Setting Digital Boundaries with Kids At Any Age

0:00If you're a parent of a teen or have teens in your life, it can be hard to figure out the right way to approach social media and technology. Ultimately, if you feel like your teens are ready, there are tools to help. Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for what your teens see and who can contact them, plus time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. An Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. That's Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Please define BrainRot because my kids are always talking about this BrainRot BrainRot BrainRot. What is BrainRot? This one kid I asked him that same question and he just kind of went, oh, you couldn't understand as a grown-up. I'm Christine Cierkleset and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show.

1:14Today's episode is about one of my least favorite topics because it causes so much strife in my home. Kids and technology. It seems like all the families I know are fighting about some aspect of tech. Whether it's a preschooler wanting to watch more episodes of Bluey, elementary kids binging on YouTube shorts, tweens asking for a phone, or a teen begging to get on social media. Wirecutter recently published a package of articles all about parenting in the smartphone and AI era. Today I'm talking with two of our writers, Cena Brewster and Ellen Lee, who did some great reporting on the best ways to introduce different types of tech for different age groups. Their advice will help parents navigate these tricky situations and help kids have a better relationship with the tech they're using. And don't miss our other coverage on this topic. We have a ton of advice for everything from the best first smartphones for kids to how to manage screen time on those phones.

2:15We'll link to those in the show notes. And don't forget, right now you can access the New York Times app for a whole month for free if you create your very first account. That means you can read articles, listen to podcasts, and so much more with no paywall. I'll be back with Cena and Ellen after the break. It's that time of year again. Fancy new phones were just announced and your carrier says they can upgrade you for free. Like, free, free? Or am I just paying more monthly? And is there a multi-year contract involved? It's all kind of confusing. With Visible, it's straightforward. Visible is the ultimate wireless hack, letting you bring your paid off phone and pay one low monthly cost. Taxes and fees included. The details of your wireless plan shouldn't be hard to understand and opaque. It should be easy to understand. It should be visible. Learn more at Visible.com. If you're a parent of a teen or have teens in your life, it can be hard to figure out the right way to approach social media and technology.

3:20Ultimately, if you feel like your teens are ready, there are tools to help. Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for what your teens see and who can contact them. Plus, time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode. An Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online. At Instagram.com slash teen accounts. That's Instagram.com slash teen accounts. The Wirecutter Show is supported by Egg Life. Back to school, his parents managing a lot more moving pieces. And meals quickly become one more problem to solve. Egg Life Egg White Raps make it easy to sneak high-quality protein into your favorite meals and snacks. These wraps made from egg whites, not flour, are a total game changer. They're high in protein and low in carbs. Find Egg Life Raps chilling in the fridge at Aldi, Whole Foods, Croger, Target, Walmart, and more. Visit egglifefoods.com to find a retailer near you.

4:26Welcome back. Today, I'm speaking with two Wirecutter writers, Sina Brewster and Ellen Lee, who recently co-wrote a guide on how and when to introduce different types of tech to kids. From young kids to teens, Sina and Ellen, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks, Christine. You are each in very different points of your parenting timeline. I want to know from each of you how old are your kids and what is your current biggest tech parenting challenge? Sina, do you want to start? My kids are three and five, so I'm sure things are about to get much, much harder in the next few years. But right now, I'd say it has to be screen time. How much of it? When can we watch TV? All those types of questions? Yeah, I remember those days. How about you, Ellen? So my kids are 10, 16, and 18. So we're in the throes of all sorts of social and screen time issues. I would say one of our biggest challenges is I have a 10-year-old, and he started fifth grade with a really big group chat.

5:31And we're dealing with that right now. Oh, yeah. The group chats can be vicious. They feel like kind of an essential part of communication in this elementary age. I feel that pain. I have a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old. The challenges I am personally facing are the screen time all the time. I think I'm getting all of it, actually. I have the want more screen time, want more TV, want a phone. My oldest kid is asking for Instagram, and my youngest is wanting her first phone. So we're right in the thick of it. We just published a group of articles about kids and tech. And as part of this, we surveyed wire cutter readers, parents, about their biggest challenges around tech and parenting. Would you guys share a little bit about what some of the biggest takeaways were from the survey? Yeah, I really related to the parents who took the survey. Parents are clearly broadly worried about screen time and screen addiction. And especially strongly, it called out parents are worried about brain rot content.

