Media & Technology
Websites:
Healthy Kids in a Digital World
Smartphones, tablets, streaming devices, apps, digital games, online videos…Screen-free time is more important than ever. Healthy Kids in a Digital World is an essential resource for any caregiver interested in promoting screen-free time in children’s lives.
http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/resource/healthy-kids-digital-world
Family Online Safety Institute
Here you will find advice, tips and tools that empower parents to confidently navigate the online world with their kids. FOSI is working to make the online world safer for kids and their families through enlightened public policy, industry best practices, and good digital parenting.
Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media is the leading independent nonprofit organization dedicated to helping kids thrive in a world of media and technology. It helps families make smart media choices. Common Sense Media offers the largest, most trusted library of independent age-based and educational ratings and reviews for movies, games, apps, TV shows, websites, books, and music. Their Parent Concerns and Parent Blog help families understand and navigate the problems and possibilities of raising children in a digital age. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/parent-concerns
Digital Citizenship
This resource helps teachers, technology leaders and parents understand what students/children/technology users should know to use technology appropriately. The topic of digital citizenship is certainly gaining momentum not only in the United States but around the world. Whether it is called digital citizenship, digital wellness or digital ethics the issues are the same; how should we act when we are online, and what should be taught to the next generation? Find out what parents can do. http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/
Healthy Children
Healthy Children is AAP’s parenting website and where you can find helpful information on almost every parenting topic, including ideas for "How to Make a Family Media Use Plan".
The Digital Wellness Lab
The Digital Wellness Lab is a nonprofit research center seeking to understand and promote positive and healthy digital media experiences for young people, from birth through young adulthood. Its mission is to educate and empower children and those who care for them to create and consume media in ways that optimize children’s health and development. They offer free downloadable resources for both parents and physicians to help guide children through the media landscape.
https://digitalwellnesslab.org/
The Anxious Generation
To motivate and empower teens, parents, educators, policymakers, and tech industry leaders to act collectively to free children and adolescents from a childhood spent largely alone on screens, and instead promote independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world.
https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/
Screen Strong
Screen Strong empowers families to prevent screen problems and reclaim their kids from toxic screens—social media, video games, pornography.
Center for Humane Technology
Center for Humane Technology works to align technology with humanity’s best interests.
Technology Addiction: Social Media, On Line Gaming, and More
Excessive and compulsive use of the internet or online activities can lead to negative consequences in various
aspects of an individuals life. Technology addiction can potentially involve various forms of online activity including social media, gaming, gambling, problematic use of online pornography, and others.
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/technology-addictions-social-media-and-more
Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health
This National Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health will serve as a centralized, trusted source for evidence-based education and technical assistance to support the mental health of children and adolescents as they navigate social media.
Videos:
Can't Look Away (2025) Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSmyNHKMYB4
Smartphones: It’s Time to Confront Our Global Addiction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ldLwkj4dRc&ab_channel=TEDxTalks
The Battle for Your Time: Exposing the Costs of Social Media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TMPXK9tw5U&ab_channel=TEDxTalks
Kids on the pressures of having a cell phone, social media at an early age
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YXK2vy8Y90&ab_channel=CBSMornings
Eye-opening look at the hold smartphones have on kids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9pblGnQE4A&ab_channel=TODAY
The Anxious Generation with Jonathan Haidt with Tristan Harris and the Center for Humane Technology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLxfLjebJV8&ab_channel=CenterforHumaneTechnology
Jonathan Haidt | Full Episode 3.29.24 | Firing Line with Margaret Hoover | PBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L0ae8_o5IE&ab_channel=FiringLinewithMargaretHoover%7CPBS
Articles:
How Technology is Changing the Way Children Think and Focus
When Should You Get Your Kid a Phone?
https://childmind.org/article/when-should-you-get-your-kid-a-phone/
How Technology is Changing the way Children Think
How Do Smartphones Affect Childhood Psychology?
https://psychcentral.com/lib/how-do-smartphones-affect-childhood-psychology