It feels like there’s never been a more challenging time to be the mom of an adolescent.

We’ve all seen a lot of scary statistics. Rates of teenage mental illness rose sharply in the 2010s, and have been steadily increasing ever since. The Anxious Generation by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt became required reading among parents of chronically online Gen Zs when it was published in 2024. Haidt argued that smartphones, social media and online gaming—which he calls “the great rewiring of childhood”—are to blame for the youth mental health crisis.

There’s a reason Netflix’s wildly popular series Adolescence has gripped the zeitgeist with its chilling portrayal of young male rage borne of a childhood spent indoors, with too much unsupervised access to developmentally inappropriate content. For many parents, it hit a little too close to home.   

But there’s a first line of defence, before educators, lawmakers and intellectuals, that still has an enormous influence on children: Their parents.