Illustration by Zohar Lazar

I didn’t grow up with a lot of yelling. Any decent therapist would hear that and say, “We have to stop now. Enjoy your remaining 47 minutes somewhere else.” But that’s the setting I came from. My southern mom was eternally polite and patient. My Connecticut dad made non-reactivity an art form. And adding to the quiet, we were Detroit sports fans in Boston, so I got zero chances to scream in public places. Instead, I learned to keep any big feelings deep inside.

But as I got older, I started playing softball and tennis and, apparently, I could be something of a yeller—and quite a good one. Sure, it looks stupid when someone else does it. Dude, it’s slow-pitch. Your shortstop is wearing a fishing hat. But when I let loose, my words have lilt and a nuance that made others stop and say, “I gotta hear this guy. He’s got some majestic issues.”

When my wife and I had our second child, the tennis and softball stopped. So did the yelling. I was under the impression I was more responsible and didn’t have time for such foolishness. But the yelling was still in there and needed to come out every so often. Mostly, it was at clueless drivers who, my God, wouldn’t leave the parking space I was waiting to get into, or, seriously, were looking at their phone while driving by a school, or—holy eff—just sitting there while I was trying to back out of my driveway and…oh, you were letting me back up and trying to stay out of the way. Sorry. Hope you can’t read lips. I’m just happy that I can drive away and never see you again.

But I admit there’s been another target for my yelling. My kids. I don’t do it around their friends or when I’m coaching their teams, but when we’re home, and other eyes aren’t on me—and that includes in the driveway because that’s totally private—I might, on occasion, slightly raise my voice. It’s usually because my first seven requests, said in a calm, loving manner, haven’t worked, and the only way to break through is to…yeah, I got no good reason.

Yelling is rarely not dumb. No matter how much it might “work,” I never think, I feel so much better now. Look at all the smiles I created. Yet I persist in doing it with my 14- and 11-year-old sons, and I can guess why. I’m tired. I’m done with a conversation before they are. I’m frustrated that they won’t heed my nuggets of wisdom, such as “Come on. Focus,” or “You gotta step it up,” or my number-one hit: “If you just did it the first time, I wouldn’t have to.”

I want to yell for the reasons we all do. I want to be heard, and I want to be right. I want to be appalled, outraged, and aggrieved. I want someone to hear my pointed words and get some justice—namely, free shipping.

And then, in general, sometimes I just want to yell, because, well, I want to yell for the reasons we all do. I want to be heard, and I want to be right. I want to be appalled, outraged, and aggrieved. I want someone to hear my pointed words and get some justice—namely, free shipping. For a few minutes, I don’t want to be in control, in charge, or an adult. Sometimes, I just want someone to make me a sandwich and let me go to my room to listen to records.

Since that’s not happening, I need better outlets for my yelling. But where? At whom? Ticket agents and customer service representatives are no more. Chat boxes simulate caring and conversation while achieving neither, and no matter how forcefully I type “no” or slam “not likely” on a survey, there is no release. In desperation, just to get any response, I go to a company’s Frequently Asked Questions page, which amazingly never includes a question that I’ve ever asked. Check that. Once, as an icebreaker, I asked someone if they knew how Xfinity was making their life better. (They didn’t.)

Could I take responsibility for my behavior and try to be a more reasonable person? Sure, but there’s no fun in that. Instead, I blame you, AI. You have made me yell at my babies.

Or possibly you didn’t. Maybe I should just try to yell less at my kids. And I decided to do just that with my version of a sober December.

The last month of the year seemed like the perfect time: All we had going on was my younger son’s birthday, Hanukkah, Christmas, the longest public school vacation ever, and the fact that we don’t ski, so there would be gobs of downtime that would never be filled. My next goal is to refrain from carbs on Thanksgiving.

Before I entered this gauntlet, Beth Kurland, a psychologist in Norwood, gave me some reminders. Be aware of what puts me in a less-than-stellar mood. Realize that yelling is a protective move, part of the fight-or-flight response, and that while the threat might be under 54 inches, insistent, relentless, loud, unreasonable, not moving out anytime soon, and often doing all of this during a car ride, the threat isn’t so dire. Plus, most everyone ends up failing since “there’s only so many times you want to ask for this thing to happen,” she says. “We reach a tipping point.” At least she didn’t mention the importance of breathing.

And then she did. But it’s not just breathing. It’s the exhalation that matters. When it’s longer and slower, it calms down the nervous system, and holy eff, another breathing tip. Really?

But I had nothing else that seemed to be working, so I gave it a shot and goddamned if it didn’t help. It gave me just enough pause to think, You want to be less like a lunatic right now? And the answer was usually, Why yes, I do, and so I did. Whenever a skirmish between the kids would bubble up, I’d do my routine: Exhaaaaaale and then think of how I wanted to be. I kept doing that, and for the first five days, I was killing it. I was so happy, and I had to imagine everyone else was. I was cured. I was never gonna have to yell ever, ever, ever again, and I’d probably get nominated for some national, or at least regional, award, which would probably be Dumbass of the Year.

Because on Day 6, it was trash day and it was a windy trash day. I was outside trying to corral my barrels. One lid came off, and the same box flew down the street for a second time, and Who was the crazy person yelling four-letter words at cardboard? Oh, it was me. But my kids were at school, so it was okay. I was just doing a little self-care. It was me time.

I never imploded over the month, but the non-yelling became less easy. One Saturday afternoon, my son and I pulled in opposite directions on a bowl. Tortilla chips were lost, and I reacted. Was it a yell? Technically, yes, made worse by the fact that it was over tortilla chips. It was a stupid use of yelling capital, if such a thing even exists.

The problem, I realized, was that my son was right in front of me. My initial success stemmed from always being in another room whenever a tussle happened. Even if it was just the kitchen, I could take three calming steps, enough to prepare my head. But on this afternoon, with this bowl, it was, “Boom. Guy stole the ball. Time to get back on D. No time to think.”

I could shake off that slip-up, which has never been easy for me. My parents, remember, were quiet folks, and each time I yell, it feels like a kind of failure. But I tell myself that there’s no perfect score to this game, a thought I might one day fully buy into.

The bigger problem was that even while I was yelling much less, I didn’t feel much better. I actually felt worse. My volume might have been down, but is saying something through clenched teeth really any better?

Of course it is. One is harsh and unnecessary, while the other is a completely gentle, sweet kind of communication that has its own weekend workshop at Kripalu.

It’s like most things. You can do everything right, and it still doesn’t work. I did mention all the holidays, the birthday, school vacation, the money going out. Did I mention AI is coming for my job while I’m busy not yelling?

The thing is, not yelling is the bare minimum for decent behavior. It’s not some salve for happiness. Oh, and there’s also a scientific reason for my mood.

“Some days you feel shittier than others,” Kurland says.

If that were on a pillow, I’d hug it every night to fall asleep.

Things eventually evened out. I still had moments of non-glory, because video games have not disappeared from the earth. But I also checked myself before bursting into an early-morning scuffle with a pep talk that might have involved “Sack up.” (Also another great pillow phrase.)

Even though December ended, it’s not like I decided, “Glad that’s over.” I’ve continued to tinker with my ways. One is trying to say what I want maybe just five times. The other is playing with my voice, changing the tone and the cadence. It seems to work, if only because it’s different enough to make my kids stop and wonder who that strange, calm man is. The one reminding them that, yes, we brush teeth before we go to bed.

