Happy week of the Young Child! The week of the Young Child is an annual week-long celebration sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (AKA: NAEYC). The purpose of this week is to focus public attention on the needs of young children and their families, and to recognize the early childhood programs and services that meet those needs. The book I'd like to honor and recognize for this is: Screen Aware Early Childhood, A Realistic Approach to Helping Young Children Thrive in a Digitally Complex World. The authors, Pat Cantor, Mindy Holohan, and Jean Rogers, walk us through the key points and tell us what we can do now to help our children thrive in the digital age.

Listen to this episode and visit the show notes on the Healthy Screen Habits website to gain access to this valuable resource.

Dawn Wible and Julianna Arnold are co-chairs of the Online Harms Prevention workgroup at Fairplay. Fairplay for Kids is the nation's leading nonprofit committed to helping children thrive in an increasingly commercialized screen-obsessed culture, and the only organization dedicated to ending marketing to children. The online harms prevention work group believes children and young people deserve to be safe online. Today, we discuss a helpful kit designed to assist parents in getting a handle on all areas of online harms.

Listen to this episode and visit the show notes on the Healthy Screen Habits website to gain access to this valuable resource.

Julianna Arnold is Coco's mom. Coco is forever 17, having been killed by a fentanyl overdose given to her from someone she trusted online. On this episode, learn how social media companies are finally being tried for addictive product design and how parents of kids who have suffered from online harms are staying strong.

Just as you wouldn't let a new driver take the wheel of a car without proper training, using smartphones requires instruction. Healthy Screen Habits now has a workbook designed for tweens and teens to help them navigate the rules of the road for smartphone use.

Healthy Screen Habits Workbook for Tweens and Teens is what we, the founding members of Healthy Screen Habits, wish we had when our oldest kids received their first devices. Learn all about it when you listen to this episode with the authors: Amy Adams and Jeannie Ondelacy Sprague.

Eli Singer is the author of Offline.now: A Practical Guide to Healthy Digital Balance and the founder of Offline.now, a global platform and community for digital balance. Offline. now's mission is to help people build a calmer, more intentional relationship with technology, using practical, compassionate tools and a supportive community so they can use screens purposefully and focus on what matters most. In this episode, we talk about how to figure out the role you want technology to play in your one, amazing life.

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In 2020, during the COVID shutdown, Frank Possemato found himself to be a new dad and an online professor. He had time to reflect on the life he wanted for his daughter, as well as take note of the changing world while it moved increasingly online. Inspired by life as he knew it before the digital revolution, he purchased a notebook (with actual coins) and started writing about the importance of offline life. He wanted to remember to be present, to connect with friends and family, and to be tolerant of different versions of shared memories. In this episode, we talk more about life offline and how to appreciate analog moments. Listen now!

Dr. Sajita Setia is a researcher and global digital wellbeing expert in New Zealand. Her work connects the dots between screen habits, sleep, mood, and the rising mental health crisis in kids. In this episode we talk about:

Why "good screen time" can still cause problems.
How screens quietly affect sleep and self-esteem
A simple game kids actually buy into: name it, move it, time it
How families can stop blaming themselves—and start winning together

If screen time feels like a daily power struggle in your home, this episode is for you. Listen now!

Kellyn Smythe is an expert at helping youth transition from living on devices to connecting with the physical world. Since 2014, he has worked at Pacific Quest, a fully licensed and accredited residential mental healthcare establishment on the island of Hawaii. In this episode we talk about layers of mental health care and what to expect with a digital detox.

Listen now!