> Social media and phones have had a huge negative impact on the amount of time young people spend together in person and have amplified the stakes of one's social life

Social media and phones are what youth had left, after adults systemically wiped out every inch of their development environment.

I'm an early genx; the last generation to grow up free of constant supervision. I went everywhere by myself and learned countless critical self-sufficiency and social skills - skill building that was utterly and thoroughly denied to my own kids.

That is, my kids risked their parents being charged if they were capably on their own. My kids had nowhere to go if they tried to be independent. Were my kids to risk having some ambition, they also risked adult-sized punishments for kid-sized transgressions.

We couldn't have designed a more stunting experience, short of tossing kids in forced-labor gulags.