Should You Start Concealing Your Children’s Faces on Social Media?
Introducing Parentverse, a new tech-advice column for kid-raisers.
Welcome to the first installment of Parentverse, TI Weekend’s new advice column for tech-savvy parents raising kids in a tech-dependent world. As a mother of two boys, ages 6 and 2, I have sought advice in various forums—Facebook mom groups, my kid’s preschool app, the grocery store checkout line—but frequently I run into either extremely anti-tech biases (“No screen time ever! Raise your children off the grid in a hut!”) or blasé responses that don’t take my concerns seriously (“Just let YouTube babysit your ten-year-old. He’ll be fine”).
Parents need frank answers that take into account the reality of our technologically mediated world and that don’t cast judgment. Yet there has not been a place to get those answers consistently, and so in true Silicon Valley bootstrapping spirit, we’ve decided to build that place ourselves. (But not in the metaverse. At least not yet.)
In this column, I will answer questions solicited from TI Weekend subscribers about the most pressing issues parents face related to technology. Parentverse will provide expert-sourced advice about protecting our kids’ mental health, using tech to enhance skills and build character, and maintaining privacy and security in a digital world that constantly threatens both.