Limits Plus Autonomy—Helping Kids Learn and Thrive In the Digital World

A Child Development Perspective

The debates—some call them “battles,” even “wars”—on kids and the digital world are heating up, now that it’s back-to-school season. The main focus for this season, as it’s been in years past, is on protection, protection, protection. Keeping children from harm is fundamental but if we only pay attention to limits, some of our efforts to protect young people fall short. I think it’s because we ignore an axiom of child development—children need both limits to stay safe PLUS autonomy to grow.

I strongly believe that if we view the issue of kids and the digital world through the lens of child development, and keep these two interlocking principles in mind, our solutions—whether we're parents, educators, school board members, or legislators—will be much more effective.

What Are Limits Plus Autonomy?

Think of limits as the guardrails of development—reasonable rules as well as clear expectations, warm guidance, and consistency. Limits help kids feel and be safe and feel and be competent. Within those guardrails, however, children need to learn to walk on their own and they learn that through having some autonomy. Studies find that it’s best to provide limits in autonomy-supportive ways, meaning that children feel they have some control over their lives and are learning the skills they need to manage. When children are new to a situation, they need more limits and less autonomy but as they become more familiar with the situation, they need fewer limits and more autonomy. The ratio of limits plus autonomy varies for individual children as well, but all children need both and they necessarily go together. Put another way, it’s best if adults don’t fix things for children but help them learn—as is age appropriate—how to begin to fix things for themselves.

Children need limits plus autonomy in the non-virtual world, especially in having opportunities to explore and to play. But that’s not enough. They need limits plus autonomy in the digital world too.

What Do We Know From Science About Harm?

Given that the public focus is on largely on protection, what are we protecting children from? Or, as it is most frequently asked: Is social media actually “causing” harm to children’s mental health? That’s the argument that Jonathan Haidt of New York University makes in his 2024 book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. The scientific community has been quick to rebut a causal argument. As Candice Odgers of the University of California, Irvine, wrote in her review in the journal Nature, “his tale is one searching for evidence.”

Despite some flaws in his arguments and the very counter-productive fear-mongering that sometimes ensues, Haidt’s book speaks to parents’ concerns and has importantly amplified the need for action as well as for asking better questions and seeking better answers.

While there are too-many-to-name studies on the impact of the digital world on young people, the most comprehensive answers to date on the question of harm from social media come from the findings of a committee of scholars convened by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and their 2024 consensus report, Social Media and Adolescent Health. In this report, Committee Chair, Sandro Galea of Boston University, admits how tempting it was to conclude social media use “causes” mental health problems, but based on the evidence, the committee reached more nuanced conclusions:

The science suggests that some features of social media function can harm some young people’s mental health. These include, but are not limited to, algorithmically driven distortions of reality exacerbating harmful content and disinformation, the distraction away from time that can otherwise be used in more healthy ways, and the creation of opportunities where youth can be abused or exploited. However, there are also several ways in which social media improve the lives of youth, including the creation of opportunities for community among more marginalized youth, and the opportunity for fun and joy for the vast majority of users.

I am sure you noticed the qualifying words: “some features of social media function can harm some young people’s mental health.” And, of course, social media is only one aspect of the digital world.

What Do We Know From Kids?

To begin, the online world is kid’s currency—it’s the world they grew up in; it’s the common language of their generation. It’s also one of the major ways that they access information as well as a way of making and keeping social connections.

Although I didn’t ask a specific open-ended question about the digital world in the nationally representative study conducted for my book, The Breakthrough Years, a number of the nine through nineteen-year-olds in the study, wrote about it, when asked what they want to tell adults about people their age.

Their consistent message is that they don’t want to be defined by their phones. As a 16-year-old girt wrote: “We aren't social media-obsessed, we aren't extremely self-involved, our phones don't define us and the internet is not going to be the end of us.” Another girl the same age wrote: “We are not 100 percent who you assume us to be—we actually think about more than just our phones or games.”

They also want us to know that while overusing phones is a real problem, this involves SOME BUT NOT ALL OF THEM.  The words of a 15-year-old-boy summarize the messages of many: “We’re not all addicted to our phones and losers.”

These messages are the part of the 38 percent of adolescents—the largest proportion in the study and a very large percent for an open-ended question—who asked adults not to generalize, make negative assumptions, or stereotype their generation. They want their strengths recognized and appreciated.

