I fear my children are overexposed to technology. Experts say I’m right to worry

‘In 2021, in the midst of a roiling pandemic, the US surgeon general’s office issued a 53-page advisory calling out tech platforms as being particularly culpable when it came to our children’s weakening mental health.’ Photograph: Paula Solloway/Alamy

Last week, my six- and three-year-olds kept singing some irritating song with a repeated “diggity-dog” and butt wiggle in it. Was that from school? I asked. Oh no, from something on the iPad. Somehow, they’d navigated there from another app I’d approved. And I, of course, had no idea, because my head was under two pillows, a small puddle of drool accumulating on the sheet as I willed myself back to sleep for just another 20 minutes.

“Do you know dolphins sleep with half their brain awake?” my first-grader told me, recently, after a trip to the museum.