When kids trade the playground for the glowing rectangle in their pocket, something fundamental shifts. As Jonathan Haidt has argued, the “phone-based childhood” replaces real-world experiences with a dopamine drip of likes and notifications—and contributes to rising rates of anxiety, loneliness, and depression among young people. Parents trying to set screen-time rules are competing against a device that’s always there, always on, always vying for attention.
Lenore Skenazy, Zach Rausch, and Haidt collaborated with the Harris Poll to survey more than 500 children ages 8 to 12 across the United States—and found that many kids don’t actually want to be glued to their phones. Children said they’d gladly trade scrolling for unstructured time with friends, if only the opportunity existed. Shifts in safety norms and heightened adult supervision have reshaped parenting, limiting the freedom for kids to play and explore on their own.
Over the past decade, smartphones have steadily replaced the face-to-face play that once defined childhood. Nearly three-quarters of the children in the survey agreed with the statement “I would spend less time online if there were more friends in my neighborhood to play with in person.” Resisting the phone-obsessed childhood may require not just setting screen-time rules, but also rebuilding the offline spaces and opportunities to connect that kids are missing.
