Hello, darkness, my old friend: How to get your body's circadian rhythms back on the beat



A few weeks ago, I enjoined all of you men to do what the right-wing bodybuilders and broscientists of X do and sun your scrota, treating the testicles within to certain health-giving frequencies of light.

As silly as that might sound, red-light therapy is a pretty hot trend, and exposing your genitalia to it probably has testosterone-boosting effects. This week, I’m going to be counseling you avoid light — and not just for your nether regions.

A study from last year found a 'significant relationship between outdoor light pollution and Alzheimer’s disease prevalence.'

The fact is that we’re exposed to too much light, of the wrong kind and at the wrong times, and it’s seriously screwing with our bodies and minds.

Apeman

My attitude to health, in a nutshell, would be this: Try to live, as much as you can, in the manner of your ancestors. Why? Well, because we're the same as them, more or less. We Homo sapiens haven't changed much from our days as hunter-gatherers 200,000 years ago. We’re still running more or less the same firmware, with a few important updates here and there.

What is different, however, is the environment you inhabit. It really kicked off about 10,000-12,000 years ago, with the Agricultural Revolution in the Near East. Now there were these things called farms and cities, and there was commerce and administration and taxes, armies and wars.

Once agriculture started to spread, the pace of change really started to pick up. Fast-forward to about 200 years ago and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and it starts to get really crazy.

All of a sudden you’ve got people living in communities of millions and a mind-boggling complexity. You’ve got people working in factories, eating food made in factories, wearing synthetic clothing made in factories, illuminating their homes and communities with electric light 24/7, bombarding their bodies with electromagnetic radiation 24/7, dosing themselves with ever-increasing numbers of medications, inhaling and swallowing billions of tiny pieces of plastic invisible to the naked eye.

The modern age

I’m not going to list all the changes here. The truth is that our bodies simply can’t cope — not fully — with the vast transformation our way of life has undergone in recent centuries and especially in the last hundred years. Keep in mind that this "modern" way of life is but a blip in human time. Our genes haven’t caught up yet, and maybe they never will. So it pays to treat your body, as much as you can, in the manner of your ancestors — to eat like them, move like them, and do the things they did.

Of course, you can go too far in your pursuit of an ancestral lifestyle — just look at the sad, sad story of the Liver King, a true cautionary tale for the “primal” community.

And I’m not saying the modern world doesn’t have its beguiling or useful aspects. I rather like the fact that I’m here, in my centrally heated living room, writing this article on my swish little iPad with its touch screen and magnetic keyboard. That’s pretty cool and useful. Then again, I suppose I could get used to writing in the manner of, say, Cicero: reclining on a couch in a toga, dictating to a slave while another one feeds me grapes.

Who loves the sun

The changes that have taken place in terms of light in the last century or so — to how we use and relate to light, natural and artificial — have been no less drastic than the changes to any other aspect of our lives, including the way we eat.

For the vast majority of human history, we organized our lives consciously and unconsciously around the natural diurnal rhythms of the planet. We woke up with the sun, and we went to bed when it became dark. There were seasonal changes, but they repeated, year after year. The invention of artificial light — fire, candles — didn’t really affect any of that much.

It was only with electric light that it become possible to defy the natural rhythms of night and day and the seasons and become what we are today: beings in possession of perpetual suns we can use to illuminate ourselves and our surroundings as much as we want, whenever we want.

Night moves

Banishing the darkness has had dramatic effects on our health.

Light governs the body’s circadian rhythms, also known as the “body clock,” which play a key role in regulating the secretion of hormones and processes of growth and recovery.

The main frequencies of light emitted by screens and LED lighting are blue, and these seem to have particularly bad effects on our bodies. Some scientists have suggested that blue light should be considered an endocrine disruptor — something as prone to mess with our hormones as nasty plasticizing chemicals, herbicides and pesticides, and many of the additives we find in ultra-processed food.