6:34And only 9% of parents said they strongly agree that they can confidently manage their kids' tech use and relationship to tech. And just in general, lots of parents are overwhelmed by managing screens and devices for their kids. I want you to please define brain rot because my kids are always talking about this brain rot brain rot brain rot. What is brain rot? It just reminded me I interviewed some kids for another piece in the series. And this one kid I asked him that same question, and he just kind of went, oh, you couldn't understand as a grownup. But I mean, really is just that idea of scrolling short form. Anything that is just trapping you sitting there on the couch for hours and hours, you can't look away. So there are plenty of adults who are also experiencing brain rot even if they don't call it that. Absolutely. How about you, Ellen? What were the biggest takeaways for you from the survey? Like Sina, I really relate to the parents who are like, I don't know what I'm doing because I definitely still don't know what I'm doing.

7:38And the majority of parents said they are using parental controls. And then we asked them to rate their parental control use from one to five, like what they thought of it. And the most of them said it was maybe mediocre at best. And by screen controls, you mean a parent putting sort of limits on what their kids can do on different devices, right? And using an app to control their child's use of different devices. Exactly. Everything from say using YouTube kids to using like screen time on your iPhone. I'm curious if the survey covered like the division of who in relationships, like manages screen screen controls because in my family, it's my husband. He is the one who deals with all of that stuff, the screen time. And then I'm in charge of other things. That's our division of labor. Do you have something similar? Man, I haven't thought about that. I think it's like any parenting thing, right? You should be a united force, but I'm taking note of that. I think for us, for a long time, I was the one managing the parental controls in part because I was testing them all the time.

8:42Sometimes messing things up. And then he would sometimes have to be like, hey, I can't access the TV right now. Help. What's going on? But more recently, we set it up so that if a kid wants access like 15 more minutes on an app, it goes to both of us. So sometimes it's him. Sometimes it's me. Yeah, I get the notifications. I just ignore them. So there are clearly different issues for parents dealing with different age groups, right? Sina, you were talking about your young kids, you're dealing with screen time, Ellen, you're talking about the issues that you face with older kids. And you cover all of this, this whole range in your piece. So I want to start. Let's run through this from youngest to oldest kids and walk through the sort of big issues. Sina, what should parents think about when introducing tech? I think it's really about building a foundation. One of the experts I spoke with Mimi Edo at the University of California Irvine. She had this great quote. She said, we spend too much time talking about whether kids have access to a device or not.

9:47And not enough time focused on what we actually want our kids to be doing. And that really got me thinking if you just immediately are focused on, okay, we get a half hour of screen time a day. What's the reason behind that? Why do you care? Why is a half hour the right amount of time to give your kid on a screen? It's really about backing up and deciding where tech fits into your life. And that means thinking really hard about your family's priorities and values. Like if you care about being outside, then you should make sure your family gets outside before you're introducing any screen time that day. And I think it's really important to think about it this age that parents are still in charge of the when, what, and how of screen time. But you can still find those little opportunities for kids to make their own decisions. The experts talked a lot about walled gardens. So like if you download an app and you know that that app has quality content, you can let your kid make the choices within the app. And then the last thing is just how do you start building a habit of communication with your kid?

10:51All these tech questions are going to get much more complicated as they get older. So if now you can start finding these windows to talk with your kid about their tech use and help them connect up how tech use relates to your family values. Then as they get older, you should be able to keep that dialogue going. As things get more complicated, you'll still be in step with one another. Yeah, I think in that way it kind of seems like any kind of parenting or communication the way you communicate with your kids even when they're little and how that follows you through the journey of as they get older. Sina, what is the advice for introducing tech to young kids? I'm assuming we're talking about kids that are preschool and younger. Yeah, we really thought about the zero to five age group when looking into this. And I think in reality, this is going to look different for everybody. All of us parents are guilty of not always following the best expert advice. But I did feel like some strong advice emerged that was a consensus among the experts I spoke with. So things like minimize screen time before the age of two.

11:53There just isn't really a benefit. This is really hard. But it's really best of kids at this age are focused on interacting with adults and learning from adults. Another one is model good media habits yourself. So for example, don't bring your phone to the table when your kid is three. If you don't want your kid bringing their phone to the table when they're 13. Another is offer alternatives. What is it that your kids have available to them in your home? If you want them to go out and find something to do instead of watching TV. And then thinking about building self-regulation without a screen. So if you don't want your kid to pick up their phone to suit themselves when they're a teenager. You need to start building those building blocks now. So that's probably you checking in with your kid when they're upset instead of handing them a screen. Another one is choose high quality content. This can be a lot of work going and researching a show before you show it to your kid. But I think this is the single biggest thing you can do to make sure that any screen time your kid is getting is actually helpful to learning something or.

