“You are always on the iPad,” I said as I rounded the corner into the dining room and spotted my son on his device. As soon as I said it, I knew it wouldn’t lead to a productive conversation about my kid’s tech habits. I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t hear a response like, “Oh,… Read More →
“Broken!” Miles exclaimed. “It’s broken!” he repeated, his frustration building. It took me a moment to catch on. My nearly three-year-old was standing in front of the TV, furiously trying to swipe at Daniel Tiger with his index finger. Then it clicked—he was trying to move the character like he would on a tablet. And… Read More →
“It’s a lot,” an eleventh grader admitted to me recently. “There is always homework, updates to check, friends to respond to, and things to get done. Plus there is so much happening in the world right now. Sometimes I try to check out, but I still feel the pressure. It’s exhausting.” This student isn’t alone.… Read More →
“If you could design your own digital spaces, what would they look like?” I recently posed this question to a group of young people. As adults, it’s easy to focus on what we don’t like about the online world. It’s also easy to assume that we see the harms clearly while young people remain thoughtlessly… Read More →
“What is the site or platform you wouldn’t want to live without?” For years, researchers at Common Sense Media have asked kids and teens this question. It’s a revealing one—it cuts through the noise of ever-evolving platforms and trends to uncover the digital spaces that truly matter to young people. While news cycles tend to… Read More →
1. Can We Hold These Three Truths About Tech and Teens at the Same Time? This is an important moment. We have an opportunity to move forward with adolescent needs and development in mind. However, doing so requires that we step up to a challenge: We need to take steps guided by both attention to… Read More →
For parents navigating stressful events, it’s natural to focus on the question, “What should we say to our kids?” Words do matter: we can reassure them that we love them, that we’ll work to keep them safe, and that their job is simply to be a kid, not to take care of us. But it’s… Read More →
The school year starts and, it’s easy to get caught up in logistics—schedules, transportation, supplies, before and after school care, and on and on. I approach these tasks with mixed feelings: on one hand, I’m already nostalgic for the more relaxed pace of summer; on the other, I’m slightly desperate for routine. Hence my focus… Read More →
Sometimes it’s hard to observe transformative changes in real-time. We tend to look back and think, “Ah, that was when everything started to change.” When I set up my first “Friendster” account, it certainly felt new and exciting. I thought carefully about which songs and photos best represented “me” for my little corner of the… Read More →
“That part is about me!” my youngest remarked proudly as we read our family poem out loud. Without hearing his name, he knew that the phrase “planetary sparkle” was his part of our story. We had just finished a personalized family poetry session with Spark & Stitch partner poet Diver Van Avery. It had begun… Read More →
