We became that family. Here is what I learned.

I spent 25 years inside some of the world's most sophisticated digital systems. I helped build some of them. And I still became that family. This is what happened — and what I'm doing about it.

Jun 1st 26

How it started

We swore it would never be us.

When my kids were young, my husband and I watched a family at a restaurant — every single one of them on their phones, completely disconnected from each other. We looked at each other and said: that will never be us.

It’s us.

It didn’t happen in one moment. It happened slowly, through a hundred small decisions that each made perfect sense at the time. Family at a restaurant, each on their own device

The family we said we’d never be.

I spent 25 years inside some of the world’s most sophisticated digital systems. I helped build some of them. And I still became that family.

That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. Because if someone who understands the architecture — who has spent decades inside these platforms thinking about how people actually behave — can slowly and quietly lose the thread, then this isn’t a parenting failure. It’s a design problem. And it deserves a design response.

How it happened

We didn’t hand them devices all at once.

Tablets only on long flights. Then COVID happened and they needed them for school. Then my daughter needed her own computer. Then the kids started walking to school alone, so we got them phones — something I’d been adamant would wait until they were older.

And suddenly: multiple devices, multiple accounts, multiple lives happening in screens I couldn’t see. My son staying up all night, not able to wake up for school. My daughter starting to quietly hide her digital life as she hit her teens and wanted privacy. But also — my kids laughing harder at content than I’ve ever made them laugh. My daughter using YouTube and drawing apps to become a genuinely talented illustrator. My son becoming a sharper problem solver through games. A 24-hour flight home that was, for the first time, completely fight-free.

It’s not black and white. And that’s exactly what makes it hard.

The tension

My husband and I don’t always agree.

He wants the kids to have independence. I want them to be bored sometimes. We both want what’s best for them, and we’re both wrong and right in equal measure. Navigating this as two people who see it differently is its own challenge — and I suspect we’re not alone in that.

When I finally decided to take back control, I came in with a document. A plan. Screen time limits, parental controls, the whole thing. Here’s how that conversation went:

Kid

It's my device.

Me

Actually, it's mine. I'm lending it to you.

Kid

You need rules too.

Me

Fair. Let's set some together

Kid

What about Spotify and drawing apps?

Me

…good question.

When we finally went to set it all up, we discovered my kids weren’t paired to our accounts at all. My daughter had eleven email addresses — none of them the one we’d been monitoring. Not because she’s devious. Because she’d forgotten passwords and quietly figured it out.

She knows the technology better than I do. And I built some of it.

That’s when I shifted from enforcement to curiosity — asking questions carefully, and at the right moment.

Not during homework. Not during dinner when everyone is already tired. The conversations happen in the in-between moments, when they’re open to them. Why are you watching this? What are your friends doing? What do you actually like about it? They’re not always easy. But they’re the ones that matter.

What I’ve come to believe

Digital literacy is not an individual skill. It is a collective capability.

It won’t be solved by one determined parent with a document, or one school with a new policy. It takes parents, schools, and kids working from the same map — even when that map is still being drawn.

A few things I’ve learned so far — and I’m still learning:

• Delay as long as you genuinely can.

  It’s much harder to walk things back than to introduce them slowly. If you haven’t given them a device yet, that window is worth protecting.

• Kids are more resourceful than the systems we build.

  The goal isn’t to engineer a system they can’t crack. It’s to raise a child who understands why the boundaries exist — and has the tools to make better decisions on their own over time.

• Curiosity works better than control, but timing matters.

  Asking questions opens more doors than banning things closes. But the right question at the wrong moment lands nowhere. Catch them when they’re actually open.

• This isn’t just about the kids.

  The same mechanisms designed to keep children scrolling are working on us too. Before we point the finger, it’s worth sitting with that.

• It requires the whole village.

  Schools, parents, and kids are all navigating this in parallel, often without talking to each other. The most powerful thing we can do is start doing it together.

This is part of an ongoing conversation — not a set of rules, not a panic, but a process of wayfinding. If it resonates, the earlier posts are a good place to start. The conversations are messy. But they’re happening, and that’s the whole point.