A study in the journal Environmental Research associates blue-light exposure with increased rates of breast cancer among women who do night work and sleep disorders among teenagers.

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Photo by Bloomberg/Getty Images

Blue arrangements

In my piece on the boon of ball bronzing, I mentioned a study showing that chronic exposure to blue light could actually bring on early puberty in rats. This is a pretty worrying finding, especially since we know the age of puberty in the developed world has been decreasing for decades and children are being exposed to ever-greater quantities of blue light from the screens and electronic devices they play with all day long.

Large-scale studies clearly suggest exposure to artificial light could be having population-level effects. Research has linked nighttime light exposure to cognitive decline, for example. A study from last year compared rates of Alzheimer’s to satellite data for nighttime light levels across the U.S. The scientists found a “significant relationship between outdoor light pollution and Alzheimer’s disease prevalence. States and counties with higher levels of artificial light at night consistently had higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease.” Most worryingly of all, the association was strongest in the under-65s, a demographic that typically doesn’t suffer from this terrible disease.

So what can you do?

Doctor my eyes

In general terms, you should try to reduce your exposure to artificial light and do things that mimic the natural rise and fall of light levels. Go out and get sunlight early in the morning, or expose yourself to bright light with a SAD lamp. As afternoon draws into evening, begin to reduce levels of light in your home or workspace. Tell your body it’s getting closer to sleepy time. Turn off the main lights, turn on lamps, close the curtains — you could even light a few candles. I light my kitchen in the evening with candles, and it creates a wonderfully relaxing atmosphere. Begin to wind down your use of electronic devices that emit blue light.

If you have to spend your day or large portions of it staring at a screen, you can buy a pair of blue-light-blocking glasses. Ra Optics makes some very fetching blue-light blockers that don’t look at all silly. In fact, they’re basically indistinguishable from normal glasses or sunglasses. You could also buy one of Daylight’s very swanky tablets that has a blue-light-free backlight.

Alternatively, you can play with your device’s brightness settings or download a blue-light app like f.lux or Twilight. There’s also a built-in feature on Windows called “Night Light” that allows you to reduce levels of blue light in the evenings. You can even toggle it to come on automatically at set times.

Of course, you could just turn the bloody thing off. Imagine that. Our ancestors, fortunate creatures that they were, didn’t have to.

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New Texas Law Targets Mass Screen Addiction Among Kids

Unless parents make a concerted effort to deal with the smartphone, the great majority of kids will never come close to reaching their full potential.

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After years of parents attempting to implement content controls, screen time limits, and other half measures, Morell is ready to cut the Gordian Knot.

Stop letting your children watch this popular show — it’s frying their brains on purpose



Look up which shows are most popular among children these days, and you’re sure to find Netflix’s "CoComelon" at the top of the list. The animated series prides itself on teaching preschoolers basic concepts like letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and social skills through catchy nursery rhymes, original songs, and colorful 3D animation. Emphasizing positive themes such as kindness, sharing, and problem-solving, "CoComelon" seems benign, perhaps even beneficial, to parents who need a moment’s peace or a few minutes to prepare a meal.

However, a deeper dive into the making of the series reveals a sinister truth: The creators are purposely frying children’s brains.

To dive into this controversy, Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” invites Clare Morell, author and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, to the show to share her knowledge.

Morell, citing a New York Times article, says that researchers at Moonbug Entertainment, the British children’s content company behind "CoComelon," test child subjects in front of two screens. One airs an episode of "CoComelon"; the other, dubbed the “Distractatron,” runs through mundane footage — “ a mom cooking dinner, a dad vacuuming.” A team of note-taking researchers observes from a glass room.

“Any time the child looked away from "CoComelon" and found the real-life scene more interesting, the episode makers would note that down, where that time stamp was within the show, and then they'd go back and they'd add more music, brighter lights, flashing colors to that point in the show because they want it to be immersive and addictive to a child,” says Morell.

So what kind of digital content is safe for young children, then?

