Welcome to The Lost Debate, a show for Politically Ecclectics. I'm Robbie Gupta. Today, I'm speaking to Pamela Paul, who's an opinion columnist for the New York Times. She was an editor or the editor of the New York Times book review for nine years and the author of eight books, including a hundred things we lost to the internet. Pamela, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having

me. Pamela, I loved this piece you wrote, which was titled, It's Not the Kids with a Cell Phone

Problem, it's the parents, or it's not kids with the cell phone problem, it's the parents. You must

have gotten an interesting response from people in your life when you wrote this piece.

Yeah, I mean, we like to blame everything internet on our kids, and it's very convenient.

I have three kids.

But the truth is, we, the parents, are generally, almost universally the ones who are paying for the phones, if not the phone

itself, then certainly the monthly bills. And we are also the parents full stop. So we are the ones

who create the rules for our kids. And it, I think, lets parents a little bit off the hook to say, like, oh, my kids won't get off

their phones.

I can't take it away from them.

They're using it during the dinner, you know, at the dinner table.

They're addicted.

It's our phone, really.

We're the ones that provide that service.

And so it is on us to set up the rules. So that's number one.

And the second thing is, when your kids are at school or away, every time you text them,

you ask them a question as a parent, that's a convenience for you. It's a convenience for the parent to know, where is my child

right now, what are they doing? And so I do think parents often don't acknowledge. And again,

I hear I'm putting myself in the guilty party among the guilty party because I too am a parent,

so I'm not just pointing fingers. But we like knowing

where our kids are, right? But I do think there are downsides to the way parents use phones.

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