine human connection carries health benefits — including lower association with anxiety, depression, and cardiovascular risk — that digital substitutes do not replicate. TechKids Foundation cites this piece as Murthy's most recent public extension of his social media and loneliness advocacy into the newer concern of AI companion technology.
The Devastating Sextortion of Mac
Published on SmackTalk's own website, this page is the origin account behind the charity Wayne Holdsworth founded after his son's death. It describes how, in July 2022, Mac, then 16, exchanged intimate images online with someone posing as a young woman on Instagram, was then contacted by a man demanding payment, and paid an initial $500 before further demands followed; Wayne reported the matter to Victoria Police. The page describes the fallout after images circulated among Mac's contacts and states that Mac died by suicide in October 2023, an outcome the family associates with the sextortion he experienced. TechKids Foundation includes this as SmackTalk's own account of the case that founded the charity's advocacy, described here in association language rather than as a claim that sextortion alone explains any death by suicide.
Our Impact
SmackTalk's 'Our Impact' page is the charity's own running account of its reach since Wayne Holdsworth launched it in April 2024. As of this page's most recent snapshot, it reports having presented to 82 schools, sports clubs, and workplaces, reaching more than 10,000 people, with 35 further talks scheduled. The page also describes one specific outcome: a teenager who contacted Holdsworth in crisis on the afternoon of a school presentation, whom Holdsworth connected with Lifeline and who stayed in touch afterward. TechKids Foundation includes this page as the organization's own self-reported reach and program outcomes rather than an independently audited evaluation, and notes it as a documented instance of a warning-signs presentation being followed by a young person disclosing suicidal thoughts and being connected to crisis support.
Let's Talk about Suicide Prevention with Wayne Holdsworth from SmackTalk
In this 32-minute episode of the Australian parenting podcast Your Parent Coach, host Mel White interviews Wayne Holdsworth, founder of the charity SmackTalk, about turning grief into advocacy after his son Mac's death by suicide following an online sextortion scam. Holdsworth discusses what he describes as effective listening during a young person's crisis, the rising rate of sextortion targeting minors and its association with youth mental-health strain, and obstacles he says he has encountered spreading suicide-prevention education in schools. He also previews SmackTalk's Unplug24 campaign, a 24-hour break from social media held on October 24, 2025, meant to raise funds and awareness for the charity's programs. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as a documented, dated public account of Holdsworth's advocacy message aimed at parents.
Dad of Sextortion Victim Backs New Australian Social Media Laws
In this first-person feature for the Australian magazine that's life!, as told to senior writer Lisa Brookman, Wayne Holdsworth recounts his son Mac's sextortion scam on Instagram in 2022, Mac's death by suicide in October 2023, and his own decision to found the charity SmackTalk. Holdsworth says he has spoken to more than 9,000 people through school and community presentations and that SmackTalk's Unplug24 campaign drew more than 130,000 participants to a 24-hour break from social media. The piece situates his advocacy against Australia's newly passed law restricting social media access for children under 16, which Holdsworth welcomes as a protective step he believes could have changed his son's outcome. TechKids Foundation includes this profile as a detailed, dated first-person account of a bereaved parent's advocacy trajectory.
Australian Father of Teen Sextortion Victim Backs Banning Young Children From Social Media
In this Associated Press wire story, reporter Rod McGuirk profiles Wayne Holdsworth days after Australia's House of Representatives voted to ban children under 16 from social media. Holdsworth tells McGuirk that his son Mac died by suicide after being sexually extorted online, and that he has since spoken at roughly 20 schools to about 3,000 students aged 12 to 17 about the risks. He says most students he addresses support the proposed ban and that some have separately disclosed being targeted by sextortion themselves, including one who had already paid a blackmailer thousands of dollars. The story also outlines objections raised by critics, including digital-rights advocates and at least one lawmaker, who argued the bill was rushed and could isolate vulnerable children. TechKids Foundation includes this as international wire coverage naming Holdsworth as a public advocate for the law.