13:01I guess not overstimulating them. How do we define high quality? I would imagine that's a little bit subjective. It is. That's a it's so true. Again, it's probably has to do with your family values. So I think for me, this comes down to I'm much more likely to give my kids the PBS kids app than I am to let them loose on YouTube. I just don't trust the content on YouTube and I don't have time to go out and look through every YouTube video and okay, the ones that are okay. So, you know, I might turn to common sense media for a clue into this or something like that. And common sense media, they do some kind of rating of different shows. You can it's kind of a shortcut if you have questions that's about a show you can look it up on common sense media and see how they rate it. Exactly. And some other things I maybe I'm thinking about is like how often the screen cuts to something else. How stimulating is the show. I think that at this age, I know that really impacts my kids.

14:01And then the final final point is look for digital media that foster social interaction. So that could be as simple as watching a movie with your kid instead of leaving them by themselves to watch a show on the couch. It also could be a game that you're playing together instead of a game that they're just off on their own. That can really add value to media. In the piece you talk about dark patterns that are embedded in apps. What are dark patterns and how can you avoid them? This is something that gets adults too, but a dark pattern is any kind of design choice that is trying to make you spend money, spend more time in the app or get data from you. So it's kind of a predatory design choice. As an adult, we can learn to spot those for ourselves, but for kids who are not able to resist that at all. It's really on us to find content that doesn't have it. And avoiding it might mean again going in and playing a game yourself before your kid does.

15:05The things to look for are if your kid stops playing the game, does the game stop as well? Or do they die? Does something bad happen? That means that they need to keep playing, playing, playing. So the bad thing doesn't happen. I mentioned Wild Gardens before. This is a great way to avoid these dark patterns. It's just find a place that you think has a really great high quality content. And then let your kid choose from within that. I want to move on to another category. This one is tracking your kids. So using some kind of device, whether it's an air tag or even a smart phone to keep tabs on your kids. I want to know to either of you track your kids. I don't. Some of this might be age since my kids are three and five. So still very supervised. But honestly, I kind of thought I would never track them. I grew up before tracking and I just had tons of freedom to roam around my neighborhood as a kid and really valued that.

16:08But in my reporting, when I talked to kids and teenagers, it was very common and accepted that there was tracking. And the thing that really surprised me is that the teenagers wanted to track their parents too. I can see that. I can see that. Well, Ellen, what about you? Do you track your kids? I totally track my kids. My 10 year old is allowed to go around the neighborhood and visit his friends and go play soccer. So I like to be able to know where he is and be able to contact him to come home for dinner. And my teenager, I track her too. It's kind of funny. I was at a parent info night last night at the high school. And the principal was like, she was talking about, you know, what the cell phone bands and that sort of thing. And then she asked, so how many of you track your kids? And there were about 70 parents in the audience and pretty much everyone raised their hand. Well, I also track my kids. I track my husband. That's how I find out how close he is when he's coming home. I'm like, is he on his way? So I feel like it's pretty common at this point. And maybe people don't even think about it being a problem.

17:08But I'm curious, what are the risks to tracking? Why should you think twice before tracking? I want to hear from both of you on this. Yeah. The extra to spoke with did have some concerns that it can send a message. It can send a message to kids that the world is unsafe. It's not safe to go out there. If you don't have tracking, it can also contribute to a feeling of helicopter parenting. And finally, just this idea that it normalizes data collection as adults. Everyone's collecting our data all the time. It might not feel that strange to us. But if kids from the moment they're conscious of technology or being tracked, what does that do when they become an adult? Yeah, I have very mixed feelings about it. My high schooler, she not only knows the location of the whole family, but she knows the location of a bunch of her friends and a bunch of her friends know her location. It's interesting because there's a lot of FOMO, right? Like if you see a bunch of your friends having a party and you weren't invited, then there's her feelings there.

18:08On the other hand, the thing that I hear from high school students, including my daughter, is like, well, what if something happens at school? What if there's a school shooting? Then you know where I am. And I hate that we're living in the society that that's like a reality. Yeah, I feel like, Sina, I also grew up in an age of no tracking. I think probably all of us did. But if my parents had the ability to track me, I'm sure they would have tracked me. If you are going to track your kids, what are the best practices so that you're doing it well, that you're doing it in a positive way? The number one thing goes back to what we were talking about, about having an open dialogue with your kids. So talk to your kid about tracking. Ask them what they think about it. If they think they would get some use out of it. And going hand in hand with that is consider using tracking for transitional periods instead of permanently. Maybe it's something like, if your kid is new to the school they're going to, you track them while they're walking to school and then they can turn it off.

