Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast where we provide one lesson every day to help you

with your most important job being a dad. These are lessons inspired by ancient philosophy,

by practical wisdom, and insights from dads all over the world. Thank you for

listening, and we hope this helps. There are more important things to worry about. In Plato's

Fadris, Socrates tells the story of an inventor who approaches the

king of Egypt, hardly able to contain his excitement about sharing this latest and greatest invention.

It was a technology he called writing. But the king was enthusiastically opposed. The discovery of

yours will create forgetfulness in the learner's souls, he said,

and they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing.

They will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing.

They will be tiresome company having the show of wisdom without the reality.

That's right.

There was a time when well-intentioned adults feared what

reading would do to young people's mental health. Technology changes and evolves, but every

generation has their own version of this ubiquitous panic about whatever, insert the blank,

is doing to our children. Indeed, the boogeyman may change his shape, but he is always

there in some form. Books, television, radios, computers, music players, video games, all have

had their time under fire at some point in history. Today, it's screen time generally. Every parent

is petrified by phones and tablets. It's why our kids are unprecedentedly anxious,

depressed, lonely, overweight, devoid of communication skills, and on and on and on. But is it, though?

Or like that Egyptian king or our fears misplaced. Research just published by the Journal of

Child Psychology and Psychiatry by a team of

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