Screen screams

Ever pry a smartphone from a shrieking toddler, or console a tween bullied by frenemies, or see a kid who’s supposed to be doing his homework get pulled down a YouTube rabbit hole? Then you understand that the new world of social technology, while wonderfully connecting the millions, is also at risk of addicting a generation.

Which is why we welcome the organization just launched by former top executives from Google, Facebook and Apple, known as the Center for Humane Technology. Its mission: to educate the public, and especially anyone raising or teaching children, about the dangers of excessive screen time and nonstop use of social media platforms. And then, where appropriate, to fight back. About time. In recent years, psychological research has piled up suggesting that overuse of ubiquitous, seductive, always-on electronic devices, ever-advancing apps and all they offer are related to declining attention spans, greater incidence of isolation and depression in young people, and even rising teen suicide rates.

You don’t have to believe every last one of those studies or subscribe to an all-out moral panic — we sure don’t — to be broadly concerned about young people’s wellbeing. Which is what makes a savvy pushback led by former tech evangelists who now preach the opposite gospel so welcome.

This is a miraculous era in which people can connect to one another anywhere, and emotions, images and ideas can spread at light speed. But it’s also an age in which many families scarcely talk face to face, even at home, and when Facebook plans to roll out a new version of its popular Messenger app — for kids as young as 6.

For starters, let’s get better and more definitive research on what gadgets are doing to developing brains.

We can no more wish away technology than we can return to a world before agriculture. But damned if families and communities armed with better information can’t help shape it, lest it increasingly shape us.