The internet has a lot of great information about raising kids in the internet era (you found us, after all). And yet, sometimes, there’s no substitute for a good, old-fashioned parenting book. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of 5 digital parenting books to help you stay informed about the issues your child faces online and gain practical tools for parenting in the digital age.
You’ve almost certainly heard of the youth mental health crisis, and chances are, you’ve heard it blamed on technology and social media. In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt — armed with ample research — sets out to examine this connection in depth.
Haidt suggests two turning points in American culture: the decline of the play-based childhood that began in the ‘80s and the rise of the phone-based childhood that came about with the invention of the smartphone. He shares data to support his case that these culture shifts have caused a great rewiring of childhood, leading to the current mental health crisis.
While the author certainly paints a dire picture, rest assured: he doesn’t leave readers hopeless. After laying out his case, Haidt offers practical advice to address the issue, both at the societal level (ban phones in schools) and for individual families (no social media before 16).
Psychologist (and, fun fact, award-winning ventriloquist) Susan Linn isn’t afraid to take on some heavy hitters in the digital landscape such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat. In her book Who’s Raising the Kids?, Linn uses her expertise in both advertising and child psychology to examine them not as tech companies, but as ad agencies who use psychological insights to prey on children, all in the name of the almighty profit.
If you follow Dr. Becky Kennedy (“Dr. Becky,” as she’s known to her followers) on social media, you already know how she manages to give advice that is practical, non-judgemental, and so very relatable. Known as “the millennial parent whisperer,” Kennedy’s suggestions are largely geared toward younger kids, so this is a great book for parents just beginning to examine what it means to parent in the digital age.
Her positive-parenting framework that all children are good inside and parents are trying their best to do right by their kids will leave you uplifted and hopeful. Kennedy’s main focus isn’t on technology, like some of the books on our list, but her actionable strategies for setting kids up for a lifetime of self-regulation, confidence, and resilience are easily translatable to many areas of childhood, making it a great foundation for tackling issues of parenting and technology.
If the idea of spending your precious downtime reading about raising your kids fills you with dread, The Daily Dad by Ryan Holiday is for you. The book is filled with 366 daily meditations (presumably to account for leap years) that are only a few paragraphs each. Although the book is written with dads in mind, parents of any gender are likely to find inspiration in its pages.
In Behind Their Screens, Emily Weinstein and Carrie James — Harvard researchers and experts on teens and technology — dismantle many of the assumptions that parents make about teens and screens. Some adults argue that teens simply need to get off their phones, but the authors argue that this perspective oversimplifies the reality kids face growing up in a digital world.
It’s easy as parents to feel like we’re on one side of the screen time battle and our kids are on the other, but Weinstein and James have shown through their research that teens actually want to learn to be safe online and to figure out how to find balance and moderation. They suggest that, rather than commands, kids need empathy and partnership from their parents as they learn to navigate the social reality of growing up in a digital age.
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