A Digitized Childhood

One of the oddest divides in American public life has emerged over the past decade. On the one hand, we have a nearly complete conviction among the nation’s legislators and educational bureaucrats that we must spread the digital revolution hither and yon, till the children of every social class have equal access to the online world. The canons of fairness demand it. And on the other hand, we have just as complete a conviction among the nation’s writers and public thinkers that the young need to escape computers and phones—for the problem of the age is not connecting our children but disconnecting them.