(The Atlantic) – The more I probed what constant monitoring is doing to kids, the more I also started to wonder what it is doing to parents, on the other end of the umbilical cord. Our phones promise us a kind of omniscience from the moment a kid is born. Even when we are physically apart, we remain digitally tethered. But as parents, we are supposed to undergo our own transformation as our children grow, relinquishing the knowledge and control we once held. “That’s an important developmental task for parents too,” Burnell said.

And here, we parents might be failing ourselves. We are certainly not thriving. In 2024, the U.S. surgeon general issued a public-health advisory about the mental health of parents, echoing a similar advisory about youth mental health three years earlier. In a national survey in which 18 percent of teens reported anxiety, so did 18 percent of parents. For all the recent concern about a crisis in teen mental health, parents are clearly struggling too. (Read More)