Notes on Media Moms and Digital Dads by Yalda Uhls

I just finished reading Media Moms and Digital Dads: A Fact-Not-Fear Approach to Parenting in the Digital Age by Yalda Uhls. It's become more relevant as screen time has become a bigger issue at home given the remote learning situation and general growing up. I got the book originally when I was still at Google when the author came to do an Authors@Google talk (see video below), and back then I didn't have any kids.

I enjoyed reading the book and learned some things. Most of all, I now feel more calm with the role of technology in a kid's life and enjoyed the overview of the scientific research done to date about its positive and negative effects. There are some decent pointers in the book about best practices at home related to mobile devices, social media, and video games.

​My notes on the book are below.

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​Part 1 the basics

1 parenting in the digital age
Set device free times as a family
Co view content
Family media use agreement (see link in book)
Device contract for when kid gets phone (see link in book)

2 screen time for babies and toddlers
Co view content and make connections to real life

3 mobile era
12 years old average to get phone
Ask child to inform you of where they are
Turn device off at night or keep out of bedroom
Consider technology breaks for a few days
Charge devices including parents’ in separate common location
Turn devices off an hour before bed

4 digital brain
Brain affected by computers

Part 2 social media

5 social media and social lives
Friend your child in all social networks and initially check activity daily for a few months
Discuss troubling behavior offline
Share stories of others’ bad behavior online as examples to learn from to not repeat. Examples in book

6 fame, fomo, and selfies
Impression management
Social comparison
Talk to child about FOMO
when child first gets phone, ban selfies initally. Can only post photos of others or environment. 
Help child notice posting behavior of others
Teach child about consumerism in media and ads linking to posts
Consider a service like Think Up to analyze media usage

Part 3 learning

7 learning in digital age
Teach child to be aware of online distractions
Deep thinking work should be done away from device
Read paper books to young kids instead of ebooks
When taking notes digitally, summarize the info instead of transcribing verbatim

8 education in digital age
Common sense educators
Graphite
Edutopia
One to one programs giving out laptops etc don’t really seem to make a difference

9 video games and learning
Many cognitive benefits even in first person shooters
Encourage girls to play video games with spatial component to develop stem skills

Epilogue
Teach kids the importance of face to face time