19:09And then I spoke with also mentioned maybe a teenager has lost some trust after a bad choice. And you decide that, okay, we're going to have tracking on until I can trust you to check in regularly again. Another great idea. And I think this actually came from Ellen is just have a community with your kids friends. So I'm just thinking about my neighbor has a couple kids, my kids ages. And as they get older, it would be so great if my kids had the freedom to walk down there. And they knew that that was an option. That's a safe way for them to kind of explore the bounds of their freedom without tracking. And then maybe their parents can check in and say my kids are down there as a form of tracking. And then finally, just research data collection practices. We always recommend buying high quality smartwatches and other devices for your kids to make sure that they're safe. But be really careful about what devices you choose and look into what's actually happening when they're collecting data about your kid. What is the best way to figure out what data is being collected and how to turn off certain settings?

20:12I think the number one thing is buy a high quality device in the first place. Read Ellen's incredible guides which are always looking into these things before wirecutter recommends them. But yeah, read the terms of service. Go into the settings and examine what you can turn on and off. I think this is a place where actually brands do really matter because companies that are invested in having a long term relationship with a customer, they're going to be a little bit more careful than a company that's kind of fly by night. That makes sense. Okay, so for these younger kids, five and under, you really want to limit screen time, especially for kids under two. For this category of kids, you really want to look for high quality content. This is probably true for all kids and adults honestly, but especially for young kids, it really matters that you are exposing them to high quality content. You want to avoid apps and games and other technology that have dark patterns built into them.

21:12And you want to communicate with your kids. That's what I'm hearing from both of you. Overall, you just really want to communicate with your kids about your values around screen time and devices that you're using. And that even relates to what we just talked about with tracking. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to get into the hot topics of when to introduce a first phone and social media. We'll be right back. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Hayley Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi. Because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get to add free, I get back room play and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube premium. Try it now for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones and I want to tell you about YouTube premium. It has offline downloads so you can watch without Wi-Fi.

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23:23Welcome back. Now we're going to talk about first smartphones. I am very familiar with the weight until eighth movement. Basically a pledge that parents sign to wait to give their kids a phone until eighth grade. I personally did not follow this rule. I have very many reasons and we can get into that. But I'm curious. Ellen, is there a right age to give a kid a phone? There is not a right age. There are a lot of different circumstances when someone might need a phone earlier or later. There was a Pew Research report and their survey found that more than half of kids have a phone by the time they're 11 in our survey with wire cutter and New York Times readers more than half said that they're 13 year old had a phone. I found this one to be really hard because I really wanted to wait until eighth grade. But my daughter commutes by herself are with friends to school and she's been doing that since she was 11 on public transit in New York City. And I wanted to be able to communicate with her. And so I felt like it was a very valid reason to give her a phone earlier. But you know, we did have to deal with all of the things that come with that.

24:31What do you decide if your kid is ready for a smartphone? I think this is something that a lot of parents struggle with trying to decide if their particular kid is ready. I think that's also a really hard decision for parents. I think it's a lot about knowing your kid and seeing if they're mature, if they're the type to lose their phone or lose their jacket or their lunch or their water bottle. Then maybe they're not ready yet. On the other hand, if it seems like they're pretty independent and they know how to make good choices, then maybe they are ready. In the end, I think it's a lot about the relationship and the conversations that you're having with your kid. So it's a lot about setting clear expectations and having rules and teaching them how to secure their phone and really coaching them. I think this is the hardest part, coaching them on like phone and texting etiquette. I think that's something I know I'm personally struggling with. Like, how do you handle a group chat? What happens if you see bullying, if you are the victim of bullying or if you see someone else being the victim of bullying? And then also figuring out like, how do you teach some digital healthy digital habits? I know I still struggle with that personally in terms of modeling it, but also working with my kid to understand like, how do you learn to turn it off on your own without a parent being the one saying like, it's time to turn it off.

25:45Yeah, I mean, I think I'm thick in the middle of that right now and I'm struggling with it. I think every parent I know is struggling with it because it's like you said, do we actually model the behavior that we want our children to follow? And I feel like I definitely can say no, I don't. I use my phone way more than I would like to. I am curious in this research and reporting for this story, what are the strategies that people are actually using that are successful to help their kids manage their use of their phones? And like you said, healthy habits around phone use. I don't know if there's success stories so much as there are parents are finding ways to have those conversations. And I think one of the things that I was inspired by when I was interviewing parents was the sense of working together as a collective so that it's not one kid in the school is the one with the phone or your kid is the only one being left out. So working with them to figure out like a kind of a collective strategy. What are we allowing them to do? What are we not allowing them to do and being on the same page?