At the same time, their messages reveal that they are clear-eyed about the problems. According to a 13-year-old girl: “Kids our age are different now because we have phones & use them for so much stuff & we learn a lot of good things but also see some bad things too.” Furthermore, they want us to know that adults’ digital habits affect them. They ask adults “to set a good example for us because in a few years we are going to run the world.” Finally, they know that their parents won’t always be there to help them and they want to learn the skills they'll need NOW. As one put it, “teach us life skills.” Another said, “Basically, I want to know how to handle the challenges that come with adulthood."

An Overview of the Landscape: How We’re Protecting Young People

The government has been a major player—as it should be—in taking action against tech companies to protect children. The National Conference for State Legislatures compiled a state-by-state report of 2023 bills that have been enacted, are pending, or failed. These include requiring media companies to: 1) set age limits for the use of social media; 2) restrict “addictive” feeds on their platforms; 3) not collect, use, share or sell personal data of youth without informed consent; and 4) block harmful content.

Federal action may be on the horizon too. At the end of July, the U.S. Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) with overwhelming bipartisan support. These two bills in one package will now will head to the U.S. House of Representatives where we can expect to see all of the problems inherent in bans fought over—the difficulties in enforcing bans, verifying ages of users, curtailing and censoring access to information, and free speech.

Another way of holding tech companies accountable and requiring them to change is by suing them. The best known is the lawsuit filed against Meta by the Attorney Generals from 33 states in federal court in California, claiming it knowingly has features on its social media platforms that purposefully addict children and teens and that it collects data on children under 13 without informing parents or obtaining their consent, in violation of federal law. In addition, Attorneys Generals are filing other lawsuits in their respective states, as are school districts.

Then, of course, parents protect their children in many different ways, including making family media plans, giving their kids flip-phones not smartphones, putting parental controls on phones, and much more.

Before we look at how limits plus autonomy work, I want to say that some children and families have suffered unspeakable harm from the digital world. It’s crucial that their stories of harm be told—that the pain of families who have lost children and of teens who have suffered be widely known. It’s similarly important that when tech companies betray children by valuing profits over their wellbeing, their transgressions come to light and that companies be held accountable.

Setting Limits on Access to Technology

Since the solutions vary for having access to technology (when, where and by whom it can be used) and for the contents/quality of technology, I am writing about these separately, beginning with access, where public action mainly centers on schools.

And, in fact, the push to make schools phone-free is escalating. A June 2024 analysis by Education Week found 11 states have passed laws or enacted policies that ban or restrict students’ use of cellphones in schools statewide or that recommend districts in their states create their own rules. Additionally, bills and actions to curb phone use in school are pending in many individual districts. New York City, the nation’s largest district is considering a ban beginning this coming February and Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest district has enacted a ban that begins in 2025. The action here is a fast-moving target.

Parents are also taking collective action, such signing the Wait Until 8^th pledge to hold off from giving their kids smartphones until the end of 8^th grade. The nonprofit spearheading this effort reports that 60,000 parents have signed on.

Do School Cellphone Bans Work?

Now we get to the main question—how do limits in and of themselves work, which we’ll look at through school bans. The answer, of course, depends on the details of the bans and their enforcement. A 2023 Common Sense Media study that literally tracked the smartphone use of more than 200 students, 11 to 17-years-olds for a week found that almost everyone  (97 percent) used their phones at school for a medium of 43 minutes. The study also found that policies on usage varied, classroom to classroom and weren’t always enforced. Some schools are thus turning to tighter ways of restricting access, such as having kids put their phones into locked pouches.

Ban are mainly enacted to curtail their interference with education. A 2024 nationally representative survey by the Pew Research Center found that 33 percent of K-12 teachers see cellphones as distracting students from learning as a major problem, with 72 percent of high school teachers feeling this way. As a former teacher, I fully understand and support this reasoning.

Cellphone bans are enacted for other reasons too, like improving academic performance, grade point averages, increasing the real-life social interactions among students and improving mental health. In a recent article, Jacqueline Nesi of Brown University reports on several studies with most showing small gains in academic performance, more attention to class materials, greater mindfulness and less nervousness.

