From a world-renowned expert on creative play and the impact of commercial marketing on children, a timely investigation into how big tech is hijacking childhood -and what we can do about it
Even before COVID-19, 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 world of the “kid-tech” industry. In the “must read” Who’s Raising the Kids? , Susan Linn – one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of Big Tech and big business on children – weaves an “eye-opening and disturbing exploration of how marketing tech to children is creating a passive, dysfunctional generation”.
From birth, kids have become lucrative fodder for tech, media, and toy companies, from producers of exploitative games and social media platforms to “educational” technology and branded school curricula of dubious efficacy. Written with humour and compassion, Who’s Raising the Kids? is a unique and highly readable social critique and guide to protecting kids from exploitation by the tech, toy, and entertainment industries. Two hopeful chapters—“Resistance Parenting” and “Making a Difference for Everybody’s Kids” – chart a path to allowing kids to be the children they need to be.
