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Dave, the protagonist of this story, is not much different than most parents of teenagers in his desperation to relate to his adolescent daughter. In particular, he is struggling to comprehend the pull of the technologies that shape his daughter’s life. As an almost 12-year-old in 2017, Ivy has easy access to massive amounts of information through her cell phone. She is also able to communicate instantly with her friends through texting and social media. Unlike the television, movie, and music heroes of previous generations, Ivy admires the influencers that dominate her YouTube feed.

Ivy is a full-fledged member of Generation Z, the first generation to spend their entire adolescence with a cell phone in their hands. Members of Generation Z, born between the mid- to late 1990s and around 2010, have a profoundly different relationship with technology than their Generation X or Millennial parents. Young people’s technology habits include checking their cell phones over 150 times and sending over 110 texts per day, and many teens feel acute distress when separated from their phones (Brody, Jane E. “Hooked on Our Smartphones.” The New York Times, 9 Jan 2017).