social media

Hot Take: Your Kid Does Not Need Social Media

Social media is not a harmless rite of passage. It is a high-speed experiment on developing brains, and too many parents are handing over the lab access because "everyone else is doing it." If that sounds dramatic, good. We should be more dramatic about this. Parents are often told that keeping kids off social media is unrealistic, overprotective, or somehow anti-tech. I disagree. I think a lot of what gets marketed as "normal" is actually just normalized dysfunction. Tweens and teens do not need 24/7 access to platforms engineered to hijack attention, amplify comparison, and monetize insecurity. They need sleep, real friendships, boredom, movement, privacy, and enough distance from the crowd to figure out who they are. And yes, I know that sounds less fun than TikTok.