The result, Dr. Greenfield offered, "could be an infantilizing of the brain, that we are going to create a generation of Peter Pans who live in a world that is a literal one, dominated by sensory content over cognitive significance, a world where what you see is what you get."
Dr. O’Keeffe acknowledged the potential for an inattentive future generation, "but I think we can reel them in while they’re still teenagers and younger kids. Each generation that passes is going to be more digital. So while we still remember what an offline world is, if we can instill in the current teenagers and elementary school kids what it’s like to be unplugged, they’ll instill it in their kids, and it should pay forward."
Much of the onus is on parents, Dr. Rich said, to learn how social media work and to help their kids become good citizens of the digital world. "You can’t afford to check out because you don’t know the digital world. The default is that your children will be raised by whomever and whatever is in the digital domain. We know from ‘Lord of the Flies’ what happens when the kids are left in charge of society. We have a responsibility to parent in the digital domain, because our kids are spending most of their time there."