Don't be depressed. In due time, our kids will complain about their kids zombie-ing out in the metaverse all day, whereas back in their days, they were actively creating memes and dance videos, modding minecraft worlds, and occasionally even had to read entire paragraphs of text.

One thing to realize is that technology is not bad—it's the shitty apps and the social media superficialities that are bad. So if you can pre-load the "good stuff" (educational stuff, documentaries, wikipedia, etc.) then you're biasing their device time toward useful stuff.

Here is a comment with detailed instructions for how to setup Kolibri and Kiwix, which are really useful educational software that works on localhost (or local network): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26137100 The idea is after installing these locally, you could turn off the internet connection.

It's only "super depressing" if you choose to see if that way

Here are some ways to "combat" the choices available, though, if you want:

- kill/limit streaming services

- kill/limit TV in general

- limit internet time(s) per device

- have your kids go outside and play

You can't. They will have friends who have access to those devices, plus daycares play programs and schools sometimes "require" a tablet. I don't know TBF.