While there are many issues that we don’t agree on in the U.S., one thing that almost all of us do agree with is that cellphones, personal screens like iPads, and social media are terrible for our children. The use of these devices and apps by our kids is rewiring the architecture of the brain, creating dopamine addictions and stealing childhoods. This has become particularly evident since the COVID lockdowns, during which children scrolled on their phones and tablets for hours unabated because they were stuck at home with nothing better to do.

Last year, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, published a book that sparked a global movement among parents. That book, The Anxious Generation, laid bare the deficits of screens and social media in our children’s lives and how they were creating dysfunction both mentally and socially. While pointing out the problem, Haidt also offered a very important solution: Parents need to be the catalyst for change. He suggested four norms that we should adopt collectively to help our children reclaim their childhoods.

These practical steps triggered a global movement that has produced a myriad of victories this past year.

The norms prescribed by Haidt are as follows:

• No smartphones before high school (or age 14)
• No social media until 16
• Phone-free schools
• Give kids more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world

While Haidt recommends no smartphones, it would also be wise to add any type of smart personal device to that edict. If your child “needs” to have a phone, give him or her a flip phone or a watch that has no internet access. Young children don’t need to access the online Pandora’s box. While handing them a device seems like a way to pacify them, in truth, you are doing them a great disservice. Children need to be bored in order to learn crucial skills like independence, creativity, and self-motivation.

Keeping kids off of social media for as long as possible is also an important principle. Social media was not only created to entrap consumers and keep them sucked in, but it’s also a very dangerous and inappropriate place for children. Even Joe Biden’s surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, recommended that parents do not allow their children to use social media.

The next norm — keeping phones out of schools — is just common sense. However, anxious parents are a major reason why doing so has been such a struggle. Many parents want to be able to directly contact their child at any point in the day. What has happened, though, is that students have become glued to their devices. According to a 2023 Pew Research study, “72% of U.S. high school teachers consider cell phone distraction a major problem in their classrooms.”

Students are so focused on their phones that they are disengaging from normal social interaction in school hallways and classrooms. Similarly, they are distracting themselves with their smartphones instead of engaging with the academics at hand.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for a cellphone ban in all schools. State governors from deep-red Arkansas, purple Virginia, and deep-blue New York and California, as well as others, are all jumping on the school-cellphone-ban bandwagon. Our students are falling behind educationally, and phones are a huge distraction. Everyone can see it.

Finally, the norm of letting kids engage in independent free play or real-world responsibilities is also a call to change the culture surrounding parenting. Parents have been pushed and cajoled into being bulldozer parents (i.e., pushing all problems and difficulties out of their kids’ way); consequently, their kids are missing crucial learning opportunities. As a mom of two small children myself, the most difficult thing to do as a parent is to allow your kids to explore their own world, experience natural consequences, and dare to climb those trees. But by denying our kids the opportunity to engage in riskier play, we are robbing them of the development of confidence, wisdom, and self-awareness that can only be achieved by discovering their limits. It is so much easier and safer — but ultimately regressive — to simply hand them a device.

Haidt’s book has sparked a movement among parents in the U.S. However, it is not just a stateside phenomenon. Parents in the UK have likewise banded together and are unified in keeping their kids away from smartphones. Moreover, Brazil, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, the Netherlands, and Hungary have instilled cellphone bans in schools. Most amazingly for Haidt, Australia raised the age for social media use to 16 and also put the onus on the companies to ensure that their users are actually over that age, as opposed to the parents trying to police it.

It is nice to see that parents from all political leanings can unify over such an issue. When it comes to our kids, there is nothing we won’t do to help give them the best chance to become wonderful, functioning, and astute adults. Cellphone bans are certainly a good start.