Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age

By: Richard Freed

Narrated by: Jean Rystrom

Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

A practical guide to building your child’s bond with family and fostering school success amid the allure of digital screens.

Kids’ obsessive use of video games, social media, and texting is eclipsing their connections with family and school - the two most important contributors to their well-being. The result: a generation of kids who suffer from soaring rates of emotional and academic problems, with many falling prey to an epidemic of video game and Internet addictions.

In Wired Child, learn why a bevy of social media friends won’t keep teens from feeling empty inside and turning to cutting for relief. See how our kids have become smartphone experts who struggle in reading, math, and the other educational basics that colleges consider in deciding admissions. Discover how many “child-friendly” technologies are depriving kids of joy in the real world, putting them at risk for device addictions.

Wired Child gives you the confidence and skills you need to safely navigate your children through a rapidly shifting media landscape. Dr. Freed offers concrete parenting strategies that will help you create the strong family kids need and encourage their school success. You’ll also learn how to protect kids from destructive tech addictions and instead guide them to use technology productively as a positive force for their future.

©2015 Richard Freed, PhD (P)2018 Richard Freed, PhD

Every parent and future parent needs to read this book.

This book blew my mind. It changed our lives. Do not pass up listening to this book. The brains of your children are depending on you. I have gifted this book to multiple people and it is a main subject of conversation now.

I am pretty sure the narrator is actually a computer.

Great book, lousy digital narration.

With four kids, we found this book incredibly relevant. We've been concerned with some volatile behaviors after heavy use of gaming or social media by both our teens and pre-teens. Getting kids to cut back can be tough and we have the constant "comparison" to other parents' leniency which we find in talking to those parents isn't factual. This book provides validation and hard scholastic data to our concerns about the impact of heavy use of games, tablets, phones, etc. on children's brains as well as underscoring how much the tech industry is in the background pushing these on our kids as "healthy". It also provides some guidance and solutions on approaches to dealing with children as well as teens.

My gripe with the Audible version is with the narration. I have been through dozens of books on Audible, Although sometimes there was normal flow in the narration, I found the narrator's cadence and flow at times choppy and stiff, sounding monotone and almost robotic as if the spoken words had been pasted together by computer. Either the narrator did a lousy job or Audible thinks its okay to digitally fabricate parts of the narration. I found that almost insulting given the subject matter of the book. You might consider reading this one instead.

Comprehensive, Relevant, Essential

I highly recommend this book to all parents – from those expecting a child to those with children in college, but this book is equally relevant to non-parents – to anyone wishing to understand the myths and messaging that are driving their own and society’s tech habits – how these are effecting us, and what to do about them. The author helps us understand the nature and impact of today’s family’s common digital screen tech habits on children and childhood, how our tech habits are driven by design for commercial interests, and the potentially serious risks as well as likely consequences that inappropriate digital tech exposure and habits can have on child development, adulthood, and the relationships between parents and children, siblings, friends, and adults.

Richard Fareed, does a remarkable job of clearing out the substantial clutter that confounds our perceptions due to the "digital myths" and conflicting messages we are constantly hearing about – with respect to the benefits and banes of digital technology, and our resulting susceptibility – mainly due to the overwhelming pro-tech biased media and other voices that promote and recommend more and more screen time to younger and younger children. These interests tend to encourage the over consumption of entertainment technology (e.g. TV, video gaming, social media, streaming media, etc.) and age inappropriate digital pastimes. Fareed comprehensively addresses the various myths and opposing arguments, and discusses why its important to clearly understand what’s being said and to know whether there are any financial motivations or biases accompanying claims and recommendations.

I’ve listened to several books that address digital wellbeing as well as a few that promote the more liberal consumption of tech by children, teens, and adults, and have consequently found this audiobook earns a well deserved maximum stars in every category. At only 6h 15m, one can easily glide through this book in a week or weekend; hopefully you will find it as worthwhile as I have.