My next Birth

Parents are relying more than ever on digital babysitters and device-led playtime to entertain their children, making it increasingly difficult to monitor what their kids are seeing, Axios' Kim Hart and Sara Fischer report.

• Why it matters: This goes beyond the old challenges of kids watching too much TV. Modern parents struggle to keep up with the immense variety of kids' programming across a multitude of apps.
• Plus, controlling what kids are exposed to on platforms like YouTube can feel like an unwinnable battle with algorithms.

While the impact of technology on kids is still relatively unknown due to a lack of long-term research, researchers attribute more screen time to increased demands on parents and the convenience of always-on smartphones and tablets.

• Mediating what children are exposed to is getting more challenging, with the ever-increasing amount of kid-targeted content and algorithms pushing out the next piece of content, said Shelley Pasnik, director of the nonprofit Center for Children and Technology.

Baby boomers and Gen-X-ers often reminisce about the days of meeting up with friends at the neighborhood cul-de-sac or mall. But today, many parents are less comfortable sending their children outside to play unattended.