Was “digital detox” or “reduce screen time” on your New Year’s resolution list, but it’s not really happening? Maybe you’ve been glued to recent world events or news happening right in Canada and feel like you can’t put the phone down? You aren’t alone. 

There’s no denying that being online can have negative effects, for adults and children. At the same time, we are living in a digital age where being online has become threaded into our everyday lives with various effects, some positive and some not so much. 

There is one place getting more attention lately for increasing the quality of conversations: in-person.

I probably could, and maybe should, write about all of the social media changes we are seeing. The troubling updates to Meta’s content moderation policies and the removal of their fact-checking program, the complicated TikTok ban in the US, all of it.

While tech has become integrated in the lives of parents and teens, there are positives and negatives that come with it. One problem? When our handheld devices affect our sleep – and this is a particular issue for teens.

Now that we’re past the flurry of people posting about their January New Year’s resolutions (maybe some of them were realistic and easy to follow and some of them less so), it’s a good time to sit back and think about how we can start off a fresh year with intention, particularly when it comes to screen use.  

It’s that time of year again when parents (and kids) are either counting down the days until school begins, or feeling a sense of overwhelming worry that the summer hasn’t lasted long enough. Admittedly, I’m in the latter category. However, our family has begun to prepare for the new school year.  

Technology has changed and often improved the way we work, live, shop and play, but it can feel overwhelming at times. I think I’m at the age where new technology feels like too much and I hate change and I don’t want to learn something new. This is why I’m still not really using TikTok I guess.