Kids and technology discussion

Well, what we hear in our clinics and in our research studies around technology is that parents are feeling really anxious about this topic.

There's a lot of information out there in the news about kids and technology.

There's a lot of fear about the way that technology is impacting childhood.

And parents are often describing that they-- it's led them to feel very anxious, and led them to feel that there's maybe one perfect way to do this, and if they could only do it in that way, that all the problems would be solved.

Why do you think the conversation around kids and tech has become sort of so panic-driven?

Well, something that's really interesting to me as someone who has been doing research in this field for a couple of decades is, when I started doing research around digital media and social media, one of the things I did is I went to the university archives, and I looked at some of the news stories that date back to when televisions came out.

And what I found there got me to look even further back at when radios came out.

And what's so interesting to see is this pattern where a new technology is released, often there's a lot of excitement, but then it's followed by a wave of fear and concern, where people realize how popular it's become and are not sure whether or not it's overall going to be helpful or harmful for kids.

So I think that we've reached that point with social media and digital media, now with AI coming down the pipeline, that there's w- we've realized how influential and pervasive these technologies are, and families are really worried about how to handle it in their own households.

Well, what we hear in our clinics and in our research studies around technology is that parents are feeling really anxious about this topic.

There's a lot of information out there in the news about kids and technology.

There's a lot of fear about the way that technology is impacting childhood.

And parents are often describing that they-- it's led them to feel very anxious, and led them to feel that there's maybe one perfect way to do this, and if they could only do it in that way, that all the problems would be solved.

Why do you think the conversation around kids and tech has become sort of so panic-driven?

Well, something that's really interesting to me as someone who has been doing research in this field for a couple of decades is, when I started doing research around digital media and social media, one of the things I did is I went to the university archives, and I looked at some of the news stories that date back to when televisions came out.

And what I found there got me to look even further back at when radios came out.

And what's so interesting to see is this pattern where a new technology is released, often there's a lot of excitement, but then it's followed by a wave of fear and concern, where people realize how popular it's become and are not sure whether or not it's overall going to be helpful or harmful for kids.

So I think that we've reached that point with social media and digital media, now with AI coming down the pipeline, that there's w- we've realized how influential and pervasive these technologies are, and families are really worried about how to handle it in their own households.