Dr. Johann D'Souza has a one-sentence solution to the biggest problem facing young people, and he will tell you upfront that almost nobody listening will actually do it. Never give your child a smartphone. He spent years assuming the answer had to be more complicated than that, researching apps, filters, and monitoring software, before realizing the complication isn't the technology. It is the word "yet." A door left open invites a negotiation that parents lose, because children have more time, more energy, and nothing else to think about. And if you have already said yes, he has a way back that starts with an apology.
But the smartphone is not really what this conversation is about. D'Souza is a clinical psychologist who switched from math and physics to theology mid-college, and a numerary of Opus Dei, which means he gave up marriage so he could spend his life forming other people. That background shows up in his diagnosis, which isn't about screens at all. He says the problem was never ignorance. Virtue is an ability, and without it we can't do the good we already know we should do. He says that, in a family, that looks like anxious moms and weak dads. Paul Kolker, Nick Bezner, and Jeff Schiefelbein spend the hour trying to read a man whose face, by his own admission, has never once corresponded to what was happening around him. Find him at neversmartphone.com. He is back Friday for the conversion story.
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