I actually have a good feeling about this method. I see it lasting past the novelty stage and leading to big, big things, like a book, media appearances, and hopefully a coffee mug. I’ll finally have a social media presence, only because I’ll have the cash to hire someone to manage it. I’ll become a parenting expert, The Delivery Man (trademark pending). I’ll do trainings, workshops, and one-on-one sessions. Use any accent you want. It’s your voice. This might be the greatest invention ever—right after I design a metal water bottle that doesn’t dent and fall over.

Now that’s a reason to yell.

Illustration by C.J. Burton

They’re planning birthday parties while moving their parents across the country. They’re fielding calls from their kids’ daycare in the morning and their parents’ assisted-living facility in the evening. They’re potty training while adding adult diapers to the shopping list—all while working 40 hours a week to pay for it all. This is the sandwich generation—and it’s exactly as brutal as it sounds. This squeeze affects 23 percent of U.S. adults, with 65 percent of them finding themselves in this situation during their forties, according to Pew Research Center data. In Massachusetts, the balancing act is especially difficult given the high cost of, well, just about everything. We spoke to four local caregivers to learn how they navigate impossible logistics, financial strain, and emotional exhaustion—and how they’re juggling, or barely juggling, it all.

Tony Luong

The Impossible Balance

It was a Monday night about six months ago when Sarah Berkley hit her breaking point. She was prepping for a client presentation, the part-time nanny she’d hired for her three- and five-year-old was out sick, and she was being peppered with calls from her parents’ assisted-living facility about their medications and health. Overwhelmed, Berkley called her boss in tears and arranged a leave of absence.

But let’s rewind. It’d been a little over a year since her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and given that her mother had been suffering from Parkinson’s for about 15 years, her parents agreed to give up their homes in New Jersey and Florida to enter assisted living in Boston’s suburbs. They first moved into the facility closest to Berkley and her husband’s home, but Berkley wasn’t satisfied with the care there. The final straw at the first facility came when her father, admittedly a fall risk, had a small stumble and bruised his forearm. It was the facility’s strict policy that all medications, prescription and over-the-counter, be purchased and administered through its pharmacy provider.

Fed up with the red tape, Berkley smuggled her father a couple of Tylenol. When the caregivers found out, they offered an alternative to address her father’s minor soreness: They could happily administer morphine instead.

That whole incident seemed unbelievable, Berkley says, but the pressure she felt was very real, and during her tearful phone call with her boss, she let it all out: “I literally can’t do everything, I just can’t. I don’t know what to do. I can’t do all of this; I’m suffocating,” she told her. Luckily, Berkley’s supervisor, who was also a mentor and friend, and working for an insurance broker, was familiar with programs that could help. In Massachusetts, that meant paid family leave and short-term disability. “With my parents, my kids, and work, it was just like I was drowning,” Berkley says.

Berkley insists she is in a “fortunate position” because her parents have the resources to cover the cost of their own care, but is also clear that the stress involved with being part of the sandwich generation isn’t merely financial. Just minutes before we spoke, she was handling reimbursement paperwork and setting up speech and occupational therapy for her youngest child. Still on leave, she maintains a full schedule but says life has thankfully started to calm down. “Without work on my plate,” she says, “I have a little bit of time now to take care of myself, focus on my own mental health.”

Tony Luong

When Everything Falls Apart at Once

In mid-May 2024, Amy Scheuerman found herself in her aunt and uncle’s living room in the Bay Area, 3,000 miles from her Somerville home, sorting through Tupperware bins of old bills and attempting to catalog their various memberships and subscriptions. At the same time, she was working with her husband back East from afar, planning a combined fourth and sixth birthday party for her sons, both May babies.

In reality, the time bomb that blew Scheuerman’s world apart had actually started ticking 15 years earlier, when her father flew to California to move his parents closer to his childless brother and sister-in-law. “His plan had been to have his brother be in charge,” she explains. But during the visit, her uncle suffered a stroke and became incapable of caring for his parents, thus forcing Scheuerman’s father to relocate unexpectedly to the West Coast from Massachusetts to help them.

Scheuerman’s father remained in California after his parents passed, helping his brother and sister-in-law navigate health issues. When Scheuerman and her husband began having children, her father wanted to come home, but the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns got in the way. And then, another challenge: In the spring of 2024, Scheuerman’s aunt was diagnosed with aggressive uterine cancer and died soon after. “Only after she passed away did we realize that my uncle was getting pretty severe dementia, and my aunt had basically been covering for him,” she says. (This is the point in the story when Scheuerman shared a crucial tip: Have your older relatives make a list of their usernames, passwords, and phone-screen codes; Scheuerman did not have any of those, and canceling subscriptions and memberships became a nightmare.)

Being the only child born to either couple, Scheuerman became health proxy for her uncle, and, later on, preemptively for both of her parents as well. And that was how she found herself in the Bay Area, attempting to sell her aunt and uncle’s home and get their affairs in order before moving two aging relatives back to Massachusetts.

Still, the biggest time suck involved researching and identifying housing for two men requiring vastly different levels of care. Her uncle was put in a memory unit in Newburyport with many of his fellow veterans, and her father moved in briefly with his wife, from whom he’d lived separately for years, until Scheuerman found an apartment for him closer to her Somerville home.

As an involved parent, Scheuer­man isn’t sure if her prolonged absence negatively affected her kids, but when she began receiving calls from her four-year-old’s school and afterschool programs about him biting, kicking, and hitting others, she couldn’t help but blame herself. While Scheuerman is quick to praise the virtues of Somerville schools and the city’s widely available afterschool programs, the calls required that she drop what she was doing and retrieve her son.

The constant drain on Scheuerman’s time wasn’t without consequences: Having already taken three months of unpaid leave to move her family members back East, the higher-ups at her company were losing patience with her attention being elsewhere. With Scheuerman on the verge of being put on a performance-improvement plan, she decided to transition from full-time employee to contractor. Eventually, they let her go, all while she incurred the additional cost of hiring a nanny for her son, who could no longer attend afterschool programming.

A year removed from the tumult of having everything go haywire at once, Scheuerman has a new job, and her father lives close enough that he can pick up her now-five- and seven-year-old from school. Scheuerman repeatedly refers to herself as one of the lucky ones, citing her good fortune of being happily married with insurance and having family members who were financially capable of supporting themselves. As tough as it’s been for her, she says, “In general we’re luckier than a lot of people.

Tony Luong

When Family Actually Works

On a Friday afternoon, Malette Lanier is cleaning the Spirithouse Music recording studio, one of several offices, banks, and other businesses that contract her cleaning services. She loves her job, mostly because she has the flexibility to look after her grandson, Takai, while her daughter works. Her daughter and grandson, ages 31 and four, round out the four generations living in Lanier’s 81-year-old mother’s home. Being so close to her mother gives her “peace of mind,” Lanier says, “because I’m there every day and if there is some decline mentally, physically, I’m going to see it. If I were living elsewhere, I might not be aware of what’s going on.”