According to Morell, none.

“The brain is in really critical periods of development, especially in those early years, and the problem is that screens are way overstimulating for a child's developing nervous system, and studies show that handing devices to these young children robs them of their ability to develop emotional regulation,” she explains. “Instead of developing patience and self-control and frustration tolerance, they're just learning to be calmed by a screen.”

Screen time limitations, she says, unfortunately, are ineffective.

“A daily screen time limit — even if it's a short amount of time — is incredibly habit-forming,” she tells Allie. Like "CoComelon," “devices are made to be addictive to a child's brain.”

“The problem is that the screen time limits don't map on to a child's mental or emotional time that is then spent craving more and more of that device because of the dopamine in the brain,” Morrell explains. “They're going to constantly crave more, and it really disregulates their developing nervous system, and so it's really important to protect those young years.”

To hear more of the conversation and learn how to protect not just your young children but also your teenagers from the harms posed by screens, watch the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

We're all 'too busy' to eat dinner as a family — but we should do it anyway



What does it mean to eat dinner together as a family?

Why do we do it? Or rather, why did we do it? It seems the number of families who eat dinner together every night is shrinking.

I remember that if the phone rang during that time, my parents would look at one another shocked. 'Who would be calling during dinner?'

It feels like every year it becomes more rare. The image of a mother, father, and a couple kids sitting around a table, full plates in front of them and a few serving dishes in the middle, is becoming an old-fashioned image in our day and age.

Today, families are too busy to have dinner together. Too much work, too many obligations, too many schedules.

Dad has meetings, mom has to go to the gym, the kids have practice, dinner will have to wait.

Grab and go

A house today is more a place for atomized individuals to rest their heads at night before heading out and on their way every morning. It’s more a hostel and less a home. Breakfast out the door, lunch on the go, dinner on your own.

What kind of family life is this?

In the preindustrial world, families saw a lot of one another. Life wasn’t a fairy tale back then, times were tough, I am not sure people were always so chipper or joyful, but families did spend a lot of time together. That’s just how it was.

Life in the modern world, on the other hand, is hectic. Today, families are pulled apart by the chaos of modern life: the activities that never stop, the nagging sense that we might be able to “have it all.”

An antidote to atomization

For a while in the 20th century, families coped with the fracturing chaos of modern life by eating dinner together every night. It was a standard thing. All across American society, families ate dinner together.

Not just on Sunday or Saturday. Every night. Practices, classes, and rehearsals were scheduled around dinner. People weren’t forced to choose between dinner and some prescheduled activity or obligation.

Even deep into the '90s, there was a sense that you shouldn’t call anyone between 6:30 and 8:30 in the evening. That was when people ate dinner. There was an assumption everyone was eating with their families. I remember that if the phone rang during that time, my parents would look at one another shocked.

“Who would be calling during dinner?”

Dinner was the final sacred realm. The last untouched territory. Everyone might be out on their own all day, but at 6:00, everyone came back together as a family again.

Kids would tell one another, “I’ve got to go, I have to be back for dinner.” The street was quieter at those times. The world slowed for a couple hours. For the sanctity of dinner, the sanctity of family.

This is gone today. That societal detente has been eroded. Dinner is no longer respected.

Making dinner matter again

Now, parents eat separately because it’s easier. Kids eat on the bus on the way back from the volleyball tournament. Families go out to eat, and they all sit around the table scrolling their iPhones not saying a single word to one another. Today, for most, dinner doesn’t matter.

But it can. Even though society tries to fracture the family in 100 ways, we don’t have to go along with it. We still have free will. We can choose a different way. We can still come together as a family for dinner every single night.

That’s what we do in our family. We don’t watch TV during dinner, we don’t look at our phones during dinner, we don’t have separate dinners for mom and dad. We all sit down together every night.

The freedom of obligation

It’s not always easy. It’s hard with little kids. Every parent knows that. The messes, the cajoling, trying to teach manners while eating at the same time. Often, it’s not exactly a relaxing vibe.

