Rules for a new era of parenting
It is an odd choice of TV show to get parenting advice from, but one of my favourite moments from the spy thriller Mr and Mrs
Smith is when Jane Smith starts talking to a man sitting beside his young son, who is immersed in his phone. The man says his son won’t connect with him, he’s lost in a video game. Jane takes the man’s phone and downloads the same game before handing it back.
We are often told that as children grow up, we should “be their friends more than parents”, yet no one tells us how to be friends with a teenager. Is it by letting go of all rules and boundaries and being a “cool mom”? I have found that doesn’t work. You become friends by laughing over school gossip; by sharing that funny reel that reminded you of their messy room; by playing the same video games.
Neha J. Hiranandani, author of the new book iParent: Embracing Parenting In The Digital
Age, gets this. In her book, a guide to being a parent while helping your children safely navigate the confusing online world they inhabit almost constantly, she doesn’t indulge in hand-wringing of the “kids these days” sort. Instead, she advises parents to get to know this world better. “Technology offers our kids vast advantages as they bypass borders, collaborate with people around the world... They can engage in discussions around body positivity and gender neutrality—concepts that parents don’t always know and that schools often forget to teach,” she writes. “This book...is an attempt to join the kids in their web.”
It’s not about stalking your child on Discord or Roblox. Hiranandani does it by playing
Metaverse game
Meta Quest 2, noting the dopamine hit from her Instagram posts, and using image filter apps like InstaFace and
FaceTune. She watches YouTube influencers like
Maral and Em Ford, popular with preteens, and confronts concepts like Ana
(anorexia) and Mia
(bulimia), anthropomorphised forms of eating disorders that have dedicated online forums attracting girls, and recalls her own brush with body image issues as a teenager.
We are peculiarly challenged to parent effectively in this age, with little experience of what being constantly online as a child or a teenager means. Hiranandani writes that we are all inside this vast, unmonitored social experiment to see how digital natives will impact our world longterm, or how living a large part of their lives online will impact children physically, emotionally and psychologically. There is no precedent in history, so we must learn as we go along.
Books like this will certainly help us see the issues more clearly, even though they may not give us quick fixes to resolve them. This book does offer some advice on helping children be safe online, such as familiarising yourself with digital spaces and coming up with a family “contract” on online behaviour, but ultimately it boils down to what good parenting has always meant—openness, trust and communication.