Lanier knows the challenges of aging firsthand. During the COVID lockdown, she and her father, who lives nearby, had to figure out a new care plan for her late stepmother, who’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and was rapidly succumbing to the disease. Because they no longer wanted to risk exposing her to outside caregivers, they decided to handle her full-time care themselves. “I would just go in the morning and help my dad get her up and dressed,” she says. “Then I would go back in the afternoon to help him change her, and then in the evenings to help him get her ready for bed.”

In many ways, Lanier was practically born into a caregiver’s role when her younger sister’s complicated delivery resulted in cerebral palsy. Lanier has been caring for her now-49-year-old sister for most of her life, always at home, and she doesn’t regret leaving her more traditional day jobs for the flexibility of running her own cleaning business.

Lanier is cautiously optimistic about her household’s future, though challenges remain. She has one more year watching Takai during work hours while her daughter works at a Lasik surgery office before he starts preschool in 2026. She and her mother also talk openly about future care needs now that her mother is in her eighties. “She told me once that if it became necessary to put [my sister] in a home, that would be fine, but I don’t see that happening,” Lanier says, adding, “She knows she has family she can count on. One hand washes the other—it’s family, it’s what you do.”

Tony Luong

The Great Role Reversal

Ever since her father’s 2016 death in their home state of Michigan, Somerville attorney Danielle Kinkel knew the clock was ticking on her mother’s inevitable relocation to Massachusetts. And tick it did: By 2019, her mother had moved into the first-floor unit of Kinkel and her husband’s multifamily home, where they lived on the second and third floors with their two young kids.

Because Kinkel’s mother had been a fierce careerist who postponed having children until later in life, the odds were high that she would need care while Kinkel was still raising her own young family. The Filipino immigrant and doctor had become a leading clinical psychologist and the president of the Michigan Psychiatric Society before winding down her career.

When her mother moved East to live with them, Kinkel’s life didn’t stop—but at that point, her mother was still healthy. Now, Kinkel is beginning to question whether her mom is still capable of living independently, especially after learning she has Alzheimer’s. The diagnosis confirmed what Kinkel and her husband had already suspected after her mother fell victim to an online scam. The scammers had instructed her to withdraw cash and deposit it in a local bitcoin machine, demanding that she not tell anyone.

Kinkel says she hadn’t anticipated how the living arrangement would shift their dynamic. Before, mother and daughter were both so busy they sometimes didn’t speak for months. Now her mom monitors her every move. “It’s like being watched, trying to navigate this weird space of being an adult and an adult child,” she says. “I am the adult to my adult parent, and sometimes I feel like I’m being catapulted back to being 17 and trying to sneak into my own home after midnight.” Conversely, her mother still has a car in the driveway—though the keys have been taken away—and has recently been caught trying to sneak it out. “The whole thing has gotten turned on its head,” she says.

Fortunately, the CEO of Kinkel’s organization has been sympathetic to her plight. Even so, Kinkel struggles as an active member of the sandwich generation shopping for long-term care for her 84-year-old mother. Her advice? Plan ahead and have the difficult conversations before you’re in crisis mode. And if you don’t have all the answers, don’t be afraid to ask for help.

This article was first published in the print edition of the October 2025 issue with the headline: “Squeezed to Death.”

Note: ChatGPT also generated this image for digital use.

This quiz is part of our annual September “Top Schools” package. Read also about how students are actually using AI (and what educators are learning) here.

AI can write better essays than your teenager and solve complex equations in a matter of seconds—and everyone is using it. Are you prepared for a future that’s now? Take this quiz to see how you fare.

1. Which of these AI “myths” should set off your BS detector?

A) AI always gives correct information.
B) AI can help outline essays.
C) Teachers sometimes encourage AI brainstorming.
D) Schools are experimenting with AI tutors.

The answer: A) AI lies with the confidence of a politician. Always fact-check that digital know-it-all.

2. Your teenager drops this bomb: “Everyone uses ChatGPT now—teachers don’t care.” Your move?

A) Confiscate their laptop like it’s 1995.
B) March to the principal’s office.
C) Ask what they’re using it for and actually read the assignment together.
D) Fire back with “Everyone speeds on the highway too—doesn’t make it legal when you get caught.”

The answer: C) Shocking concept: Having an actual conversation builds trust and clarifies the rules.

3. When teachers actually want students to use AI, what should the teacher do?

A) Say, “Use ChatGPT if you want,” and pray for the best.
B) Provide clear guidelines and citation requirements.
C) Grade purely on grammar and call it a day.
D) Tell students to go full incognito mode.

The answer: B) Responsible AI use isn’t the Wild West. Rules and transparency matter.

4. Which AI habit will save your kid from academic disaster?

A) Clearing cookies religiously.
B) Citing AI-generated ideas like any other source.
C) Only using ChatGPT during vampire hours.
D) Building a secret AI vault.

The answer: B) Teaching proper attribution now prevents plagiarism scandals later. You’re welcome.

5. Why do some teachers break out in hives when students go AI-heavy?

A) It crashes the school WiFi.
B) Grade inflation makes everyone look suspicious.
C) It can turn students’ brains to mush.
D) Teachers are secretly jealous of AI’s grammar skills.

The answer: C) When AI does all the thinking, students lose the ability to think. Not ideal.

6. How might AI actually level the playing field?

A) Give everyone the same essay to copy-paste.
B) Replace teachers with chrome-plated overlords.
C) Offer language and accessibility support on demand.
D) Charge premium rates for premium answers.

The answer: C) AI can be a great equalizer for non-native speakers and students with learning differences.

7. Your kid gets falsely accused of AI cheating. Time to:

A) Lawyer up immediately.
B) Stay quiet and hope it blows over.
C) Ask for evidence, review the policy, and let your kid defend themselves.
D) Launch a crusade to ban AI from all schools forever.

The answer: C) Due process isn’t just for courtrooms. Ask questions, demand transparency, and involve your kid.

How’d you do? If you aced this, congratulations—you’re ready for the AI age. If not, don’t panic. You’re just getting started in the most interesting parenting challenge of our time.

This quiz was first published in the print edition of the September 2025 issue as part of a package on AI and education.

Illustration by Comrade

Illustration by Dale Stephanos

As part of our Top Schools 2024 special report about kids and cell phones, we’ve asked two mothers of seventh graders to share their perspectives on why they have—or haven’t—given their child a smartphone.

Why I won’t give my seventh grader a smartphone…

“What scares me most is observing my own behavior with the phone. I’m addicted to Facebook. It has radically altered my life. I used to read copious amounts of books and magazines, and I don’t read them anymore. I see how it affects my relationships. It’s really negatively affected my life.

My daughter is a rising seventh grader. We got her a flip phone at 12 because I don’t want her to not be able to text with people. She has an iPad. She can use Messenger Kids with people. But I have all kinds of rules: If there are friends over, you can’t be on a screen. This was always my rule, but it’s really unraveling now that so many kids have phones.

She gets plenty of screen time. She watches tons of TV; she has time on the iPad. But the amount that she gets, given our restrictions, is just a fraction of what other people are contending with. Her anxiety is less than other kids. She has some, which I think is age-appropriate and seems universal for her generation. But we’ve witnessed her being able to do things that are kind of unusual in this age group: to just meet people.

