(Father of children ages 7, 5, and 2.)

3 thoughts, ordered from most concrete and practical to most speculative.

Concretely, how do I do this? My kids go to a Waldorf school. (waldorfeducation.org) Is it expensive? Yeah. But, among many other benefits, you're automatically joining a conspiracy of parents dead set against tech-ified childhood. (A HUGE number of whom, you know, _work in technology,_ which tells you something.)

Second, and more reflective: I find that as a general matter, I spend more time thinking about how to call my kids toward things rather than away from things. Yes, social media and TV and video games will fill attention voids. But only if there are voids. The stereotype is that a parent will try to keep kids from doing 12 million things, but really you spend your best parenting effort trying to get them to love or value about 4 things. If you succeed, avoiding destructive habits and behaviors is much easier.

Third, and most speculative but most optimistic: I think we have hit peak social media for teens. It feels a lot like that point with cigarettes where everyone was still addicted to nicotine but nobody was pretending it was cool or sexy anymore. If you don't have kids yet, then society has 10-15 years to get its act together on this stuff before your kid is in the really dangerous age range for bad mental health outcomes from being drowned in tech. Could it remain this bad? Sure. But it's (literally) a generation from now in every respect: culturally, technically, politically, and socially. There is momentum for reform at many levels: legislative, private, school-level, and social. You have time for several of those reforms to fail and iterate. Someone will have figured it out by then. You may have to move—or join a cult—but I promise your kid will be worth enough to you to go find those people and live among them.