Sharad Mittal of Teracube On What Tech Companies Can Do and Are Doing to Protect Our Children’s Mental Health From Technology and Digital Media
An interview with Pirie Jones Grossman
Give parents tools to understand how to set up secure features and parental monitoring on their children’s devices. This is often a challenge for parents as each social media app requires its own parental controls.
Tech companies keep iterating and moving forward. They are constantly working on furthering their goals. But as we all know, our mental health and our children’s mental health are sometimes at stake. Young people’s brains are still developing, and it sometimes seems that we need to fight against so much just to allow our kids a fair chance at healthy development and mental wellness. Are tech companies trying to help protect our kids’ mental health? What are some things companies are doing or should be doing to help protect our children’s mental health? In this interview series, we are talking to leaders of tech companies, as well as anyone who is an authority on the subject of “What Tech Companies Can Do and Are Doing to Protect Our Children’s Mental Health From Technology and Digital Media.” As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Sharad Mittal of Teracube.
Sharad Mittal, the visionary behind Teracube Thrive, brings a wealth of experience both as a parent and from his previous roles at Microsoft and Amazon. Passionate about technology, mindfulness and online safety, Sharad is dedicated to creating solutions that foster a healthier relationship with technology. As a father of two tweens, Sharad has personally navigated the challenges of managing digital safety and screen time, and those difficulties galvanized him to take action and create Teracube Thrive, a platform committed to ensuring digital well-being for families everywhere.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I have always been passionate about technology and spent my early career days working at several startups, as well as larger companies like Microsoft and Amazon. During my employment in the tech industry, I became inspired to prioritize sustainability and mindfulness in my life, which ultimately led me down the path of starting my own sustainable technology business, Teracube.
Over time, the primary mission of Teracube evolved from sustainability to helping families navigate smartphone safety. As a parent raising my own kids through the smartphone age, I experienced firsthand how difficult it is to maintain a balanced digital life for the family. These challenges were enhanced further due to Covid, when kids were more dependent on screens for school and connection with friends. I also became captivated by the Facebook whistleblower news, which pulled back the curtain on how vulnerable teenagers — especially girls — were on social media.
The final push to shift my company’s focus from sustainability to family was after supporting a close friend whose daughter was struggling with severe depression due to the digital world and social media. This is what truly inspired me to become part of the solution in this new complex world where kids have smartphones as early as 8-years-old. We leveraged our resources at Teracube to launch Teracube Thrive, a kids smartphone designed with safety and digital wellbeing in mind.
Can you share the most interesting story that has happened since you started your career?
My career is lined with many interesting turns and twists over the years. One particular evening turned my life upside down. What started as a simple night watching a movie (“Noah’s Ark,” starring Russell Crowe) with my wife actually made me rethink how I approached life. I had an epiphany that something wasn’t right in the world, and I was contributing to the problem. This thought kickstarted a whirlwind 5-year journey learning about sustainability, consumerism, and the detrimental impact of our throwaway culture. I felt helpless and confused, and I felt trapped in a system that prioritized convenience over responsibility. Thankfully, I was surrounded by a support system of family, friends, mentors and colleagues that empowered me to start thinking about how I could be a part of the solution. That realization led to the creation of Teracube — a company founded on the belief that we can create mindful technology that serves both the people and the planet.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We work hard every day to improve Teracube Thrive, continuously updating the product with new features as we listen to our customer feedback (and what our tweens are saying as they are some of our best product testers). Beyond new features that help parents establish digital balance and safety for their family, we’re also working on two new products that we’re aiming to launch next year. These new products will help give families more options when choosing how to introduce their child to the digital world. The goal of these new launches is to serve as an ally to parents navigating tech with their kids and to become a brand that grows with your family.
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
One of the books that has really impacted me is called, “Buddhist Boot Camp.” One of the biggest struggles I had when navigating sustainability was judging myself and others for choices, from flying and driving to shopping habits. I didn’t fly for 2 years or take any vacations, which made home life difficult, as you can imagine. However, this book, written by Timber Hawkeye, teaches many mindfulness concepts, including how our judging mind inhibits happiness, but we can manage it with a few simple thought and belief changes. This helped turn around my outlook on sustainability so that I could drive positive change.
