Creating Healthy Tech and Media Habits with Your Teen

Creating Healthy Tech and Media Habits with Your Teen

Are you worried your teen is too dependent on their smart phone and technology is taking up too much of their time? Whether it’s perusing social media, texting with friends, playing games, doing homework, or attending class, our teens’ time with screens is ever-increasing in a COVID-19 world. You may be left wondering how all this time with media could be negatively affecting teen mental health – or you might suspect there is already an impact. Fortunately, there are steps parents and caring adults can take to help teens navigate technology in a savvy and healthy manner. And though it’s easier to introduce limits from the start, you can still work out a plan with your teen when their device is already part of their life.

In this webinar, Meredith Gansner, MD, shares how technology and media affect teen mental health, parents and caring adults can support healthy teen use of technology, and media plans guide family technology expectations and practices.

Presenters

Meredith Gansner Headshot

Meredith Gansner, MD

Meredith Gansner, MD, is an instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and attending child psychiatrist at Cambridge Health Alliance. Her research includes problematic digital media use of adolescents with significant psychiatric illness, and the use of digital phenotyping in assessing and managing Problematic Internet Use. For her research, she has been awarded Henry G. Altman Award for Excellence in Medical Education, a Dupont Warren Fellowship Grant, and the Eleanor and Miles Shore Faculty Development Award through Harvard Medical School. She is also an active member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry media committee and has written articles about problematic digital media use for The Psychiatric Times, Cognoscenti, The Boston Globe and Slate magazine.

Susan-Weinstein headshot

Susan Weinstein, JD

Susan Weinstein, J.D., serves as Co-Executive Director of Families for Depression Awareness and Editor in Chief of Care for Your Mind, a mental health advocacy blog. She has been with the FFDA since 2012.