We have signed a Wait Until 8th pledge. I’m not purporting to be an expert, but I am reading the studies. I just really want to raise a resilient, independent child who can solve problems, who can think analytically, with unsupervised play outside, interacting with the world and with other people. Not a week after we got her the flip phone, she got a message: ‘Hi; how are you?’ She wrote back, ‘Who’s this?’ thinking it’s some friend, because she doesn’t have enough names and numbers in her new phone. There was chatting back and forth. This was at 9 p.m.

I get those messages, and I delete them. But a child doesn’t know what to do with that. We’ve discussed it with her, but she was so excited to get a message from a friend that she got up and responded. The next thing you know, this guy was calling 11 times in a row. It was a grown man.

Still, we don’t want to prevent our daughter from socializing. My kid is highly socially skilled, enormously emotionally intelligent, and will have friends even if she’s the only one on the planet without a cell phone. I have total confidence in her with that. Even now, she keeps forgetting her flip phone. She’s not addicted to it. To be fair, we don’t suffer in the same way.” —Rachel Canar, Arlington

Why I gave my seventh grader a smartphone…

“My son got his first iPad at four, passed down to him by a friend of ours who worked at Apple when my daughter was born so that he could sit beside me and play games, so he’s very tech-savvy. We started with a two-hour limit per day, and when the time was up, it was up. Then, depending on if it was weekends, holidays, or COVID, limitations slowly went out the door.

We got him a phone for his 13th birthday, in 7th grade, because he was starting to be farther away from us, getting dropped off on a sports field. Just last night, I dropped him off and thought he would be there for two hours. After an hour, he texted and said, ‘Can you come get me? They’ve called the game.’

With his dyslexia, he has speech-to-text written into his IEP. Recently, he was doing a book report on Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, and he listened to it on Audible every night on his phone. We had a great discussion about the book that really opened up interest for him in the sciences. But what I was really impressed with was how much he absorbed that he definitely would not have if he’d ‘read’ it. I’ve also noticed that, as he’s becoming more independent, he’s using his phone for executive functioning, setting alarms to remind himself to do things.

There are definitely certain apps he cannot have. We have it set up so that he can’t download anything without our permission. He doesn’t have Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat—for us, it’s the curated life that isn’t real—but we allow Discord so he can talk with friends. They game or even watch movies ‘together.’

I think smartphones are only as scary as you want to make them, and they don’t absolve you from any responsibility as a parent, making sure that you know what they’re doing. But I’m sure that there are people who side-eye us.” —Jennifer Carberry, Westford

First published in the print edition of the September 2024 issue as part of our Top Schools 2024 package, with the headline, “On the Front Lines: What’s it like to parent in the age of smartphones?”

Are Smartphones Failing Boston’s Kids?

• The Sobering Truth About Kids and Smartphones
• How Schools Are Regulating Smartphones—Or Not
• Ask the Experts
  • Studies Show Smartphone Use and Social Media Can Affect…
  • How to Say “No” to Your Child’s Phone Use — and Stick to It
  • How to Manage Your Teen’s Social Media
• Also, in this issue:
  • The Top Public High Schools in Greater Boston, 2024

Photo by Xavier Lorenzo via Getty Images

For our Top Schools 2024 special report about kids and cell phones, we’ve asked two experts for tips on managing your teen’s screen time.

1. Understand that there’s no perfect age for social media.

In 2024, there’s no broad consensus among experts on when to introduce your kid to the digital realm. A mature 13-year-old might have the self-regulation skills to handle it; an impulsive 16-year-old might have trouble shutting down. But consider the times: Kids use social media to keep up with homework, connect with friends, and learn about current events. “Painting social media as the monster [is] a misdirection of energy and thought. What we’ve got to think about is: How do we use these powerful tools to make us better humans and put them away when that’s not the job?” Boston Children’s doctor of adolescent medicine Michael Rich says.

2. Measure non-screen time instead of screen time.

Just as important as setting smartphone limits is how parents put those limits in place. Rich recommends mandating how much time your kid spends away from the screen. “Back in the days of television, you could say, ‘One to two hours of quality educational screen time a day.’ Now we move seamlessly in and out of the digital and the physical space. What we recommend is dedicated nonscreen time: That’s something you can measure and consciously do,” he says.

3. Start small.

Instead of eliminating social media entirely or using bans as punishment, first pinpoint concerning scenarios, such as your child going right to their phone in the car without pausing to chat about their day. “That’s a highly specific problem to solve, and you’re going to get a lot more traction trying to solve that piece first,” explains Mass General adolescent psychologist Stuart Ablon.

4. Be available for support.

Just as you’d want your child to tell you about bullying on the soccer field, the same goes for smartphones. Does your kid understand the threshold for enlisting your help, whether that’s witnessing bullying on a group text, getting a creepy DM, seeing something that looks like fake news, or stumbling onto explicit content? “If parents can’t talk to their children about pornography, they shouldn’t give them a smartphone,” Rich says. “We have to talk to them explicitly about it. This is an open and ongoing dialogue.”

First published in the print edition of the September 2024 issue as part of our Top Schools 2024 package.

SEPTEMBER 2024

Are Smartphones Failing Boston’s Kids?

• • The Sobering Truth About Kids and Smartphones
  • How Schools Are Regulating Smartphones—Or Not
  • Studies Show…
  • Do You Give a Seventh Grader a Smartphone? (Coming soon)
    • The Case For
    • The Case Against
  • Ask the Experts
    • How to Say “No” to Your Child’s Phone Use — and Stick to It
    • Are Screens Good or Bad for Alternative Learners?
    • How to Manage Your Teen’s Social Media
  • Also
    • The Top Public High Schools in Greater Boston, 2024

Photo by SeventyFour via Getty Images

As part of our Top Schools 2024 special report about kids and cell phones, we’ve asked two experts for tips on how to manage your child’s phone use. Here are four ways to take back control.

1. Remember who’s in charge.

“We’ve got to remember who the parent is here. If we were to turn that smartphone into a bottle of vodka, would they have a problem saying no?” says Boston Children’s doctor of adolescent medicine Michael Rich. “This is not you being a bad parent, a mean parent. We owe our kids a diverse menu of experiences, which a phone can be part of when used in purposeful and mindful ways. But it should be introduced as a power tool, not as a toy.”

2. Confiscate the device at key times.

If your child is scrolling to the exclusion of specific activities, such as sleep or mealtime conversations, go ahead and pull the plug. “The simplest thing is to take the phone away. Literally take it away at whatever time at night is reasonable for your family,” says Mass General pediatric psychologist Ellen Braaten, author of Bright Kids Who Couldn’t Care Less: How to Rekindle Your Child’s Motivation.

3. Embrace boredom.

Sometimes, parents are afraid that kids will complain about being bored without their precious smartphone appendage. But as Braaten says, boredom can be a good thing. If your child is always on the phone, “They’re not spending time on other things, nurturing their brain and developing their social skills. We have to get okay with boredom and saying to our children, ‘Find something to do.’ Letting them find it is the hardest thing,” Braaten says.

4. Admit your mistakes.

Maybe your adolescent is already glued to a smartphone, and you regret the initial purchase. “It’s okay to say, ‘We screwed up as parents. I really know what’s best for you because I am the parent. I pay for the phone. I want you to have some of this downtime built into your life that you haven’t had yet,’” Braaten says.

