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Better Than Real Life: How Silicon Valley's Secret Science of Persuasive Design Is Stealing Childhood
“This book will haunt you, but in all the best ways. It's not enough to know our kids are being tricked and manipulated, it’s knowing how they are being tricked that will help parents—and kids themselves—make smarter screen-time decisions.”
—Victoria Dunckley, MD, integrative child psychiatrist and author of Reset Your Child's Brain
“Dr. Freed courageously exposes the ‘puppet masters’ hiding behind kids’ screens, shedding light on how technology and gaming companies employ neuropsychologists and neuroscientists to implement manipulative designs in their digital products.”
—Andrew P. Doan, MPH, MD, PhD, neuroscientist and author of Hooked on Games
“This beautifully written and accessible book will give you calm, clear, and courageous information that cuts through profit-driven marketing, tech-industry manipulation, and media hype.”
—Kim John Payne, MEd, author of Simplicity Parenting, The Soul of Discipline, and Emotionally Resilient Tweens and Teens
In Better Than Real Life, child and adolescent psychologist Richard Freed reveals how Silicon Valley’s secret science of persuasive design is pulling a generation of kids away from the real world to live on social media, video games, and online video. The psychological science is so powerful that it is able to persuade youth, at a genetic level, that sitting sedentary on playtime screens is better than running and playing, better than engaging with school, better than spending time with family. He shows how social media exploit girls’ DNA-driven instincts with tragic consequences for their mental health, while video games take advantage of boys’ Stone Age impulses, increasing the risks of academic struggles and gaming addiction.
Who’s protecting the kids? As a parent, an educator, a health-care provider, or other person involved in raising children, why aren’t you being informed about the risks that supposed “child-safe” technologies pose to youth? Why has the industry been able to steal kids’ childhood with little to no resistance? Freed shows that the leading “health-based” institutions claiming to protect kids from unhealthy technology are actually aligned with industry, often financially, and essentially act as promotional bodies for consumer tech products.
Freed has devoted his career to shedding light on how Silicon Valley industry is using psychology—a discipline that we associate with healing—as a weapon against children. He uncovers in this book a dangerous double a very small group of tech-involved parents are making fundamentally different choices about how their own kids use technology as compared to what their organizations preach is beneficial for other kids. The result is a shameful example of a small privileged group of parents being able to provide their kids a science-based childhood while the remainder of kids are pushed toward a screen-centered existence. This is wrong. A childhood focused around family, school, and the outdoors must be made available to all children and teens. Better Than Real Life shows how we can provide our kids the healthy lives they need—in the real world.
—Victoria Dunckley, MD, integrative child psychiatrist and author of Reset Your Child's Brain
“Dr. Freed courageously exposes the ‘puppet masters’ hiding behind kids’ screens, shedding light on how technology and gaming companies employ neuropsychologists and neuroscientists to implement manipulative designs in their digital products.”
—Andrew P. Doan, MPH, MD, PhD, neuroscientist and author of Hooked on Games
“This beautifully written and accessible book will give you calm, clear, and courageous information that cuts through profit-driven marketing, tech-industry manipulation, and media hype.”
—Kim John Payne, MEd, author of Simplicity Parenting, The Soul of Discipline, and Emotionally Resilient Tweens and Teens
In Better Than Real Life, child and adolescent psychologist Richard Freed reveals how Silicon Valley’s secret science of persuasive design is pulling a generation of kids away from the real world to live on social media, video games, and online video. The psychological science is so powerful that it is able to persuade youth, at a genetic level, that sitting sedentary on playtime screens is better than running and playing, better than engaging with school, better than spending time with family. He shows how social media exploit girls’ DNA-driven instincts with tragic consequences for their mental health, while video games take advantage of boys’ Stone Age impulses, increasing the risks of academic struggles and gaming addiction.
