I have a mercy mission this morning, and I want to get to it just before Covid lays me low, as it has been doing after lunch. I need to help a friend, or a parent, in distress.

I have a good friend who was near tears telling me how worried she is about her son.

She said he is on tech devices between 10 and 16 hours daily.

He rarely leaves the house, has no friends he does things with beyond texting and gaming, and is depressed, gaining weight,  irritable and disobedient.

He is also s struggling in school.

I recognized the symptoms right away.

Her son has become a technology addict – something familiar now to just about every mother, father, and grandparent in America.

I wrote for Wired and Rolling Stone around the time the Internet came into being, and we had no sense then of how powerful or addictive Internet-spawned technologies would become.

We thought the Web would support freedom, not undermine it. We never thought it would become the world’s greatest addiction.

I wanted to help my friend, but I wasn’t sure how I think I find a way in an important new book that focuses honestly, persuasively, and helpfully on the subject. It is also easy to read.

I went on Amazon to order this book, which people I trust say is the best book yet about the rise of addictive technology and how it affects our children and us.

It’s written by New York University Professor Adam Alter, and it’s called “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.”

I remember a reporter writing a piece about the cellphone explosion among the young (now the social media and Tik-Tok and texting explosion).

The reporter asked Steve Jobs how much time his children spent using new technologies like the Iphone.

None, he said, he thought young children did not have the mature, development, or cognitive things to handle potent and addictive devices like cell phones, tablets, Facebook, and texting.

A dozen other tech executives said the same thing. Cell phones were too powerful a device to give to young children, whose minds were not developed enough to handle them.

New technologies like cell phones, social media sites, and tablets are designed to be addictive; that’s their genius and danger. Some people are addicted to gaming, some to sex, some to cruelty and gossip, and some to lies and hatred.

Some social scientists argue that we are becoming a nation of tech addicts, none more alarmingly than the young.

Even Jobs couldn’t have imagined YouTube,  What’s App, Tik-Tok,  PopJam, and Facebook.

The suicide rate among young people is skyrocketing, and so are reports of depression, isolation, and low self-esteem among children and adolescents.

Researchers are finding that children aren’t learning how to socialize healthily, exercise, engage in actual life activities, or relate to their families, parents, relatives, and friends. Some can’t even tell the real from the digital.

Their minds are just not developed enough to handle the tsunami of communications and interactions overwhelming them through new technologies.

I was struck when I met the Amish children down the road by how confident they were, how high their self-esteem seemed to be, how easily they talked with me, and how healthy they were and looked.

I realized this is because they don’t grow up spending time on social media, cellphones, Ipads, or computers. They only talk to real people face-to-face. The social media that inflicts the young, especially young women, is unknown to them.

Alter’s book is about addictive behaviors, which, he says, are becoming more common, harder to resist, and more mainstream.

“We know that the number of immersive and addictive experiences is rising at an accelerating rate, so we need to understand how, why, and when people first developed and then escape behavioral addictions,” Alter writes.”

This hits home with me; My Iphone is the center of my worldly life. I bank on it,  pay bills, follow the news on it, research it, take photos with it, and keep in contact with my friends.

I am on it too much and depend on it too much. It is my lifeline to the world.

But I am older, and as Alter suggests, people like me can handle it and still fill our lives with real people and activities. We great up just in time, just before the excellent tech wave. Our moral challenge is to help the children who come behind us.

Corporations constantly push us to do online, drop paper bills, and talk to software because it saves them money. But it also can take our souls. I don’t intend to let that happen to me.

I can only imagine the impact of all that on a small child. No wonder so many are depressed and feel isolated. They are. They can’t process or compete with the images thrust at them day and night.

This addiction is hazardous for children who grew up with social media when their neural systems and social confidence – their defenses – are being formed.

“The impact of social media has been huge,” he quotes one psychologist as saying, “social media has completely shaped the brains of the younger people I work with.”

He says many can no longer differentiate between real-time interactions, text messages, or e-mail.

Technology is not inherently evil; it has benefited me and others in many ways.

I think Alter’s book is essential; it helps to spot addiction in ourselves and our children (do you pick up the Iphone first thing in the morning to check messages? I do. I’m going to stop.)

It’s easier for older people to deal with this; we have often formed our consciousness around other things.

For the young, it’s another story. They urgently need help and guidance. Like every rational psychologist, Alter argues for limiting the use of devices among the young, primarily through adolescence.

I’m taking Irresistible to my friend this morning. I hope it will help her. The desperation and fear in her voice – she feels she is losing her son – was deeply disturbing.

She’s working hard to be strong enough to confront her son and to face the addition she is convinced is doing him great harm.

For those of you reading this and facing the same situation with children in your family, I’d recommend the book.

It’s a start. And we’re late.