Alaina Kozma

“The screen-averse attitude is about values, principles, and cultural customs. It's a moral and ethical position. It's grounded in beliefs about proper and improper ways of living a good life. It may be framed as if it were objective, as if it were about physical or mental health; but the real problem is that grown-ups are resistant to change. They are anxious about their kids' adjustment.
They should be. After all, today's parents aspire to the impossible: adjusting their kids to old-time habitual norms that no longer characterize the predominant social experience. This is the root cause of their screen-time anxiety - it is not the technology, but rather discomfort with the increasingly ambiguous boundary between home and work. Like Engelhardt, parents don't like it that the private world of the controlled family home fraternizes with the frightening unpredictable chaos that is supposed to happen elsewhere. Connected digital devices exacerbate their stress because, paradoxically, they facilitate deeply private encounters with a wildly public world. Parents see attention streaming away from the household. The lines between inside and outside, private and public, isolated and connected become ambiguous. And grown-ups become become confused. This is why most of the screen-time advice offered by experts, practitioners, and journalists advocates for drawing clearer boundaries and achieving better balance -- these are misguided attempts to bring what's blurry into focus.”
― Jordan Shapiro