Social Media Ban 'Will Work': Father and Advocate Wayne Holdsworth
In this 13-minute segment on 774 ABC Melbourne's Melbourne Breakfast program, hosts Sharnelle Vella and Bob Murphy interview Wayne Holdsworth roughly two months before Australia's under-16 social media age restrictions took effect. Holdsworth, whose son Mac died by suicide after an online sextortion scam, tells the hosts he believes the incoming law will work and calls it "a magnificent start," while acknowledging it will not solve the problem immediately. He also tells the hosts that, based on his experience presenting to schools, he believes roughly 100 Australian children a night are targeted by sextortion attempts. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as a dated, on-record account of a bereaved-parent advocate's view of the law shortly before it started, and notes Holdsworth's nightly-incidence figure as his own claim rather than an independently sourced statistic.
Social Media Ban for Children Under 16 Starts in Australia
This Associated Press wire story, carried by NPR on the day Australia's under-16 social media ban took effect, reports on a Sydney gathering marking the law's start. It quotes Wayne Holdsworth telling the crowd that bereaved parents' children "haven't died in vain," given the policy change, and situates his remarks alongside a 12-year-old campaigner's comments and a mother's concerns about the ban's effect on her children's careers in entertainment. The story notes the ban covers ten major platforms, carries fines of up to roughly A$49.5 million for non-compliance, and that Australia's eSafety Commissioner planned to report on early enforcement before year's end. TechKids Foundation includes this as wire coverage marking Holdsworth's public presence at the law's implementation — a policy outcome his advocacy is publicly associated with.
Wayne Holdsworth's Mission for Suicide Prevention
In this interview posted to YouTube by the program Sportzfan Radio in February 2024, shortly after he founded the charity SmackTalk, Wayne Holdsworth discusses the death of his son Mac by suicide and lays out what he describes as a three-part approach to suicide prevention centered on awareness, early intervention, and improved support systems. Holdsworth explains his motivation for starting SmackTalk and his early efforts to bring warning-signs education into schools and community groups. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as an early, dated public statement of Holdsworth's advocacy framework, made in the first weeks after SmackTalk's founding and before the national debate over Australia's under-16 social media law had fully taken shape.
Father Tells of Unimaginable Loss After a 30-Minute Online Conversation Led a Teen to Take His Own Life in Sextortion Tragedy
In this 7NEWS.com.au feature, reporter Malin Hagglund reconstructs the sextortion scam that targeted 16-year-old Mac Holdsworth in 2022 and its aftermath, drawing on an interview with his father, Wayne. The piece describes how a man posing online as a young woman obtained an intimate image from Mac, then threatened to distribute it unless paid, and how Wayne involved Victoria Police after his son disclosed what was happening. It reports that police identified a suspect within three days via the bank account used, but that the image had already been shared with Mac's contacts by then. The article accompanies a 7NEWS Spectrum podcast episode on the case. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as investigative reporting, independent of SmackTalk, documenting the sextortion case underlying Holdsworth's advocacy, describing events factually rather than attributing Mac's later death to any single cause.
Wayne Holdsworth Joins Gerard Whateley to Discuss Unplug24
Australian sports broadcaster Gerard Whateley interviewed Wayne Holdsworth on his eponymous podcast on October 21, 2025, about the origin of SmackTalk's Unplug24 campaign, a 24-hour break from social media the charity organizes to raise awareness of sextortion and suicide risk. According to SmackTalk's own description of the episode, Holdsworth explains how his son Mac's death prompted the campaign and how participation has grown since its first run. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as a dated example of Holdsworth's advocacy reaching a general-interest sports and current-affairs audience outside specialist youth-safety or parenting media, broadening the audience for his warning-signs message beyond outlets that cover online safety directly.
Testimony in Support of the Vermont Kids Code (S.289)
In testimony to Vermont's Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs, Design It For Us co-chair Zamaan Qureshi urged lawmakers to pass the Vermont Kids Code, a design-code bill requiring platforms to set their strictest privacy defaults for minors. Then a college senior, Qureshi argued that opaque recommendation algorithms and default settings are associated with harm to young users, and pre-emptively countered anticipated industry objections on free speech, parental rights, and age verification. He cited a Washington Post report on low adoption of Instagram's parental-supervision setting and a public poll on support for platform regulation to argue that voluntary industry safeguards were reaching only a small share of teen users. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as a documented example of youth-led advocacy for state design-code legislation, offered in Qureshi's capacity as a coalition leader rather than as clinical or diagnostic evidence.
