Disconnected: Technology, Kids, and the Rise of Stealth Parenting

As our lives are increasingly controlled and organized by smartphones and apps and our relationships maintained on social media, discussions about the impact of technology on our privacy, kids and families, race and gender roles, and democracy have taken on new urgency. What are the costs of this constant interaction with technology, both on an individual level and as a society?

James P. Steyer, founder & CEO of Common Sense Media, is all too familiar with these issues. Since 2003, Common Sense Media has helped parents and educators navigate the digital world with their kids and students. His new book, Which Side of History? How Technology Is Reshaping Democracy and Our Lives, features a collection of essays from the country’s leading writers and thinkers on how to improve approaches and policies related to technology.

One of these emerging conversations is the role technology can play in parenting. Julie Lythcott-Haims, the former Stanford University dean of freshmen, has spent the past 15 years drawing attention to the downsides of parental over-involvement, cumulating in her 2015 best-selling book How to Raise an Adult. In Which Side of History, Lythcott-Haims contributes an essay discusses the rise of stealth parenting, the use of surveillance and other technologies to monitor children in an attempt to keep them “safe.” But at what cost? Could those technologies, created in part to aid parents, actually hurt the parent-child relationship?

Join us as Steyer and Lythcott-Haims discuss technology’s impact on modern parenting and parents’ ability to raise the next generation of independent and resilient adults.

The livestream will be available beginning at 5:30 p.m. Have questions? Tweet them at @TheCityClub or send a text to 330.541.5794.