5 Parent Picks for Managing Kids and Social Media

iRules: What Every Tech-Healthy Family Needs to Know about Selfies, Sexting, Gaming, and Growing up, by Janell Burley Hofmann
When The Huffington Post posted Hofmann’s original cell phone contract with her son, the response resonated with many parents and soon went viral. In this book, Hofmann expands on the original contract and explains her Slow Tech Parenting method whereas she tries to find a balance between technology and human interaction. Discussing issues such as cyber-bullying, friend fails, and sexting, she helps parents understand the value of a phone contract to help establish family expectations and impart important values to your child from the minute they enter the online world; self-respect, integrity, and responsibility. It may feel impossible to stay tech savvy, but it is very possible to teach tech-healthy.

Media Moms and Digital Dads: A Fact-Not-Fear Approach to Parenting in the Digital Age, by Yalda Uhls
Understanding that a media culture is here to stay, author Uhls takes a factual, practical, and engaging approach to parenting in the digital age. With sections clearly dividing different issues, such as Social Media and Social Lives or Fame, FOMO and Selfies, parents can dive right into what they need help or guidance with right now. Each chapter summarizes the science, provides some quick takeaways, and lists tips for parents. Parents want to keep kids safe, healthy, happy, and interacting in a wholesome manner. Uhls helps take the fear out of managing kid’s social media and arms parents with knowledge and skills to confidently embark into the new digital frontier.

Screen-Smart Parenting: How to Find Balance and Benefit in Your Child’s Use of Social Media, Apps, and Digital Devices, by Jodi Gold
As a psychiatrist and mother of three, author Jodi Gold witnesses the daily effects technology has on children. Exploring both the positive and negative impacts of screen time, social media, and apps, Gold explores how to teach your children to be good digital citizens. She explores the way technology can be a positive part of growing up, stage by stage. Broken down into age groups, she offers practical advice on how to prepare your kids for social media, guiding them and protecting them along the way. Not only does she offer guidance about children interacting within social media platforms, but she helps parents set boundaries about the amount of time spent on social media in general.

A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Social Media: Helping Your Teenager Navigate Life Online, by Mark Oestreicher and Adam McLane
Social media is not going anywhere and your kids are going to want to use it, one way or another. This book helps parents find methods to be involved, set boundaries, and engage kids in offline conversations about their online lives. Written by authors who are parents and youth workers, they draw on a vast amount of experience. With an understanding that parents vary from no social media experience (digital dinosaurs) to daily users, the authors dive into the ways kids use the platforms differently than adults do. A swift read, this book is a great primer to principles and practices for young people posting online.

The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World, by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis
If you see the top of your kid’s head more than their face and your words fall on distracted ears, then you are not alone. Researchers, including famed Harvard psychologist Gardner, have taken note of young people spending vast amounts of time on their digital devices and thoroughly researched this new “app-dependent” generation. Living in a society with constant connectivity leaves many people feeling disconnected from the world around them. Never has this been more true than for today’s kids. Exploring three important aspects of adolescence—identity, intimacy, and imagination—the researchers determine both the positive and negative effects the digital age has on kids. Recognizing that social media drives a large portion of time spent on apps, the researchers explore the positive effects social media can have on youth and the ways it can be a springboard for creativity.
What books would you recommend to help parents struggling with kids’ use of social media?