Digital literacy first
Teach them to make things with it, not just watch it.
The objection is not to the screen but to consumption, so the answer is production: making, coding, editing, building, and understanding how the feed decides what it shows you. Time spent creating is not counted the same way as time spent watching, and a child who knows how the machine works is treated as better defended than a child kept away from it.
Not what it promises
Every approach here works for the families it suits; the useful question is what it costs to run.
- An adult who will actually sit and build something with them
- Distinguishing making from watching in practice, which is harder than it sounds
- Resources — a device good enough to make on, and time to learn alongside them
Where it stands
Every position with the source it was read from, and the pale band is how much internal variation the approach genuinely tolerates. A wide band is not vagueness — it means the texts in this family really do disagree with each other about that axis.
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
Source: Parenting for a Digital Future
What to read
Lifelong Kindergarten — Mitchel Resnick
From the group that built Scratch. The clearest statement of making-over-consuming.
Parenting for a Digital Future — Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross
The "embracing" families again, and an honest account of how often the aspiration meets reality.
Compared with
- Digital literacy first vs Co-viewing
- Digital literacy first vs Content-curated
- Digital literacy first vs Delayed device
- Digital literacy first vs Earned access
- Digital literacy first vs Guideline-led
- Digital literacy first vs Screen-free
- Digital literacy first vs Self-regulation
- Digital literacy first vs Time budget
Sources for this row
Parenting for a Digital Future
Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross, Oxford University Press, 2020. The ethnography behind the "what screens are for" axis: families sort into embracing, balancing and resisting, largely by what they hope the future looks like.