Together with community partners and parents, we have supported the creation of the Digital Guardians Toolkit, made by parents for parents, to know the risks and benefits of social media and how to manage it with kids and teens. The toolkit is intended to be used by parents to facilitate supportive conversations with their community, share information, and learn ways to talk about this tricky topic with youth, set boundaries that work for families, and identify red flags.
View the Digital Guardians Toolkit on Canva!
Download the Digital Guardians Toolkit for your records!
The Center of Excellence has three main goals. These include 1) improving pediatric mental wellbeing by reducing the risks and leveraging the benefits of social media, 2) building the capacity of individuals who work with youth so that they can mitigate social media’s impact on mental wellbeing, and 3) provide communication, guidance, trainings, webinars, and focus groups that are evidence-based and utilize best practices to promote healthy social media use. Research that is conducted here at the Radesky Lab is used to develop the resources we give families through the Center of Excellence.
If you would be interested in participating in future online focus groups, please reach out to us at centerofexcellence@umich.edu with your name, occupation, age of child(ren), and a brief description of why you are interested.
If you have any questions about social media and mental health that you would like to ask our expert staff and medical directors, please follow this link to our Q&A portal.
A relationship-based framework for early childhood media use (Click link to download article)
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