Joan Ganz Cooney understood that children’s media does not exist in isolation. Parents, caregivers, and teachers help children connect what happens on screen to the world around them. This week, our authors consider the role of the caring adult in a media landscape that is increasingly personalized, pervasive, and difficult to navigate—and how technology can support, rather than replace, human connection.
Technology has changed dramatically in the past six decades, but human development, thankfully, has not. We talk about children as “digital natives,” which implies that they instinctively know how to thrive in a technological world. But thriving in a tech-saturated future won’t come down to technical skills. It will come down to uniquely human capacities. Skills like resiliency, empathy, and critical thinking will empower children to use technology thoughtfully—and to excel at the parts of life that cannot be automated. These skills are built the same way they’ve always been: through relationships, conversation, play, exploration, and hands-on experiences.
Which means we need to move beyond thinking about kids and media consumption primarily in terms of screen time. The more important question is: When my child is engaged with a screen, what is that technology replacing? If a child spends time video chatting with a grandparent, for example, that’s fundamentally different from watching 20 minutes of algorithmically generated videos. One is facilitating human interaction, the other is crowding it out. Likewise, if AI helps a parent reduce administrative burdens so they can spend more time talking, reading, or playing with their child, that’s a very different use of technology than AI stepping into the role of caregiver, conversational partner, or emotional companion.
The science of early brain development teaches us that children don’t simply absorb information. They build their brains through responsive, back-and-forth interactions with caring adults. Those moments of shared attention, imperfect conversation, and emotional connection literally shape the neural architecture that supports language, self-regulation, empathy, and lifelong learning. That’s why every new technology that enters our child’s world—through their classroom, at home, or during playtime with their friends—should be evaluated by whether it strengthens or weakens those essential human interactions.
So instead of asking, “How much screen time is OK?” Or “How do I make sure my child is tech savvy?” we should ask, “What kind of childhood are we trying to protect?” Digital natives, to my mind, shouldn’t mean children who are fluent at tech. It should mean children who remain curious, creative, resilient, empathetic, and capable of thinking critically, even when their worlds become increasingly tech-saturated. The future—ours and theirs—depends on our willingness to preserve the uniquely human experiences that no technology can replace, and that children’s developing brains still depend on.
Dana Suskind, MD, is the author of “Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI”
