Digital Well-Being: Let Us Ensure Every Child Can Shine — by Aliza Kopans
— Aliza Kopans is a nationally and internationally-recognized leader in Digital Wellness, whose work has been widely recognized, including on 60 Minutes. We were very fortunate to have her join us as an intern with Every Child Shines this summer.
My name is Aliza Kopans, and I interned with Every Child Shines (ECS) this summer. An initiative of East Boston Social Centers, ECS works to ensure all children in East Boston enter kindergarten joyful, thriving, and ready to learn. Every Child Shines offers support, education, and community-based resources to parents and their families.
My time at ECS was incredible. I learned about the inner workings of a non-profit, practiced Spanish with my co-workers, created a bulletin board chronicling the Centers’ work, attended tabling events and partner meetings, and felt my mind growing daily. As a rising junior at Brown University studying Public Health and Intercultural Competence focused on Spanish, this internship held everything I hoped for and more.
During a meeting with Justin, the Executive Director of the Centers, I shared a bit about my previous work and passions. Since 2020, I have served as a Digital Well-Being Youth Activist. A wordy title, yet a mission that impacts most corners of our country — ECS included. For me, Digital Well-Being is rooted in a core question: How can we thrive in our tech-saturated world?
The intersection of digital wellness activism and ECS’ model reveals an essential piece of thriving: caregivers. Parents play a huge role in shaping their children’s relationships with tech, yet are so often under-supported as they learn how to parent in this digital era. In order to raise a generation that is joyful, thriving, and ready to learn, we must recognize the tremendous impact parents have on their children and assist them in juggling the challenges of raising children alongside technology.
Oftentimes, parents are not aware of the potential harms of digital tech, especially on developing brains. For younger children, increased screen time is correlated with reduced social-emotional skills, less alertness, and future academic struggles. Research advises no screen time (except for video-chatting family or friends) for children under 2 years old and less than an hour per day of high-quality content watched with a parent for children ages 2–5.
This can sound daunting, especially when handing a child a screen feels like the easiest way to calm them. First, it is important to acknowledge the difficulty of trying to minimize screen time for children, particularly as a busy parent. In light of this, parents may seek support and action-oriented approaches to fostering their child’s healthy development both on and off screens.
Thankfully, there are countless resources detailing accessible, impactful ways for caregivers to bring digital balance into their households.
- The Basics Principles, a core element of ECS’ approach, offer free, fun, and simple strategies to promote children’s healthy development without needing screens.
- Healthy Children provides a customizable Family Media Plan (Plan familiar de uso de pantallas) for building healthy screen-time habits.
- “How and When to Limit Kids’ Tech Use” from the New York Times shares a range of implementable, research-backed digital balance tips.
- Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child presents handouts with brain-boosting activities in “Brain-Building Through Play.”
- The Screentime Action Network at Fairplay is another organization with a wealth of both resources and advocacy opportunities for families.
These resources only scratch the surface of all there is to learn. And depending on capacity, language barriers, and internet access, not all parents can use said resources. Community-rooted groups could bridge this gap, helping more caregivers learn how to navigate this challenging topic and best support their child. Organized playgroups could provide opportunities for children to engage with humans and the physical world instead of with passive online activities. With the proper support and resources, as well as modeling healthy screen behavior in their own actions, parents can cultivate digital well-being from the moment their child is born.
While caregiver involvement is significant, the responsibility of protecting young people online should not be solely on parents’ shoulders. I entered the digital wellness field focusing on the power of the individual, co-creating Dear Parents, a digital well-being guide from teens to parents. I thought that if we changed our habits, we could sustain healthy relationships with technology. Yet as my work progressed, I realized there is only so much one person can do when most online platforms are designed to keep users hooked.
Fueled by my belief that further regulation is essential for safe digital spaces, I co-founded Tech(nically) Politics, a youth-led movement working to ensure young people’s voices are heard as lawmakers create new regulations governing online platforms. Last summer, I took my policy passion to a new level by co-founding Design It For Us, a campaign-turned-coalition advocating for safer social media and online platforms that aided in the passage of California’s impactful Age Appropriate Design Code.
We need systemic change that ensures digital spaces are safe for growing minds: prioritizing the well-being of people over company profit. Yet as we work towards high-level regulation and design changes, we must still be conscious of the pitfalls of digital tech and actively work to protect our young people.
Digital tech heavily impacts young children’s development. Therefore, Every Child Shines’s mission “to support the wellbeing of children and families in East Boston” includes addressing the influence of the digital world. Through ECS’ Family Champion program, I envision families receiving referrals to comprehensive digital wellness resources and groups, getting the support they need to help their child flourish. I believe ECS — with strong community connections, passionate, innovative staff, and a dedication to serving Eastie families — can help cultivate community-wide digital well-being: starting from a child’s first breath.
Photo 1: Aliza painting with EBSC’s Social Sprouts classroom! Their completed mural is on display in the Central Square location.
Photo 2: Aliza pushing for digital regulations on a Youth Mental Health panel with advocates, health practitioners, researchers, former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, and Senator Ed Markey.
This is the 28th post about boosting joy the only way we can: in community. Please share, subscribe (https://medium.com/@justinpasquariello), and join our movement by emailing me or supporting East Boston Social Centers: https://www.ebsocialcenters.org/support. Stay Joyful, East Boston.