Testimony in Support of the Vermont Kids Code (S.69)
Returning to Vermont's legislature a year later, Zamaan Qureshi testified before the Senate Committee on Institutions in support of SB 69, a renewed version of the Vermont Kids Code. Speaking as co-chair of what he said was by then a 200-plus-member youth coalition, he described platform features — endless scroll, autoplay, opaque recommendation algorithms — that he associated with compulsive use among his generation, and said some peers had developed depression, anxiety, or eating disorders, or, in the gravest cases, died by suicide, following experiences he linked to social media use. He pointed to the U.S. Surgeon General's social media advisory and to internal Meta materials surfaced by whistleblower Frances Haugen as evidence that platforms were aware of these associations. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as documented youth-advocate framing of design-code legislation.
Why Meta's FTC Trial Matters For Keeping Young People Safe Online
In this bylined analysis for Tech Policy Press, Zamaan Qureshi argues that Meta's FTC monopoly trial is a rare opening to force accountability for design choices he associates with harm to teenage users. He writes that roughly six in ten U.S. teens use Instagram, cites disclosures from three Meta whistleblowers, and notes that more than 40 state attorneys general have sued Meta over features they allege are associated with compulsive use among minors. He references an internal 2019 Meta study he says found teens reporting they could not disengage from Instagram even when they wanted to, and argues that a forced separation of Instagram from Meta could restore competitive pressure toward safer product design. TechKids Foundation includes this piece as an example of a youth advocate translating an antitrust proceeding into child-safety terms; the argument and figures are Qureshi's own, not an independent TechKids finding.
Hinsdale Native's Youth Online Safety Coalition Works With Parents, Others to Push for Accountability From Social Media Giants
This Chicago Tribune feature profiles Zamaan Qureshi, a Hinsdale, Illinois native and Design It For Us co-chair, alongside a mother who spoke at a New York protest about her daughter's 2021 death, which she has said followed contact made through Snapchat. The piece documents Qureshi's account of organizing youth advocacy since 2023, his description of platform recommendation systems as a design factor he says should not have facilitated that contact, and a coalition member's account of body-image and diet-related content she associated with her own social media feeds. It also notes a bipartisan Illinois legislative package addressing minors' screen time and online safety. TechKids Foundation includes this profile as documented public advocacy connected to a family's loss; per TechKids editorial policy this entry carries the mandatory 988 safety note, and this abstract deliberately omits narrative detail about the death itself, describing only the documented public advocacy context.
Scary Feeds: The Reality of Teen Accounts
Accountable Tech and the youth coalition Design It For Us, which Zamaan Qureshi co-leads, published this joint report after five coalition members trial-tested new Instagram Teen Accounts over a two-week period in spring 2025. The report found that all five test accounts were algorithmically recommended content the researchers classified as sensitive or sexual despite Meta's default protections being enabled, that four of five accounts were recommended body-image or disordered-eating-adjacent content, and that four of five participants described their experience as distressing; only one of five accounts received recommended educational content. The report frames these findings as evidence that Instagram Teen Accounts' default settings did not fully deliver the protections Meta had publicly promised. TechKids Foundation includes this org report as youth-coalition-conducted testing relevant to platform design defaults, not as a peer-reviewed or clinical study; no individual author is credited on the report, which is jointly published by the two organizations.
Policy Voices: Zamaan Qureshi
In this Q&A for Children and Screens' recurring 'Policy Voices' newsletter feature, Zamaan Qureshi describes how watching a 2020 documentary about the Cambridge Analytica scandal drew him into tech policy work, and how his focus shifted toward youth online-safety advocacy as he says he watched peers develop anxiety, depression, and body-image concerns they associated with content repeatedly served to them on social media. He credits Frances Haugen's 2021 Facebook disclosures with catalyzing the current wave of kids' online-safety legislation, and discusses federal proposals including the Kids Online Safety Act, state Age-Appropriate Design Codes, and emerging AI-safety bills as the fronts he expects to dominate the coming year. He also predicts continued industry legal and lobbying resistance to enforcement. TechKids Foundation includes this interview as a first-person account of a youth advocate's stated policy priorities and reasoning, not as independent research.
