Parenting in the digital age brings with it a fresh batch of questions concerning kids’ increasingly screen-saturated world. Fortunately, Dr. Devorah Heitner, an expert on young people’s relationship with digital media and technology, is coming to Marymount of Santa Barbara on January 25 for a free, public event to share her learnings and answer questions. Heitner is the author of Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World and the founder of Raising Digital Natives, a website that provides advice for navigating these issues. Heitner aims to empower parents to help their children thrive in a digital culture, foster empathy, and cultivate social and emotional literacy. The Santa Barbara Independent caught up with Heitner ahead of her talk.
Why did you decide to write Screenwise? Parents are incredibly overwhelmed about raising their kids in the digital age. I decided to write Screenwise because I was already speaking about this issue at a lot of schools and people kept asking me, “Where is your parenting book?” There’s a lot of fear and mixed mes- sages, which can make parents feel a lot of guilt and worry that they’re doing it wrong, and that shuts down the conversation. Screenwise helps parents have conversations with their spouse, their peers, and their kids.
What are the most common questions you get from parents who are worried about their kids living in an increasingly digital world? “Am I messing up my kid by allowing them to use this device?” We should really be asking ourselves, What is the quality of the experience? Some experiences that kids have may be really negative, and others may be really positive. Another one is, “Is my kid ready for a phone?” We need to focus not just on prevention of digital mistakes. We also have to give kids strategies to repair, including going to people and apologizing.