In Laura Derrendinger's house, she'd rather her children use a dangerous power tool than pick up a smartphone. "It is safer to give my kids a chainsaw than access to social media. A chainsaw is not designed to be addictive," notes the former Doctors Without Borders nurse, who says she has raised her four kids in rural Vermont without TVs, iPads, or smartphones. She has even moved the family "at least 10 times" and sent two of her teens 500 miles away to a Waldorf school to keep them in screen-free environments. The piece by Rhian Lubin for the Independent that features Derrendinger and other parents surveys a growing, sometimes drastic anti-screen movement, which involves parents relocating to low-tech schools, taking kids on "digital detox" farm stays, or slashing phone use to a couple of weekend hours after seeing sleep, mood, and school performance suffer.
Lubin's piece also tracks emerging laws and lawsuits targeting Big Tech, from jury rulings that have found Meta and Google harmed children's mental health, to new "phone-free schools" policies in multiple states. Advocates argue that delaying or ditching smartphones entirely should become the norm, as long as the time is filled with something beneficial, while still raising concerns that lower-income families may have fewer options to do so. "It is vital that parents of all backgrounds are brought into the conversation ... acknowledging the divide between wealthier families whose children have greater access to safe, outdoor spaces and can afford to send their kids to screen-free private schools, and low-income parents who cannot," Lubin writes, citing Emily Boddy of Smartphone Free Childhood US. For specific limits that parents are using, as well as the policy push behind them, more here.
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