Parents, Put the Phones Down
My latest piece on parents' tech use and pre-order offers for The Tech Exit!
Today in The Dispatch I write about the importance of parents adopting better habits with our own phones, how to distance ourselves from them and make them less appealing to us, in order to avoid the harmful interference of digital technology in parent-child relationships. And to also help parents model a healthy use of technology for our kids to imitate as adults.
I explain, “Most efforts to protect kids from the harms of technology focus on delaying smartphones and social media for children and getting phones out of schools. As a tech policy expert, I fully endorse these solutions, but one key and often overlooked part of the equation is what parents must do about their own technology use…
…While digital technologies’ addictive effects are more harmful to the developing brains of children, adults are not immune. Parents’ compulsive screen behaviors hurt kids. In fact, a relatively new field of research focuses on this problem, which researchers call “technoference”: the phenomenon of digital technology interfering with parent-child relationships…
…[Instead] by adopting practices to help us put our phones down, we model for our children what healthy technology use as an adult looks like—and open their eyes to the wonder of the world around them, away from screens.
Children will value what we value. Let’s show them we value people more than phones.”
Read the piece in full here.
Pre-Order Offers for The Tech Exit
Now available on the website for my forthcoming book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones are a few early items for those who pre-order. Once you pre-order you can receive immediate access to book bonuses including the first three chapters of the book to read now, discussion questions for each chapter to go deeper, and a tip sheet for how to go screen free with your kids this summer. All you have to do, is upload a screenshot of your pre-order to this page and you will be emailed these items immediately.
Special Pre-Order Sale Starting Tomorrow at Barnes & Noble
Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 23, through Friday, April 25, all Barnes & Noble Premium and Rewards Members will receive 25% off all pre-orders, including audiobooks and eBooks. Premium Members also receive an additional 10% off print book pre-orders. It is free to sign up to become a Barnes & Noble member.
Coupon code is: PREORDER25. You can find my book to order on Barnes & Noble here.
thank you, Clare for this important piece. Do you by chance ever speak at events? looking for a speaker to address social media with teen girls at a christian festival in central pa in july.