“I am just so tired. It feels like a full-time job,” a parent shared with me recently, describing the constant work of managing parental controls and online risks. “Yeah,” I replied. “You aren’t alone. Most of these platforms aren’t designed with our kids’ wellbeing in mind, and we’ve largely outsourced responsibility to parents and kids.… Read More →
When I’m leading workshops with parents about adolescence, I often invite them to travel back to their own teenage years. I’m not asking for a perfectly accurate replay of events. Instead, I ask for memories of what it felt like to be on that rocky, turbulent, exhilarating road from childhood to adulthood. Together, we fill… Read More →
There’s a small print hanging on the wall just outside our kitchen that says simply, “It’s okay to cry here.” I don’t necessarily need the reminder. I come from a family of cryers. If you’ve been lucky enough to see my dad speak, you know he can rarely get through a keynote or workshop without… Read More →
First comes the violence. Then comes its rapid spread across the internet. Sadly, political and interpersonal violence is not new. What is unique to this generation is the proliferation of graphic content online. Raw footage of political assassinations, war crimes, racialized violence, and sexual assault can spread quickly in the wake of acts of violence,… Read More →
I spent last week canoeing with my family in northern Minnesota. Before we left, I changed my out-of-office message to indicate that I would be offline for a week. For many people, this kind of message is meant to communicate the spirit of a commitment: to take a break from work and relieve the expectation… Read More →
“Just checking in! How is everybody doing?” When Elmo asked this question on X in January 2024, no one expected it would generate 180 million views within just two days. Initial responses were light and playful. But people across the internet quickly began sharing more honest status updates, including feelings of distress, loneliness, challenge, and… Read More →
When my family had a conversation about summer screen time a month ago, our agreements and ideas felt so full of promise. They didn’t result from an idyllic family summit or long formal meeting, but the conversation was earnest and grounded in our most positive vision of what life could look like in the ever-shifting… Read More →
“That’s probably just AI,” my youngest said, pointing at an image that looked a little too perfect to be real. “How can you tell?” I responded. “It just seems like it,” he shrugged. On one hand, this skepticism is an asset in a digital world where the line between human- and AI-generated content continues to… Read More →
Summer arrives, and it’s easy to get caught up in planning—camps, childcare, screen time limits, and all the logistics that come with the shift. I approach this season with mixed feelings: part of me craves the slower pace and open-ended days; another part already anticipates the chaos of too much unstructured time. For many families,… Read More →
I remember watching the 2013 movie Her, where a man named Theo develops a relationship with an artificial intelligence operating system, and feeling two contradictory things at once: incredulous (“This could never really happen”) and uneasy (“This seems like it really could happen”). Fast forward twelve years, and my second impulse was right. We’re closer than ever… Read More →
