At first, I honestly thought people were exaggerating.
Every generation panics about technology, right?
TV.
Video games.
Computers.
So when I started seeing pediatric specialists warning about “screen overstimulation” and “dopamine dependency” in children, I brushed most of it off.
Until I started noticing it in my own daughter.
And once I saw it…
I couldn’t unsee it anymore.
She used to spend hours outside.
Riding her bike.
Drawing chalk on the driveway.
Taking random little “treasures” home from walks.
Then slowly, over the course of about a year, something changed.
The phone became more interesting than everything else.
At first it seemed harmless.
A little TikTok after school...
YouTube during dinner...
Games before bed...
But eventually it felt like her brain was permanently attached to stimulation.
Short videos.
Fast cuts.
Loud sounds.
Constant scrolling.
And what scared me most wasn’t that she loved screens.
It was that she stopped loving almost everything else.