January 23, 2023

Digital for Good, by Richard Culatta

One of the best things I do is subscribe to Courtney R. Martin’s Substack, which is where I encountered her interview with Richard Culatta (headlined “‘Screen Time’ is Dumb”), introducing me to the ideas presented in Culatta’s 2021 book Digital for Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World, published by Harvard Business Review Press. Culatta is CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, former Chief Innovation Officer for Rhode Island, and was appointed by President Obama to lead the US Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology, and I found his book such an inspiring and exciting read, reframing so much of how I’d come to understand my role in helping to shape my children’s relationships to technology. Rather than foregrounding potential online dangers, Culatta argues, we should be giving our kids the tools to be good digital citizen who are able to contribute to conversations, use technology for problem solving, community and connection. Rather than telling our kids they spend too much time on their phones, to select one example, we should teach them to be thoughtful in HOW they use their phones. Culatta recommends researching apps that are educational and interesting and recommending these as we might a good book, a tactic I’ve already tried with my eldest with really interesting and positive results, along with all kinds of other accessible “next steps” that follow each of his book’s chapters, which I’m also really looking forward to putting into play.