Who’s protecting the kids? As a parent, an educator, a health-care provider, or other person involved in raising children, why aren’t you being informed about the risks that supposed “child-safe” technologies pose to youth? Why has the industry been able to steal kids’ childhood with little to no resistance? Freed shows that the leading “health-based” institutions claiming to protect kids from unhealthy technology are actually aligned with industry, often financially, and essentially act as promotional bodies for consumer tech products.
Freed has devoted his career to shedding light on how Silicon Valley industry is using psychology—a discipline that we associate with healing—as a weapon against children. He uncovers in this book a dangerous double a very small group of tech-involved parents are making fundamentally different choices about how their own kids use technology as compared to what their organizations preach is beneficial for other kids. The result is a shameful example of a small privileged group of parents being able to provide their kids a science-based childhood while the remainder of kids are pushed toward a screen-centered existence. This is wrong. A childhood focused around family, school, and the outdoors must be made available to all children and teens. Better Than Real Life shows how we can provide our kids the healthy lives they need—in the real world.
341 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2025
17 people are currently reading
748 people want to read
About the author
Richard Freed
2 books11 followersRichard Freed, PhD, is a child and adolescent psychologist, author, and his insights have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other media outlets. He is a leading expert on how our kids’ increasingly screen-focused lives affect their physical and mental health as well as academic success.
Freed has devoted his career to revealing how Silicon Valley is using psychology—a discipline that we associate with healing—as a weapon against kids in order to pull them online and keep them there. This is achieved by consumer tech corporations joining forces with world-leading psychology experts to create the virtually unknown science of persuasive design used in social media, video games, and online video. Freed is determined to bring knowledge of this science—which now exists among a handful of tech elite—to all of those who care for kids in his newly released book, Better Than Real Life: How Silicon Valley’s Secret Science of Persuasive Design Is Stealing Childhood.
Freed speaks nationally to groups of parents, teachers, and health care providers. Receiving his professional training at Cambridge Hospital / Harvard Medical School and the California School of Professional Psychology, he is on the advisory boards of the Screen Time Action Network at Fairplay, Families Managing Media, and Wait Until 8th. Freed lives in Walnut Creek, California and is the proud father of two daughters.
Freed has devoted his career to revealing how Silicon Valley is using psychology—a discipline that we associate with healing—as a weapon against kids in order to pull them online and keep them there. This is achieved by consumer tech corporations joining forces with world-leading psychology experts to create the virtually unknown science of persuasive design used in social media, video games, and online video. Freed is determined to bring knowledge of this science—which now exists among a handful of tech elite—to all of those who care for kids in his newly released book, Better Than Real Life: How Silicon Valley’s Secret Science of Persuasive Design Is Stealing Childhood.
Freed speaks nationally to groups of parents, teachers, and health care providers. Receiving his professional training at Cambridge Hospital / Harvard Medical School and the California School of Professional Psychology, he is on the advisory boards of the Screen Time Action Network at Fairplay, Families Managing Media, and Wait Until 8th. Freed lives in Walnut Creek, California and is the proud father of two daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 4, 2025
Fascinating and timely book about the technology forces that are pulling kids further and further away from the real world.
April 3, 2025
This book should be a must read for every parent before they decide to let their child play video games, get a smartphone, or join social media. I truly believe that if parents understood what persuasive design is and how it is leveraged by the creators of Fortnite, Roblox, and every major social media platform to exploit the vulnerabilities of children for profit, they would never allow their kids to engage with this technology. As this book convincingly shows, big tech's only priority is to keep users on their platforms for as long as possible via persuasive design, because that is how they make money. (Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably part of the Silicon Valley Propaganda Machine.) As a result, we have a generation of kids who no longer have the attention span to read a book, who have skyrocketing rates of obesity, and unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression. And many parents aren't doing much better with this tech.
Parents also need to understand how trusted institutions like the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, and Common Sense Media have been bought out by big tech and are no longer providing objective, science-based recs when it comes to screen time. All of this is detailed in this thoroughly researched, powerful book. READ IT!
