Building Healthy Digital Habits

What are healthy digital habits?

Healthy digital habits are ones that make our tech use manageable, meaningful and mindful. That means they:

Building Digital Balance: A Family Guide to Google's Safety and Well-Being Tools

When it comes to digital wellbeing, one of the most important things is to establish an ongoing conversation with your children about their online lives. There is no one size fits all; every family can develop strategies that work best for them. But having access to a wide range of tools can help you adapt those strategies at every stage of your kids’ journey. Here are some of the key principles for those conversations:

How Social Media Helps Teens Cope With Anxiety, Depression, and Self-Harm

By Dr. Sameer Hinduja of the Cyberbullying Research Centre
Content reposted with permission – original article from Cyberbullying.org

It is easy for many adults – whether educators or parents – to focus on the negatives of social media in the lives of teens today. This is understandable, because they are the ones who have to deal with the fallout when adolescents make mistakes online (cyberbullying incidents, sexting cases, electronic dating violence, digital reputation drama, and similar forms of wrongdoing).

I’m overwhelmed online. Now what?

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.

A Guide for Trusted Adults

A Guide for Trusted Adults is based on YWCA's consultation with Canadian girls and young women about their concerns and the issues they face online and on social media platforms and the ways they want the adults in their lives to support them.

Dealing with digital stress - Tip Sheet

Time Management

Managing media in middle childhood (6-9 years old)

Helping Kids Build Safe and Smart Digital Habits

Parents can focus on helping kids this age explore safely by choosing high-quality experiences, setting clear boundaries, and teaching them how to recognize when something feels off.

There are four main strategies to help kids become resilient to online risks. We can:

Curate our kids’ media experiences;

Control who can access our kids and their data;

Co-view media with our kids;

and be our kids’ media Coaches.