Available globally in hardcover, ebook, and audio
A provocative look at the new, digital landscape of childhood and how to navigate it.
In The New Childhood, Jordan Shapiro provides a hopeful counterpoint to the fearful hand-wringing that has come to define our narrative around children and technology. Drawing on groundbreaking research in economics, psychology, philosophy, and education, The New Childhood shows how technology is guiding humanity toward a bright future in which our children will be able to create new, better models of global citizenship, connection, and community. Shapiro offers concrete, practical advice on how to parent and educate children effectively in a connected world, and provides tools and techniques for using technology to engage with kids and help them learn and grow. He compares this moment in time to other great technological revolutions in humanity's past and presents entertaining micro-histories of cultural fixtures: the sandbox, finger painting, the family dinner, and more. But most importantly, The New Childhood paints a timely, inspiring and positive picture of today's children, recognizing that they are poised to create a progressive, diverse, meaningful, and hyper-connected world that today's adults can only barely imagine.
Jordan Shapiro, PhD, is a world-renowned thought leader on global policy and education. He's a senior fellow for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and Nonresident Fellow in the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. He teaches at Temple University, and he wrote a column for Forbes' on global education and digital play from 2012 to 2017. He lives in Philadelphia.
Who's talking about Jordan Shapiro
and The New Childhood?
NPR/The Best of Our Knowledge (WAMC)
An international bestseller, available
(or soon to be available) in 11 languages
and counting...
"For those who lament what the 'app generation' may lack, Jordan Shapiro offers a timely, reassuring scenario."
- Howard Gardner, author Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
"Shapiro's arguments are compelling and Luddite-proof."
-USA Today
"Jordan Shapiro’s The New Childhood is a must-read for parents and educators! It’s an incredible resource for developing healthy families and kids in today’s technology-enabled world, and pushes us beyond clinging to rules, traditions, and practices developed for a different era."
-Wendy Kopp, CEO & Co-founder, Teach For All, and mother of four
"Timely, essential and thought-provoking, The New Childhood is the must read parenting guide for raising 21st century, digitally-driven kids. Rather than resisting social media and the Internet, Jordan Shapiro tells parents how to embrace technology, stay involved in their children’s lives and prepare them for their future. Read it! I promise you’ll rethink your parenting. I couldn’t put it down."
- Michele Borba, Ed.D. author of UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed In Our All-About-Me World
"This book asks us to realize that dualistic thinking about 'screen time' vs 'non screen time' is an exercise in futility and actually prevents us creating a healthy, integrated life in acceptance that digital interconnectedness is not just our future, it is our present."
-Ben Lee, Musician, Actor, Pop Star, Parent
"A well-formulated, deeply insightful point of view on the place of technology in raising kids."
-Publisher's Weekly
"Credible theories backed by solid research."
-Kirkus
"I would recommend this book to anyone who is grappling with the question of how to manage the relationship between children and technology."
-Jenny Anderson, Quartz
"Shapiro successfully transforms our worst fears about screen time into excitement about the potential for redesigning childhood around our latest technologies – as long as we can get the parenting right. It’s a necessary book that I urge you to read."
-Alex Beard, The Telegraph
"Useful and timely. It offers bearings to parents floundering in the new digital landscape and suggests clear actions they can take to help their children to thrive both in childhood and later life."
-Andy Robertson, Forbes
"Skeptics may be less than bullish about his rosy view of the 'New Childhood.' Still, they will find much food for thought about how
video games may unite people even if they live largely in the equivalent of a digital gated community."
- Booklist
"Shapiro’s writing itself embodies the hybridization characteristic of modern life. His book is an information network that spans history and the globe, but it is also rooted in anecdotes about the intimacies of his own family life."
-Paul Darvasi, Writer, Educator, Game designer
"The New Childhood is Doc Spock meets the digital age!"
-Michael Levine, Chief Knowledge Officer for Sesame Workshop
"You may start out thinking, 'Yes, but this particular point in history is different, because … ',
but eventually, Shapiro’s examples will overwhelm you, and you’ll cave. Scholarship does that."
-Keith Devlin, Author, Stanford Professor, Fellow for The Mathematical Association of America
"Immensely innovative and insightful. Jordan Shapiro is getting down to what makes a real difference in childhood—and thus to something that will determine the future of humanity itself. This book has revolutionary significance."
-Edward S. Casey, Philosopher, Author: The Fate of Place, Former President of the American Philosophical Association
"A thrilling and prescient book that enhances and enriches our understanding of what it means to live in a connected world."