It would be so much easier to throw something together for the kids, sit them at the table, then go in the other room and scroll the timeline on my phone. It would be so much easier to not block off that time every night. I would have more freedom if we didn’t eat dinner together. But I would be missing something important. I would be missing dinner together.

Our culture is what we do. Eating dinner together is a part of our culture. Eating dinner every night with no other distractions is good. Even when it’s bad, it’s good.

It’s not about grand meals or perfectly prepared dishes. It’s about something deeper. Eating dinner together is about coming back together at the end of the day, sitting around the table, and looking at each other in the eye — remembering that we are a family, thanking God for the food in front of us and also for those around us.

That’s what eating dinner as a family is about.

Meet the ‘I don’t know’ generation



During my freshman year of high school, my English teacher required each student to memorize quotes from the play “Julius Caesar.” Ever since, I have turned to Shakespeare’s words in times of turmoil and turbulence to remember essential truths:

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves ...”
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
“This was the most unkindest cut of all.”

Likewise, in 2013, then-future British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Hong Kong and spoke about finding solace and fortitude amid life’s brevity and failures. He said he often looked to a passage from “The Iliad.” In a remarkable show of erudition, Johnson recited that excerpt in ancient Greek for more than two minutes, leaving his audience in awe.

No one wants to say it, but we are fostering an entire generation of Americans with 'slower' brains.

Last year, actor Jeff Goldblum appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” When asked how he “stays inspired,” he delivered a lengthy, heartfelt quote from George Bernard Shaw about “the true joy in life.” His effortless recall was striking.

Such spontaneous displays of deep knowledge are rare today for a sobering reason: We are raising a generation less and less capable of presenting such learned feats. Students simply do not study as they once did, nor can they retain information at the same level. As a result, their knowledge gaps are enormous — so vast, in fact, that those outside the teaching profession might find them hard to fathom.

This is not hyperbole or melodrama; it reflects the lived reality of today’s American classroom. Students possess shocking gaps in their knowledge. Can they name the state capitals? Planets in the solar system? Basic grammar, cursive, oceans, or continents? Do they understand what makes certain presidents great? Are the years 1066, 1215, 1776, or 1941 significant to them? Sadly, the list goes on.

Data from the National Center for Education Statistics confirms this decline: study times have fallen, and students complete less homework. Even when they study, they often become distracted by phones and other devices. Gen Z reportedly spends up to nine hours a day on screens.

Most American college students study less than two hours per day. Strangely, despite these dwindling efforts, grades have soared and graduation rates are higher than ever. This paradox — less work yielding better results — casts doubt on modern education. It recalls a line from the 1990s group C+C Music Factory: “Things That Make You Go Hmmm ...”

No one wants to say it, but we are fostering an entire generation of Americans with “slower” brains. Students increasingly claim they cannot study, explaining that they simply “cannot remember anything” when it is time for an exam. A new family of expressions — “brain rot,” “doom scrolling” — have emerged to describe the damage.

Why don’t kids read any more? They can’t concentrate. And even if they could, many lack the vocabulary or cultural-historical knowledge to appreciate what they read. Try understanding “A Farewell to Arms” when you know almost nothing about World War I. Try grasping “The Kite Runner” if you have never heard of Afghanistan.

Traditional methods of rigorous study and rote memorization have largely fallen out of favor, dismissed as relics of a bygone educational era. In their place, newer objectives — such as promoting “21st-century skills,” emphasizing social-emotional health, encouraging “digital literacy,” or exploring identity — have taken center stage.

At the same time, modern “thought leaders” and consultants, many with little or no firsthand classroom experience, often mock the foundational goals of education: building strong reading and writing skills and cultivating deep, substantive knowledge.

But we can do something about it: When we raise the bar, our young people can and will rise to meet it.

And here is the dead giveaway. Many of the same kids who claim they cannot study for academics somehow find a way to memorize dozens of plays on the football field, lines for a drama production, or moves for a video game.

