To protect our children and our democracies, we have to stop fighting the wrong battles. The best defence isn’t being better parents or being better voters. It’s governing the platforms designed to exploit and divide us for profit.
by Suzanne Nam, Advisor to Defend Democracy
STOP BLAMING OURSELVES
Nearly every parent I know struggles to manage their children’s screen time. It’s a frequent topic of discussion among parents and a common source of friction within families. Unfortunately, the effort and drama aren’t making a big difference. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, children ages 8-12 in the United States spend an average of 4-6 hours a day watching or using screens. By the teen years, most kids report “constantly” being online, according to the Pew Research Center.
Why are we failing at this? Why are kids, almost universally, using more screen time than their parents want? Is it possible that if we just did a better job parenting, paid more attention, were more consistent, set better examples, or maybe if our kids just did a better job listening, would they happily put down their devices and spend more time engaged in the real world?
Rationally, we know this cannot be true, and yet this is the narrative that most of us believe and one that’s constantly reinforced. Take these recent headlines: “Parents are key when it comes to limiting screen time for kids, study finds.” and “Here are 4 ways parents can help their teens be smart with screen time.” But are parents really the key? No. Instead of blaming ourselves and our children, we need to acknowledge that no amount of good parenting, behaviour modelling, boundary setting or problem solving will make this problem go away. The real key to limiting screen time for kids is adequate regulation of a product that is known to cause harm and is deliberately marketed to children.
WHO’S REALLY TO BLAME?
There should be no question at this point that social media platforms and many other digital products have been designed in such a way that they make it very difficult for children (adults, too) to use them in a reasonable and healthy way.
In June 2024, Vivek H. Murthy US Surgeon General announced that he would push for warning labels on social media platforms telling parents and children using social media could be damaging to children’s mental health. He specifically called out social media companies for the collection of sensitive data, and “algorithm-driven feeds” as well as push notification, autoplay and infinite scroll features that “prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use.”
In November 2023, 42 US states filed a class action lawsuit against the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, claiming that Meta’s business practices hurt the mental and physical health of children and teens. The lawsuit, which is ongoing, claims Meta knowingly designed these platforms with addictive features to maximise kids’ engagement, including infinite scroll and push notifications, even though they knew about the significant psychological and health risks.
Shouldn’t this make it clear that the root of the problem isn’t lazy parenting or children who don’t want to follow the rules? It’s companies such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok who profit when our children use them and will do anything they can to capture our children’s attention, hold on to it for as long as possible, and sell it to the highest bidder.
And just like climate change can’t be solved by individuals, what each parent does at home is not going to solve this socio-technical problem.
WHAT’S THE HARM?
Kids are losing time and freedom to grow and experience life to SnapChat and TikTok. No one knows how much screen time is optimal, but most of us agree that 9, 5, even 3 hours a day is too much. Those 3, 5, or 9 hours are coming at the expense of something else, be it playing, making friends, being outdoors, or just thinking and being bored.
The technologies that our kids routinely are exposed to have the power to impact elections, alter people’s opinions, their perceptions about reality, and their self esteem. We saw the impact Facebook had in Myanmar, and Brexit and January 6. Cambridge Analytica proved to us not just that there are bad actors, but that the system of content selection itself is flawed and ripe for exploitation in big and small ways. And yet our kids are using these platforms constantly.
The scariest harms, and the ones the Surgeon General and the US class action lawsuit focuses on, are the impacts to kids’ mental health and development. The platforms are so addictive that they’re seriously affecting kids’ mental health, causing more anxiety, depression, and issues with focusing. Kids are literally losing sleep to pointless content because they can’t pull themselves away from their screens. And, according to the attorney generals in the lawsuit mentioned above, social media platforms mess with kids’ brain development and interfere with their emotional growth. It’s not just making them more anxious or depressed, but also potentially altering how they develop psychologically and neurologically.
Detractors argue that screens aren’t so different from television or even once-hated radio. Is that really true? The technologies kids are using, mostly smartphones, are fundamentally different from anything in the past. They are portable, we can have them with us all the time so there are literally no boundaries or obstacles to their use (not even in the bathroom). They are interactive, they beckon us with pleasurable buzzes and beeps, etc. (please shut off haptic ASAP!). The devices and apps on them have been specifically designed to make you want to play with them more and more and more. And the content on many apps is personalised, engineered to make your child personally want to keep watching or scrolling. 57% of Americans describe themselves as being “addicted” to their phones. Did you ever feel that way about your television, or books, or radio?
Finally, screen time causes arguments. According to Pew, around 40% of parents and teens say they regularly fight with each other over time spent on their phone. Parenting tweens and teens is already difficult, and moments of peace and connection feel fewer and farther between. Kids get the sense that they are disappointing their parents or being “bad” because they consume too much digital content. But, according to the Pew study, they also feel the compulsion and the lack of control. They feel powerless against it, even as it’s giving them gratification. In another Pew Research Center survey (data from 2024, published in 2025), 48% of teens said social media has a “mostly negative” impact on people their age. Why is it okay for Meta and other companies to set our children up to fail, and to make it even harder for us to get along and enjoy being together?
In addition to facts and the studies, which are compelling, as parents we just know that it doesn’t feel right to watch adolescents sitting in their rooms looking at screens for hours at a time. It feels terrible. As parents, and as a society, we should be able to protect children against something that feels wrong. We don’t need to wait (and should not wait) until the evidence is so compelling and irrefutable, because the damage is already being done.
CONCLUSION: A CALL FOR COLLECTIVE ACTION
Ultimately, the struggle to control screen time isn’t about how we raise our kids—it’s about the political, economic and social forces that shape the digital universe and the leeway we grant to Big Tech in its pursuit of profit. Parents cannot be the sole gatekeepers of their children’s screen habits, and we should not be expected to bear the full responsibility. The real solution is demanding accountability from the companies that make money off our children’s attention. These platforms have intentionally designed their algorithms to exploit young users’ developing brains (and ours, too), fuelling addiction and causing lasting harm.
Laws and regulations must hold these companies accountable for their actions and protect children’s mental health and well-being. We must demand laws that protect our children from manipulative practices and regulate how companies use algorithms, data, and addictive features. As a society, we accept that we must regulate products to protect public health —food, medicine, tobacco, cars— we must treat these digital environments the same way.
This is a problem that requires a collective, societal response, and one that fully recognises the harmful impact these technologies have on our children.
Defend Democracy, 23 October 2025
