Digital Health Resources for Parents

Research on impacts of human/digital interactions

• The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)
• Jean Twenge's sensational but controversial 2017 article on Smartphones and their effects on youth; a key criticism of her narrow sampling/research methods, and some context about what generations are really being changed by Smartphones (hint: it's a lot of us).
• Pew Research Center 2018 statistics on who is using Social Media. Note similarities for Facebook, YouTube (this is ages 18+).
• 2018 Economist article on UK study linking mental health outcomes to social media use in 16-24 year olds (original source)
• Amazing, brilliant and compassionate interview with Anya Kamenetz by Manoush Zomorodi on finding a scientifically-validated family screen time balance
• Why are people so nasty to each other online (2012)?
• Great, kid-friendly chat with Manoush Zomodori about the Default Mode Network in the brain and how boredom is a beautiful, valuable thing for creativity

Digital Industry insiders outing the industry practices

• Tristan Harris, formerly of Google and now founder of Humane Tech, in a 60 Minutes piece with Anderson Cooper talking about behavioral engineering by Apps
  • ...and a shorter, teen-friendly Vox interview with Tristan about the same topics
• Lengthy, rich Guardian article talking about the deliberate efforts to engineer addiction in Apps & devices
• Weapons of Math Destruction is a book about the dangers of ceding control to algorithmic processes when they have bias built-in, or don't account for subversion