I tested this theory in my classroom, asking students to memorize foundational American texts: the Preamble to the Constitution, the First Amendment, and the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. At first, they balked. But over time, something remarkable happened. They didn’t just learn the words; they learned something essential about themselves. They discovered that effort yields rewards and that they were capable of more than they had believed. As my freshman English teacher taught me, some truths are worth remembering forever.

Knowledge isn’t just valuable in the marketplace; it’s essential for a well-lived life. It builds the foundation of a substantial self, grounded not in fleeting trends or momentary chicness, but in the wisdom of the ages.

Without intellectual rigor, our children will never know what they’re capable of or how high they can reach. The solution is simple yet profound: Ask more. Demand more. And watch the magic happen.

Sweden Warns Parents: Quit Plopping Your Baby In Front Of Brain-Rotting Screens

When screen time is eliminated or reduced, children have more time to be outside, interact in person, and, critically, sleep.

The paradox of screens: Parents and grandparents wrestle with how much screen time to give kids



Parents and screen time

Parenthood is brutal — it has always been brutal. But in an era of unstoppable tech growth, raising children becomes more difficult by the day.

If you have kids or grandkids under the age of 13, you know the paradox of screens. The chaos of parenthood is relentless, and there’s a special brand for those of us with little kids. Exhaustion of every sort.

Peace is hard to come by for parents and many grandparents, especially those of us with little ones.

I have toddlers. Screen time is one of the constant subjects of examination between my wife and me. We're always assessing our screen time, our personal relationships with our phones, and the behavior we model for our kids.

Handing your kid a phone or tablet is a quick way to buy a moment of silence. We are desperate for the chance to think, to breathe, and sit still.

But this is no ordinary quiet. Screen time offers immediate relief in exchange for destruction that comes later. Parents make this deal constantly regarding screen time. Handing your kid a phone or tablet is the quickest way to neutralize a chaotic environment.

But this pause is deceptive. It doesn’t seem to remedy the situation, and it may even worsen the chaos.

Then there’s the addict-like response kids exhibit immediately after being handed a phone, a slot-machine glaze. They grip it like a starving ape grips bananas, as a tool for survival.

The Mayo Clinic warns that excessive screen time has been noted to lead to all sorts of health issues, including obesity, violent behavior, attention deficit, sleep disruptions, and erratic behavior.

It can even lead to “sensory differences” in toddlers.

There are plenty of detractors who frame the rejection of screen time as part of a moral panic, contending that it’s harmless or even beneficial.

This is one of the bizarre confrontations that have arisen with any new technology over the course of human history: People feel that these recent advancements are causing an incredible amount of harm. The other group claims that “every generation panics about technology, but most of the time their anxiety is actually ignorance and fear."

Reality lies in between the two: The invention of the ship is also the invention of the shipwreck.

Big little feelings

damircudic/Getty Images

Fad parenting has always been a problem. And like fads in general, it risks being swept aside at a moment’s notice, leaving a generation of disenchanted parents in its wake.

Each generation winds up with its own parenting philosophy. It’s corrective, a way to address the failures of the previous system. It’s also expressive, allowing each parent to rule the kingdom creatively. It is full of predictions about what matters and what doesn’t, what should worry parents and what shouldn’t — with plenty of outrage and hysteria along the way.

This philosophy is also a response to the folkways, constraints, disasters, luxuries, and technologies of that exact moment in history.

The current era of parenting seems largely focused on gentleness. Gentle parenting is the coin of the realm. I’ll give you a rushed, cursory, and probably haphazard explanation.

Gentle parenting, known formally as “attachment parenting,” is guided by empathy, the willingness to sit with a kid who, by most accounts, is being a real piece of work. Gentle parenting is focused on language that often sounds politically correct, like how it emphasizes bad behavior is “action,” not identity. It’s wrong, for instance, to say that a kid is mean. Say instead that the kid is acting mean. Parents are advised to “comment on the action, not the person.”

