I definitely broke the law in Michigan routinely. At the time the law was that of you were under 18 then during the school year you couldn’t work more than 30 hrs/wk. (I assume there must be an exception for dropouts or sometime, but I don’t know). Anyway my boss would pay me cash if I went over the limit. Mutually beneficial, no doubt. Of course I wasn’t working to support my family. I was working because I liked the money and even more I liked the sense of belonging I could get in a restaurant kitchen that I couldn’t get at school. Nothing ever boosted my confidence as a person more than when my boss started trusting me with the keys to the place at age 16. So no doubt that I think work is invaluable for adolescents to learn to grow up. I also think the law should have more flexibility. If I weren’t working it’s not as if I would have been studying.

But all that said it was a choice, but a necessity. I’m glad we live in a society where kids aren’t forced to work because their families are in dire need (certainly this exists some places…just not writ large in the developed world). Totally agree though that we need to be careful about the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. Kids are resilient, and I think they actually thrive on responsibility. My kids are younger than yours, but even at 3 and 4 you can see that they love helping put the dishes away or working on home projects. They might suck at it and cause more trouble than it’s worth, but accomplishing a complex task and then getting a high five for it is what they live for.

Maybe, and I’m just thinking out loud here, that’s part of my original point, that we live in the digital coal-choked slums. We’ve “protected” kids to the point that all they have left is the iPad. Companies fought for eyeballs, because they know where the eyeballs are to be found. I don’t know if we’ll ever make social media illegal for kids, but I think we’ll approach a day when it’s entirely frowned upon, and hopefully the business models will collapse or change drastically. Legal or not, society shouldn’t be set up to push our kids toward screen addiction from a young age. Just late night ramblings here, so apologies of there are a lot of non sequiturs.