Kids & Tech on F L O T I S S E R I E

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 09:06:54 -0500

Reading about yesterday’s Meta settlement, the global movement to get kids off tech, “chopped uncs,” and thinking about the dance between students and our local school system’s IT department during the COVID-19 shutdown, when my then-elementary schooler was unwittingly participating in a digital cold war:

In our community, the kids were in remote learning for a full year and a half, and the IT department chased them around their approved digital tools like a game of whack a mole, shutting down access to chat and collaboration. In the meantime, almost no socialization happened between students that wasn’t directly observed by teachers. By 2021, the kids were engaged in secret, digital note-passing, chatting within Google docs and PPT slide decks and Pinterest DMs to avoid teacher surveillance on their approved tools. Where there is a will to socialize, there is a way.

Business Insider provides an update on how teen social media bans are going in Australia, and it’s not great! After a few months, kids steadily got back online, nearing or matching pre-ban levels.

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:42:55 -0500

Reading over the $18b Meta settlement over social media harms to children, and while it’s not perfect, it’s something. I’m a fan of default time limits, night and school-time blocks, and other limits baked into the software. It’s not fair to ask every parent to become an IT governance expert.

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 08:51:45 -0500

To read: this report from Common Sense Media, “Talk, Trust and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions.” About a third of teens have turned to an AI for serious conversations about their own mental health and relationships, showing these tools are already embedded in teen social life.

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:04:09 -0500

Question for parents: How are you teaching your teens to stay safe and think about safety and security while they surf, shop, chat and learn on their digital apps and devices? Are you sharing books, articles and videos with one another? If so, which ones? I’m asking for a friend; the friend is me.

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:01:24 -0500

Parents wanting stakes lower than a smartphone: consider a kid-friendly Wi-Fi landline, which looks and works like an old corded phone but runs over your internet connection, giving kids the independence to get connected safely. Alternatively, get a VOIP phone through your ISP for ~$10/mo.

Wed, 13 May 2026 19:44:08 -0500

“Two things can be independently true about social media. First, there is no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children’s brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness. Second, considerable reforms to these platforms are required, given how much time young people spend on them.”

Why I'm broadly skeptical of device bans in K-12

Fri, 08 May 2026 10:19:05 -0500

Watching a local phone ban policy snake through the community this week, one that state law now requires every district to adopt by July 1. Like others have already said, my concern is mostly related to enforcement, as we know enforcement for all school policy lands unevenly across school populations at the expense of Black students, and early data from Florida’s phone ban shows the same pattern. But also, my experience is that the local school system is not communicative in a way that reinforces student and parent desires for two-way communication, especially considering the logistics of having kids who need transportation and after school arrangements.

When I was young, there was a pay phone on every corner and a central landline in every home. We don’t live in that world anymore – in our world, phones and other personal devices are part of our daily processes for school, work and family logistics and communication with friends, family and the broader world. Same for kids with devices.

None of this means screens are neutral or that Jon Haidt is entirely wrong about attention and comparison dynamics. But Haidt et al diagnose a genuine social problem and locate the cause as technology design, then arrive at solutions that are driven by individual consumer behavior. He does ask legislators to act, but his asks center on age limits. Ultimately he does not call for taxing and regulating algorithmic platforms, regulating algorithmic amplification of distress, regulating algorithmic amplification of marketing, reducing economic precarity, or doing anything about climate change linked to tech. All of the behavioral changes indicated (device bans, Faraday bags) set up fights between kids and adults on phone access at the individual behavior level, fights with consequences that generally land harder on certain students. A UK study found no difference in student wellbeing between schools with restrictive and permissive phone policies, and a follow-up found that managing phones takes schools more than 100 staff hours a week either way.

While this issue roils locally, my kiddo’s locker was broken for two months this year, and while waiting for repair, she got dinged for having her device in her pocket in class when the locker wasn’t a secure option. She had shoes stolen from her locker in the meantime, proving the point.

I spoke with my kiddo at length to get her thoughts. Her takeaway as an 8th grader is that kids have second and third secret devices that they hide from parents and teachers already – often, mom and dad’s old devices slipped from a junk drawer and connected to wi-fi. She suggested we adults don’t fully appreciate the kids’ ingenuity around their devices, and how they view their phones and tablets as the means to get and stay connected with one another.

