When we give a raccoon the keys to the minivan and hope for the best 🤞

My wife and I were recently out for dinner. For some reason, we no longer call it “going on a date.” Maybe it's because we’re an old married couple. Who knows.

Anyhow, while we sat at our table, we could see them all around us. Whatever direction we looked in, we saw at least one. Usually more.

And we felt sad because of what we saw.

Kids sitting motionless and in isolation, although right across from their moms and dads, staring blankly into glowing boxes they held in their hands. Well, at least their thumbs showed some life.

And it made me think.

There’s a curious phenomenon in modern parenting that deserves a closer look. Let’s call it the “Leash-and-Launch Paradox.”

It goes like this: Parents will hover like anxious drones the minute their child steps outside the house, fearing scraped knees, stranger danger, or the off-chance their kid might eat non-organic dirt. 

And yet, when it comes to cell phones and other devices? We hand them over like a peace offering. No manual. No boundaries. Just a “Here, distract yourself so I can have a moment in peace.”

Let’s be clear: parenting is hard. Like, really hard.

It’s a choose-your-own-anxiety adventure every day. But the irony here is thick enough to spread on toast. 

Many parents micromanage outdoor play with walkie-talkies, GPS trackers, sunscreen reapplications every 17 minutes, and yet they treat digital devices like self-regulating nannies.

We fret endlessly about scraped knees and stranger danger, yet we give kids unsupervised access to a digital universe full of filtered bodies, algorithmic rabbit holes, and dopamine-driven design and then we hope they’ll be fine.

That’s not parenting. That’s gambling with the house’s money.

Outside the house, we hover. Inside the screen? We ghost.

Why?

Because screens are quiet. Screens keep kids occupied. And screens, unlike other humans, don’t talk back (at least, not until you enable voice AI).

So we fall into the trap of assuming that our kid staring at a phone is safe.

But the danger isn’t that they’ll see something “bad” once. The danger is the hours of isolation, comparison, and low-quality digital interaction that gradually chip away at their mental health.

The truth is, a kid is far more likely to be psychologically impacted by unfiltered screen use than they are to be abducted while riding a bike two blocks away.

But you wouldn’t know that based on how many parents install Ring cameras on their porch while giving their 11-year-old full access to TikTok and Snapchat with zero conversation about boundaries, ethics, or emotional health.

To reduce isolation, kids need more real-world, unstructured play with peers. Not sanitized, scheduled “playdates” with allergy-safe snacks and name tags, but real-deal, mud-on-your-face, figure-it-out-yourself experiences.

Ironically, this is exactly what many parents don’t allow anymore because of outdoor safety fears. And yet these same parents allow unlimited screen time, which is what’s really eroding kids’ well-being from the inside out.

“But I trust my kid,” some parents say. That’s great! Trust is good. But blind trust in a preteen with a portal to the entire internet is... bold. It's like giving a raccoon the keys to your minivan and hoping for the best.

The problem isn’t technology itself—there’s a lot of good on those screens.

The problem is when parents don’t parent in the digital space. We don’t hover, we don’t check in, we don’t set limits. Some don’t even know the passcode.

It’s like buying your child a Porsche 911 and saying, “Drive wherever you want. No license, no seatbelt, no curfew. Just text me when you crash.”

So here’s the challenge: what if we took even a fraction of the energy we spend worrying about what might happen outside and applied it to what is happening inside our kids’ screens?

The solution isn’t to go full digital tyrant and smash every screen with a hammer (tempting, though). 

The real win is balance. Talk to your kids. Create phone curfews. Discuss what apps are okay and which ones need to wait until they have the emotional maturity to handle them. 

Check the search history, not as 007, but as a parent who cares. Think of it like digital sunscreen: you’re not ruining their fun, you’re protecting them from burns they don’t yet see coming.

It’s about choosing to parent in both the physical and digital worlds—with curiosity, clarity, and a little courage. 

So maybe it’s time we swap a little of that outdoor hover-energy and apply it to the digital world too. After all, the backyard might have mosquitos, but the internet has trolls, creeps, and addictive rabbit holes that make YouTube look like a Vegas casino for kids.

In the end, your child doesn’t need less freedom.

They need more guidance. Because unlike scraped knees and dirty hands, digital wounds often don’t show—until it’s too late.

Make the connection:

• How might we be as international about our kids’ digital safety as we are their physical safety?

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