Parents also need to understand how trusted institutions like the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, and Common Sense Media have been bought out by big tech and are no longer providing objective, science-based recs when it comes to screen time. All of this is detailed in this thoroughly researched, powerful book. READ IT!
October 5, 2025
Having been in consumer internet for most of my career, albeit on the business side, I thought I knew a little bit about persuasive design and screen addiction. I was partially right, turns out, I actually knew VERY little about the subject.
Wow was this book eye-opening and informative. And perhaps one of the most important books on the market for parents with young and teenage children.
Richard Freed is an exceptional writer as Better Than Real Life: The Secret Science Addicting Kids to Screens—and How to Save Childhood is a very accessible and an engaging read throughout. I was both fascinated and disturbed to learn about the science and details behind how tech is used to manipulate behavior and keep people, especially kids, glued to their devices.
And I was even more concerned to read about the vast conflict of interests (potential and, in some cases, clear cut) between leading non-profits and health organizations and even media outlets like NPR and the consumer tech industry. As Freed reveals, it is essentially the same model used by big Tabacco from the 60’s and 70’s. That's problematic to say the least.
I appreciated how the author reached out to and engaged with a number of the executives and experts involved with persuasive design and shared many of these exchanges in the book. I knew of or had heard of several of these people but, others were new to me. Of particle interest was reading about the director of user experience for Fortnite, Celia Hodent. Freed expertly and clearly breaks down the elements within this massive game and the techniques it employs to hold a kid's attention and the ramifications as well. And it also reflects on how Dr. Hodent evolved from a creator to critic of addictive game design involving children.
I feel very fortunate that phones and tablets were not an issue when raising my kids at younger ages. It wasn’t until they became teenagers that my son became a Call of Duty fanatic. Fortunately, that didn’t last too long and my daughter never really got too deep into social media which in retrospect is truly fortunate. In fact, if anyone is addicted to screens in the family it is me and this book really helped me understand how that came about. I am going to put my phone down as soon as I finish this review and go for a walk! LOL.
This book is essential for parents of pre-teen and teen kids. It joins Investing for Kids: How to Save, Invest and Grow Moneyas one of the must read books that I often recommend my parent friends and family. If you're a parent (or grandparent or uncle or aunt etc.) you should read it too.
Wow was this book eye-opening and informative. And perhaps one of the most important books on the market for parents with young and teenage children.
Richard Freed is an exceptional writer as Better Than Real Life: The Secret Science Addicting Kids to Screens—and How to Save Childhood is a very accessible and an engaging read throughout. I was both fascinated and disturbed to learn about the science and details behind how tech is used to manipulate behavior and keep people, especially kids, glued to their devices.
And I was even more concerned to read about the vast conflict of interests (potential and, in some cases, clear cut) between leading non-profits and health organizations and even media outlets like NPR and the consumer tech industry. As Freed reveals, it is essentially the same model used by big Tabacco from the 60’s and 70’s. That's problematic to say the least.
I appreciated how the author reached out to and engaged with a number of the executives and experts involved with persuasive design and shared many of these exchanges in the book. I knew of or had heard of several of these people but, others were new to me. Of particle interest was reading about the director of user experience for Fortnite, Celia Hodent. Freed expertly and clearly breaks down the elements within this massive game and the techniques it employs to hold a kid's attention and the ramifications as well. And it also reflects on how Dr. Hodent evolved from a creator to critic of addictive game design involving children.
I feel very fortunate that phones and tablets were not an issue when raising my kids at younger ages. It wasn’t until they became teenagers that my son became a Call of Duty fanatic. Fortunately, that didn’t last too long and my daughter never really got too deep into social media which in retrospect is truly fortunate. In fact, if anyone is addicted to screens in the family it is me and this book really helped me understand how that came about. I am going to put my phone down as soon as I finish this review and go for a walk! LOL.
This book is essential for parents of pre-teen and teen kids. It joins Investing for Kids: How to Save, Invest and Grow Moneyas one of the must read books that I often recommend my parent friends and family. If you're a parent (or grandparent or uncle or aunt etc.) you should read it too.
