Jordan Shapiro
Raising Digital Kids: What Jordan Shapiro Teaches Us About Parenting in the Screen Age
If you’ve ever caught yourself saying “I just wish my kids would get off their screens!” — you’re not alone. Most parents I speak to feel torn between letting kids enjoy technology and worrying about what it’s doing to them. But American educator and author Jordan Shapiro, who wrote The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World, offers a different perspective — one that feels refreshing, balanced, and realistic.
It’s Not About Banning Tech — It’s About Sharing It
Shapiro’s big idea is that technology isn’t the enemy. The problem, he says, isn’t that children are using screens — it’s that adults often aren’t using them with them.
“Our resistance to digital play,” he writes, “is just like every other generational resistance to change.”
Rather than pulling kids away from their devices, he encourages us to join them — to understand what they’re doing online and use that as a way to connect. That could mean playing a video game together, helping them set up a creative project on a tablet, or even watching their favourite YouTuber and asking what they love about it.
It’s a mindset shift — away from control and toward connection.
Tech Time as Family Time
What Shapiro really gets right is that kids learn values and boundaries through relationships, not restrictions. When we play or explore online with them, we’re modelling how to behave — how to pause, how to question what they see, and how to use tech for creativity instead of mindless scrolling.
He believes that by turning tech time into family time, we help children learn digital citizenship the same way we teach them table manners — through example and gentle guidance.
From Screen Fear to Digital Confidence
It’s easy to see screens as something to fear, but Shapiro suggests reframing them as tools for learning, imagination, and empathy. A video game can teach teamwork. A YouTube tutorial can spark curiosity. Even chatting online helps kids learn about friendship in a modern world.
Of course, limits still matter — he isn’t saying let kids scroll all night — but his advice helps us build confidence rather than fear around technology.
“Our job,” he says, “is not to protect children from the digital world, but to prepare them for it.”
And that’s a message that really resonates with me. Technology isn’t going anywhere — so let’s teach our children to thrive within it.
Insights inspired by Jordan Shapiro, author of The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World.