First published in the print edition of the September 2024 issue as part of our Top Schools 2024 package, with the headline, “How to Say ‘No’ — and Stick to It.”

Photo by Getty Images. Illustration by Benjamen Purvis.

As part of our Top Schools 2024 special report about kids and cell phones, we’re exploring the advantages of screens and social platforms for students with unique learning styles. Here, experts Rachel Parker, director of innovation and instructional technology at the Carroll School, and Devorah Heitner, author of Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World, help us parse the benefits and drawbacks of digital devices for students who learn differently.

How can digital devices be educationally helpful for nontraditional learners?

“My catchphrase is: Allow a student to be a creator rather than a consumer. I think the part of social media and video games that people are afraid of is the consumption, not really the creation. Let’s take Minecraft: Minecraft is such a creative game, building and creating and modifying. To me, that’s the most important distinction when thinking about technology: Is the child creating on this technology? Or are they just consuming? Are they passive, or are they engaged? Really strong, deep learning happens in creative moments.” —Rachel Parker

In what ways can digital devices be emotionally helpful for nontraditional learners?

“No child’s learning profile is the same. But when we think about dyslexia, for example, starting to write a paragraph can be so daunting and anxiety-provoking for our students that a lot of them just can’t get started. Getting started oftentimes is the biggest hurdle to being able to access content and create content. By having tools that allow them to speak out loud so that they don’t have to be writing, they’re not hitting that block and can actually communicate even more valuable and creative information.” —Parker

Will my child with learning or behavioral differences interact with social media differently?

“Impulsivity might be part of ADHD for some kids. Social media, unfortunately for all of us, kind of encourages impulsivity and a quick reaction. The danger, especially for a young person, would be that they might respond in a way that might blow up their social network. They might respond in a way that they think is funny in the moment, or they might get really angry, and it could be a problem for them. Another example is kids who miss some nuance. Some kids might do better because, in some ways, a text is more explicit than reading expressions, but there also might be kids who miss some of the hidden rules of interactions: You don’t respond too quickly, or you don’t respond this many times. That could be socially costly for them.” —Devorah Heitner

Will smartphones help or hurt my teen with social anxiety?

“Every time I hear from a parent who says, ‘My kid has no friends; they’re only gaming with other kids,’ I wonder: If that kid didn’t have gaming, would they then be out at a million social events engaging, or would they actually have nothing? That’s the question: What is social media replacing? If the kid would be out engaging with people in person but instead is gaming 24/7, that wouldn’t be ideal. But what if that’s a kid who would just have been doing nothing with other people? Then the games are a bridge and an important part of their life. It’s important to also think about: How can we connect what young people might be doing in these spaces to other skills? If your kid is watching a lot of YouTube cooking videos, could they be learning to cook? Could they be translating that interest into a useful life skill?” —Heitner

What are the best apps for kids and teens who thrive with hands-on learning?

“For educational technology and creativity, Scratch and Scratch Jr., which are entry-level programming languages. They were specifically designed for young children, and they’re very well designed for children who can’t read. You’re creating stories and games, programming on a 2-D screen. The other one is Tinkercad 3-D-modeling software. You basically take shapes, manipulate them, and you can 3-D-print them. They’re free, and they’re designed specifically for children in educational settings.” —Parker

Should I worry about my child disclosing too much online?

“I think parents worry that kids are revealing too much, but they’re actually revealing within the norms of their own social community: kids coming out online, for example. A lot of kids will come out online, and parents are like: ‘They’re only 13. What if they change their mind?’ A parent might not recognize that maybe lots of kids in middle school are taking that step; social costs may be much lower, and the benefit may be higher in terms of inclusion and support.” —Heitner

First published in the print edition of the September 2024 issue as part of an annual Top Schools 2024 package, with the headline, “Alternative Learners 101.”

Are Smartphones Failing Boston’s Kids?

• The Sobering Truth About Kids and Smartphones
• How Schools Are Regulating Smartphones—Or Not
• Studies Show…
• Do You Give a Seventh Grader a Smartphone? (Coming soon)
  • The Case For
  • The Case Against
• Ask the Experts
  • How to Say “No” to Your Child’s Phone Use — and Stick to It
  • Are Screens Good or Bad for Alternative Learners?
  • How to Manage Your Teen’s Social Media
• Also, in this issue:
  • The Top Public High Schools in Greater Boston, 2024

Photo by Getty Images

It was a miracle: My seventh grader was at the Burlington Mall with friends. I double-parked in front of Nordstrom for pickup, eagerly awaiting tales of overconsumption at the food court or a shopping spree at Newbury Comics. After all, when I was growing up, I had to beg my parents for a mall trip like this. Now I was begging him.I’d initially cajoled him into starting the group text. Then I arranged the transportation. In fact, I practically pushed him out of the house. Why? Because he was always on a screen, unless he was playing sports. He typically returns from school, does homework, and evaporates into the playroom to stare at Snapchat or a video game. Sometimes, I’ll drive past his middle school at dismissal to gawk like an amateur anthropologist at him and his friends walking home—hoodies up, earbuds in, and heads down—clinging to their devices like zombies.

So I nudged him to text his friends (nobody calls one another anymore, Mom) about going to the mall. Honestly, I would’ve driven them to Canobie Lake Park if it meant a couple of phone-free hours—anything to conjure some real-world interaction. And so there I was, idling in the parking lot with a kernel of optimism. At last, he and his friends were actually socializing in person instead of gaming virtually or exchanging pointless Snapchats from the depths of their suburban basements.

After I waited for a few minutes, four gangly boys plopped into my SUV. And in heartbreaking unison, each of them pulled out their phone, put their head down, and went silent for the 15-minute car ride home. I thought to myself: What have we done?

I’m hardly alone. At this point, most people believe that smartphones and social media have at least some negative effects on kids. Experts preach limits and abstinence, yet so many middle- and high-school parents (myself included) allow them: Today, up to 95 percent of young people ages 13 to 17 report using a social media platform. Nearly two-thirds of teens use these apps daily; one-third use them almost constantly, according to data from the Pew Research Center and Common Sense Media. That’s made it nearly impossible for parents who don’t want to give their child a shiny new iPhone but do want them to be part of the social flow at school and not be ostracized. Which got me wondering: What does the research actually show? Is all of this smartphone panic we’re constantly hearing about warranted, or is it overblown?

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Infographic from the September 2024 issue of Boston magazine.

Are Smartphones Failing Boston’s Kids?

• How Schools Are Regulating Smartphones—Or Not
• Do You Give a Seventh Grader a Smartphone?
  • The Case For
  • The Case Against
• Ask the Experts
  • Studies Show Smartphone Use and Social Media Can Affect…
  • How to Say “No” to Your Child’s Phone Use — and Stick to It
  • Are Screens Good or Bad for Alternative Learners?
  • How to Manage Your Teen’s Social Media
• Also, in this issue:
  • The Top Public High Schools in Greater Boston, 2024-2025

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Undoubtedly, there are reasons to be concerned. While reporting this story, I asked parents what worried them most about smartphones and social media. “My biggest fear is that my son will get sucked into white supremacist culture via social media, as he’s incredibly impressionable due to his mental health challenges,” said one parent. “My biggest fear is sexually explicit stuff that my kids are not ready for and are afraid to ask me about,” said another. One mom worried about online predators soliciting her children for sex. Others pointed to peer pressure writ large, which just last year caused a Worcester 14-year-old to die after he completed the viral Paqui “One Chip Challenge.”

