Overview

From a world-renowned expert on creative play and the impact of commercial marketing on children comes a timely investigation into how big tech is hijacking childhood--and what we can do about it. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technologies had become deeply embedded in children's lives, despite a growing body of research detailing the harms of excessive immersion in the unregulated, powerfully seductive, profit-driven world of the kid-tech industry. In Who's Raising the Kids? Linn--one of the world's leading experts on the impact of Big Tech and big business on children--explores the roots and consequences of this monumental shift toward a digitized, commercialized childhood, focusing on kids' values, relationships, and learning. From birth, kids have become lucrative fodder for a range of tech, media, and toy companies, from producers of exploitative games and social media platforms to educational technology and branded school curricula of dubious efficacy. Noting that many Silicon Valley elites wouldn't dream of exposing their young kids to the very technologies they've unleashed on other people's children, Who's Raising the Kids? is unique--a highly readable social critique and guide to protecting kids from exploitation by the tech, toy, and entertainment industries. Linn provides a deep and eye-opening dive into exactly how new technologies enable huge conglomerates to transform young children into lifelong consumers by infiltrating their lives and influencing their values, relationships and learning. She persuasively argues that our digitized-commercialized culture is damaging for kids and families as well as society at large, and maps out what we must do to change course. Written with humor and compassion, the book concludes with two hopeful chapters--Resistance Parenting and Making a Difference for Everybody's Kids--that chart a path for protecting kids from targeting by the tech, toy, and entertainment industries that treat them as lucrative bundles of data and as mini-consumers ripe for exploitation rather than as the children they need to be.

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Reviews

An eye-opening and disturbing exploration...Linn recounts numerous horror stories about manipulation, but she is proactive in her advice...Linn's examination of how screens have taken over childhood is a must-read for any parent. -- Kirkus Reviews An invaluable response for parents at an impossible moment--and for those of us whose kids are already grown, a great guide to resisting the platforms and apps that are constricting the life of our society in ever more painful ways. -- Bill McKibben, New York Times bestselling author Linn issues a clarion call to governments, schools, and parents to push back--against the relentless marketing, the false promises, the saturation of tech into our most intimate and private moments. -- Sophie Brickman, author of Baby, Unplugged

If you love children and care about the future (and who doesn't?), this book is a much-needed call to arms. -- Russell Banks, New York Times bestselling author An eye-opening and disturbing exploration...Linn recounts numerous horror stories about manipulation, but she is proactive in her advice...Linn's examination of how screens have taken over childhood is a must-read for any parent. -- Kirkus Reviews An invaluable response for parents at an impossible moment--and for those of us whose kids are already grown, a great guide to resisting the platforms and apps that are constricting the life of our society in ever more painful ways. -- Bill McKibben, New York Times bestselling author Linn issues a clarion call to governments, schools, and parents to push back--against the relentless marketing, the false promises, the saturation of tech into our most intimate and private moments. -- Sophie Brickman, author of Baby, Unplugged

Author Information

Susan Linn is a psychologist, awardwinning ventriloquist, and a world-renowned expert on creative play and the impact of media and commercial marketing on children. She was the founding director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (now called Fairplay) and is currently research associate at Boston Children's Hospital and lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The author of Consuming Kids and The Case for Make Believe (both published by the New Press), she lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. Susan Linn is a psychologist, awardwinning ventriloquist, and a world-renowned expert on creative play and the impact of media and commercial marketing on children. She was the founding director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (now called Fairplay) and is currently research associate at Boston Children's Hospital and lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The author of Consuming Kids and The Case for Make Believe (both published by the New Press), she lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

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