The fact that the gains occur is good but that they are small doesn’t necessarily surprise me. If educators want to see improvements in other outcomes, it’s not enough to get rid of distractions in the classroom—they also have to work toward improving the environments for learning and social interactions. Setting limits is necessary but not sufficient.

Setting Limits in Autonomy-Supportive Ways

What’s sufficient is setting limits in ways that build on children’s need (and I use the word need quite intentionally) for some autonomy. That why I so strongly believe that efforts to deal with the digital world must include both limits plus autonomy.

A good example comes from the research on efforts to stop bullying. A meta-analysis of nineteen antibullying studies of 350,000 students in grades one through thirteen in several Western nations concluded that these programs worked in 7^th grade and below, but had no effect with older students. Let me say that again. No effect!

It would have been easy to assume that it was too late to change the behavior of older students. Fortunately, David Yeager of the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues saw the finding of their meta-analysis through a child development lens. They noted that antibullying programs tended to be didactic, using “should” and “don’t” language, setting forth adult rules and having students practice them and that this approach isn’t effective, especially with adolescents. What does work, they argue is providing young people with some autonomy because studies find that young people are more motivated to comply when limits are set in autonomy-supportive ways.

An approach I’ve used as a teacher and parent provides one example of autonomy-supportive limit setting. Called Shared Solutions, it has five steps.

1. The adult states the problem or rule and determines the goal. This step is important because autonomy support begins with the adult providing limits, then the adult and young people crafting solutions together. The adult—teacher or parent—might state this as “Phones must not interfere with schoolwork—we need to find effective ways to make this happen.”

2. Young people generate as many solutions as possible. The adult writes down all of these ideas, without judgment. “No idea is a stupid idea.” Adults can suggest ideas, if necessary, but the goal is to have the ideas come from young people because it’s important for them to learn to resolve problems like this now and in the future.

3. Young people evaluate the solutions. They talk about how each solution would work for them and the adult.  The adult can write down these plusses and minuses.

4. The adult and young people select a solution to try that work best for all involved.  It’s important to see the solution as a change-experiment and together set the criteria and the timeframe for determining how effective it is as well as consequences for infringements.

5. The adults and kids meet at the predetermined time (or earlier if necessary) to evaluate the solution. If it isn’t working, repeat the process to create another Shared Solution.

Setting Limits on Online Content

A 2024 national poll of 1506 K-12 parents by the National Parents Union found parents are ambivalent about cellphone bans (only 32 percent support bans).

They want their children to be able to reach them in an emergency. In other words, they want their children to have access to their phones but with limits on when they can be used. On the other hand, parents are most concerned about inappropriate content (63 percent), exposure to predators (60 percent) and cyberbullying (57%)—all hugely troubling issues.

More than eight in ten parents support minimum age limits for access to social media.  As we all know, schoolwork in today’s world involves access to the online world, whether students are in school or doing homework, thus access to other kinds of content is very present issues and not one that parents and educators can solve alone besides restricting usage and putting controls on computers and phones. That’s why a lot of the legislative action revolves around restricting harmful content.

One recent and innovative solution, suggested by the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, is to put warning labels on social media. In a June 2024 New York Times editorial, he wrote:

It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.

In the editorial, he cites supports for this strategy, stating that a warning label on tobacco increased awareness and changed behavior about smoking. The data on cigarette harm, however, are more inarguable and findings on what actually decreased smoking are more complex. Rigorous evaluations have found that messages like “just say no to smoking” actually increased smoking!

Limits Plus Autonomy Work!

There were some anti-smoking efforts that did work, however, once again these are the ones that combined limits plus autonomy, understanding that young people need to feel like the owners of their own actions.

An example is The Truth campaign that depicted teens who didn’t smoke as standing up to corporate executives who wanted to hook them on spending their own money on cigarettes. While other campaigns increased smoking, this campaign decreased it. Based on a nationally representative group of 8,904 adolescents ages twelve to seventeen surveyed annually from 1997 to 2004, an evaluation estimated the campaign prevented 450,000 adolescents nationwide from starting to smoke.

The Truth campaign’s approach showed teens standing up to executives who wanted to make money by getting them addicted to smoking. Standing up to adults is one form of autonomy.

