The Verdict Is In — But the Real Work Is Just Beginning
What the social media trials tell us, what they don't, and what parents need
We are building a platform of short, child-centered curricula for parents and educators — translating deep knowledge about child development, and the effects of technology, into practical tools for everyday life. Our goal is simple: to help families and schools reclaim the real social spaces that children need to thrive. This article explains why — and why now.
We now have verdicts in two of the five ongoing trials involving social media companies. In both cases — involving Instagram and YouTube — the platforms were found liable for causing harm to children or for failing to disclose known dangers. Fifteen years ago, these same companies were celebrated as the key to humanity’s future. Today, they are following the path of the tobacco industry.
As significant as these rulings are, they are not the end of the road — and they may be modified on appeal. The verdicts confirm what most parents have felt for years. But they do not solve the problems our children are facing.
Technology evolves. AI may soon replace social media as the dominant force in children’s lives, bringing with it a new set of risks: cognitive risks in how children learn to think; behavioral risks when a child begins to regard a bot as a friend; and privacy risks when personal thoughts and feelings are shared with a machine. What will not change is technology’s effect on relationships — between children and their parents, and between peers. These challenges will remain, whatever the courts decide.
A Changed Landscape
Over the past twenty years, the environment in which children grow up has shifted considerably — and not only because of technology. Schools have narrowed their focus, increasingly measuring success through a handful of statistics that reduce education to what can be tested. Parenting has changed too. Parents are now handed an ever-expanding list of decisions to make about their children’s lives — decisions that are often made in the dark, without a clear understanding of what children actually need at each stage of their development.
Because parents are given the choices, they also absorb the blame when things go wrong. The result is predictable: parents say that raising children today is significantly harder than it was when they were growing up. Parents report feeling stressed — and so do their children.
Why This Matters
When we are forced to operate without adequate knowledge, we leave outcomes to chance and carry the weight of consequences we didn’t fully understand. The social media trials have shed light on decisions made by tech companies that prioritized their companies’ growth over children’s safety. But children have needs of their own – safety, yes, but also the freedom to grow, and that growth is about far more than grades.
It is about building the human capacities that truly matter in life: the skills that help us navigate school, relationships, adversity, and an uncertain future. These are the qualities that give us our distinctly human advantage — over technology, over disruption, and yes, over AI.
Take resilience, for example. It has a well-documented positive relationship with mental well-being. Resilience is not a cure for anxiety — it is a capacity that allows us to move through anxiety without becoming stuck or overwhelmed.
Yet it is nearly impossible for parents and educators to develop these capacities in children within the current framework most of us operate in. Human capacities like resilience, creativity, and social intelligence are rarely measured by grades or tests, so they go largely unseen. They cannot be built by attending a class or joining a club. And yet, in the long run, they are precisely what helps children succeed — in school and beyond.
A Different Way of Looking at This
Education is always future-oriented. The decisions we make today are meant to prepare children for the next stage of their lives — and, ultimately, to shape the adults they will become. No one can claim to know exactly what the future holds. But we can prepare children by giving them the strongest possible human foundation. Some capacities are timeless.
We may not know the future state of the world, but we do know the current needs of children at every stage of their development — and we know the effects of technology on those needs.
Over the past twenty years, my leadership roles at schools in Silicon Valley that made a deliberate choice to operate without technology gave me a close and sustained view of what tech does to children. The trials in Los Angeles and elsewhere address what can be argued in court: negligent conduct, failure to warn, misleading claims. But the deeper issue is this: technology has accelerated the erosion of relationships — between children and their parents, and between peers. These relationships are not incidental. They are the very mechanism through which a child becomes a functioning, grounded adult.
At the schools I led, we invested enormous energy in building children’s social environments. When technology was present and mismanaged, it consistently got in the way. That is one of the reasons we decided to eschew it.
We gained knowledge about the complex effects of technology on child development. The question became: how do we make this knowledge available to other parents?
A Better Frame
Think of technology the way we think of carbs. Consumed as part of a balanced diet, carbs play a legitimate role — we need some of them to function. The problem arises when carbs begin to replace the meal. It provides a temporary sense of satisfaction, but the body knows something is missing and asks for more. We eat more carbs, and we find ourselves in a cycle of highs and lows, never truly nourished.
Technology works the same way. What it can never fully deliver is the experience of healthy, complete human relationships. And that is precisely what children are desperately seeking — especially in adolescence, when relationships become the primary engine of growth and identity.
If we can provide children with genuine connection and fulfillment outside of technology, the phone becomes easier to put down. Not because it was taken away — but because something better is available.
Good Intentions Are Not Enough
There is no shortage of resources online offering screen time management tips or behavioral strategies for parents. These provide temporary relief, but they do not give parents the deeper knowledge they need to act with real confidence and autonomy.
Every child is different. Every family environment is different. What parents need is not a one-size-fits-all prescription, but the understanding to adapt thoughtfully to their own situation.
Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs in schools have shown limited results — not because the goal is wrong, but because this kind of development cannot be confined to a classroom. It must happen continuously, through trusted relationships with adults who know the child. Even the best SEL programs rarely extend beyond the school walls.
A tech-free childhood is often perceived as a luxury available only to some. Our goal is to ensure that all parents — regardless of the path they choose — have enough knowledge about their child’s developmental needs to make genuinely informed decisions.
Real change also requires community. The interventions that work are built around the construction and maintenance of in-person social groups — and eventually, groups that teenagers help build themselves. Different kinds of relationships serve different needs. It is the village teenagers need, and where growth actually happens.
What We Are Building
We are developing a platform for parents and educators.
Based on the age of each child, parents will have access to a focused curriculum of short videos — each one explaining the developmental needs of children at that stage, the specific effects of technology, and the practical tools parents can use to respond wisely. This is not a five-step program or a magic formula. It is deep, grounded knowledge about children, technology, and human development — designed to help parents make sense of what is happening and make choices they feel good about.
The platform will support both individual access and group access. For groups of five or more parents, we will also offer live sessions — creating the small, connected communities that children need, and that parents need too.
Who is Behind This
I am joined in this work by my wife, Dr. Monica Laurent, who has spent more than twenty years in education — including guiding two cohorts of students and their families from first through eighth grade, teaching high schoolers and adults, and mentoring teachers. Her most recent academic research focuses on the social environments of teenagers.
We will begin with tweens — a group that is both overlooked and underserved in most existing resources on this topic.
In the coming weeks, we will share more details about the platform’s content, structure, and how you can get involved.
Stay close. What comes next matters.
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