TED

How to Escape the Smartphone Doom Loop | Larz May, Elise Hu | TED

Technology is more like food than anything. We have our own media metabolisms. Every child is different. Every family is different. We must learn how to consume technology in a way that is going to support us rather than hurt us, because unfortunately, the systems are not built for us to thrive.

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me

A tick-filled odyssey | Wait Wait Don't Tell Me

Just be assured whatever format you choose, you will enjoy having the movie ruined by the people that brought a 3-year-old to a 9:00 p.m. showtime.

Fresh Air

French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani on feminism & freedom

when I was a teenager, I hated my parents for that. I judged them very harshly because I thought that they were hypocrites. And I thought that they were cowards. And you know, when I was writing the book, my own son is now 15 years old and I put myself in the shoes of my parents. And I thought, yeah, of course, if I was in the same situation, I think I would act the same. My mother was not a coward. She was a mother.

TED

How to Raise Kids Who Question AI | Randi Williams | TED

The bottom line is that smart toys open a digital door into children's playtime, bedroom and hearts. And if you're thinking about opening that door, my advice to you would be to take a very careful look at what's on the other side.

Book of the Day

'The Shampoo Effect,' 'The Revelation of Dionne Daphne' are marked by big surprises

I think that we all have really strong senses about the life that we want to live and the kind of person that we want to become, but once you have children and you're no longer living for yourself, you no longer have the time you want to do everything the right way. You can be this ardent environmentalist who's all of a sudden using disposable diapers.

It's Been a Minute

The fame and (mis)fortune of family influencing

Those early mom blogs, the mothers were the main characters. And now with family influencing on Instagram and on YouTube, really the kids became the main character and they became the draw and the mothers kind of faded into the background.

TED

Why a Social Media Ban Won’t Save Teens | Candice Odgers | TED

The answer is that adults were in distress and parents were dying. OK, let's go back to that elephant in the room. Social media and smartphones also increased during this period. But here's the weird thing. In our longitudinal studies, social media does not emerge as a major predictor of teen mental health.

TED

Why a Social Media Ban Won’t Save Teens | Candice Odgers | TED

People ask me all the time: what could have happened during this period other than social media coming online? The answer is that adults were in distress and parents were dying.

Book of the Day

Tom Perrotta’s novel 'Ghost Town' revisits a New Jersey childhood from a bygone era

My mother was like, no, my kids are going to college. And and you know, uh my brother went to Williams College, my sister went to Villanova, I went to Yale. So, you know, her vision of the family was the vision that determined our lives.

TED Radio Hour

Are we using screens as a scapegoat for teen mental health?

Scary stories sell They always have And the more often you hear something the more likely you are to believe that it's true And scary stories are really easy to sell to parents We are an anxious lot

Radiolab

Bonus: Wild Animal Dads from Terrestrials

In the animal world, fathers have long been painted as aggressive or absent. At best providers and protectors, but certainly not caregivers. And yet for every tale of a lion or chimp dad eating its own young (yikes!), there's another creature who tells a sweeter story.

Fresh Air

Comic Ali Siddiq on fatherhood, prison, and his biggest regret

I didn't want my kids to think that anything else was more important than them, not being in the streets, not women, not gambling, not hustling, not anything. I didn't want them to ever think that anything that I was doing was more important than them. And my father made me at times feel unimportant to him.

Fresh Air

Comic Ali Siddiq on fatherhood, prison, and his biggest regret

My father made me at times feel unimportant to him. I played sports. He went to one game. Out of all the sports that I played, he went to one game.

Radiolab

Bonus: Wild Animal Dads from Terrestrials

Along the way, we learn that nature doesn't offer just one model of fatherhood. Alongside Mother Nature... there just might be a Father Nature, too.

TED

How to Give Feedback That Lands | Renee St Jacques | TED

Correction without connection feels like rejection. Connection is what separates our work from our worth. It's about valuing people not just for what they do, but who they are.

TED

Why You Should Be a Techno-Skeptic | Jonathan Haidt | TED

Which means that puberty is the worst possible time for a human being to be on social media. For our ultra-social species, that rewiring should be guided by huge amounts of social interaction in the real world, not by TikTok's algorithm.

TED

I Let DaddyGPT Parent My Kids. Here’s What I Learned | Stephen Remedios | TED

But daddy, DaddyGPT is never busy. And in that moment, I realized I had just been outparented by my own algorithm.

Code Switch

The minefields of parenting and race | Code Switch

Parenting activates all these anxieties and all this urgency around our identities and how we move through the world.