Kids, Screens and Mental Health: What Parents Need to Know
Kids, Screens and Mental Health: What Parents Need to Know  
Podcast: When Millennials Become Moms
Published On: Tue Dec 16 2025
Description: In this episode, we sit down with Nicki Petrossi from Scrolling 2 Death to unpack the growing mental health concerns tied to kids’ technology use. We explore how social media, gaming platforms, and school-issued devices impact attention, emotional health, and development. Nicki breaks down what parents need to know about platforms like Roblox, Snapchat, and Discord and offers practical steps families can take to set healthy boundaries around tech without shame or fear.  Rough Timecodes: 1:00 – Welcome 3:00 – The link between social media and depression 5:00 – Mental health impacts and the connection to fragmented attention 6:00 – Kids getting devices earlier and schools providing devices 7:00 – Everything is becoming social media (Spotify, Roblox, etc.) 8:00 – What parents need to know about the dangers of Roblox 11:00 – What if you allow these platforms so your child doesn’t feel excluded? 13:00 – The dangers of Snapchat for kids 15:00 – Two things parents can do to avoid common pitfalls 18:00 – Playing games with your child and what to do if something isn’t appropriate 20:00 – Discord: what it is and what parents need to know 21:00 – Age gating and GCO 22:00 – Facial scanning and how it relates to age gating 24:00 – Going backwards: how to help kids reduce tech use 27:00 – Creating a family tech contract 30:00 – Teaching kids phone etiquette 33:00 – The dangers of laptops in schools Links: 10 rules for raising a kid in a high tech world - https://amzn.to/3KNemnV how to make your smart phone a dumb phone - https://www.drorganicmommy.com/blog/how-we-turned-our-sons-smartphone-into-a-dumb-phone-and-how-you-can-too-natasha-beck Tin Can https://tincan.kids New York times - laptops in schools - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/opinion/laptop-classroom-test-scores.html Tech Safe learning - https://www.techsafelearning.org Good Pictures Bad pictures book -https://amzn.to/4pXMs7q