Whos Raising the Kids: Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children

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From a world-renowned expert on creative play and the impact of commercial marketing on children, a timely investigation into how big tech is hijacking childhoodand what we can do about it

Even before COVID-19, digital technologies had become deeply embedded in childrens lives, despite a growing body of research detailing the harms of excessive immersion in the unregulated, powerfully seductive world of the kid-tech industry.

In the must read (Library Journal, starred review) Whos Raising the Kids, Susan Linnone of the worlds leading experts on the impact of Big Tech and big business on childrenweaves an eye-opening and disturbing exploration of how marketing tech to children is creating a passive, dysfunctional generation (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). From birth, kids have become lucrative fodder for tech, media, and toy companies, from producers of exploitative games and social media platforms to educational technology and branded school curricula of dubious efficacy.

Written with humor and compassion, Whos Raising the Kids is a unique and highly readable social critique and guide to protecting kids from exploitation by the tech, toy, and entertainment industries. Two hopeful chaptersResistance Parenting and Making a Difference for Everybodys Kidschart a path to allowing kids to be the children they need to be.

Reviews

Praise for Who's Raising the Kids:
Engrossing and insightful. . . . [Who's Raising the Kids] is rich with details that paint a full portrait of contemporary child-corporate relations.
The New York Times Book Review

An impassioned indictment of tech companies making big money off exploiting the minds of our children.
New York Post

A guide on changing course both individually and as a society, by an experienced activist; a must-read.
Library Journal (starred review)

A stunning examination of how marketing, technology, and consumer capitalism impact the well-being of children. . . . This is a must-read for parents and educators.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A must-read for any parent.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Pioneer researcher and activist Susan Linn shows that we have been passive as our children were shaped into the selves that tech companies wanted them to be; adults have not met their duty of care. Whos Raising the Kids is a call to arms and a core text for a necessary national conversation.
Sherry Turkle, professor, MIT, and author of Alone Together, Reclaiming Conversation, and The Empathy Diaries

An invaluable response for parents at an impossible momentand for those of us whose kids are already grown, a great guide to resisting the platforms and apps that are constricting the life of our society in ever more painful ways.
Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened

Whos Raising the Kids is a book about a dangerous divergencebetween the profit-maximizing strategies of companies that market toys, apps, and social media to children, on the one hand, and the actual needs of children, on the other. Drawing from an impressive collection of studies and stories, Linn illuminates the harms of what she aptly calls a corporate takeover of childhood and shows us what we can do to protect all our kids.
Alfie Kohn, author of The Schools Our Children Deserve and Punished by Rewards

Every child needs an advocate like Susan Linn; every parenta wise friend like her; every politician and corporate leadera bold challenger like her. And every reader needs this booka passionate and supremely practical reckoning with one of the great dilemmas of the age.
James Carroll, author of The Truth at the Heart of the Lie

Brava to Susan Linn! This is a timely and profoundly important book. Children are being transformed into passive consumers by advertisers and social media companies who view them as easy targets for their attention and desires. More often than not, parents are allowing this to happen without thinking about the consequences to their childrens development. Whos Raising the Kids is a reminder to parents and all who care, that children are vulnerable and can be easily preyed upon by profiteering businesses who see them only as consumers. If we truly cherish and value our children we must heed Linns warning, not allow our kids to be exploited, and keep a close eye on how they grow, develop and are influenced on their way to adulthood.
Pedro Noguera, dean, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California

In this unsparing account of what it means to raise children in a commercial society, Susan Linn issues a clarion call to governments, schools, and parents to push backagainst the relentless marketing, the false promises, the saturation of tech into our most intimate and private moments. With practical advice on how parents can navigate this morass, her expertise and research-backed conclusions also serve as a real source of comfort: children, she rightly insists, are born with all the skills they need to succeed in lifeno toy, app, or flashy screen required.
Sophie Brickman, author of Baby, Unplugged

Susan Linn is every parents hero. Her work calls out the manipulative marketing tactics that Big Tech and big business direct toward our children, strategies designed to exploit their vulnerabilities and ours as parents. Whos Raising the Kids explores the pervasive and often covert commercialism in digital child culture and the negative influences corporate profiteers have on our childrens values, learning, emotional health, and relationships. This is an eye-opening, at times unnerving read and a hopeful call to action with practical advice for weakening the forces of consumerist culture in our families and how we can advocate for a freer childhood for our kids.
Janet Lansbury, bestselling author of No Bad Kids and Elevating Child Care

Todays kids are tomorrows adults. If you love children and care about the future (and who doesnt), Susan Linns Whos Raising the Kids is a terrifying book. The digital conquest of our progenys hearts and minds is nearly complete, and if shes right, its almost too late to take back whats been surrendered. This book is a much-needed call to arms.
Russell Banks, author of Rule of the Bone, Continental Drift, and other works of fiction

Author Bio

Susan Linn is a psychologist, award-winning ventriloquist, and a world-renowned expert on creative play and the impact of media and commercial marketing on children. She was the Founding Director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (now called Fairplay) and is currently research associate at Boston Childrens Hospital and lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The author of Consuming Kids, The Case for Make Believe, and Whos Raising the Kids (all published by The New Press), she lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.