[ianseyer]

"What a load of shit", "all these problems are your fault."

Really? This comment just seems like ego-driven parental grandstanding rather than an actual attempt to understand how the first generation born into the era of smartphones and all-the-time internet access might have difficulty negotiating a healthy psyche against a multi-billions dollar oligarchy of companies intentionally seeking to monetize their attention.

Congratulations, your son doesn't seem addicted to their ipod. Cool anecdote; here's actual data about wether or not parental control of phone use has much of an affect on phone addiction (it doesn't): https://journals.lww.com/jan/fulltext/2018/04000/does_parent...

[JoeCianflone]

It’s not ego driven but there was anger on my side. I hate it when we blame technology first, which seems to be the point of this article. Kids can absolutely be addicted to phones that’s true. But it’s the job of the parent to set limits, this person admits in the article that her daughter wore her down and flaunted the limits and there were no consequences. So yeah she may be addicted now, which we can’t really diagnose, but that’s still the parents fault for setting limits and bending to the will of their kid.

[ianseyer]

I don't think the article made this differentiation specifically, but I don't see this as blaming technology, but ad-driven companies engineering skinner boxes. It is well understood that advertising companies wreak havoc on children's health (tobacco, body image, sugar, etc). We should hold these companies accountable.

While there were definitely lax restrictions here, there are more factors here (societal pressure, both cultural and literal; the article indicated that study groups and other activities were coordinated solely on social media) that affect one's proneness to phone addiction.

In addition, in the article linked above (and others), parenting is not _the_ bellwether preventative in terms of phone addiction - there are psychological factors, environmental factors, etc.

In addition, there are societal variations across gender that are documented as having an affect on proneness to phone addiction.

Don't let your individual experience override the reality of the situation. This is an issue that is going to require extensive research and potentially regulation.