Parents have stopped posting their children’s photos online. The shift happened quickly. When the author’s first child was born, he registered Gmail and Twitter accounts in her name and shared her image across the web. By the time the second child arrived, he had reversed course. He refused to make her birthday public record or feed her face to algorithms. He even deleted the digital footprint he had built for his older daughter.
Why the change
The author watched the early internet’s promise turn into a reality of abuse. He was already addicted to smartphones and social media. His wife, a pediatric nurse, grew alarmed by the number of children admitted to her hospital suffering from body dysmorphia or cyberbullying caused by online interactions. They became the parents who let their kids carry flip phones and stay away from TikTok.
He is not alone. Many people working at big tech companies keep their children at a distance from technology. They lock down phones or keep them off social media entirely. Even Mark Zuckerberg does not post his children’s faces on Facebook or Instagram.
What started as a minor concern has become a flood. Jonathan Haidt’s best-selling 2024 book The Anxious Generation pushed the issue into the mainstream, despite criticism from some developmental psychologists. Last year, Australia became the first country to enact a social media ban for children under 16. Other nations, from Austria to Indonesia, followed with similar bans. The US Supreme Court recently upheld an age verification law in Texas, which acts as a de facto ban, and several states have considered their own measures. School districts across the country are banning educational devices like iPads and Chromebooks in favor of actual books. Kids themselves seem to embrace this tech skepticism too: the hottest gadget among the Gen Alpha set is a vintage Sony Walkman.
We have to prepare our children to live in the actual world we have actually created, not the one we wish we had.
Living in the world we made
There is no hiding from technology. It permeates nearly everything. We must prepare our children to live in the actual world we have created, not the one we wish we had. The question feels urgent in the era of artificial intelligence.
To find answers, the publication brought in the editors of Anyway, a magazine for teens and tweens that meets them where they are. The editors asked children to share in their own words how they feel about AI and what is coming next. What those young people told Anyway was complex, fascinating, and, to a large extent, thoughtful and sophisticated.
The author has loosened the digital tether just a bit. He still does not post many photos of his kids online and remains concerned about the dangers of social media and AI.
When his older daughter started high school, they retired the flip phone for an iPhone. His younger child now wears an Apple Watch. These devices have opened the world to them in various ways. They help forge new friendships, building relationships that move between digital and physical spaces. They allow the kids to roam free—or at least more freely—beyond their neighbourhood and across the city.
Along the way, they are learning and testing boundaries, just as they are supposed to. The author guesses you could say he is doing the same.
