03/06/2026
“It is safer to give my kids a chainsaw than access to social media. A chainsaw is not designed to be addictive,” his mom said. [...]
“I spent my career before being a mom trying to prevent children from getting sick and dying in refugee camps because of pathogens like malaria,” she said. “I say now, essentially, that the research is telling us these screens effectively function like vectors of disease, the way a mosquito carries the pathogen of malaria.” [...]
She referred to smartphones as “a mini addictive surveillance device.” “We don't have to call it a smartphone, we can call it what it is,” she said. “Instead of calling it ‘extreme,’ I'm saying what I'm doing is age appropriate,” Derrendinger explained. [...]
Price is a single mom of five who knows that social media addiction is real. She said that her children, ages 20, 15, 12, and 7-year-old twins, have undergone a transformation since she dramatically reduced their screen time earlier this year. [...]
“They all were addicts,” the 39-year-old mom from Jacksonville, Florida, told The Independent. “I'm embarrassed to say, but I feel like they were on there all day when they weren't eating or sleeping. My son's teacher would tell me that he was sleeping a lot in class, [...]
“And then I started to notice my own patterns, and I'm like, oh my gosh, my kids got it from me,” she recalled. “They see me on my phone all the time; they picked up the habit from watching me.” Price, a social media and marketing director, wanted to make changes, but it wasn’t as simple as locking up her kids’ devices. “I had to replace the time that the screens were filling,” she said. [...]
“My kids started being creative again, they were reading, drawing, painting, talking to each other, talking to me,” she said. “It wasn't overnight, but it felt real. And the biggest change wasn't even their behavior. It was the energy of our home. It just felt calmer, and we feel more connected now.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/social-media-screen-time-kids-parenting-b2983950.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawSNUPxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA80MDk5NjI2MjMwODU2MDkAAR5W60Jc__IYDF2Za3Ma_kYbiKLkP1IaIg_mlAYdual8F3lmnawJX8cth3jo1Q_aem_7JnorL3vBS_6m0wKWCwQcg
A growing movement advocates for kids to grow up without screens and believes social media poses a grave threat to well-being