Regardless of the content our children consume, the stats are troubling: Kids and adolescents who spend upward of three hours per day on social media face double the risk of mental health issues, including symptoms of anxiety and depression. Self-esteem also takes a hit, according to a Boston Children’s Hospital study, with 46 percent of adolescents ages 13 to 17 saying social media makes them feel worse about themselves. While the jury is still out on whether children predisposed to mental health problems are more drawn to social media, the link is alarming enough to make apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube seem increasingly like public enemy number one. In fact, this past June, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for a warning label on social media platforms, emphasizing that they’re associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.

Yet if you ask local experts, there’s another lurking threat: a lack of human interaction and memory making in favor of the addictive but fleeting gratification of clicks, likes, and scrolling. These days, the currency, the common language, of childhood has changed from soul to scroll. “We lost a lot when ‘friend’ became a verb,” says Boston Children’s doctor of adolescent medicine Michael Rich, who directs the Digital Wellness Lab and the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders.

The same is true for adults, of course, but teens are especially vulnerable to social media’s allure: Brain development, starting at ages 10 to 13 (the outset of puberty) until approximately the mid-twenties, is linked with hypersensitivity to social feedback and stimuli. In other words, teens thrive on behaviors that help them get personalized feedback, praise, or attention from peers, whereas adults have a more developed prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that helps regulate emotional responses to social rewards.

That’s part of the reason why smartphones and social media can feel even more like drugs to kids than they do to grownups, says Mass General adolescent psychologist Stuart Ablon, who recently partnered with the Your Brain on Social Media initiative to launch a free resource for families navigating conversations about social media with their kids, from privacy issues to sexting to viral video challenges. A significant issue, Ablon says, is that social media is algorithmically designed to keep kids coming back for more, and smartphones are the conduit. In his practice, Ablon sees addictive use by teenage girls, who are especially vulnerable to online social comparisons and warped beauty ideals. “Originally, [Instagram] was for sharing pictures,” he says. “But then, the algorithms were built around: ‘How can we make it enticing to get as many responses as possible and to bring people back to the app again and again to check how many likes they have?’ It’s like holding a mini slot machine in your hand.”

Photo via Getty Images

Meanwhile, ads are flooding our kids’ feeds with undesirable images and messages—like TV advertising on steroids. “We used to be concerned that when you’re watching TV, that there’d be an ad every 10 minutes,” Ablon says. “Now, there are customized ads that are popping into people’s feeds. Let’s be clear: People selling things to adolescents do not have their mental health in mind.”

In response to all of this, some local parents are joining forces with grassroots movements such as Wait Until 8th, a shareable online pledge to delay smartphone use until eighth grade. Its motto? “Let kids be kids a little longer.” The movement was crystallized in The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt, an instant bestseller that spurred endless parental text threads, book groups, and worrying when it came out earlier this year. In it, social psychologist Haidt makes the case that a play-based childhood has been replaced by a phone-based one, leaving organic connection, growth, and exploration in the dust.

A like-minded group in my town, Arlington Parents for Smartphone Sense, has more than 500 members on Facebook. That’s roughly the size of an elementary school: impressive, but hardly a majority in town, which makes it even harder for parents like me to just say no when it comes to the devices. After all, no one wants to see their kid completely cut off from their peers. That’s part of the reason why founder Jeff Miller, a dad of two elementary schoolers and a Wait Until 8th advocate, continues to work to build a consensus among parents. “Social media is so powerful. You look at something for two milliseconds, type in ‘get thin quick,’ and you can be drawn into things like the Corpse Bride Diet,” he says, referring to a dangerous social media trend involving a 300-calorie-a-day meal plan. He was first moved to action after watching his kids frolic on a neighborhood playground and wondering how long the innocence would last. But he’s further motivated by social media’s perniciously alluring qualities: “It’s an algorithm-driven addiction machine,” he says.

Rich, for his part, understands the damage those algorithms can inflict on kids. “Do you remember kicking a soccer ball around the backyard, taking a walk, camping with your family, or trying to cook spaghetti sauce and spilling it all over the floor?” he asks. “Those are the things that build our memories and our connectedness with each other. One of the things that I worry about is that we’ve traded away our deep, sustaining, meaningful connectedness with each other for near infinite connectivity.”

Photo via Getty Images

So what’s a concerned mom like me supposed to do? I’d already set the stage for a fight by giving my son a phone in the first place. Was he now destined for a life as a screen addict? After the mall debacle, I decided to double down on setting smartphone parameters. I installed time limits on his apps. (He’d then send a request for more time, which I found hard to deny because I was busy working or too tired to argue.) I began confiscating his phone for the day so he could spend an old-fashioned afternoon riding his bike or shooting hoops. (He’d mope and say that he couldn’t coordinate with friends without texting.) I audited his chat and messaging history while he hovered over me—but honestly, I could barely decipher what I was looking at, anyway. (For those of us over 35 or so, TikTok and Snapchat are sensory overload.) And when none of my interventions changed his usage habits, I decided I needed to dig a little deeper to see how I could navigate my son’s relationship with his smartphone in a sustainable way.

That’s when I heard something reassuring. Contrary to the doom-and-gloom narrative surrounding kids and smartphones today, several of the experts I consulted were quick to remind me that these devices are not inherently evil. In the right hands, assistive technology and educational apps used on an iPad or a smartphone can reach learners like my son, who is dyslexic. For example, to suit his learning style, he can compose a five-paragraph essay using video-based apps and talk-to-text programs on his Chromebook, or absorb a book by listening to Audible on his smartphone—something unthinkable a generation ago. Smartphones also help me track him as he’s walking home from school or text him that I’m en route to pick him up from basketball. Even social media isn’t universally detrimental: It can help kids find affinity groups, learn about current events and promote causes they care about, and flex their creative muscles.

Just like our parents taught us how to ride bikes or drive a car, we need to teach our kids how to interact as responsible digital citizens.

But just like our parents taught us how to ride bikes or drive a car, Rich says we need to teach our kids how to interact as responsible digital citizens. “It’s about helping [kids] learn to use this power tool in ways that make them stronger, healthier, and kinder to others,” he explains.

What’s more, completely banning smartphones—especially after today’s teens spent years staring at screens out of necessity during COVID—is a tall order that could end up causing parents more stress than success. “I’m a realist,” Ablon says. “And I think it’s hard to fight against it at this point. In many ways, the horse has left the barn.”

Instead of banning or confiscating phones, it’s more important to understand what our kids are seeing in their virtual worlds and engage with them about it, just as we’d engage with them about things they experience in the real world. Rich urges parents to think of what he calls the “three-plus-two Ms”: modeling behavior, mentoring, and monitoring, plus mastery and making memories.

Modeling behavior means using our phones in the ways we’d like our kids to: shutting it off during dinner and putting it down when having a conversation.

What kids are looking at online—asking questions and allowing them to show us what they’re seeing. This also plays into their sense of mastery: Instead of treating social media and smartphones as a vice, we need to reframe them as a tool with powerful capabilities that they can deploy (and shut off when needed). “If you approach it with curiosity and as a student, they will actually share—not in a reprimanding or judge-y way, but in a way of: ‘Cool, how does this work? Teach me how it works.’ They will actually share it with you,” Rich says.

