It's Time to Stop Tracking Screen Time — And Start Living In the Digital Age

Dedy Andrianto/E+/Getty Images The war for our kids' attention is being waged, and we’re losing. That’s my cynical summary of so many experts who study such things. When it comes to screen science, I’ve attended the lectures, seen the documentaries, read the books, gone to parent meetups, and flipped through the studies. I’ve been through it personally with my high schooler — hooked, caught in dangerous situations, experiencing mental health crises thanks to the online world. My third-grader is phone-free and blissfully unaware (well, he loves Tears of the Kingdom , but that seems downright educational these days), but I still work so hard to get ahead of it. I’ve signed the Wait Until 8th pledge, I’m working on ways for the kids to be more independent (both commute to school themselves!), and we talk about screen time an annoying amount. Hell, I’ve helped to start and run a PTA committee whose purpose is to look critically at screen time and help foster independence in kids. There’s a lot of movement. And yet, it feels like parents are American revolutionaries in 1773. We’re dumping tea into the harbor and an impossibly well-funded army is coming to get us. This past week I took the fight overseas. I had the pleasure of talking with Kaitlyn Regehr, Ph.D., a researcher and professor of digital humanities at University College London and author of Smartphone Nation , out now. The tagline of the book is spot on: “Building Digital Boundaries When Offline Isn't an Option.” It’s a…