Parenting in the Screen Age: A Guide for Calm Conversations

Product Description

Does every conversation with your child or teen about screen time blow up into a fight? Or maybe you avoid bringing up the topic but silently harbor worry and frustration. How can you better understand what you’re up against — and most importantly, ensure the healthiest screen time possible? In Parenting in the Screen Age, award-winning filmmaker, and mental health advocate Dr. Delaney Ruston distills more than a decade of communications research into a definitive guide for today’s parents. Packed with evidence-based insights on screen time from researchers, input from kids and teens, and solutions drawn from Dr. Ruston’s own messy parenting struggles, this guide shows you how to start — and sustain — productive family talks about technology. You’ll learn how to: Bring up screen time without making your child or teen defensive; Talk through difficult issues like online social cruelty, sexting, and mental health; Engage your child in creating boundaries around Netflix, video gaming, and social media; Have screen time limits that actually work — with less of the sneaking or arguing. During the COVID pandemic or after, this book will help you lead your child to become more tech-wise and life balanced — empowering them to build a healthier relationship with our digital world, now and into their future.

About the Author

Delaney Ruston, M.D. is an author, filmmaker, Stanford trained physician, and the creator of the award-winning films Screenagers and Screenagers NEXT CHAPTER. 
 

A trusted expert on screen time and parenting and improving the wellbeing of today’s youth, Ruston has appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, PBS NewsHour, and many others. Ruston has
been invited to speak at
Google, The Aspen Institute, the United Nations, and conferences and schools worldwide. To date, the Screenagers movies have been seen by over 4.5 million youth and adults. 
 

Ruston has been a researcher in interpersonal health communication at UC San Francisco and has been faculty at The University of Washington School of Medicine and Stony Brook School of Medicine. Ruston is a practicing primary care physician. Meanwhile, she has won several awards for her work in creating mental health awareness campaigns. 
 

Delaney is the mother of two and resides in Seattle with her husband and teenage daughter.