If and when there are new media campaigns, I would love to see them promoting inspiring forms of autonomy—showing young people as effective advocates. And there are many motivating stories. For instance, when Logan Lane was seventeen, she ditched her smartphone and founded a group of like-minded young people, called the Luddite Club. On a larger scale, a group called Tech(nically) Politics was co-founded by Alicia Kopans and Emma Lembke, who as teens fell prey to endless hours of scrolling, comparing themselves to the perfectly curated lives of others, to counting “likes,” and to eating disorders and mental health challenges that ensued. Now in college, they joined forces with other young people to advocate for changing laws to prioritize wellbeing over profits. Similarly, Design It For Us is a youth-led collation advocating for policy change to protect young people. And Half the Story has a Digital Civics Academy co-designed by youth to help them make local or global change to improve digital wellbeing.

Another way to improve the content in autonomy-supportive ways is for young people to become content-creators, not content-consumers. Studies by Ethan Kross and his colleagues find this approach—being active not passive users of content—supports their wellbeing. There are no lack of examples, from TikTok creations to powerful podcasts like Talk with Zach, This Teenage Life, She Persisted and replays of Teenager Therapy.

Similarly, schools can create courses on New Media, as Baldwin High School in Baldwin, New York has done, where students learn new technologies like video gaming, video and webpage internet design, web and podcasting, blogs, and creating online communities and use this knowledge to do projects to improve their local community.

Building Skills

As we’ve seen, and as The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s report, Social Media and Adolescent Health, makes clear too, broad bans and restrictions are not going to resolve the challenges in the digital world. Necessary are limits plus autonomy, as the committee states:

It is therefore necessary to create both an online environment that protects young people and social media consumers who are empowered to protect themselves.

Common Sense Media was well ahead of the curve in first creating its award-winning K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum in 2010. It’s now used by more than 1 million teachers worldwide as well as in 70% of U.S. schools.

There are many proposals for digital literacy programs in state legislation. The Academy report notes, however, that many efforts fall short because of “scarce funding, uneven content, or poorly qualified instructors.” Their report calls for ongoing teacher and student teacher training in digital literacy and for state standards for these programs, K-12. In addition:

The committee therefore seconds recent calls for more prospective research to identify the essential skills that make up digital media literacy and the most equitable strategy to promote it.

I don’t think it should be hard to determine what those essential skills are. Given the decades of research on executive function skills showing that they are as—if not more–predictive of academic success than IQ or socio-economic status, that’s where we should turn.

What are executive function (EF) skills? These are the attention regulation skills that are foundational for all intentional learning. These are the skills we use to manage and coordinate our emotions, thoughts, and behavior to achieve goals.

Core EF Skills include using what you know (working memory), thinking flexibly (cognitive flexibility), reflecting, and using self-control (inhibitory control). These core skills become the cognitive building blocks for Life and Learning Skills, like setting goals, understanding others, communicating and collaborating, problems solving, thinking creatively and critically, learning self-control, and taking on challenges—all central to managing the digital world and the real world too.

Children aren’t born with EF skills, but they’re born with the capacity to learn them and the early years and adolescence are prime times to learn these skills because the brain is developing very rapidly and is, at the same time, very sensitive to experience.  Over the past two decades, we’ve learned not only a lot about the skills, but how to promote them.

As one example, think about the skills that Shared Solutions uses. To brainstorm ideas on what might work managing the digital world and their schoolwork, young people have to use what they know (working memory) and think creatively. To evaluate how their solutions would work for all involved, they have to use the skill of perspective-taking. To select a solution to experiment with, they have to use critical thinking. And to try out their plan, they’re using the skills of taking on challenges and self-control.

In Sum

Whatever approaches we use to helping children live in the digital world, we will do much better if we base on strategies on what we’ve learned from child development. Children need both limits to stay safe plus autonomy to help them grow.

For Further information

To stay in touch with the ever-changing action on the digital front, the newsletter my daughter works on at Project Liberty is an excellent resource. To stay in touch with the research, Jacqueline Nesi’s Techo Sapiens substack is also excellent. And if you want to go deeper, The Kids Online Health and Safety Task Force, an interagency federal task force (where I served as a consultant) released a report at the end of July that provides comprehensive information and many how-to suggestions for parents from the American Academy of Pediatrics.