I found this book in the local library, displayed in a prominent position in the tech section. Discussing how to raise kids in the age of social media, the topic is an interesting one. As a software developer who grew up alongside the rise of social media and even worked on some social media products in the past, I really know how damaging these platforms can be to mental health, especially for teenagers whose brain are still developing and are more vulnerable to the tricks that the big companies spent billions to develop. Which is why I’ve almost quit all the social media and wrote the blog post What Is Wrong about Recommendation System.

But when raising a kid, you cannot simply impose your ideology on them, especially if all their peers are using the social media. It’s a pretty unique challenge. I’ve been thinking it from time to time since my daughter was born. There is still quite a while before she’d old enough to use social media, so hopefully by then, enough people will have recognized the harm so it’s not popular among kids anymore.

Anyway, I still want to see how others are thinking about the problem and the solutions they propose today. So I picked up this book with great interests. But unfortunately, I found it underwhelming. There is no systematic discussion about the problem and the principle of the solutions. It reads more like a collection of some random problems and solutions. Some of them are not even particularly relevant to the digital age.