Written by: Angela Derrick, Ph.D. & Susan McClanahan, Ph.D.
Date Posted: October 27, 2025 11:11 am
When psychologist Jean Twenge first questioned whether smartphones were “destroying a generation,” her 2017 Atlantic article caused shockwaves among parents, teachers, and mental health professionals alike. Now, nearly a decade later, she’s trying to end the debate she ignited, not because the problem has gone away, but because she believes we finally know enough to take action.
In a recent New York Times profile, Twenge reflects on both her professional research and her parenting philosophy. Her new book, 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World, offers what she calls “simple but non-negotiable” guidelines. Kids’ first phones should be basic phones, create no-phone zones, and no social media until age 16 or later. These rules may sound rigid in a world where toddlers swipe before they speak, but Twenge’s message isn’t about fear. It’s about boundaries as protection, not punishment.
At SpringSource Psychological Center, we see the human side of Twenge’s data every day. Behind the statistics are parents, children, and midlife to older adults, all struggling to navigate the same unrelenting current of digital life. It’s not just about kids and their phones; there is something we can all learn about reclaiming attention, connection, and presence in an age that profits from our distraction.
Most of the conversation about screen time focuses on young people and rightly so. Studies consistently show that teenagers who spend more time on screens report higher levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness, while sleep, self-esteem, and real-world social engagement decline. Yet what’s often missing from the conversation is this: adults are struggling, too.
Midlife adults, particularly those balancing careers, caregiving, and digital communication overload, now spend approximately six hours per day or more on screens. That includes work messages, news, social media, streaming, and digital caregiving coordination. It’s a constant hum that fragments our attention and erodes rest.
Twenge’s findings on adolescent distress mirror what we see clinically in adults:
Many parents who bring their teens to therapy for screen-related struggles quietly admit their own dependency. They describe reflexively reaching for their phones to escape, connect, or numb themselves, then feeling worse afterward. The pattern is universal: as one parent put it, “I tell my daughter to get off TikTok while I’m scrolling the news in bed. It’s like telling her not to swim while I’m treading water next to her.” Children model what they see, not what they’re told. Twenge herself admits her family isn’t immune: “I don’t have perfect children; I’m not perfect either,” she told the Times. What matters, she argues, and what therapists know, is not perfection, but repair: the willingness to notice when we’ve lost balance and begin again.
Twenge’s “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World” may sound simple, but they’re radical in practice because they restore a sense of agency to families.
Among her most important rules:
“The biggest link to happiness, and the biggest link to depression, is sleep — always,” Twenge explains. When phones come into the bedroom, sleep quality plummets, and emotional regulation follows. For teens, that can mean mood swings, irritability, and vulnerability to anxiety. For adults, it can mean chronic fatigue, burnout, and emotional disconnection.
In therapy, we often remind families that boundaries are not barriers; they are forms of care. When parents institute screen limits, they’re not stifling independence; they’re safeguarding the nervous system. When adults put their own phones to bed before themselves, they’re protecting their capacity to think, feel, and connect.
What’s striking about Twenge’s rules is that they apply just as easily to adults as to adolescents.
At SpringSource, we often help clients rebuild comfort with quiet. That’s harder than it sounds. For many midlife adults, silence feels unsafe; it stirs thoughts or feelings long deferred. But as one client described after a week of “phone curfew,” the quiet became something sacred: “I didn’t realize how much of my day was spent absorbing everyone else’s energy. When I turned it off, I finally heard my own.”
It’s easy to forget that Twenge’s warnings about youth screen use were born from her broader study of generational change. She’s argued for decades that technology shapes entire cohorts. Smartphones, however, represent a new kind of influence: not just changing how we live, but who we are becoming.
For parents in midlife, this shift is especially poignant. They are the bridge generation — the first to parent in the age of the algorithm, while also managing their own relationship with it. They use their phones for work, caregiving, community, and comfort. Yet they also feel its psychic toll.
Research shows that adults who spend extended time online report higher rates of stress, sleep disruption, and comparison-based dissatisfaction. The endless stream of productivity posts, filtered perfection, and alarming headlines leaves many feeling anxious, inadequate, or numb. What’s more, adults in their 40s and 50s, often dubbed the “sandwich generation,” are among the most digitally burdened populations: responsible for elderly parents, teens, and jobs that never truly end.
The digital overextension of adults doesn’t just affect their own mental health; it reverberates through their families. When children see parents chronically preoccupied or emotionally unavailable, they internalize that divided attention as normal. Over time, relationships begin to fracture not from conflict, but from absence.