October 4, 2025
Better Than Real Life: The Secret Science Addicting Kids to Screens—and How to Save Childhood is a well researched eye‑opener for anyone concerned with how ubiquitous screens are reshaping childhood.
Richard Freed a child and adolescent psychologist, unpacks the hidden mechanics of what he calls “persuasive design” — the ways in which app, game, and social media designers exploit psychological and biological vulnerabilities to draw—and keep—kids into digital worlds.
From ancient DNA‑based instincts to social media reward loops, he shows with clarity how many online experiences are engineered to feel “better than real life,” even when they come at the cost of physical activity, emotional well‑being, social connection, or school engagement. The strength of the book lies not just in its exposition of the problem, but in its insistence that the problem is real, urgent, and capable of being addressed.
What I especially admire about the author's writing is how he connects rigorous science with human concern. He doesn’t just catalog harms; he paints the picture of what’s being lost: spontaneous play, deep family bonds, the real world experiences that builds resilience.
Of particular interest to me was how hi lifted the veil on the complacency—even collusion—that often exists among institutions trusted to protect children. Health organizations, media‑watch groups, school. He argues many have been, at minimum, slow to sound the alarm, and in some cases financially or culturally aligned with the very tech‑interests causing the harm.
This is an eye opening and important read, especially for any parent concerned with how kids (and adults) get addicted to the screen. I highly recommend it,
Richard Freed a child and adolescent psychologist, unpacks the hidden mechanics of what he calls “persuasive design” — the ways in which app, game, and social media designers exploit psychological and biological vulnerabilities to draw—and keep—kids into digital worlds.
From ancient DNA‑based instincts to social media reward loops, he shows with clarity how many online experiences are engineered to feel “better than real life,” even when they come at the cost of physical activity, emotional well‑being, social connection, or school engagement. The strength of the book lies not just in its exposition of the problem, but in its insistence that the problem is real, urgent, and capable of being addressed.
What I especially admire about the author's writing is how he connects rigorous science with human concern. He doesn’t just catalog harms; he paints the picture of what’s being lost: spontaneous play, deep family bonds, the real world experiences that builds resilience.
Of particular interest to me was how hi lifted the veil on the complacency—even collusion—that often exists among institutions trusted to protect children. Health organizations, media‑watch groups, school. He argues many have been, at minimum, slow to sound the alarm, and in some cases financially or culturally aligned with the very tech‑interests causing the harm.
This is an eye opening and important read, especially for any parent concerned with how kids (and adults) get addicted to the screen. I highly recommend it,
October 17, 2025
I’m surprised this book doesn’t have more reviews. Truly excellent and a must read for all parents. We are a fairly low tech family but I like reading these books to help me maintain my resolve and not slip into bad habits. And it made me realize that although we limit how much our kids play, we could still do better and that I myself want to cull out the time I spend on apps that use persuasive design. I wish each chapter of this book could be a docuseries for those that don’t like to read. The hypocrisy and the conflict of interest of the tech elite and those who protect them should be exposed.
October 13, 2025
This book was a real eye opener for me.
I had heard about tech firms manipulating people but not the actual science behind it. Very devious, especially harmful for children.
I won the book in a Goodreads Giveaway (my first!) and it was a very interesting and worthwhile book on a subject I otheriwse knew very little about.
I had heard about tech firms manipulating people but not the actual science behind it. Very devious, especially harmful for children.
I won the book in a Goodreads Giveaway (my first!) and it was a very interesting and worthwhile book on a subject I otheriwse knew very little about.
October 20, 2025
A must read for parents everywhere.
I had no idea that tech companies dod these things and that trusted medical associations were funded by them too.
Get your kids off the screen at all costs. That is what the tech overlords ensure for their own kids.
Again a must read!
I had no idea that tech companies dod these things and that trusted medical associations were funded by them too.
Get your kids off the screen at all costs. That is what the tech overlords ensure for their own kids.
Again a must read!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews