Chicago White Sox general manager Chris Getz had to have a difficult conversation with shortstop Tim Anderson.

“What Tim Anderson meant for the organization, there is not enough time to go through the impact he’s made on the organization, the city, his teammates, the game,” Getz said during Tuesday’s MLB general managers meetings at a resort in Paradise Valley, Ariz.

“A guy that was drafted, went through the system and performed at the major-league level. So a decision like that needs to be as thorough as it possibly can. There was a lot of factors involved.”

The Sox declined the two-time All-Star’s $14 million club option for the 2024 season on Saturday. He receives a $1 million buyout.

Getz discussed the decision with reporters Tuesday.

“He’s my son’s favorite player as well so not only is TA disappointed in me but so is my son,” Getz said. “With the direction we’re going, and unfortunately a decision on a TA situation had to come when it did, pretty much immediately after the World Series.

“We have a lot of holes to fill on our club. We had 101 losses last year, so to have to fill so many holes in both near-term and long-term, felt like it was the best decision to decline that option.”

Anderson became one of the most recognizable players in baseball during his eight seasons with the Sox, winning a batting title in 2019 and hitting the dramatic walk-off, two-run home run at the Field of Dreams game against the New York Yankees in 2021.

He slashed .245/.286/.296 with 18 doubles, one home run, 25 RBIs and 13 stolen bases in 123 games during an injury-impacted 2023.

“We are open to bringing TA back, but he’s earned the right to see if there is a better opportunity for him,” Getz said. “We wish TA very well. We have great memories with him. I know he shares the same sentiment and I wish him luck and we’ll stay in touch.

“There is going to be a healing process that needs to take place just because his life changed fairly dramatically with this decision. But he’s part of the White Sox family. I want TA to go out there and do well. I really genuinely do. If that’s with someone else, I’ll be rooting for him. We’ll see where the offseason goes for him.”

Getz said shifting to second base — where Anderson moved during the World Baseball Classic and for two games with the Sox in 2023 — was not part of the conversation the two had.

“He has a self-evaluation and other organizations have their evaluations whether it becomes defense or offensive potential,” Getz said. “But we didn’t dive into where he is best fit defensively.

“He’s a very athletic player, he has the ability to play some shortstop. He could easily go over to second base and I believe he could play in the outfield, too. He’s versatile and he’s going to have options.”

The Sox already had a lot of work to do this offseason, including second base, right field, behind the plate and with their rotation and bullpen. They’ve added shortstop to that list.

“You have to find a way to allocate resources, and figure out the best way to do that,” Getz said. “We have a lot of pitching holes to fill and the middle infield to take care of.

“I really like to focus on our defense. That’s going to be a large focus of us this offseason. I want it to be an attractive place where pitchers want to pitch. We’ll set out to do that.”

Which direction the Sox go at shortstop becomes one of the top questions for the team this offseason. And the next steps for a shortstop in their system, 2021 first-round pick Colson Montgomery, remain to be seen.

Rated the organization’s top prospect by MLB.com, Montgomery entered Tuesday with a .244/.302/.423 slash line, three home runs and 20 RBIs in 19 games during the Arizona Fall League. He earned Fall Stars Game MVP honors Sunday in Mesa, Ariz. The 21-year-old played most of his games in 2023 at Double-A Birmingham.

“He’s been the talk of the Arizona Fall League,” Getz said. “Not just the White Sox talking, other organizations as well. That just speaks to his potential and how much he’s getting better and every time he goes out and plays, I don’t want to set limitations on a Colson Montgomery. He’s a guy that is very unique and has the ability to be a special player at the major-league level. He’s finishing strong in the fall league.

“We hope for a productive offseason out of him. He’s still growing into his body. But he’s played a pretty solid shortstop here in the fall league. He has some zone awareness, he has a hit tool, he has some power he’s tapping into so he has a chance to be a well-rounded player. I don’t want to have the expectation for Colson to think he’s going to be our Opening Day shortstop, but I also don’t want to cap anything for him either because it’s important for him to stay motivated and be ready to go in spring training, because who knows how 2024 unravels for him.”

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The hardest rule I ever set for my kids was refusing them cellphones until high school.

I’d seen the research on the doleful effects of social media, screens and surveillance parenting on kids’ mental, physical and cognitive well-being. If it turns out that the data is wrong, I figured, they will have survived a mild deprivation in their relatively privileged lives and provided fodder for a future therapist’s couch.

“How did you manage?!” other parents asked, and I knew exactly what they meant. Much as parents don’t want to admit it, we need — or it feels like we need — our kids to have a phone.

They’ll be safer walking to school, we tell ourselves — fully aware that should they be hit by a car or snatched away, they won’t be texting Mom about the situation. Even in a school shooting, cellphones have as much potential for danger as they do for safety.

We tell ourselves the phone will give our kids a sense of independence, even though phone trackers let us know exactly where they are. It will teach our kids to be responsible, even though we pay the bill.

We may genuinely believe these little lies; we may just love the convenience. Phones let kids check the forecast themselves rather than yell for a weather report while getting dressed. Phones let kids distract themselves rather than distract us when we’re on our phones.

As much as we lament the besotted, agonized, needy relationship our kids have with their phones, that same phone lets parents off the hook. If we screw something up, we can always text: Remember your grandfather’s birthday! Don’t forget violin. So sorry, I can’t pick you up this afternoon. You forgot your Chromebook!

The news that some districts are cracking down on cellphones is thus a bewildering case of competing interests among kids, administrators, teachers, parents and other parents. It overturns many pro-tech school policies embraced before COVID and resorted to during lockdown. It’s also the smartest thing schools can do, and it’s about time it got done.

Years ago, schools largely rolled over on tech in the name of inculcating “21st-century skills.” Schools boasted Chromebooks for every child, wired education, all kinds of apps. According to the Department of Education, as of 2020, about 77% of schools prohibited nonacademic cellphone use. Note the caveat “nonacademic”; many schools had simply integrated phones into their curriculum.

When my kids were in middle school, for example, teachers repeatedly told kids to take photos of assignments; in science, recording images on cellphones was part of the lesson. In The Atlantic, Mark Oppenheimer described one school that “made no pretense of trying to control phone usage, and absurdly tried to make a virtue of being aggressively tech-forward by requiring phones for trivial tasks: At the beginning of the term, you had to scan a QR code to add or drop a course.”

Little surprise, then, that a new study by Common Sense Media found that 97% of teen and preteen respondents said they use their phones during the school day, for a median of 43 minutes, primarily for social media, gaming and YouTube. According to the authors, students reported that policies about phone use in schools vary — sometimes from classroom to classroom — and aren’t always enforced.

Now the enforcers are coming in. As Natasha Singer reported recently in The New York Times, Florida has issued a statewide prohibition against student cellphone use in the classroom, and school districts elsewhere — including those in South Portland, Maine, and Charlottesville, Virginia — have made similar moves. One district in Florida, Orange County, went so far as to ban phones during the school day entirely. The not-shocking result: less bullying, increased student engagement, even actual eye contact among students and teachers in the hallway.

We should know this by now. In 2018, a secondary school in Ireland decided to ban cellphones altogether. The result: a significant increase in student face-to-face social interactions. “It’s hard to measure, but we find the place has a happier atmosphere for everyone,” one administrator told The Irish Times.

It’s not the school’s job to police kids’ phone habits, something parents are acutely aware isn’t easy. And that gets to the thorny crux of the issue: Parents are often the problem. When one group of parents in my district confronted the administration about its lax policy toward cellphones, the principal said whenever he raised the issue, parents were the ones who complained. How would they reach their children?!

But if we expect our kids to comply with no-phones policies, we’ve got to get over the deprivation. Our own parents would just call the front office — in an emergency. Not because they wanted to make sure we remembered to walk the dog.

