Sublime

Once a child gets online, there is never a threshold age at which she is granted more autonomy or more rights. On the internet, everyone is the same age, which is no particular age. This is a major reason why a phone-based adolescence is badly mismatched with the needs of adolescents.

The loss of attunement is a second way that social media alters the course of childhood (while also fraying the social fabric).

To correct overprotection in the real world, state and local governments should narrow neglect laws and give parents confidence that they can give their children some unsupervised time without risking arrest or state intervention in their family life.

Alone Together, author Sherry Turkle warns: “Networked, we are together, but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone. And there is the risk that we come to see each other as objects to be accessed—and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing.”

“Now we’re in an age where you can simply reinforce your own viewpoints. And it’s hard to have a discussion of the facts when you’re dealing with two separate sets of facts—two sets of talking points that came down from on high. With the Internet, all of us were going to be content producers, but it’s become an echo chamber.”

Our personal technologies, particularly the cellphone, are a massive drain on civil attention.