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A Rutgers poll found overwhelming support for school cellphone restrictions. Then Reddit got into the details.
Parenting & Childhood
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What If We’ve Been Asking the Wrong Question About Kids and Screen Time?
Reported Feature
A study of nearly 22,000 Swedish twins suggests the relationship between screens and mental health is more complicated than hours alone can explain.
We Teach Children How to Handle Disappointment. Do We Also Teach Them How to Enjoy Happiness?
Reported Feature
A 15-year study suggests that the warmth children experience at age 3 may be linked to how strongly their brains respond to good news years later.
Sometimes Kids Don’t Want Advice. They Just Want Someone to Listen.
Reported Feature
New research from Camp Fire suggests that supporting young people’s emotional well-being can begin with something surprisingly simple: asking what they need before deciding how to help.
Halloween Is Bigger Than Ever. So Why Is Traditional Trick-or-Treating Losing Ground?
Reported Feature
More Americans are celebrating Halloween, but the night of knocking on neighbors’ doors is increasingly sharing the spotlight with scheduled events, parking-lot parties and destination outings.
Maybe 'Screen Time' Doesn't Mean Anything Anymore
Reported Feature
A 2026 survey suggests American teenagers are increasingly living in different digital worlds, divided by gender, class and activity, while adults continue to measure all of it with one blunt number.
We're Not Afraid to Talk About Death. We're Afraid to Ruin a Nice Day.
Reported Feature
A new survey of 5,000 Americans finds inheritance conversations feel more awkward at birthdays than funerals - and that waiting for the 'right' moment may be exactly the problem.
We Have Started Selling Kids the Childhood We Removed
Reported Feature
Little Diggers is expanding a business built around an almost aggressively simple idea: put children in a giant sandbox, give them trucks and excavators, and let them stay there awhile. The interesting part is not that the model can be franchised. It is what we now recognize as valuable enough to buy back.
Maybe Gen Z Didn’t Stop Reading. Maybe We Kept Counting the Wrong Things.
Reported Feature
New research on Gen Z and public libraries complicates the familiar story that phones, social media and short-form video displaced books. The more interesting question may be whether our definition of a “reader” has kept up with the ways reading now happens.
How Many Times Can You Start Over Before ‘Home’ Means Something Different?
Reported Feature
Blue Star Welcome Week turns tours, coffee, ballgames and scavenger hunts into something more consequential: a way for families who move again and again to acquire the tiny shared references that make a place feel like theirs.
Some of the Most Important Parenting Happens When You Aren’t Parenting
Reported Feature
New Rutgers research about fathers of daughters raises a larger question about the lessons children absorb from the ordinary relationships happening around them.
We Said Kids Needed More Independence. Then They Got E-Bikes.
Reported Feature
Electric bikes are giving teenagers a transportation network years before a driver’s license. New Jersey is now confronting the awkward part: independence is easier to praise in theory than to manage at 20 miles per hour.
We Accidentally Turned Childhood Sports Into a Luxury Good
Reported Feature
When did 'my kid plays soccer' become a household budget category?
Parents Are Comparing Themselves on Social Media Too
Reported Feature
A Griffith University study of Australian parents found that upward comparison with other parents on social media was strongly associated with parental anxiety and overprotective behavior. The uncomfortable question underneath it: when does protecting a teenager become a way for the parent to manage their own fear?
The Internet Is Helping Teach Kids What Behavior Gets Rewarded
Reported Feature
Children have always learned how people are supposed to behave by watching other people. Now some of that observation happens inside digital spaces where approval, attention and conflict are visible, measurable and sometimes amplified.
The Pen Pal Is Back — and This Time It Comes With a Movie Tie-In
Reported Feature
BIC, DreamWorks Animation and We Are Teachers are using handwritten letters to connect U.S. elementary students with peers in the Philippines. The project is part literacy exercise, part cultural exchange and part branded campaign, which makes it a particularly 2026 experiment in what analog connection is worth.
Your Childhood Has Been Premiumized
Reported Feature
Nostalgia used to sell us the thing we remembered. Now brands are taking the flavor, memory and cultural shorthand of childhood staples, rebuilding them as premium adult products, and selling the past back in a form that signals who we became.
Toys“R”Us is Back - NJ Is On The List
Reported Feature
You can bring back Geoffrey, the giant aisles and the feeling that somewhere in the building was the toy you absolutely needed. You just cannot bring back the world that made the old store possible.
Apparently All of Our Food Has Anxiety Now
Reported Feature
Two days after “Guacxiety,” a New Jersey snack company has arrived with the “Snack-Xiety Report.” At some point, the coincidence becomes a language story: advertising has discovered that anxiety is one of the quickest ways to name ordinary consumer friction.
The Generation Raised by the Feed Is Pulling Up the Drawbridge
Reported Feature
Pacsun's second annual Youth Report gives Gen Z and Gen Alpha a branded new name, but the behavior underneath it is more interesting than the label: young people remain deeply online while becoming increasingly selective about whose advice, access and authority they allow into their private worlds.
Parenting Now Comes With a Research Department
Reported Feature
More information was supposed to make caregiving choices easier. NIQ's new U.S. research suggests that, for many mothers, abundance has created another job: deciding which advice deserves to be trusted.