About the author
Mark Ingles built the systems this book is about.
For most of my career, I ran advertising campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and the platforms that followed them. I sat in the rooms where the engagement targets got set, and I understood the math behind the dopamine — not as a theory but as a job. I know what the lever does before it is pulled, and I know exactly how much money and intelligence has been invested in making sure your child cannot put their phone down.
That knowledge is why my own kids are not on social media. Not preachy, not restrictive — the way a chemist who works with dangerous compounds is careful about what they bring home. Other parents notice. Some of them pick on me about it. I am fine with that, because my kids can still pay attention in class.
I'm writing this book for the parents who didn't have my vantage point — the parents the people I worked with were counting on. The ones who tried the phone-confiscation and the parental controls and the sit-down talk, and watched all of it fail in slow motion. You weren't outsmarted. You were outspent.
A co-author is joining the second edition.
She's a licensed addiction counselor with thirty years of clinical experience working with families navigating exactly this. What you have in this first edition is the tactical and structural framework, built from advertising, technology, and behavioral systems. What you'll have in the second is that framework deepened by three decades of clinical work.
Both matter, and the first edition is not a rough draft but a complete and useful book. I wanted you to have the full picture.
Get the first chapter at launch.
One email when it's ready. That's it.