I also found “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt to be very insightful, and I’d recommend it to both parents and educators. Haidt links youth mental health issues to the shift from a “play-based” childhood to a “phone-based” one, citing social deprivation, sleep loss, attention fragmentation, and addiction as key harms. In this book, he provides practical solutions to help kids connect to friends and family in the real-world. Many of the fundamentals in this book align with our beliefs at Teracube — that real life connection among adolescents is more important than ever before as technology continues to infiltrate our lives.
Fantastic. Let’s now turn to the central part of our interview. From your experience or research, can you help articulate some of the downsides of children having access to technology and digital media? Is there an amount of time, or certain content, that is just too much?
From personal experience as a parent raising tweens and the research we’ve done to develop Teracube Thrive, we’ve found that while technology can be a helpful tool for children in certain instances, like a place for educational content, a way to stay connected with friends or a way for parents to stay in touch, it requires boundaries to stay safe. Without boundaries, kids have unrestricted access to the world in their pockets, making them vulnerable to dangerous content or too much screen time. A smartphone can provide unlimited stimulation to a child — much like giving a child access to a fully stocked candy store with no restrictions, which is something we would never do. Adults struggle with balancing screen time and staying secure online, so it’s unrealistic to expect kids to be successful without providing protections, from attentive parents to smartphone alternatives like Teracube Thrive.
Too much technology without boundaries often results in reduced physical activity, limited engagement with friends and family, poor mental health, increased loneliness, and reduced free play and creative activities. Ultimately, it prevents our kids from learning how to be bored, and boredom is an experience that parents should encourage as it’s essential for a child’s creative growth and mental well-being. Too much technology and digital media can also be detrimental to important essentials like sleep and school or study time. This is why we’ve designed Teracube Thrive to allow parents to turn off phone access during those times to provide the necessary boundaries.
Generally, the maximum amount of time that kids spend by themselves on screens (other than homework) should increase as they grow older. For example, 10–12 year olds could have access for one hour per day, while 13–15 year olds could have access for under two hours per day. Social media is a different story. I believe that platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat should be restricted until age 16, and then only allowed in limited doses after 16-years-old.
Let’s talk specifically about social media. How can it be harmful to young people’s mental health?
Social media is designed to be addictive and show unrealistic lives, leading to destructive thoughts around seeking validation and comparing yourself to others. This is particularly dangerous for young, vulnerable and impressionable kids and teens. The platforms, especially apps like Instagram and TikTok, are built to drive stimulation as kids and teens strive for more likes and followers, and creators compete to post new entertaining content, resulting in teens spending up to an average of 9 hours each day on their phone. Additionally, kids’ safety is compromised on social media, as kids can connect with strangers through social media platforms and online games, where they can share images and personal information with strangers, all unbeknownst to parents.
Can you help articulate to our readers how big of a problem this is in our society right now? Why is this an urgent discussion to be having now?
The tech industry is changing faster than ever, with companies like Meta and TikTok growing increasingly proficient in grabbing ahold of kids’ attention — and studies are showing the dangers of these trends. Kids and teens are spending more and more time living their lives in the digital world (with kids ages 8–12 years old spending 4–6 hours per day on a screen). With this rapidly changing tech industry, it’s more important than ever to try to preserve kids’ childhoods and ensure they have a connection with the world away from their phones. Not only do we want to improve their mental health with less time online, but we want to ensure they’re experiencing the outside world and pursuing other hobbies that aren’t just in their pocket.
Here is the main question of our interview. Can you please share five things that tech companies should do to protect our children’s mental health. (Please share a story or example for each.)
Include more robust age restrictions to ensure that content/app material is
age-appropriate for the user. Most kids know how to falsely provide an older age to access social media, so we should leverage AI to detect a user’s age without requiring manual entry or implement a verification system with school IDs. Android and iPhones allow kids to remove parental controls at age 13 in most countries, but the age should be higher. A great example of this is Germany, where the age is 16 by law. Once a device like a phone or laptop is enabled for parental controls (by setting a kid’s age), all apps should enable parental controls automatically. Youtube on Android is a great example that configures itself for kids content and limits once Android’s parental controls are enabled. Most social media apps, on the other hand, require their own parental controls, which is a nightmare for the parents. Offer parental monitoring on all devices that allows parents to instill time limits on apps to take away the mindset that the parents are the bad guys.