Every new parent I know has taken a parenting course from “Big Little Feelings.” It may be the most obvious example of Millennial parenting philosophy available. I have to admit, the course has benefitted my parenting tremendously.

The course has an entry on handling outbursts related to screen time, and as a true Millennial philosophy, the solution to screen time tantrums involves an acronym, PREP:

  • P: Plan in advance.
  • R: Reveal the plan.
  • E: Explain the details.
  • P: Put your toddler in charge.

The method remains unproven, but my point here is that it serves as a perfect representation of the parental angst unique to this era of total networking, total communication, total information.

The New Yorker captured this weird disharmony, where, in all of its planning, “gentle parenting represents a turn away from a still dominant progressive approach known as ‘authoritative parenting.’” It feels inherently feminine, yet it’s not. Because we have also seen an unprecedented shift in the father’s role and presence in family life.

At its worst, gentle parenting resembles the performance of a cartoonish NPR host, whispering passive-aggressive slogans that don’t correspond to reality. At its best, it offers a key to peace in the household. It can be annoying and stilted. But it can also be calming.

Screen activism

If you have young daughters or granddaughters, you should read “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” by Abigail Shrier.

She charts the spread of radical gender ideology as the cause of “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” in which prepubescent girls who have never expressed any sort of gender confusion suddenly develop an identity centered on gender and body dysphoria.

Transgender activists hate Shrier largely because she exposes the dark side of screen time, which political radicals use for recruitment.

She argues that this fad is unnatural — it has never occurred at any other moment in recorded medical history. She makes a compelling case, and one of the phenomena she cites as proof is the influence that social media has on these girls.

She refers to Jonathan Haidt’s observation that we’re living through a “mental health crisis,” the worst in decades, specifically affecting adolescent girls. Depression and anxiety rates are spiking, along with self-harm.

And Shrier correlates it to the rise of the iPhone and social media. This has left kids today not just depressed and anxious but also socially underdeveloped. She argues that kids today feel like they should be able to live the carefree lives of their parents, but they don’t know how. So they seek the guidance of online personas who appear to have things figured out.

This leads to peer contagion, the cultural spread of a mental pathology. Increasingly, we have seen how this process occurs throughout the education system.

The “trans influencers” behind this fad are devoted to evangelization. Their biggest argument is that early intervention is necessary, the earlier the better. As Shrier puts it, “Trans influencers typically take a by-any-means necessary approach to procuring cross-sex hormones. Whatever you have to do, whatever you have to say — do it. Your life is on the line.”

Shrier’s response to this tactic is one of her most compelling points: Intervention is not a pause button. No studies show that puberty blockers are safe or reversible. They stop sexual maturation and development of bone density from occurring.

Studies have shown that from there, nearly 100% of kids put on puberty blockers proceed to cross-sex hormones. This guarantees that the child will be infertile and have permanent sex dysfunction. In other words, early intervention almost guarantees infertility. We should hammer this in. It’s maybe the most shocking and unacknowledged part of the transgender craze.

In other words, screen time has led to an unprecedented crisis of psychosis-driven mutilation.

Shipwrecked

Tassii/Getty Images

Jonathan Haidt is quite possibly the most reasonable man in America. He is somehow unaffected by the political vertigo of our time, able to connect with every sort of person. He has approached the dangers of social media from many angles: as a tool for activism, as a corruptor of colleges, as a harm to teenage girls, even as a modern version of the story of the Tower of Babel.

In an article for the Atlantic titled “After Babel: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” Haidt uses the Tower of Babel as a metaphor “for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit.”

The story of Babel comprises one short chapter of the Bible, Genesis 11. Yet it’s a story everyone knows. He describes “people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.”

Like the people in the story of Babel, America is in trouble: “Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”

Social media platforms have damaged our trust, degraded our belief in institutions, and eradicated our shared stories. Haidt has been sounding the alarm about social media for years now, including in his most recent book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness."

