I’ve just finished reading the book Screen-Smart Parenting by Dr. Jodi Gold.  It’s a fantastic resource for parents – insightful, educational, practical, and relevant.

If you’ve ever wondered how to handle modern parenting challenges such as wrangling the iPad away from your six year old, or whether or not your 11 year old is old enough to have a FaceBook account, Dr. Gold has some guidelines for you.  By first helping you determine the digital culture of your family – are you a media-light, media-moderate, or a media-centric family? – and assessing your parenting style, you can then create a practical and realistic media parenting plan for your family.

Divided into three main sections, her book looks at the digital landscape first, including what’s out there, facts and research on how digital use affects kids and their development, as well as some basics for “digital immigrant” parents (such as what is FaceBook? Instagram? What does my child have access to on each digital platform?).  The second section breaks down childhood by age group, and looks at usage and key parental concerns for those groups, and the third section helps you draft a customized digital technology agreement for your family.

Easy to understand, Dr Gold provides a wide overview of everything a parent might want to know about, from educational apps for toddlers, to sexting and cyberbullying for older kids.  Not all of the information is going to be new (it’s not uncommon for parents today to have their own FaceBook accounts and to do a fair amount of texting themselves…), but it is packaged in one convenient place, and the breakdown in the final section about drafting a digital technology agreement for your family is thorough and thought-provoking.  A great book for all parents.