Sorry if the pith obscured the substantive point: You said you had no problems with connecting with your children, the point is that there are varying characters and that other children may have problems with connecting that are exacerbated by device usage. I know I have those sorts of problems as an adult and suspect at least one of my kids has similar issues.

Your comment seemed dismissive of the possibility of a problem, and of the possibility of that problem being exacerbated by screentime/phone use/tablet use. Ergo my interjection.

As an analogy, that I think is apposite, some people can smoke tobacco and not get addicted, for others it becomes a consuming need; I think electronic interactions can be like this for many people. I get tetchy (irritable) when I don't have a drink for a few days, a similar tetchiness takes me when I don't get my fix of phone time. Screens can provide a very easy way to avoid social interaction, something which is a challenge for me. Stick this all together and you have problems connecting with people that are exacerbated by increased screentime; I do have the agency to avoid getting completely absorbed by devices but I also exercise that agency on behalf of my kids as I believe they have not (as pre-teens) developed the ability for themselves.

> If you can't connect with your kids when they have iPhone in hand, you're not going to be able to connect with your kids even if you're a million miles from the nearest wireless cloud.

It seems to me, you did make that claim.

They were obviously implying that, yes. Then just backpedalling for some strange reason.