Report cards used to be simple: math, reading, science. Now there's a second one your child never gets to read. It lives behind the apps.

Every pause on a video, every late-night scroll, every "accept cookies" becomes a line on that invisible file: what makes your kid laugh, what keeps them anxious, when they're most likely to click "play."

The file doesn't grade knowledge. It grades predictability. Marketers love predictable kids.

If the system learns your 11-year-old lingers on slime videos at 10:47 p.m., the machine will feed more — brighter, louder, stickier. If your 13-year-old checks likes the second they wake up, the machine learns to ping at 6:41 a.m. sharp. It's not "personalization." It's training.

Parents don't see this report, but it follows kids from app to app, screen to screen. It can shape the ads they see, the content they're nudged toward, even the moods they start the day with.

We worry about grades slipping in school. The scarier question: what is the algorithm quietly rewarding at home? Endurance over sleep. Reaction over reflection. Staying on over signing off.

There's a reason the feed feels like it "knows" your kid. It does. And it's keeping score.