You cut off the screen, and your kid turned into someone you don't recognize

When the kid you knew isn't there

It's not a character flaw. It's a reward system that got its supply cut off overnight.

You took the phone away, or shut down the games, because something had to change — and instead of relief, you got a child who's aggressive, manipulative, telling you they hate you. You explained the new rule to the school counselor in English that same week, and to your mother over the phone in Spanish that same night, and neither conversation had the word "dopamine" in it, because nobody told you it belonged there. Social media and games are built to flood a developing brain with dopamine on a schedule that never lets up. Cut that off in one day, without warning, and the brain doesn't shrug it off — it reacts like something real was taken from it, because something real was.

Psychoeducation doesn't tell you the abrupt cutoff was wrong, or that you should have known better. It helps you see what's actually happening in your child's brain right now, and gives you a way to bring screens back down to size that your child can survive — and that you can hold without it turning into a daily fight.