If I Don't, Someone Else Will
On raising children in a world built by people who were never asked to think about them
Years ago, I sat across from a talented developer working with one of the heavyweight figures in tech. He was building something genuinely clever: a tool that could read your emotional state and shape music to move it — to push a runner harder, to lift a mood, to alter how a person felt in real time. He described it the way most builders describe their work: with energy, with pride, with the certainty of someone who can already see it working.
I asked him a simple question. Where is the responsibility to the person on the other end? If the tool is designed to push someone further, who makes sure it doesn't push them over an edge they couldn't see coming?
His answer has stayed with me for over a decade. He said: "If it's not me, someone else is going to build it."
I don't share that to single him out. I share it because it was not the answer of a careless person. It was the answer of a normal, capable, well-meaning one — and that is exactly what makes it the most important sentence I have heard about the world we are now raising our children in.
We are only shown one side of the coin
Every piece of technology that reaches us arrives polished and sold. We are shown the benefit — the productivity, the connection, the magic — because the people showing it profit from our adoption, not from our wellbeing. That is not a conspiracy. It is simply how business works: a product is built to be wanted, and measured by how much of our attention, money, or behaviour it can capture.
What we are rarely shown is the cost — the harm that sits on the balance sheet of our wellbeing rather than theirs. And the evidence that it exists is no longer in question. Platforms are widely documented to use persuasive design and recommender systems engineered to keep us, and our children, engaged as long as possible. Brain-imaging research shows personalised feeds activate the same reward circuitry as addiction. Around a quarter of adolescents now meet the clinical criteria for social media addiction, with compulsive use linked to rising anxiety and depression. One investigation, using accounts registered as thirteen-year-olds, found the algorithm served them tens of thousands of weight-loss videos within weeks. And the incentive beneath it has been measured: roughly eleven billion dollars in advertising revenue each year from ads aimed at users under eighteen.
These are not the actions of villains. They are businesses doing what businesses are built to do — optimising for the number that pays them. The harm is not usually chosen. It is simply not counted.
"Someone else will" is the engine
The most dangerous thing about my colleague's answer is how reasonable it sounds. If I don't, someone else will, so it may as well be me. It feels like realism — almost like responsibility. But look at what it does. It removes the one moment where a person might have paused and asked whether the thing should exist at all, converting a question of ethics into a question of inevitability.
And it is not one person's flaw. The research on harmful design names the same two drivers every time: businesses prioritise short-term gains over ethics, and a competitive field drives each one to copy its rivals to stay relevant. "Someone else will" is simply that engine, spoken aloud — the sound of accountability being handed to no one.
What this means for us as parents
I am not writing this to tell anyone to throw the devices away. The tools are extraordinary, and our children will live their whole lives among them. The work is harder and quieter than rejection: it is learning to see the side of the coin we are not shown, and teaching our children to see it too.
What to do. Ask, out loud and often, what is this product actually rewarded for? — and let your children hear you ask it. Teach them that "free" usually means they are the product, not the customer. Model the pause: show them what it looks like to choose not to do something you are perfectly capable of doing. And treat their attention as valuable enough to protect, because there is an eleven-billion-dollar industry that already treats it that way.
What not to do. Don't mistake polish for safety; the more frictionless something feels, the more deliberately it was built to keep you there. Don't assume the makers weighed the cost to your child — most were never asked to. Don't hand the judgement to default settings that are tuned for the business, not for you. And don't accept "this is just how it is" — it is the same surrender as "someone else will build it," only quieter.
The choice that is still ours
Technology is not going to develop a conscience on our behalf. The incentive runs the other way, and it runs hard. So the real work, as a parent, is not to police every screen — it is to build something inside the child that the design cannot reach.
I want my daughter to feel the pull before she is caught by it. To notice when something has been engineered to keep her there, even when — especially when — it is smooth, pleasant, and gives no obvious reason to stop. I want her to carry an inner voice that asks, quietly and on her own: is this serving me, or am I serving it? That awareness is the one thing no algorithm can override, because it lives in her, not in the product.
That is the agency I am trying to give her. Not a rule she obeys, but a question she carries — one I am still learning to carry myself. Because in the end it is the same question for all of us: am I being quietly consumed by someone else's agenda, or am I using this in a way that genuinely serves me and the people around me?
If she can learn to ask that, and trust the answer enough to step away when she needs to, she will be free in the one way that matters most.
Sources: Research on persuasive design, recommender systems, and adolescent mental health drawn from peer-reviewed studies and investigations including the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, published work on algorithmic addiction and dark patterns, and reporting on advertising revenue derived from users under 18. Figures reflect widely reported findings as of 2026.