The best books on children and parents in the digital age

As a researcher, I’m always looking out for fresh ways to approach familiar problems.

Three problems really bother me. One is the idea of reducing all the different types of media, and all the different ways families use media, to a simplistic formula – screen time. As if we could just measure screen time, reduce it by turning parents into screen time police, and thereby solve the problems of our digital age.

Another is the idea of seeing parents as having all the power and children as willful or ignorant or naughty and so needing to be controlled. As if families weren’t trying to be more democratic and as if parents had nothing to learn from their children. The third is the idea that families have got to work all this out on their own, as if digital innovators and the wider society weren’t in some ways part of the problem and couldn’t be part of the solution.

This carefully researched book challenges all three problems and shows us another way, whether we are researchers, educators, parents, or designers.

I love how balanced and practical this book is, full of suggestions for parents to try out.

Yet at the same time, it’s thoroughly grounded in independent research. Crucially, it steers clear of moral panics about how tech is making everything worse and, instead, builds on tried and tested insights from evidence. This combination is because it’s written by an Oxford University professor and a parenting counsellor.

It’s also full of parents’ experiences – as I try to do in my own work, the book reminds us how incredibly diverse families are. So, there are no ‘one size fits all’ solutions – but after reading it, I felt there’s plenty I and other parents can do to support children growing up in a digital world. And that’s very encouraging!

This book was published ten years ago, and it’s as fresh and relevant as ever. I’ve chosen to highlight it here because, honestly, it’s the classic book that catalyzed many researchers into properly listening to young people and really respecting their views.

I learned a lot from danah boyd’s fieldwork about how to put effort into gaining teens’ trust, avoiding adult assumptions, and properly listening to what teens had to say. The teens in this book are often troubled, struggling with mental health problems and difficult life circumstances – but it's not their fault, they are facing so many real-world problems – poverty, family breakdown, racism, etc.

As a result, teens turn to technology for support, privacy, intimacy, and belonging. But in key ways, technology can also make things worse. I found this book truly thought-provoking.

Media producers, digital designers, educators, child psychologists – professionals with different kinds of expertise and experience have different insights to offer.

I find it fascinating how these insights converge in this book on a vision of childhood that I can really support – children are seen as active agents making sense of their digital world, but also in need of thoughtful mentoring and guidance from parents, educators, and media producers.

Unlike some books which forget that media are not just tech but also content, this book really engages with the kinds of cultural representations that now populate children’s lives and imaginations. Of course there are differences between the authors, so this book offers plenty of food for thought to the reader.

All the essays are short, so you can get the gist of an argument and further reading in just a few pages – and each one has something new to offer.

One of the questions I am most often asked by parents and the public is – is it OK to share pictures of my children online? (Other questions, by the way, are – at what age can my child get their own mobile phone? And how much screen time is too much? See my book for my answers).

The extraordinary amount of photos of children that are shared online from before their birth and every step of the way to adulthood – is simply unprecedented. And while these photos can give a lot of pleasure to family and friends, there’s so much that can go wrong.

I find it fascinating that Stacey Steinberg approaches this topic as an attorney and she really digs into the legal issues about privacy, legal redress, and children’s rights. At the same time, she’s super practical and parents can learn a lot about how to meet the challenge of growing up shared.