“Parents normally set these rules to promote their children’s scholastic development and to make sure that they invest enough time in schoolwork. But that evidently can also backfire,” commented Hargittai. But why exactly? The study can’t say definitively, but I emailed Hargattai to see what hypotheses she might have.

“One possibility would be that such parents also create other rules or different contexts for their children while they are home studying through high school, but once they are at college, that larger context changes,” she diplomatically responded.

Let me restate that more bluntly: parent who carefully control their kids’ tech use might have a more general tendency towards helicopter parenting, and once their kids get to college and experience a taste of freedom and responsibility, they can’t handle it. With no one looking over their shoulder, some kids can’t force themselves to put down their phones and study.–Inc.com