Category Archives: Guest Posts

Supporting Families in a Screen-Saturated World: A New Guide for Movement and Play As digital media becomes more integrated into family life, parents and caregivers are increasingly looking for ways to strike a healthy balance—especially when it comes to screen time and physical activity. A new resource from the California Partners Project, developed in collaboration with First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, offers timely, research-informed guidance to help. The Tech/Life Balance: Movement & Outdoor Activity Family Guide is a bilingual tool…

In a world where career paths are no longer linear, how can we prepare young people to thrive amid constant change? At Unity Technologies, and through my book The Career Game Loop, we set out to tackle this challenge by borrowing strategies from an unexpected place: video games. Today’s learners face a workforce landscape filled with uncertainty. Technological disruption, gig work, AI automation, and remote jobs have rewritten the rules. Traditional models of education and employment no longer guarantee a…

Andy Robertson draws back the curtain on his Ludocene Kickstarter project that hopes to change how children discover video games for the better.

In the last five years, there has been mounting public interest in the relationship between digital technology use and children’s wellbeing. New policies and legislation aimed at promoting children’s rights and/or safety online are being proposed across North America and around the world at an unprecedented rate. Despite their popularity among children of all ages, however, digital games are often left out of the conversation. As is children’s vast knowledge, insights, and willingness to discuss the positives and negatives that…

As a researcher focusing on AI and child development (and also as a parent of two), I have seen many instances of kids talking to conversational AI agents like Siri, Alexa, or ChatGPT. It seems that kids turn to AI agents to satisfy their curiosity, asking things like what six plus six equals, how far away black holes are, or how to make an invisible potion. And sometimes kids engage in what feels like social chitchat: they share their favorite…

Although we are still in the midst of discovering the implications and opportunities that various technologies bring to our children’s (and our own) lives, we’re seeing a new technological innovation getting a lot of attention: artificial intelligence (or AI) – and specifically Generative AI. AI is something you’re likely already using in your daily life. If you’ve ever unlocked your phone with facial recognition, spoken to a voice assistant like Siri or Alexa, or relied on a navigation app like…

As an instructor at the Fowler School of Engineering at Chapman University, I teach an undergraduate  Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) class regularly. This class is a hands-on, project-based course that teaches students the fundamental principles of HCI and Interaction Design. The course aims to enable students to apply interaction design methodology—discovering requirements, designing alternatives, prototyping, and evaluating—to develop technology that puts the user’s needs upfront. In the Spring 2024 semester, our class goal was to design technology that supports the digital…

Imagine an education system designed from the ground up around fundamental human needs, from strong social bonds to cultural flourishing on a healthy planet. We are an inventive species, now with fantastically powerful tools, but limited wisdom to use them toward good. Solving this mismatch may be the key to our collective well-being. In this essay, I sketch an educational approach for building wisdom, with a special focus on learning through social interactions with other people, and one-way parasocial interactions…

A new report from SRI Education describes the quality of educational YouTube videos for prekindergarten- and kindergarten-age children. Findings point to surprising differences from educational television shows, including less use of characters and plot to help kids learn. Many parents question the quality of YouTube video content. So do researchers. According to the 2020 Common Sense Media Census, children are spending more time watching videos online than in any other format. Streaming sites like YouTube have surpassed even television viewing.…

Today’s parents and caregivers often find themselves caught between two powerful forces: on the one side, harrowing headlines about how social media harms kids, and on the other, kids’ vigorous lobbying for social media accounts. Not surprisingly, this leaves many adults feeling that they must choose between two terrible options. Should they refuse to give their tween or teen access to social media and, in so doing strain their relationship with their child while likely harming their kid’s peer connections?…