A former teacher writes the handbook she wished parents had
Cherkin spent years in middle school classrooms before she became The Screentime Consultant, and she wrote this book for the parents who kept telling her the same thing: they were worried about screens and did not know what to do. Her answer is to become "tech-intentional," which means starting from your family's values and choosing tech that serves them, instead of starting from the device.
Emily Cherkin. Photo from thescreentimeconsultant.com.
Five moves you can start this week
Cherkin shared five starting points from the book with Seattle's Child:
- Live your life out loud. Narrate what you are doing on your own phone, so kids see the purpose.
- Buy an alarm clock. Phones out of every bedroom, for the whole family. It is much easier to hold the line with a teen if it started years earlier.
- Worry about the right things. What kids do online matters more than the minute count. Ask curious, non-judgmental questions. Parental controls, she says, mostly do not work.
- Put the relationship first. It is the best protection for a kid's mental health. Do not take rudeness personally, regulate your own emotions, and admit you struggle too.
- Later is better. Delay the phone and social media as long as you can. "No parent has ever said to me, 'I wish I'd given my kid a phone or social media earlier.'"
Her own version of number five is "save a tween, share a phone": she shares one cell phone with her daughter.
Scary and dangerous are different things
One of the book's useful tools is separating what feels scary from what is dangerous. Her example is a kid lost on a ski slope: the fear points toward handing over a phone, while the problem itself can often be solved another way. Cherkin asks parents to check whether the solution fits the risk.
She is skeptical of school tech, too
Cherkin pushes back on screens in classrooms as well as at home. In interviews she has called EdTech "Big Tech in a school uniform," and she runs an Unplugged EdTech toolkit for parents who want to raise it with teachers. Her advice there is the same as at home: "replace judgment with curiosity," and treat teachers as allies.
Hear her talk about it
Cherkin joined Elise Hu and Ash Brandin on the Raising Us podcast to talk about social media and school tech:
It leans on parenting more than on tech
One reviewer who came looking for tech criticism found the book weighted toward parenting and relationships. For most parents that is the point. The TL;DR summaries, tables and FAQ make it easy to use as a reference. If your kid already has a smartphone, the "later is better" chapters can sting; read them as a plan for the next device, not a verdict on the last one.
Read it with
Anya Kamenetz, author of The Art of Screen Time, blurbed it, and so did Delaney Ruston, director of Screenagers:
From the publisher's Amazon page.
From the publisher's Amazon page.
For the case that phone-free childhood needs whole communities, read The Anxious Generation.