While talking, I was reminded of the dance between students and the school system’s IT department during the COVID-19 shutdown. In our community, the kids were in remote learning for a full year and a half, and the IT department chased them around their approved digital tools like a game of whack a mole, shutting down access to chat and collaboration. In the meantime, almost no socialization happened between students that wasn’t directly observed by teachers, on camera. By 2021, the kids were engaged in secret, digital note-passing, chatting within Google docs and slide decks to avoid teacher surveillance. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Update, September 26, 2026: The Madison School Board approved the policy on June 23, with tighter limits on high schoolers than a UW–Madison La Follette School research team had recommended. Parent Check On Tech, the group linked above, pushed for the stricter version. Elsewhere, a San Diego teacher reports that students hand over burner phones and keep their real ones.

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:05:30 -0500

I’m reading about trends in book and phone bans in American public schools, and reminded that reading novels was once considered an idle and immoral pasttime, just as internet use is today. This 2016 article from JSTOR goes into the history of reading books and the fear that it “enfeebled the mind.”

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:51:52 -0500

Deepfake nude culture and its impact on American teens.

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:44:04 -0500

A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting convo with Jessica Grose on Threads about the rise of the “Luddite teen” trend. I largely suspect neo-Luddism is a class-related trend and will not be durable. In short, I remain unconvinced that the concern of white collar professionals and parents about the attention economy can be universalized to everyone in the actual economy. This weekend, the NYT reports that the “one laptop per child” goal we’ve been living with in public education may be on the way out, like I hinted in that thread. As the anti-AI backlash develops in real time, it will implicate other tech trends like so.

I’ve been dismayed to find out how much schoolwork happens in Google Classroom in 2026, especially since the COVID shutdown accelerated the shift. My kiddo has received a good deal of math instruction through digital modules, and I’ve learned that if I want her experience to be different, I need to be prepared to pay out of pocket for a private tutor (a scenario taken for granted by much of the commentariat). At the same time, I learned that our local school district is struggling to keep up with the costs of all the hardware and software it committed to over the years, ostensibly for educational continuity, equity and access. Do we need the tech or not? Who decides what it means and how it’s applied? Chicken, egg.

I think it would be foolish to throw up our hands and say the kids need paper and pencil and nothing else, and yet that’s where the discourse is going. I have low confidence that our current landscape will produce a sane and reasonable solution to this tangle – even Haidt is selling you a product here. Until then, we need to consider what it means to offload the costs, accountability, and responsibility for this technology onto school districts, parents, and children, many of whom do not have the time, resources, or know-how to curate an ideal tech experience on nights and weekends.

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:18:00 -0500

From 2024: Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, on the durable limits of Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation.”

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 10:00:35 -0500

A roundup of news stories on Meta and Google’s losses in court this week, where their social media business practices were found harmful to children’s mental health and in violation of consumer protection law.

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 09:23:53 -0500

NYT on the trend of “Luddite teens.” I have a growing suspicion that various neo-Luddist trends will largely map to class identity. In some areas of the world, in some areas of the US, Facebook is the internet, yellow pages and water cooler, and the internet experience is entirely mediated by apps.

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 18:56:39 -0500

A new report from Pew on how teens view and use AI says that more than half of teens turn to chatbots for help with school, and some are turning to AI for emotional support and companionship.

Rules without lessons

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 09:23:47 -0500

If you spend time around cycling and pedestrian advocates, the debate between bans and regulations is familiar territory. When I got deep into road biking, where I learned to ride long distance through a red state with almost no bike infrastructure outside tight urban and exurban areas, one of the best things I did was take road classes through the League of American Bicyclists. You learn the rules of the road from a cyclist’s perspective and practice skills like riding with car traffic under expert guidance, including how to change a flat on the side of the road in the height of summer, gritty with sweat and road grime.

The challenge is that bike education isn’t standardized, so most cyclists never learn the fundamentals anyway. Many of us learned as kids and haven’t had a refresh since. I get stomach pain when I see people riding at night without a light, going too fast on a dedicated path, and adults riding their bike on a pedestrian sidewalk. But when I think about e-bike bans and pedestrian right-of-way debates, it strikes me that outside of getting a driver’s permit for car drivers, there’s essentially no infrastructure for learning how to share roads and paths safely. We’re trying to regulate behavior most of us didn’t learn in earnest.

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 12:20:00 -0500

Folks are beginning to wonder why Twitter and Grok are still in the app stores, given the latest trend in using the LLM to generate non-consensual imagery of people (namely women and children) at alarming rates.

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:52:26 -0500

New numbers from Pew Research on how teens used social media and AI chatbots in 2025.

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 09:47:19 -0500

I am pro-games and gaming (and partake in gaming myself), and both of my kids had a generally positive experience on various gaming platforms over the years, but stuff like this still gives me pause.