As courtrooms fill with families seeking accountability from the world’s biggest social media companies, a quieter but potentially more consequential conversation is happening about what comes before – and what could have come first.

Thousands of families are currently involved in litigation against major social media platforms, arguing that products designed for engagement contributed to measurable harm to children’s mental health. The lawsuits have become a flashpoint in a broader reckoning over how technology companies design products for young users and where responsibility for online safety should begin.

For Kate Doerksen, cofounder and CEO of Sage Haven, an AI-moderated messaging platform designed for children ages 8 to 12, the current debate may be focused on the wrong stage of childhood.

“It’s exciting to see parents all over the country activating as they become increasingly aware of the harms of social media,” Doerksen says. “For a long time, the narrative has been that concerned parents were overreacting or being technophobic. What we’re seeing now is a critical mass of families who’ve watched their kids struggle with anxiety, depression, body image issues, sleep disruption and are refusing to accept that this is just the price of growing up in a digital world.”

The public conversation around children’s technology use has largely centered on teenagers and social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat. Legislators around the world have responded with proposals ranging from age verification requirements to outright bans for younger users.

While those efforts are important, Doerksen argues they overlook a crucial developmental period that begins years earlier.

“There’s a critical window between ages 8 and 12 when the majority of U.S. kids move online through video games like Minecraft and Roblox, video streaming like YouTube, and online messaging usually starting with iMessage or Google Messages,” she says. “This starts even before they have smartphones through tablets, smartwatches, video game consoles, and computers.”

According to Doerksen, many of the behaviors that later become concerns on social media platforms are already taking shape long before children create their first Instagram account.

“Elementary and middle schoolers are already navigating complex social dynamics in group chats and consuming short-format videos in rapid succession on YouTube,” she says. “This gap matters urgently because these aren’t just ‘practice’ years. The communication patterns kids develop at 9 or 10 become the foundation for how they’ll behave at 14 or 16.”

That perspective challenges a common assumption underlying much of today’s policy debate: that children’s digital safety begins when they gain access to social media. Instead, advocates of a prevention-first approach argue that healthy digital habits must be developed much earlier.

“We are heartened by recent progress in legislation focused on keeping kids safe online,” says Doerksen. “The fact that lawmakers globally are taking children’s digital safety seriously represents a genuine shift from the ‘internet as Wild West’ mentality that’s dominated for decades.”

At the same time, she believes restrictions alone are insufficient.

“Social media bans and age verification requirements are all welcome in my book,” she says. “But if that’s the only tool in our policy toolbox, we’re essentially telling an entire generation of kids that the internet isn’t for them until they turn 16 or 18.”

The larger question, she argues, is whether technology companies can design products that prioritize prevention rather than remediation.

“Parental controls today remind me of the U.S. healthcare system, reactive and focused on dealing with symptoms, not preventative and focused on foundational-level health,” she says. “We’ve normalized this model where companies build for maximum engagement first, then bolt on safety features later when the harm becomes undeniable or legally risky. It’s backwards.”

A prevention-first model would require rethinking the metrics that have historically defined success in consumer technology.

“Right now, most consumer tech is designed around metrics like daily active users, session length, and retention,” Doerksen says. “These metrics aren’t neutral. They actively incentivize keeping people, including kids, on platforms as long as possible.”

Instead, she argues, companies should begin with different questions altogether: What does healthy technology use look like for a child? How much screen time is appropriate? What types of digital interactions should products encourage?

The rise of artificial intelligence has added another layer to the debate. Critics warn that AI could expose children to new risks, from deepfakes to increasingly sophisticated manipulation. Yet many experts also see potential for AI to serve as a powerful safety tool.

“AI is genuinely transformative for content moderation at scale,” Doerksen says. “That’s not hype, that’s just reality. There’s no human team large enough to review every message, image, or video that kids encounter online in real-time.”

She believes AI’s most promising application is not replacing parents, but supporting them.

“AI can make parental supervision and controls so much easier,” she says. “At Sage Haven, we use AI to create dynamic parent recaps and alerts so they don’t have to spend as much time grabbing devices and scrolling backwards.”

Ultimately, the lawsuits currently moving through the courts may determine how companies are held accountable for the products they built. They also raise a broader question about the future of children’s technology.

“The families in court right now are doing the work of rewriting the rules,” says Doerksen. “Our job as builders is to prove that it’s actually possible to create technology that serves kids’ wellbeing instead of exploiting their vulnerabilities.”

As policymakers, parents, and technology leaders search for solutions, the next phase of the conversation may be less about restricting access and more about redesigning the digital environments children encounter in the first place.

The question is no longer whether technology affects kids. The question is whether the industry is willing to build technology around what children need, rather than what keeps them online.