And really, if we’re trying to teach kids to be safe, responsible and independent, shouldn’t we give them the leeway to do so? Phones don’t teach kids these values; parents do.

For schools to enact what research overwhelmingly shows benefits students, we parents have to back them up. When parents say our kids are the ones with the cellphone problem, we’re just kidding ourselves.

Pamela Paul writes a column for the New York Times.

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Amy Lindgren

Second Sunday Series  — This is the third of 12 columns on making a career change appearing the second Sunday of the month, from September through August. Last month’s column presented a sample timeline, while the month before offered questions to consider when changing careers. 

Some people planning a career change know exactly what they want to do next. Lucky them! If that’s not you, waiting for inspiration to strike isn’t the answer. Passive processes can lead people to quiet careers of desperation, so to speak, not to mention years or decades of missed opportunities.

Instead, you’ll want to select one or more steps to follow, hopefully leading to ideas you can research to identify your next career. Following are 10 such processes, some more strategic than others, but each of which can work.

Many of these steps can be enhanced by a trip (or several) to www.CareerOneStop.org. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration, this helpful site is actually an integrated suite of national websites covering areas such as assessments, training opportunities, labor statistics and more.

1. Assessments. As you might know, assessments of different types can help you determine which jobs fit your interests, your work style, or your personality. Since the results are sometimes confusing, a counselor’s interpretation can be helpful.

2. Hot jobs list. Nearly every job board offers a version of the “Top Ten Jobs for … ,” which can provide helpful prompts as you dig for ideas. Keep in mind their research is not likely to be comprehensive.

3. Job postings. Sometimes a bit of window shopping is all you need to unlock new ideas. Just remember: Some jobs are never advertised, so the postings won’t be a complete list of what’s possible.

4. Friends’ careers. You and your friends share common interests — maybe their career choices would interest you too?

5. Parents’ suggestions. Your folks may have seen talents that you haven’t recognized yourself. Just be careful not to let old family narratives or other peoples’ dreams take over the process.

6. Past jobs. Sometimes the jobs you left behind still hold some magic, particularly if you can recapture what you liked best about a favorite role.

7. Skills transfer. The skills you most enjoy using are a powerful key to careers you’ll enjoy. Once you’ve named them, on online skills transfer tool can tell you which jobs use them.

8. Hobbies. Every hobby has a professional component, from selling related goods to teaching others to marketing the products to … would it be fun to work where you play?

9. Childhood dreams. It might be too late for that ballerina career, but how about working for a dance company? Childhood ideals can be a rich source of adult career ideas.

10. Volunteer or charitable activities. If you support specific causes, perhaps you want to put more weight behind them by joining the cause as an employee.

If you get stuck, the eleventh option is a conversation with a career counselor, who can help you sort through the ideas you’ve been generating by providing targeted suggestions and exercises.

Eventually you’ll need to trim your options so you can go deeper. Once you have a short list, the following processes will help you gather more information on specific career ideas. Doing them in order will help you build from one level of research to the next.

Internet research: You’ve been doing this already but perhaps not strategically. To coordinate your process, focus on one idea at a time, spending perhaps five or 10 hours at the maximum on each. Things you’ll want to know include variations of the work, skills generally requested, predictions for growth, wages, etc. Track your data with online files or printouts to make later reference easier.

One-on-one conversations: Now that you know the basics on your top career ideas, choose your favorite to discuss with people already in that field. Sometimes called informational interviews, these conversations can be supplemented with professional association meetings or introductory classes.

Hands-on experience: Still trying to decide? Experiential research might provide the tie-breaker. This can include job shadowing, volunteer work, training classes or anything else that lets you experience the work directly.

Choosing a new career path can be confusing, so don’t worry if your “final” choice doesn’t feel final. As new information emerges, you can refine your thinking. Just keep working the process for now, then come back for next month’s Second Sunday column to delve further into career change strategies and ideas.

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Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.