It’s Monday evening and you are scrambling to finish your reading for your Social Development class that meets the following afternoon. Your phone dings, and you see an incoming text from your friend, Esther. She is babysitting for 10-year-old Maia. Esther’s text reads:
“Maia’s mom was not kidding when she said that Maia is GLUED to her phone. She’s on it all the time, and now I can’t even get her to go to sleep. Her mom is worried that she is addicted to her phone and wonders about the effect it’s having on her. At first I thought she was overreacting, but now I dunno…. Aren’t you taking some kind of child development class?? What should I do? What should I tell her mom to do? Is all that time on her phone bad for Maia or could she be actually be getting something good out of it?