Something interesting may be happening with teenagers and social media. For years, adults have been the ones warning children that too much time online might not be good for them. Now a growing number of teens appear to be reaching a similar conclusion themselves. In the data we discussed on the Celebrate Kids Podcast, nearly half of teens surveyed said social media has a mostly negative effect on teenagers, a notable increase from just a few years earlier. More teens are also saying they spend too much time there. I find that encouraging, but I do not think parents should celebrate too quickly. Recognizing that something is not working is not the same as knowing what to replace it with.

One of the strange things about raising children is eventually realizing that the people who look so much like us may not actually want to become us. This can be surprising. You spend years looking across the dinner table and seeing your spouse’s smile and maybe, unfortunately, your tendency to leave shoes in the middle of the floor, and, somewhere along the way, you assume there will be other similarities, too. Then one child wants to do exactly what you do, while another looks at your career and thinks, “That seems terrible.” That is not necessarily a parenting problem. It may simply mean we have finally discovered that our children are people.

Sometimes a basketball game stops being about basketball. Recently, a professional women’s basketball game became part of a much larger public disagreement over sex, gender identity, belonging, and women’s sports. The signs, shirts, protests, and public statements received most of the attention, but I think parents have to look beneath the noise. There are children listening. Girls are wondering what it means to be female. And children wrestling with their bodies or gender are hearing adults argue about them in ways that can make them feel more like symbols in a cultural fight than people who need to be known and loved.