Monitoring—having your kids’ usernames and passwords, just as you’d monitor their PowerSchool account or homework—is just as important. “This frankly changes their behavior. It’s like random drug testing in the workplace,” he says. And memory making, of course, is exactly what it sounds like: ensuring there’s still time to do those IRL things that define growing up.

After talking to Ablon and Rich, I began to feel a tiny bit better about my seventh-grader’s habit. Smartphones and social media are here to stay; instead of fighting them, I had to work with them, because the stakes are too high to ignore.

I began to realize that the challenge with my son wasn’t about completely banning his phone and disabling all of his apps, as much as I’d sometimes like to. It was about helping him learn and grow within his current screen-focused reality, even if it often felt uncomfortable. That meant, sometimes, letting him do nothing at all. “We make a real mistake when we just pull out our phones because we don’t know what else to do. Boredom for kids is the crucible of curiosity, creativity, and innovation, because it not only gives you the space, but it gives you that discomfort that makes you want to fill that space with something,” Rich says.

The following week, I decided to conduct a small experiment: Picking my son up from basketball, I put his phone in the front seat with me instead of letting him scroll as we sat in traffic. He stared out the window. He moped for a minute. But after a bit of awkward silence, we began talking about the sneaker-design class he wanted to take. I told him we’d research it that night at bedtime—together, on his phone. ❟

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Photo by Getty Images

STUDIES SHOW

Smartphone Use and Social Media Can Affect…

ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
A 2023 study conducted by University of Delaware and Florida State University professors of 1,459 middle-schoolers ages 11 to 15 found that academic achievement decreased as the use of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and X increased. Kids with less frequent Facebook and Instagram use—as well as high-quality mother-adolescent communication—had better grades.

IMPULSE CONTROL
A 2023 study in JAMA Pediatrics analyzing 169 sixth and seventh graders found that habitual checking of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat could be longitudinally associated with changes in the brain’s sensitivity to social rewards and punishments.

SLEEP
A JAMA meta-analysis found that kids’ access to and use of media devices was significantly associated with inadequate sleep quantity, poor sleep quality, and excessive daytime sleepiness. Meanwhile, 56 percent of parents of teens believe electronics, social media, and cell phones are to blame for their child’s sleep issues, according to a University of Michigan national poll.

Photo via Getty Images

Smartphones in School

How local districts are regulating smartphone use in classrooms—or not.

For students, the days of sneaking selfies in the bathroom or covertly using Snapchat during algebra may soon be over. While school districts in Greater Boston are taking different approaches to address smartphone usage, one thing is universal: It’s an issue they can’t ignore.

Some schools have stricter rules than others: In September 2023, Newton’s F.A. Day Middle School launched a cellphone-free program that requires students to drop their devices in sealed Yondr pouches when walking through the door. In January 2024, Lowell High School announced a policy requiring smartphones to be turned off and put into designated lockboxes in the classroom, though they’re still allowed at lunch.

Meanwhile, at an Arlington school, kids are told only to keep phones out of sight. Students store them in backpacks, which travel from class to class; if a teacher sees a student on their phone, they have the right to confiscate it.

Though it’s too soon for data about these programs’ successes, experts hope that schools find a way to focus on distraction-free learning while working on digital literacy—a skill as important as any other in the social media age. “The task at school is twofold,” says Boston Children’s Michael Rich. “One is didactic learning, for which smartphones are a distraction: math, science, et cetera. [But] I do think that we need to build digital literacy into our curriculum. We need to actively teach kids to use these tools.”

Kara Baskin is a contributing editor and the mother of a dyslexic middle-schooler who uses assistive devices to great advantage in school (but also spends too much time on his smartphone, according to his Mom).

First published in the print edition of the September 2024 issue with the headline, “The Fractured, Surprising, and Sobering Truth About Kids and Smartphones.”

Are Smartphones Failing Boston’s Kids?

• How Schools Are Regulating Smartphones—Or Not
• Do You Give a Seventh Grader a Smartphone?
  • The Case For
  • The Case Against
• Ask the Experts
  • Studies Show Smartphone Use and Social Media Can Affect…
  • How to Say “No” to Your Child’s Phone Use — and Stick to It
  • Are Screens Good or Bad for Alternative Learners?
  • How to Manage Your Teen’s Social Media
• Also, in this issue:
  • The Top Public High Schools in Greater Boston, 2024

Photo by Pat Piasecki

It was a spectacular, sunny day on Cape Cod. And yet I was devastatingly sad. While my kids and wife were happily getting ready for the beach, gathering our sandcastle tools and packing up peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and juice boxes, I had quietly stepped outside as I had several times over the past few months—to cry privately. Secretly.

It was the summer of 2022, and I was nearly 15 years into a career in television news that most people would consider highly successful. I was the morning anchor at the legendary WBZ in Boston—the station I had grown up watching.

I finally had some downtime to spend with my wife and kids in South Yarmouth—one of my favorite spots in the world. Yet instead of relaxing, I found myself in a full-blown mental health crisis. The obsessive-compulsive disorder with which I had struggled off and on since childhood had come roaring back. I was suffering from crippling anxiety and major depression. I wasn’t myself.

On some level, I knew the source of my tailspin. For months, I had been agonizing over the feeling that I couldn’t be the husband or father I wanted to be. With an overnight schedule, I was gone by the time my kids woke up and often in bed before they went to sleep. And when I was present, I was too tired to be truly present. That came with guilt. And more anxiety. And more depression.

To make matters more complicated, when I did apply myself fully as a dad, it often felt like I was neglecting my career—or at least limiting my potential for growth within it. Television news can be a grinding labyrinth of ratings and deadlines and a perpetual feeling that you’re one contract away from it all ending. It’s difficult to turn that all off when you get home.

This is a pattern that working mothers have been discussing publicly for years. Over the past generation, the American family has undergone a sea change in roles and priorities, with women entering the workforce at a historic rate and eclipsing young men in admission to and graduation from college. The story of what that means for the family lives of women is well known, as it should be.

All of this has also led to a major and long-overdue change in how our society defines fatherhood and what it means to be a good dad. We are expected to be more involved. More hands-on. More sensitive and emotionally connected with our children. More vulnerable with our partners. More engaged with household chores. And that has meant men, too, are increasingly grappling with the serious question of work-life balance. Better put, work-family balance.

It’s a dilemma that I think many modern fathers will recognize. But unlike women, we aren’t talking about it enough—not to our partners, one another, or mental health professionals. Our inclination is to keep our emotional vulnerabilities secret.

I, for one, had thought of seeking help more than once over the prior year and, each time, decided against it. Asking for help is a sign of weakness, I had told myself. I can solve this on my own. I kept the pain a secret even from my wife and closest friends. But standing outside that Cape Cod cottage with my head in my hands that day, I knew I was in a dark place, and it had become obvious that my plan to fix it myself wasn’t working. I knew I needed help. What I didn’t know was how much my life was about to change.

