I’m writing to thank the Press Herald for printing Matt Pine’s opinion piece May 16 on social media’s effect on children. As the parent of an 8-year-old attending a Portland elementary school, I found the piece eye-opening. Notably, the concepts of “attention economy” and “collective action trap” alerted me to conditions I was unaware of. The attention economy has a corollary with Big Tobacco in that they profit from things that harm us. We have since been made aware of the dangers of smoking. Yet I fear that we are not fully aware of how social media companies make money by keeping us and our children constantly glued to our devices.

I, too, feel the pull of the collective trap of not wanting my child to be socially isolated while simultaneously wanting to guard him against the insidious nature of self-gratifying algorithms. While I fully accept the duties of parenthood, the ubiquitous nature of screens undermines my ability to balance my child’s exposure to these devices properly. With the adoption of laptops and iPads in our public schools, I agree with Pine’s assertion that the state legislative committee that oversees these schools must take immediate action to mitigate the detrimental effects of too much screen time on our children’s well-being. Technology that is just a little over a decade old appears to be radically altering time immemorial parenting and childhood. This should concern parents, schools, and the state and federal legislatures.

Chris Kuchuris
Portland