Devorah Heitner- Screen Time Confinement or Liberation- Growing Up with Digital Media, Porn, and Video Games

Devorah Heitner is not just another mom concerned about raising a digital native. She uses her Ph.D. in Technology to research, teach, write, and lecture about how families everyday lives are affected by digital media, smartphones, and video games. She’s the author of Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World. And her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and TIME magazine. Devorah did a great TEDx talk about cultivating a culture of empathy and social/emotional literacy around kids and technology. She recently wrote a fantastic article for the Washington Post about how a smartphone would’ve saved her mother who had learning disabilities.

Anytime parents find out her line of work, she gets cornered because every parent is anxious about their kids’ multi-tasking, their social skills, them taking and receiving naughty pictures, cyberbullying, and well…the list can go on. But Devorah paints a brighter picture. She’s a media historian here today to let us know our concerns over digital media are a normal cycle of historical anxiety, and although we need to be cautious about the technology, we also need to celebrate the freedom the technology allows us and our families.

SHOW NOTE LINKS:

Raising Digital Natives

Devorah Heitner’s book, “Screenwise”

Devorah Heitner’s “Washington Post” article- “My Mother Struggled with Learning Disabilities. A Smartphone would have Helped her Find her Way.”

Qustodio

“This American Life- Status Update”- Ninth graders talking about being relevant.

Unitarian Universalist Sex Education Curriculum

The Fosters TV Show

“Now You See It: How Technology and Brain Science Will Transform Schools and Business for the 21st Century” by Cathy Davidson

“The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains” by Nicholas Carr

NAMI- Ending the Silence Program

Rachel Steinman’s Article, “Is There an App to Stop Parents from Screaming at their Kids over Device Use?”