Fox32 Chicago Interview on Illinois AI and Social Media Safety Bills
In a televised interview with Fox32 Chicago, described in his own social media post, Zamaan Qureshi discussed two pending Illinois bills Design It For Us was supporting: an AI-transparency and child-safety measure requiring third-party audits of large AI developers, and Governor JB Pritzker–backed legislation on children's social-media product design that he said could be strengthened further. He framed both bills around a 'safety and privacy by design' standard, arguing platforms and AI developers should bear responsibility for building products safe for young people by default rather than relying on after-the-fact parental controls. TechKids Foundation includes this appearance as a documented example of a youth advocate using broadcast media to build public support for pending state legislation; the exact air date is approximate, based on the timing of Qureshi's own account, since no separate broadcast archive link was located.
Testimony Before the Illinois Senate Executive Subcommittee on AI and Social Media
Testifying before the Illinois Senate Executive Subcommittee on AI and Social Media as Design It For Us's director of campaigns and policy, Zamaan Qureshi cited his coalition's own testing, saying recommendation systems served sexual content to all five Instagram Teen Accounts it trial-tested, and that a separate coalition survey found more than a third of surveyed 13-to-15-year-olds experienced unwanted messages or unsafe content weekly. He referenced jury verdicts in California and New Mexico that found Meta and YouTube liable for design failures affecting young users — trials in which he says he testified, including as the state's final witness in the New Mexico case — and cited company language he said was disclosed in that litigation. He urged the subcommittee to advance Illinois design-code and AI-transparency legislation. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as documented advocacy citing litigation-disclosed material; the litigation-sourced figures are Qureshi's own characterization and have not been independently verified by TechKids.
Statement on Illinois Passing the Strongest AI Safety Law in the Country (SB 315)
After the Illinois General Assembly passed SB 315, described by supporters as the country's strongest state-level AI safety law, Design It For Us released a statement from director of campaigns and policy Zamaan Qureshi praising requirements that large AI developers publish safety plans, develop catastrophic-risk mitigation measures, report serious incidents to state officials, and submit to independent third-party audits rather than self-assessment. Qureshi framed the law as building on similar measures in California and New York and credited sustained advocacy — including his coalition's earlier Illinois legislative testimony, a member's published op-ed, and his own broadcast interview — with helping the bill pass. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a legislative outcome Design It For Us directly credits to Qureshi's advocacy; the framing and figures reflect the organization's own statement rather than independent TechKids verification.
Statement on Illinois Passing the Children's Online Social Media Safety Act (HB 5511)
Design It For Us released a statement from Zamaan Qureshi after the Illinois General Assembly unanimously passed HB 5511, the Children's Online Social Media Safety Act, which requires social media platforms to prioritize young users' wellbeing over engagement and sets default protections for minors paired with privacy-preserving age assurance. Qureshi credited years of coalition testimony in the state with the bill's passage, framed it as building on similar laws in California, New York, and Vermont, and described industry efforts to seek platform-specific carve-outs and narrow the bill's scope during the legislative process. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a policy outcome Design It For Us directly credits to its advocacy, including Qureshi's own prior testimony (work #7); the framing and figures reflect the organization's own statement rather than independent TechKids verification.
Testimony as Final Witness in New Mexico v. Meta
In a first-person account posted to LinkedIn, Zamaan Qureshi said he testified as the state's final witness in the trial of New Mexico v. Meta, a lawsuit alleging Meta failed to design its products safely for young users. He said his testimony presented findings from Design It For Us and Accountable Tech's own research, including the 'Scary Feeds' testing of Instagram Teen Accounts, and that he shared what he described as the lived experience of young people who grew up using Instagram. Qureshi's later Illinois legislative testimony (work #7) references a verdict in the case finding Meta liable for related design failures. TechKids Foundation includes this entry as a documented instance of a youth advocate serving as a formal courtroom witness; case-outcome details are as characterized by Qureshi in his own public statements and testimony and have not been independently confirmed by TechKids against the court record itself.
America After 3PM: Unmet Demand for Afterschool Programs Among Middle School Youth Reaches an All-Time High
America After 3PM is a national household survey conducted by the Afterschool Alliance that measures participation in and demand for afterschool programs among U.S. children, including middle school youth. The December 2025 release finds that unmet demand for afterschool programs among middle-schoolers has reached an all-time high, with millions of families who want a program for their child unable to access one — citing cost, transportation, and a lack of available programs in their area as the primary barriers. The Alliance presents this as descriptive survey data on program supply and family demand, not an evaluation of any specific program's effectiveness. TechKids Foundation cites this survey to describe the scale of unmet need for structured, adult-supervised, skill-building afterschool time — exactly the gap our Screen-to-Builder Labs are designed to fill for children who would otherwise spend those hours unsupervised and largely on screens.
