Managing Kids and Technology

The way technology has been designed, it can be easier said than done to use it at a healthy level.

Dr. Katie Davis, the author of Technology’s Child, and Associate Professor at the University of Washington, says her book gives parents the opportunity to learn directly how their children interact with technology, and how it impacts them.

One of the first suggestions is trying to make sure the interaction is self-directed, as opposed to using rewards-based games and apps that take up all of the user’s attention with rewards and going to the next level and so on.  The second is a community-supported approach, where parents can often join in, ask questions, or extend the opportunity by using their surroundings to interact with their children.

Overall, Dr. Katie Davis  stresses that parents should be kind to themselves when trying to monitor their kids amount of screen time and technology use. Being pro-active in general is the right mindset to being a digitally conscious parent.