Give parents tools to understand how to set up secure features and parental monitoring on their children’s devices. This is often a challenge for parents as each social media app requires its own parental controls.
Are there tech companies currently doing work that you admire that are helping to protect children from the downsides of digital technology? We’d love to hear more.
We admire organizations like Wait Until 8th and Phone-Free Schools Project that are spreading awareness of the impact of tech on young people and driving movements for online safety.
Of course, parents and guardians are the players who are most responsible for the young people under their care. So what are some things that they should do to protect young people’s mental health from the downsides of digital tech?
Transparent conversations are the first line of defense when protecting kids from the complex digital world. Positive relationships built on trust and two-way communication help parents and kids work together to find a balance that makes sense for the family. There are tools that help shape these conversations, from online resources to products like Teracube Thrive, which is built to be a conversation-starter that helps children and parents feel comfortable working together to find a balance with their screen time so everyone in the family feels good about the boundaries. There are also helpful media resources, such as “The Social Dilemma,” a documentary that can spark some meaningful conversations between kids and parents when they watch together.
It’s also important for parents to play the role model that they want their kids to emulate, demonstrating a balanced digital lifestyle with habits like having screen-free meals or restricting their own screen time. We’ve also found it helpful to involve other parents in the community so that they can be a part of the conversation.
What are the best resources you would suggest to a young person who would like to learn more about this?
Families can find helpful and kid-friendly books like “First Phone” by Catherine Pearlman, which is written as a guide for kids, or online resources like Common Sense Media that offers
age-appropriate lessons for kids to learn how to have healthy digital habits online. Teens may also find the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” impactful and informative.
What resources would you suggest to a parent or educator who would like to learn more about this?
Common Sense Media also offers great resources for parents to talk with their kids about digital habits and online safety, and gives parents media recommendations and advice for raising kids in this tech-heavy world. The Screenager Movies are also powerful resources for parents looking for ways to help their teenager navigate the digital world. Another great book is “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
Among many quotes that have influenced me deeply, one that stands out is: “Present moment is all that matters.” I repeatedly remind myself of this because my mind and screens are ready to distract me from whatever I’m doing.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I’d love to start a movement where screens and social media are treated like tobacco and alcohol, where we restrict and block access to ensure the health and safety of our kids and teens. While it’s the norm for alcohol and tobacco use to have limitations, it’s often a hard conversation for parents who are trying to limit screen time. I’d love to change that so that parents have the support of lawmakers, schools and tech companies to make this the norm.
Other movements I’d support are restricting social media until age 16, or inspiring families to participate in “No Internet Days,” where phones and social media are put away to focus on in-person connection.
What is the best way our readers can continue to follow your work online?
You can stay in the loop with everything we’re doing at Teracube on our website, www.myteracube.com, or on our Instagram, Facebook, X and LinkedIn.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
About The Interviewer: Pirie is a TedX speaker, author and a Life Empowerment Coach. She is a co-host of Own your Throne podcast, inspiring women in the 2nd chapter of their lives. With over 20 years in front of the camera, Pirie Grossman understands the power of storytelling. After success in commercials and acting. She spent 10 years reporting for E! Entertainment Television, Entertainment Tonight, also hosted ABC’s “Every Woman”. Her work off-camera capitalizes on her strength, producing, bringing people together for unique experiences. She produced a Children’s Day of Compassion during the Dalai Lama’s visit here in 2005. 10,000 children attended, sharing ideas about compassion with His Holiness. From 2006–2009, Pirie Co-chaired the Special Olympics World Winter Games, in Idaho, welcoming 3,000 athletes from over 150 countries. She founded Destiny Productions to create Wellness Festivals and is an Advisory Board member of the Sun Valley Wellness Board.In February 2017, Pirie produced, “Love is Louder”, a Brain Health Summit, bringing in Kevin Hines, noted suicide survivor to Sun Valley who spoke to school kids about suicide. Sun Valley is in the top 5% highest suicide rate per capita in the Northwest, prompting a community initiative with St. Luke’s and other stake holders, to begin healing. She lives in Sun Valley with her two children, serves on the Board of Community School. She has her Master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica and is an Executive Life Empowerment Coach, where she helps people meet their dreams and goals! The difference between a dream and a goal is that a goal is a dream with a date on it!
