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Hey, it's Mariel.

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When I was a kid, we had one of those big, chunky Macintosh computers in my parents' room.

I was drawn to it, like a moth to a flame.

I remember printing this picture of a black and white clip art style panda on that white printer paper with the hole punches in the side and thinking, what sorcery is this?

Now, the tech kept changing.

We eventually got a newer computer and dial up internet.

I'd spend hours on AOL Instant Messenger cultivating my away messages and gabbing with classmates.

In high school, I got a cell phone, and then we got the Wi-Fi, so my parents could actually use their landline at the same time as we were surfing the web.

Then came Facebook and eventually smartphones, though by that point I was like 22.

All this new technology, it sucked me in, completely captured my attention.

And my parents and other parents at the time had to figure out what that meant and how to keep us safe from child predators in chat rooms and from our own budding addictions to the stuff.

These days, take that experience and crank up the dial by a million.

Kids are growing up with smartphones in hand.

Even if they don't have one themselves, their friends will.

And at the age I was

marveling at that clip art panda, they're scrolling on TikTok, eyes glued to a constantly

refreshing stream of content that is designed to keep them hooked. Parents have always been trying

...