Children born after 1995 are disproportionately anxious. This is largely the result of screen time. Screen time is alienating. It leads to isolation. Hence the alarming rates of depression and anxiety, both rooted in aloneness.

Haidt argues that over the past 30 years, it has led to a rapid decline in “play-based childhood,” which has been replaced in the past decade by “phone-based childhood.”

The Mayo Clinic confirms his assertions.

He notes that the smartphone-driven "great rewiring of childhood" is causing an “epidemic of mental illness.” He suggests four ways to combat this: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones in schools, and prioritizing real-world play and independence.

He describes “smartphones as ‘experience blockers' because once you give the phone to a child, it’s going to take up every moment that is not nailed down to something else,” adding that “it’s basically the loss of childhood in the real world.”

He concludes with a similar refrain: “The most important change we can make to reduce the damaging effects of social media on children is to delay entry until they have passed through puberty.”

Like so much else as a parent, this process winds up being tough but redemptive.

Kids' shows your children can actually watch



I don’t believe that exposure to technology is tantamount to child abuse as some uber-crunchy trads might insist. That said, they're reacting to a culture that pushes tablets and phones on the very young, despite fairly convincing evidence suggesting that too much screen time may harm kids’ cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional growth.

'Prolonged exposure to high-stimulation shows, even those with virtuously 'educational' packaging such as 'Baby Einstein,' primes children for inattention.'

Is it possible to stake out a reasonable middle ground? In my view, yes — provided you have a clear-eyed understanding of just what pitfalls to avoid.

Sheer quantity is obvious enough. Consuming six hours straight of uninterrupted screen time is the dopamine-overdose equivalent of binging a family-sized bag of Reese’s cups: pretty clearly a bad habit to indulge. Of course, most "content" today is designed for passive binging, putting the onus on the parent to keep time. You don't want to forget your child in front of "Bluey" any more than you'd want to forget your roast in the oven.

Then, you have to consider the ideology (trans, critical race theory, etc.) smuggled into the average children’s television programming these days. What makes it particularly insidious is the difficulty of knowing where exactly it comes from.

Vaclav Havel foretold this in his essay “The Power of the Powerless,” in which he describes life under communism through the story of a greengrocer. The greengrocer put a communist slogan in his shop window, not because he particularly liked its content, not because the content was true, not in the hope that someone might be persuaded by it,

but to contribute, along with thousands of other slogans, to the panorama that everyone is very much aware of. This panorama, of course, has a subliminal meaning as well: it reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don't want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquility and security.

That is to say, it is an utterly gratuitous form of psychological torture. What a good reason to cancel the show, and the network, for good measure.

But quality doesn’t begin and end with the message itself. Canadian philosopher and father of media theory Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message,” the idea that the manner of communication can often say more about the culture, and the messages that culture communicates, than the explicit messages themselves.

Illustrating his point, wokeness as a form of political manipulation and psychological terrorism entered its heyday in tandem with high-stimulation special-effect media. Dr. Dimitri Christakis says that the pace of the media has a significant impact on its quality, at least in terms of a child’s neural development. His research indicates that prolonged exposure to high-stimulation shows, even those with virtuously "educational" packaging such as “Baby Einstein,” primes children for inattention. The type of input that the mind learns to crave is not available in the real world, so the child becomes addicted to the constant, unchallenged emotional gratification of the screen.

Suppose, however, that parents enforce strict time limits and vet all shows for messaging. Is the occasional hour or two of curated screen time fine?

The study I linked to at the beginning suggests that it is, especially if we balance it our with “green time."

Here, I’ve curated some of my favorite high-quality, low-stimulation, and actually child-appropriate shows that my kids watch when they’re sick or I need to get something done. This list is not exhaustive, so please share in the comments: What morally and aesthetically wholesome shows have you found that get the sort of crunchy, Christian mom stamp of approval?