Kristen Hughes, a pediatrician, and Kymberly Ozbirn, a school psychologist, are neighbors and moms. It wasn’t long ago they realized their regular conversations kept returning to the same topic ― screen time.
Hughes was noticing the effects of excessive device use in her young patients at the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department, including the tell-tale signs of anxiety, depression, obesity, and feelings of isolation. “It really seems to be disrupting the normal process of their development,” she said.
Ozbirn was observing it during breaks in the school day, when junior high students would hunch over their phones and watch YouTube instead of playing sports, or communicate via Snapchat rather than talking face-to-face. “The phones are the center of their world,” she said.
