Our modern technological lifestyle has a lot going for it. For one thing, in the pre-internet era, which really wasn't all that long ago, I couldn't do what I'm doing for a living now, from where I am. Journalists in those days were confined to offices, produced their work on typewriters or the first generation of word-processors, and mostly got stories by sallying forth and talking to people. But now, in this wonderful, technological era we live in, I can quite literally have my cake and eat it too, staying abreast of global events - and keeping you dear readers apprised of those events - from my little Susitna Valley homestead, nestled in our peaceful stretch of Alaska woods.
It seems we've come a long way very quickly, doesn't it?
But growing up in the '60s and '70s, in the era before the internet and when mobile phones were the playthings of the very wealthy (unless your name was Jim Rockford), things were very different. The internet was mostly on paper, and we called it "the press." There were three TV networks - and PBS. If we wanted to contact a buddy to arrange to meet up for some fishing or to go shoot pheasants, one had to stand in the kitchen and use the land-line phone mounted on the wall. Kids didn't have smartphones, and our attention span was probably better for it.
Some parents are trying to take their kids back to those days.
Mothers across the globe are leading the charge for change. Two groups started by moms—Smartphone Free Childhood in the UK, and Wait Until (the end of) 8th in the U.S.—had already designed pledges for parents to support one another in delaying smartphones. These groups, along with dozens of other grassroots organizations (nearly all founded by mothers) were already doing great work, yet remained small and disconnected from each other. We helped amplify their efforts by gathering these groups onto a single webpage and directing traffic to them.
In most social movements, it takes decades and a great deal of advertising money for social norms to change, as happened with teen smoking and drunk driving. This movement is different.
It is different, in no small part because too many parents allowed the capture. My wife and I were fortunate in that our kids mostly grew up before the screen capture event; our youngest kids had flip phones when they graduated high school, but the smartphone phenomenon had not caught on yet.
Things have changed.
At lightning speed, we’ve seen parents of younger kids commit to delaying smartphones, and parents of older kids set new boundaries, swap smartphones for flip phones, and have meaningful conversations with their kids about the risks of online life. To take just one example: Smartphone Free Childhood began in early 2024 with a simple post by two British moms to a WhatsApp group. They were looking for other parents who shared their desire to delay smartphone access. By the end of the first week, they had 10,000 people, organized into 75 WhatsApp communities. In March 2025, they have over 300,000 parents and 29 offshoot groups in countries around the world.
And it's not just the hardware that is causing problems. It's the software - the apps - and the ease with which kids can hide their use of this endless, fire-hose stream of information.
Social media is wildly inappropriate for minors. The major platforms welcome anyone who is old enough to say that they are 13. They collect and sell children’s data, capture their attention for an average of five hours a day, and routinely expose them to sex, violence, and content that promotes suicide. Although an ideal minimum age would be 18, we chose 16 because it sets an age floor that could realistically emerge as a global norm.
It’s working.
Granted, I'd prefer this be a parental choice than a government edict that's frankly not enforceable. Smartphones and all the go with them are here to stay, and there's no getting around that. Parents need to do what needs to be done to protect their children, and in that, the answer seems obvious.
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Alternatives. And all we need to do is look back a few decades.
Granted, I had the benefit of growing up mostly in a rural environment in northeast Iowa. In the summers, from about age 10 onward, my friends and I would roam the forested hills and trout streams of Allamakee County, fishing, swimming, or just exploring. The countryside was ours, and if a local farmer looked out his window and saw a couple of young lads crossing his pasture with fishing rods or .22 rifles, he would say, "Oh, I know those boys," and sit back down to finish his lunch.
We did this because, when we were younger, our parents took us fishing, swimming or just exploring.
My cousins and friends who lived in town played outdoors until the streetlights came on. They rode their bikes all over, without helmets or knee pads. Rural or suburban, all of us scraped our knees and elbows, we broke a bone or two, we got dirty, we got muddy, we came in and got yelled at for tracking on the rug.
Best of all, it was real. We weren't viewing fake events on a tiny screen. We were out, doing things, adventuring, learning how to deal with other people face-to-face. Now and then we disagreed, and now and then it led to a scrap, resulting in a few black eyes and split lips. We learned from it. We learned to deal with the bumps and scrapes one gets from falling out of a tree. We learned how to dry off our clothes after falling into the creek - and I can tell you I had a knack for that; I doubt there was a body of water in northeast Iowa I had not fallen into.
We learned. We adventured. We grew. And it was real.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to take our kids back to that world, at least in the schools. I'm not buying the cancer risk angle, but he's got a good point on social media, and in any case, the kids are there to learn, and should be paying attention to their instructors, not a tiny screen.
This isn't just an issue for kids. Some months back, while visiting our kids, we took them out for supper, and I observed, at a nearby table, what appeared to be a father with three daughters. They came in, ordered, ate, and left, with all four of them staring at their smartphones the entire time. None of them spoke, except to order food. They didn't interact with each other at all. I thought, "Why bother?"
Life needs to be real again. Technology is great, but it must be our servant, not our master. We can start with our kids, but we need to take a good look at ourselves as well. There's another great slogan for our time: MARA - Make America Real Again. Take your kids outdoors, and leave the smartphones at home. That's a good place to start.
