It's natural to blame this stuff on the latest bogeyman but I doubt it has anything to do with smartphones and social media specifically. I was in school before smartphones and social media, and I just stayed up until the small hours talking on the landline.

Kids and teenagers need some time to do their own thing, so given that most of the "waking hours" are filled with school and other things that we effectively force on them, of course they try to steal some hours for themselves where they can.

Yes. The forms change with tech, but the basic dynamics are the same.

In my case, it was programming 8 bit computers and yakking on the CB net a friend and I had setup. We had about 20 people on it at one point. Adults tuned in regularly to listen to us kids talk about all kinds of shit.

Amazingly, they left us alone.

> Amazingly, they left us alone.

One of the best things we adults can do for our kids, a lot of the time.

Yep. I did a lot of free range with my kids and am raising my granddaughter, who will see the same.

The other thing we can do is bring them a lot of hands on experiences. Doing stuff.

Both are high value.

> It's incredibly easy to stay up too late when you're hyperconnected and chatting with your classmates late into the night. It just wasn't even a possibility 20 years ago.

I stayed up until 2 or 3 am reading books because I wasn’t tired. They’re staying up chatting with their friends because they’re not tired. The connection is the “not being tired.”

I grew up before social media, and I stayed up late reading books. "just one more chapter and then I'll go to sleep". And I'm not even a book nerd - I haven't read any fiction in over a decade now, it's just what we had. I think young people will find something no matter what.