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of digital devices by young children and to their compulsive use by adults in their presence. I spoke with Dr. Shimi Kang, a Harvard-educated psychiatrist, specialist in adolescent addiction, and author, most recently of The Tech Solution: Creating Healthy Habits for Kids Growing Up in a Digital World. “Right now we have mothers who are on their phones while they’re nursing, or giving an infant a phone during a diaper change,” she said. “The diaper change used to be this whole dynamic experience between the caregiver and infant. You’d have to find a way to get them to sit still, and now you just give the child a phone and they lie quietly. You can go to any restaurant and see that many, many, many children are being fed in front of an iPad or a computer. You see it all over the place. The phone is so attractive to that young brain.” What gets displaced is the neurobiology of attachment, the release of bonding and mood-regulating brain chemicals like oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, present in the cerebral circuits of both parent and baby when they lock eyes in attuned, responsive connection—chemicals, Dr. Kang points out, that are known to be “the key to long-term happiness and success.” The unintended but wounding message to the child is, again, “You don’t matter.” Although it doesn’t take a brain scientist to see what makes these devices “so attractive to that young brain,” brain science certainly factors into their design. “Video games, social media, gadgets, and apps are engineered to keep young brains glued to their screens by finding ways to reward them with hits of dopamine,” Dr. Kang writes.[11] Dopamine, as we will see, is the essential chemical in the addiction process, whether to substances or behaviors. It is one of the brain’s “feel good” chemicals, inducing a state of excitement, motivation, aliveness, and gratification. When Dr. Kang asserts that digital apps and gadgets are “engineered” to hit children’s brains with bursts of dopamine, she is being very precise. “The phone,” she told me, “has been designed by the world’s top neuroscientists and psychologists, who have taken all of our most sophisticated brain research and understanding of human motivation and reward cycles and have embedded it into devices.” She cited as an example a company with a name and mission so on the nose