26:46I think for me personally last year, the biggest help to me was that New York City Schools band having cell phones in school during school hours, which honestly it was the biggest help as a parent. So you're like, well, you just can't have your phone in class. You just you have to put it in a pouch when you get to school. And I don't have to be the police officer about this. This is actually a rule that you have to follow and that was massively helpful. So there is I think this element of what can you do as an individual parent and what do you need society to buy in on? You know, I think that's the big challenge right now. Yeah, I think it's definitely one of those collective things. One big picture thing I want to point out is that a lot of this gets treated as an individual family decision when families are actually up against what's really a societal problem. Tech companies are making decisions about how they design apps and content. They're trying to get adults and kids onto these platforms and using them consistently.

27:47So when we're thinking about screen time, I think it's really worth having grace for ourselves as parents. I think that's such a great point, Sina. It is a great explanation for why as a parent, it can sometimes feel like you're playing whack-a-mole to try to like control how your kids are using different technology. You know, you might have very strict rules or rules that seem to make sense for your family, but you know, they might go to a friend's house and things are different there or you know, even within your own home, you might not be able to control everything and it can feel very frustrating as a parent. Yeah, I would just add that we have parental controls, but I think parents like we like the survey said, struggle with them and it's because it's so easy for kids to avoid them or to get around them and yet it's at the same time so hard for parents to manage it. So let's get into the next one that's super tricky, social media. Clearly, a lot of kids are on social media and there's kind of this like FOMO thing, right? If you're not on social media as a teen, you can really feel like you're missing out.

28:50What is the best way to approach this, Ellen? What are the things parents should be thinking about when their kids are asking them about getting onto a social account? I think this is a huge challenge and it's something I've struggled with both my daughters who are teenagers because part of the issue is that their school uses social media, even our principal postings on social media. So that's how they find out about a special schedule the next day and that's how they find out like, oh, it's spirit week and we need to dress up like a cowboy tomorrow. And I actually remember we had parental controls on my daughter and she got 10 minutes or something like that on Instagram and she's like, mom, I need more time. I don't know what's happening tomorrow. And that's so hard because of course there's other ways to get information, right? Like she can call her friend, you know, I'm sure it was sent out in an email, but that's where a lot of the information is really broadcasted through Instagram. Do you think that's like a high school thing? My kid per school isn't giving information in middle school on Instagram, but I know a lot of high schoolers are getting their information on Instagram.

29:51Yeah, I definitely saw that shift when we went from middle school to high school, maybe because age 13 is the general like accepted age for when you can get on to social media. And so I felt like there was this huge shift. There was just this expectation that we're all on Instagram and that's how we're going to share information. So obviously Instagram, TikTok, these are all, you know, the big social channels that a lot of people think about. But what exactly let's step back a little bit and just define what we're talking about when we talk about social media. Do you include something like YouTube or Pinterest in that group? I do include YouTube, which is funny because I feel like some people just think of it as like a video channel. But since there's also a social component with connecting with friends and making comments. So it's still very much a social media site. And I would say the same thing with Pinterest where even though they don't have all the levers that you think of for social media, it also is very much about connecting with people and sharing photographs and stuff like that. So if you're not letting your kid be on Instagram that could definitely be a point of contention between parents and kids. But are there other flashpoints that you think are happening between parents and kids right now when it relates to social media.

31:03I think there's so many. So there's the whole issue of social media and the connection to mental health issues. There's the fact that parents worrying about their kids being on social media too much and spending too much time there. There's a lot of issues about like what what they're being influenced by and what they're seeing and how they kind of digest that information. So that's one of the things that experts recommend is having those continue conversations about like what is the algorithm? Why is it different for you than it is for me? And what is the purpose of this algorithm? Why is it serving you all this stuff? Why is it endless? Why does the video play automatically after you don't want the first one? So all of these questions that I think we need to keep talking about. Yeah, so communication again, this is coming up as a theme of this interview. So from your reporting, have you found that there is a developmentally appropriate age to allow kids on the social media? You already mentioned a lot of these platforms. The age limit is 13, but I know some countries are considering making this stricter, you know, Australia banned social media until age 16.