Employment in STEM Occupations
This U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data table projects employment growth and wages in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) occupations compared with non-STEM occupations over a ten-year projection period. BLS projects STEM employment to grow substantially faster than non-STEM employment over the period, with STEM occupations also carrying a median annual wage more than double that of non-STEM occupations. These are government labor-market projections and current wage statistics, not a guarantee of any individual's career outcome. TechKids Foundation cites this data to describe the economic opportunity gap our creator programs aim to help close: children who spend their technology time consuming rather than building are less exposed to the skills, confidence, and career pathways connected to a fast-growing, higher-wage segment of the job market.
Frequent Social Media Use and Experiences with Bullying Victimization, Persistent Feelings of Sadness or Hopelessness, and Suicide Risk
This CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report supplement analyzes 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data on U.S. high school students, examining how frequent social media use relates to experiences with bullying victimization, persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and suicide-risk indicators such as having seriously considered or attempted suicide. Students who reported more frequent social media use also reported higher rates of being bullied — including online — and higher rates of persistent sadness, hopelessness, and suicide-risk indicators, compared with students reporting less frequent use. The report presents these as patterns observed across a large national survey, not as evidence that social media use by itself causes bullying or suicide risk; suicide and self-harm are complex outcomes shaped by many factors together. TechKids Foundation cites this report to describe cyberbullying and self-harm risk as warning signs associated with heavy social media use, never as a single-cause claim.
Daily Screen Time Among Teenagers: United States, July 2021–December 2023
This CDC/NCHS Data Brief reports how much screen time U.S. teenagers use on an average weekday, drawing on National Health Interview Survey data collected from July 2021 through December 2023. It finds that just over half of U.S. teens ages 12–17 report four or more hours of screen time on a typical weekday outside of schoolwork — time that, added up across a school week and a school year, can amount to more hours than any single class they attend. The brief presents descriptive national estimates rather than evaluating specific health effects; TechKids Foundation uses these figures, phrased as association and displacement, to describe how much time a large share of American teenagers spend on screens outside of schoolwork, not as evidence that screen time alone determines any child's outcomes.
Associations Between Screen Time Use and Health Outcomes Among US Teenagers
This CDC-published analysis in Preventing Chronic Disease examines associations between weekday screen-time use and a range of health outcomes among U.S. teenagers ages 12–17, using National Health Interview Survey (NHIS-Teen) data collected between July 2021 and December 2023. The study finds that teens who report four or more hours of screen time on an average weekday outside schoolwork are also more likely to report warning signs across several health measures, including anxiety and depression symptoms, compared with teens reporting lower screen-time levels. The authors frame these findings as associations observed in survey data, not as proof that screen time alone causes any particular outcome. TechKids Foundation treats this analysis as one data point describing patterns linked to heavy passive screen use among U.S. adolescents, not a diagnosis of any individual child.
The Harms of Screen Use
This HHS Office of the Surgeon General web resource summarizes the public health case for concern about screen use among children and teens, drawing together research the office has reviewed on how screen use is associated with outcomes such as sleep loss, attention difficulties, mood changes, and social withdrawal. The page frames these as warning signs and risk factors observed across a growing body of research, not as proof that any single child's difficulties are caused by screens alone. It calls for shared responsibility among families, schools, technology platforms, and policymakers to reduce potential harms while preserving the benefits technology can offer. TechKids Foundation cites this page as an official federal public health source establishing that screen-use harms are a recognized area of concern, not a fringe claim.
More Than Half of Public School Leaders Say Cell Phones Hurt Academic Performance
This National Center for Education Statistics (NCES/IES) press release reports findings from a national survey of U.S. public school leaders about cell phones in schools. More than half of surveyed school leaders say cell phone use by students hurts academic performance, and the same survey finds that fewer than half of public schools currently teach students about artificial intelligence, with only a minority having a written policy governing student AI use. NCES presents these as school-leader-reported survey findings, describing perceptions and existing school policy, not a controlled study of cause and effect. TechKids Foundation cites this survey to describe a policy and instruction gap — schools recognizing a problem with unmanaged device use while AI-literacy instruction and clear policy both lag behind — that after-school creator programs like TechKids Labs are positioned to help fill.