Men are increasingly grappling with the serious question of work-family balance. But unlike women, men aren’t talking about it enough.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with achievement. I still haven’t unpacked exactly why, but I was laser-focused on excelling. I studied hard and went to Harvard University and then to Northwestern’s highly acclaimed journalism master’s program. Soon after graduating, I landed my first gig in TV news in 2009 in Lansing, Michigan, working as a weekend anchor and weekday reporter. I shot and edited my own stories and often produced my own newscasts on the weekends, even using a foot pedal to roll the teleprompter as I delivered the news. I worked holidays and odd shifts. I reported live during lightning storms and snowstorms. I listened to police scanners and sometimes arrived at crime scenes before the police. I did whatever it took to keep advancing.

Three years later, the fruits of my labor paid off when WCVB hired me as a freelance reporter. I couldn’t believe my good fortune: I was coming back to work in my hometown of Boston at 27 years old. I kept aiming higher, though, and there was almost nothing I wouldn’t give up—Thanksgiving dinners, Christmases with family, weekends off—on my climb toward my ultimate, then-inconceivable goal of being an anchor at WBZ, the channel I grew up watching and one of the oldest TV news stations in the country.

During that time, I was also starting a family. I met my wife in Lansing, and we married in 2011. Our daughter was born in 2014, followed by a son in 2017. I felt immensely blessed and determined to be the best father I could be.

It quickly became clear that wouldn’t be easy, as I darted in and out of the house at odd hours most days of the week. Evening anchors generally arrive at work at 3 p.m. and get home around midnight, which means they only get to see their kids for a few hectic minutes in the morning before school. I saw some of my coworkers and close friends—also parents—struggling with those split responsibilities and lost time at home. I knew my career aspirations were running headlong into the realities of fatherhood.

The first signal that something about my priorities had shifted came in 2015. My daughter wasn’t yet one and I was deep in talks with CNN to be a national correspondent—a dream job for just about any TV journalist. In the final rounds of the interview process, I asked the talent executive how many days of the year I would have to be on the road. He estimated 200.

I looked at my daughter crawling around in the room next door. I thanked the executive for his time and rejected their invitation to come to New York the same day. A piece of me mourned the loss of a remarkable opportunity to see the world and tell its stories, but I knew any decision I made for the benefit of my family was the right one. That was my priority, and from that point, all decisions about my career were made with that understanding.

Soon after, WBZ hired me to be the second evening anchor. I had achieved my goal, set out so long ago. But I also knew the difficulties that dream and the schedule that came with it would present when my kids got to school age. So in 2020, I made the move to the morning show. I wouldn’t be home to get my daughter and son off to school, but I would be there to get them off the bus, bring them to their after-school activities, coach their sports teams, cook them dinner, and help my wife get them ready for bed before I crawled in myself. I felt I had found a balance.

It wasn’t long, however, before I realized this more family-friendly position was taking a toll on me. I was up at 2 a.m. and (on a good day) in bed by 7:30 p.m. When I first took the job, a good friend who had worked the morning shift for years told me, “You’ll always feel a little like shit.” He was right.

I should pause here to point out that there are people who work even more grueling shifts, and in much more difficult roles: night nurses, firefighters, police officers, security guards. Even the producers on our show work more challenging hours—11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Some people function well on that distorted sleep schedule, but most struggle with it. I was in the latter camp.

On more than one occasion, I found myself delivering the headline of a new study on how bad overnight shifts are for the body and brain. Increased risk of heart disease. Decreased odds of healthy aging. Increased risk for dementia, depression, anxiety, and on and on.

I figured I could beat the odds. After all, I had grown up in the ’80s with a healthy dose of Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood and the notion that men should push through. Hustle. Grind. Don’t show vulnerability. But two years into working the morning shift, I was a wreck. I was foggy-brained, drained, stressed, and, eventually, depressed. I was suffering from intrusive thoughts and self-loathing. Some days, just getting out of bed felt like a monumental task.

I did just about everything I could to mask the pain from my family. I kept rough­housing with my kids, pushing myself to be the playful, silly dad they had always known. I tried to do my part when it came to household duties, though I always recognized my wife as the CEO of that operation. At work, I smiled and laughed and worked hard—hoping to will away the storm inside.

Deep down, I knew it wasn’t sustainable. The dam would eventually break.

In a moment of desperation, in the summer of 2022, I finally let my wife in on the secret I had been keeping from her for months. When she asked why I hadn’t told her before, I replied, “Because I didn’t want to be weak.”

Her response changed my life: “The strongest thing a person can do is to ask for help.”

My therapist had wild bright-red hair and a finely tuned bullshit detector that she wasn’t afraid to use. I had found her online during that desperate day in Cape Cod, and during our first session, she was quick to recognize the patterns—and the causes—of my mental health challenges.

“How many hours of sleep a night are you getting?” she asked, perking up when I told her about my shift.

“And why are you doing that to yourself?”

The answer to that question was pretty simple: I loved the job. I loved getting to share people’s stories. I loved learning about complex policy issues and boiling them down for our viewers. I loved meeting and interviewing fascinating newsmakers and sports legends. I loved the connection with the community. And I loved the camaraderie and excitement of the newsroom. It was an atmosphere like few others.

But my therapist was bringing to the forefront what had been bouncing around in the back of my brain for some time: Is all of that worth the toll? That question was especially germane in light of the more-active role I so desperately wanted to take on as a father, and for good reason. Study after study has shown that dads being more involved in their kids’ lives—school pickups and drop-offs, meal prep, after-school activities, creative play, and quality time—correlates with better outcomes for the children and more satisfaction for the dads.

Of course, being more hands-on with the kids means that, for many men, hustle culture is dead. And yet the pressure on dads to provide for the family persists. Our society, by and large, hasn’t quite shaken that notion, and it’s left dads with a competing set of priorities: Be the dad and husband they want to be or secure the career they want to achieve. When I thought about it like that, the choice for me became pretty clear.

In March, I left my dream job at WBZ behind. It was a difficult choice. I loved my coworkers. Truly loved them. And I felt very connected to the viewers, who often tell us it feels like we’re a part of their family. What an incredible honor. But I knew what I wanted my life to look like, and ultimately—for me—it couldn’t look that way while working in TV news.

In therapy, one of the things I learned about myself is that I tend to be a black-and-white thinker who sees the world as a series of mutually exclusive choices. You can have the prestigious career, or you can be the best dad, but you can’t have both. Or at least that’s what I thought.

Now I am learning to see the world in shades of gray—or maybe even in color. I am moving on to a new career as co-owner of a public relations and social media marketing agency in Boston. It’s a role that excites me, gratifies me, and challenges me—and allows me to be with my family for the big and little moments of life without compromising my mental or physical health.

None of this takes away all that I have done. I can say I was there when the Patriots won championships. I covered Tiger Woods in his prime. I interviewed a president, governors, and mayors. I moderated debates and shared grief with communities devastated by tragedy. I witnessed major storms and historic elections and had a front-row seat to history in the making in a city and state I love. It was an immense privilege.

Embarking on this new path, however, gives me the time and space to be there for other history-making events. I will be there to see my daughter nail her first back tuck in gymnastics and to cheer on my son when he earns his next belt in karate. I’ll have breakfast and dinner with them and be fully present to watch them grow. That’s a full-spectrum life, and man, is that beautiful.

First published in the print edition of the April 2024 issue with the headline, “A Seat at the Table.”