It’s been a crazy week, and next week looks to be similar, so sharing a quick note here today (and possibly next week too) - thanks for bearing with me.
Something funny worth sharing this week - it turns out that the topics pondered in the Home Alone and Disneyland posts are actually a real thing, and not just with marketers. Books have been written about today’s adults’ over-identification with youth and discomfort with parental roles - who knew???
I discovered this in Dr. Alison Yeung’s podcast episode last week, where near the end, she and her guests mention parents’ role confusion with their kids, and refer to the recently updated book The Collapse of Parenting by Dr. Leonard Sax.
This peaked my curiosity, and I am now reading said book (actually, listening via audiobook mostly while driving in the car - thanks, public library). I can already tell that he approaches this issue from very different foundational beliefs, but that’s what I’m finding interesting.
For the last decade or more, we have all existed in these algorithmic bubbles of confirmation bias, myself included, where everything we hear and read reinforces and supports beliefs we already have. This is a book my algorithms never would have served me, and maybe because of that, I find myself refreshed by hearing perspectives that come from far outside my usual realm of exposure, even if I don’t wholly agree with them. And while I think much of what I’m hearing would have made me bristle even a year ago, the more I work in this tech-and-kids space, the more I understand the protectiveness of some of the remedies he suggests.
When done, I’ll share the takeaways with you all. In the meantime, a shorter This Week in Tech is below.
I wish you all a lovely spring weekend. Thanks for being here, I appreciate you.
❤️ Meg
This Week in Tech
Emoji key:
👂= podcast
👀 = article (or book)
👁️ = video (or social media post)
🫳 Helping Hands for Parents
👁️ Four new apps to have on our radars, from The Common Parent.
👀 Sleepovers (and drop-off playdates)- when are our kids old enough to navigate these safely? Rosalia Rivera of Consent Parenting has great advice as we consider when or if our child is old enough to be permitted to sleepover or stay alone at friends’ houses.
👀 How do we raise boys that side-step the “Manosphere”? Yetty of Parenting in the Digital Age shares incredibly important suggestions for all of us raising boys.
👁️ The Guardian shared feedback from a 15-year-old girl in the UK on the ways the Manosphere impacts her daily (news article link here). It is so important to address this, for both our boys and our girls.
👁️ For more on boys’ experiences online, listen in on this speaker panel from the Common Sense Media Summit on boys’ experiences online.
👀 Megan Saxelby of Wild Feelings shares a recent experience where passers-by were too focused on their phones to see or wave back to her young child. She asks us to examine the modeling we set by our own phone use, and includes wonderful scripts and questions to pose to our kids.
👂 If you haven’t yet listened to an interview with the wonderful Michaeleen Doucleff about her new book, Dopamine Kids, which tackles the behind-the-scenes workings of two common parenting trials (screens and processed food), here are two more chances - she talks with Cynthia of Screen Less, Play More here, and Dr. Aliza Pressman of Raising Good Humans here.
📱Helping Hands - Devices
👀 Is your teen finally ready for an iPhone? Jean Twenge shares steps to program your child’s iPhone for safety, sharing what she did when her 16-year-old got her first smartphone.
👀 Looking for a ‘dumb’ phone that can act as an extension of your smartphone? These from Dumb.co connect to your smartphone, allowing you to leave it at home while staying connected to voice calls and text on the “dumb” phone. You aren’t distracted by constant notifications, yet can easily connect to all information on your smart phone if needed. These are skyrocketing in popularity amongst Gen-Z.
꩜ AI and the Future
👀 AI companies shouldn’t teach AI literacy to kids - it would be akin to, as Andrew of The Walled Garden says, “something like contracting a casino to teach about the risks (and benefits?) of gambling.” Instead we should lean into human-led digital literacy programs (like CyberCivics) to help our children build needed skills to navigate their digital worlds now and in the future.
👀 Duke law professor Dr. Nita Farahany and the New York Times explore the potentially life-altering applications of Anthropic’s Mythos, and ways humans might try to contain the potential force we may be unleashing with such programs.
Meanwhile, AI companies in Canada and Germany are merging to provide alternatives to US and Chinese AI dominance.
👀 AI influencers are flooding conservative social media, and undoubtedly the same will soon happen (if it isn’t already) on the left. Be aware that AI is beginning to impact everything we see - look for the “tells” on AI (odd grammar or spelling, accents and voices changing between posts). Be aware of confirmation bias and how easy it is to be tickled by an attractive persona spouting beliefs you share - this type of propaganda is soon going to be everywhere, and we need to build our awareness and defenses.
👀 ChatGPT seems to have helped a shooter carry out an attack at Florida State - as one official said, “if it was a person on the other end of the screen, we would be charging them with murder”.
As these cases mount, they remind us to talk to our kids early and often about AI tools, their design flaws (how they’re designed to please the user and keep them using the platform at whatever cost, even if planning violence), and how they should not use them until the companies make them safe for everyone. That probably goes for us adults too - we can vote with our attention & data here!
🏛️Legislation
👁️ Gen-Z advocate Ariel Geismar talks with Baratunde of Life with Machines about the tech bills being passed throughout the nation, thanks to the advocacy of young people at Design It For Us.
👀 A rundown of AI legislation and laws in the pipeline throughout the nation today, from The Transparency Coalition.
👀 Survivor parents met in the Capitol this week to advocate for changes in the wake of the recent social media trials, plus info on Super PAC money and more, from the Tech Oversight Project.
📚Ed-Tech
👁️Schools Beyond Screens has been advocating tirelessly in LAUSD to remove screens from the classrooms, and finally the school board just voted in a new policy overhaul tech use, thanks to their advocacy. This is a big deal!
👂Nicki of Scrolling2Death talks with Lila of Schools Beyond Screens in this short 8-min podcast episode about her advocacy that led to this vote.
👀 Emily Cherkin’s questions to Seattle Unified (like “How many children should be able to use their school laptop to:
Watch YouTube and play games?
Search up harmful content?
Talk to strangers?
Watch porn?
Use AI to write their essays?”)
…can apply to early every district in the nation. She shares her testimony and letter to help other parents engaged in this battle with their districts to reduce or remove Ed-Tech.
👀 Jenny Anderson of How to Be Brave shares her biggest take-aways from a big technology and education conference she just attended.