32:12And of course, in the news recently, we've heard a lot about this recent meta settlement over social media claims. And that's probably going to be shifting some things around the way that teens are using accounts. What do parents need to know here? So I think the key thing to know is that a lot of kids are actually on social media before they're 13 and that there is a lot of research pointing to concerns about that that there is a correlation between using social media at a young age and mental health issues later on. And so with Australia, I would say it's interesting. They made 16 the age and there's been a lot of back and forth. I think there's some people who are saying it's working. We're seeing a decrease in kids on social media accounts. But then there's a lot of pushback right now. So there's a lot of people also saying, you know, it's not working. Kids are still on social media. The rules are not strong enough to actually force tech companies to get them off. And for the kids who are being kicked off, they're going to darker corners of the internet. So it's not really helping them.

33:16So it's going to be interesting. I think people are keeping an eye on Australia because a lot of countries, including the United States, are considering these laws. But unfortunately, there's a lot of concerns about like, how do we implement these laws? How do we think about privacy? How do we think about free speech? But at the same time, how do we have these controls? Yeah, bigger picture solutions. I'm curious. This is really for me. Ellen, please walk me through this. And Sina, maybe this is for you in the future. What is the best way to introduce social media for a kid who is interested? Are there ways to teach your kid better social media? Literacy ahead of time? Like, how do you approach this? You've already probably been through this a couple times with your kids. I am still going through it. My older daughters are like, oh my god, mom, you talk about this all the time. But it's a lot about having those conversations, having them think about the algorithm, about what they're seeing. I think one of the concerns I always have is that if it sees that you're interested in cats, it might show you more videos of cats. And that's great.

34:18But if you happen to show interest in something darker or dangerous or problematic, it will also show you more information about that. That it will just lead you down that rabbit hole. And so it's a lot about asking your kids, what do you do when that happens? Or how do you manage your feed? Who are you following? Who are you interacting with? And figuring out how do I also digest this information? How do I see like, oh, my friends look beautiful or they're having the best life or they're having this awesome vacation. And I don't get that. And how do you handle that? And knowing that people are posting, you know, their best life on social media. And not necessarily the things that they're working on or struggling with behind the scenes. Yeah, isn't that the advice for all of us using social media? Ellen, you just had a kid leave the nest. You have a daughter who just went to college this fall. And you do write some guidance in this piece that we're talking about about how to approach this stage of parenting.

35:20What's your best advice for this transition of sending a kid out into the world when it comes to tech? I think the hardest part of that whole experience so far has been trust. And knowing like, okay, you are set free. You live on your own now. And it's up to you to know how to manage your screen time. We stopped using parental controls before she left in the hopes that she would kind of learn how to regulate herself. We set her up with an app called ClearSpace, which helps. It's something that she can manage herself. It actually is an app that makes you like take a break. It makes you like take a deep breath. It even sometimes makes you do push ups and stuff like that before you get back on. Yes, exactly. And then I also I was like, all right, I don't know if that's enough. Here's a brick, which is another device that you use. It's like a physical device where it will block you from all the things that distract you on your phone and force you to like say study. Both of you, I want to ask we have a traditional question we ask at the end of each episode.

36:24I want to know what have you purchased recently that you really, really loved? I can go first. I do a ton of biking with my kids. And when they were little, they had these amazing helmets called nutcase helmets, but they don't sell them anymore. And I finally found a helmet that's just like them. It's called the noodle NUDL. And they're just adorable and they fit my kids perfect. And just that like extra five seconds of not being frustrated, putting a helmet on my kids head makes my day. Oh, that's great. All right, Ellen, how about you? So the thing that I purchased recently was a trader Joe's ice cream sandwiches. They are delicious. They are cooling. Is it just a traditional is like vanilla with chocolate cookies? What was exactly it's a chocolate cookie with ice cream inside. It's actually pretty big. It's like the size of almost the palm of my hand. It's so good. It's delicious. And it's one of our picks for ice cream sandwiches. Oh, right. We have a great ice cream sandwich guide.

37:29All right. Thank you both for joining. It was great to be here. Thank you so much for having us. Check out Sina and Ellen's super helpful article on our website. We will also link it in the show notes along with more reporting on the topic of kids and technology. These are great resources for parents of kids of any age. That's it for us. Thanks for listening. The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Garen and produced by Abigail Keel, engineering support from Maddie Masiello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson, original music by Dan Powell, Marion Luzano, Rowan Nemisto, Catherine Anderson and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter's deputy publisher and general manager. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor in chief. I'm Christine Cereclasette. Thanks for listening.

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