How Teens Use and View AI
This Pew Research Center report, published February 2026, examines how U.S. teens ages 13–17 use artificial intelligence tools and what they think about them — including where teens turn to AI for help with schoolwork, how much they trust AI-generated answers, and how comfortable they are questioning or verifying what AI tells them. The survey finds that many teens use AI regularly but that comfort verifying AI outputs and awareness of AI's limitations vary widely. Pew reports these as self-reported attitudes and usage patterns, not as a measure of accuracy or harm. TechKids Foundation cites this report to describe a gap between how often teens use AI and how equipped they feel to question it — the gap our AI-literacy curriculum modules on verification, bias, privacy, and responsible use are designed to close.
Screen Time and Suicidal Behaviors Among U.S. Children 9–11: A Prospective Cohort Study
Published in the journal Preventive Medicine, this prospective cohort study followed a large sample of U.S. children ages 9–11 over time to see whether screen time was associated with later suicidal behaviors, including suicidal ideation and attempts. Children with higher baseline screen time were more likely to report suicidal behaviors at follow-up than children with lower screen time, even after the researchers accounted for other measured factors. Because the study tracked the same children over time rather than comparing them at one moment, it offers a stronger design than a single snapshot survey — but the authors are clear that suicidal behavior in children has many contributing causes, and screen time is one associated risk factor among several, not a standalone cause. TechKids Foundation cites this study as one of the stronger pieces of evidence linking heavy screen time in younger children to elevated self-harm risk over time.
Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025
This Pew Research Center report surveys U.S. teens ages 13–17 about their social media habits and their use of AI chatbots, tracking how quickly AI tools have entered teenagers' daily lives alongside existing social media use. The report finds that a majority of teens now report having used AI chatbots, with a notable share using them on a daily basis, while also documenting continued heavy use of social media platforms among the same age group. Pew presents these as self-reported survey findings describing current teen technology habits, not as an assessment of health effects. TechKids Foundation cites this report to describe how quickly AI chatbots have become part of teenagers' everyday technology use, often layered on top of already-heavy social media habits, underscoring the need for AI literacy alongside the mentoring and creation TechKids programs provide.
Screen-Based Activities and Risk of Self-Harm and Suicidal Behaviors Among Young People: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
This systematic review and meta-analysis, published in the journal Psychiatry Research, pools findings from multiple studies to examine how screen-based activities relate to self-harm and suicidal behaviors among young people. Combining data across the included studies, the authors report a consistent association between higher levels of certain screen-based activities and increased odds of self-harm and suicidal behaviors, with the strength of the association varying by the type of activity studied — for example, social media versus gaming versus general screen time. As a meta-analysis, this study synthesizes correlational evidence from many settings rather than proving that screen use directly causes self-harm; the authors describe self-harm and suicidal behavior as outcomes shaped by many interacting risk factors. TechKids Foundation treats this meta-analysis as strong, aggregated evidence that certain patterns of screen-based activity are linked to elevated self-harm risk in young people, phrased here strictly as association, never as single-cause proof.
U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on the Harms of Screen Use
This is the formal 2026 U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on the Harms of Screen Use, published via the National Library of Medicine's Bookshelf. A Surgeon General's Advisory is issued when the office judges an issue significant enough to warrant the public's attention, and this one lays out the evidence reviewed for associations between screen use patterns and outcomes in children's mental health, sleep, attention, and development. The advisory calls this a public health concern warranting action from parents, educators, technology companies, and policymakers, while stating clearly that children are affected differently and that outcomes reflect many interacting factors, not screen use in isolation. TechKids Foundation treats this advisory as the highest-level federal acknowledgment that problematic screen-use patterns are linked to real risks for children, reinforcing rather than replacing the association language used throughout this campaign.
TechKids Foundation — Company Profile
This is TechKids Foundation's own public organization description as published on its LinkedIn company profile, accessed July 2026. It states TechKids Foundation's mission, program focus, and how the organization describes its own work helping children move from passive technology consumption toward hands-on technology creation through robotics, 3D design, AI literacy, and entrepreneurship programming. As a self-published organizational description rather than independent research, this entry is included in the library for transparency and citation purposes — anywhere the campaign references TechKids Foundation's own stated mission or program description, this is the primary source. It is not evidence of screen-use harms and should not be read as an outcome or impact claim; those are reported separately, tied only to what the organization actually measures.
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