In therapy, we hear this in subtle ways:
“My mom’s always working on her laptop.”
“My dad’s on his phone when I’m trying to talk.”
“We all sit together at night, but nobody’s really there.” “Most of my interaction with others is on my phone.”
Technology, in this light, becomes less about connection and more about emotional displacement. It’s a way to avoid presence when presence feels overwhelming. Recognizing this isn’t about blame; it’s about healing. Awareness opens the door to different choices for both kids and adults.
Despite the fatigue around conversations about smartphones, the debate persists because the evidence continues to mount. Currently, U.S. teens average nearly five hours of social media use per day, and almost half say they use the internet “almost constantly.” For adults, those numbers can be even higher when work is included.
Twenge’s critics argue that her conclusions may oversimplify — that global stressors, economic anxiety, and climate fears also contribute to rising mental health challenges. And that’s true. But Twenge’s point isn’t that technology is the sole cause; it’s that it has become an amplifier, magnifying whatever emotional vulnerabilities already exist.
From a clinical perspective, we see technology not as an evil, but as an accelerator. It speeds up stimulation, reaction, and comparison while slowing down recovery, reflection, and rest. That imbalance is particularly dangerous for developing brains and overextended adults alike.
In other words, the phone isn’t the villain, but it’s also not neutral. It’s a tool shaped by design incentives that often run counter to emotional well-being.
For families seeking balance, the question isn’t “Should we have screens?” but “Who’s in charge — us or the device?”
Twenge argues that even small shifts, like no screens overnight, can create powerful ripple effects. As therapists, we know that small, consistent habits create structure for emotional regulation.
Some practices we recommend at SpringSource:
Every digital behavior serves a purpose: to soothe, distract, connect, or escape. When we begin reducing screen time, we often surface the emotions that scrolling kept at bay: anxiety, grief, loneliness, emptiness. That’s why digital detox alone rarely lasts; without emotional insight, we return to the screen for relief.
Therapy offers space to explore these undercurrents. For parents, it may reveal guilt or shame over not being “present enough.” For midlife adults, it may expose deeper exhaustion or the ache of unmet needs. For teens, it often uncovers isolation masked by online hyperactivity.
The work isn’t about cutting off technology, but reintegrating it into a life that feels grounded. We help clients identify what technology is displacing, like sleep, conversation, movement, creativity, and rebuild those capacities gently, with compassion rather than judgment.
Dr. Angela Derrick notes, “Our goal is to help clients develop a healthy relationship with technology, just like the kind of healthy relationship they might have with other things in their lives-meaning that there is enjoyment, boundaries, and choice about how and when to engage.”
Twenge’s book emphasizes structure; therapy adds compassion. Together, they create a balanced model for modern families where control gives way to connection.
Instead of “screen policing,” we invite parents to co-regulate: to acknowledge that both generations are learning to manage digital life. When parents admit their own struggles, children feel less judged and more understood.
Conversation starters that build empathy:
These questions shift the tone from compliance to curiosity, and from shame to understanding. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s mindfulness and presence.
Despite her reputation as a digital pessimist, Twenge is surprisingly optimistic. “It can be tempting to give up,” she says, “but this is too important for us to give up.” She points to small wins — bipartisan school phone bans, better parental tools, the rise of “basic” kid-friendly phones — as signs that the tide is turning.
At SpringSource, we share that optimism. Change rarely begins with sweeping reform; it begins with awareness, conversation, and a single evening when the phone stays in another room and there is opportunity for different kinds of interactions.
It’s easy to forget that technology’s goal is to capture attention, but attention is a way to show love. When we reclaim it, even moment by moment, we rediscover what asynchronous* screen time can never simulate: eye contact, empathy, stillness, and the feeling of being truly seen.
*Synchronous communication is face-to-face in real time, while asynchronous is one-to-many and involves delays in responses with no ability to glean information from facial expressions and other live indicators. Not all digital interactions are asynchronous; for example, FaceTime counts as synchronous as it is one-to-one and in real-time.
The digital world isn’t going away, and neither is our longing for connection. The challenge, and the opportunity, lie in reconciling the two.
Jean Twenge’s work reminds us that reclaiming presence isn’t an act of rebellion; it’s an act of care. It’s a decision to protect the conditions that make emotional life possible — rest, curiosity, attention, and community. Whether you’re thirteen or fifty-three, those are the foundations of wellbeing.
So maybe the question isn’t how to end the debate about kids and phones, but how to expand it to include every one of us. Because the struggle to stay human in a digital world is a shared one. And the first step toward healing might be as simple as putting the phone down and looking up.
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