
Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jean Rystrom
-
By:
-
Richard Freed
About this listen
A practical guide to building your child’s bond with family and fostering school success amid the allure of digital screens.
Kids’ obsessive use of video games, social media, and texting is eclipsing their connections with family and school - the two most important contributors to their well-being. The result: a generation of kids who suffer from soaring rates of emotional and academic problems, with many falling prey to an epidemic of video game and Internet addictions.
In Wired Child, learn why a bevy of social media friends won’t keep teens from feeling empty inside and turning to cutting for relief. See how our kids have become smartphone experts who struggle in reading, math, and the other educational basics that colleges consider in deciding admissions. Discover how many “child-friendly” technologies are depriving kids of joy in the real world, putting them at risk for device addictions.
Wired Child gives you the confidence and skills you need to safely navigate your children through a rapidly shifting media landscape. Dr. Freed offers concrete parenting strategies that will help you create the strong family kids need and encourage their school success. You’ll also learn how to protect kids from destructive tech addictions and instead guide them to use technology productively as a positive force for their future.
©2015 Richard Freed, PhD (P)2018 Richard Freed, PhDListeners also enjoyed...
-
Boys Adrift
- The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men
- By: Leonard Sax
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why America's sons are underachieving, and what we can do about it. Something is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere 20 years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. In Boys Adrift, Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on more than 20 years of clinical experience to explain why boys and young men are failing in school and disengaged at home.
-
-
Profound
- By Sunny Blaine on 12-03-17
By: Leonard Sax
-
iGen
- The 10 Trends Shaping Today's Young People - and the Nation
- By: Jean M. Twenge Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Madeleine Maby
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An entertaining first look at how today's members of iGen - the children, teens, and young adults born in the mid-1990s and later - are vastly different from their millennial predecessors and from any other generation, from the renowned psychologist and author of Generation Me.
-
-
Really, Amazon, no PDF?
- By Elizabeth on 10-19-17
-
Irresistible
- The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
- By: Adam Alter
- Narrated by: Adam Alter
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction - an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans.
-
-
Not scientifically sound
- By Alex Gertner on 09-05-20
By: Adam Alter
-
Reset Your Child's Brain
- A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time
- By: Victoria L. Dunckley MD
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Increasing numbers of parents grapple with children who are acting out without obvious reason. Revved up and irritable, many of these children are diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar illness, autism, or other disorders, but don't respond well to treatment. They are then medicated, often with poor results and unwanted side effects. Based on emerging scientific research and extensive clinical experience, integrative child psychiatrist Dr. Victoria Dunckley has pioneered a four-week program to treat the frequent underlying cause, Electronic Screen Syndrome (ESS).
-
-
Insightful
- By Alan on 11-24-18
-
Glow Kids
- How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids - and How to Break the Trance
- By: Nicholas Kardaras PhD
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology - more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity - has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain’s pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis.
-
-
Fear Mongering - a modern day Mazes and Monsters
- By Veronica on 11-03-20
-
Hold On to Your Kids
- Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers
- By: Gordon Neufeld, Gabor Maté MD
- Narrated by: Gabor Maté MD, Daniel Maté
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Neufeld and Dr. Maté explore the phenomenon of peer orientation: the troubling tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction—for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behavior. But peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere, and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for schoolyard bullying and youth violence; it is an escalating trend that has never been adequately described or contested until Hold On to Your Kids.
-
-
Very very disappointed
- By CristinaPG on 01-11-20
By: Gordon Neufeld, and others
-
Boys Adrift
- The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men
- By: Leonard Sax
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why America's sons are underachieving, and what we can do about it. Something is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere 20 years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. In Boys Adrift, Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on more than 20 years of clinical experience to explain why boys and young men are failing in school and disengaged at home.
-
-
Profound
- By Sunny Blaine on 12-03-17
By: Leonard Sax
-
iGen
- The 10 Trends Shaping Today's Young People - and the Nation
- By: Jean M. Twenge Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Madeleine Maby
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An entertaining first look at how today's members of iGen - the children, teens, and young adults born in the mid-1990s and later - are vastly different from their millennial predecessors and from any other generation, from the renowned psychologist and author of Generation Me.
-
-
Really, Amazon, no PDF?
- By Elizabeth on 10-19-17
-
Irresistible
- The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
- By: Adam Alter
- Narrated by: Adam Alter
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction - an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans.
-
-
Not scientifically sound
- By Alex Gertner on 09-05-20
By: Adam Alter
-
Reset Your Child's Brain
- A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time
- By: Victoria L. Dunckley MD
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Increasing numbers of parents grapple with children who are acting out without obvious reason. Revved up and irritable, many of these children are diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar illness, autism, or other disorders, but don't respond well to treatment. They are then medicated, often with poor results and unwanted side effects. Based on emerging scientific research and extensive clinical experience, integrative child psychiatrist Dr. Victoria Dunckley has pioneered a four-week program to treat the frequent underlying cause, Electronic Screen Syndrome (ESS).
-
-
Insightful
- By Alan on 11-24-18
-
Glow Kids
- How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids - and How to Break the Trance
- By: Nicholas Kardaras PhD
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology - more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity - has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain’s pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis.
-
-
Fear Mongering - a modern day Mazes and Monsters
- By Veronica on 11-03-20
-
Hold On to Your Kids
- Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers
- By: Gordon Neufeld, Gabor Maté MD
- Narrated by: Gabor Maté MD, Daniel Maté
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Neufeld and Dr. Maté explore the phenomenon of peer orientation: the troubling tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction—for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behavior. But peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere, and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for schoolyard bullying and youth violence; it is an escalating trend that has never been adequately described or contested until Hold On to Your Kids.
-
-
Very very disappointed
- By CristinaPG on 01-11-20
By: Gordon Neufeld, and others
-
The Coddling of the American Mind
- How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
- By: Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff
- Narrated by: Jonathan Haidt
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines.
-
-
Only Praise
- By TJ on 12-02-18
By: Jonathan Haidt, and others
-
Girls on the Edge
- Why So Many Girls Are Anxious, Wired, and Obsessed - and What Parents Can Do
- By: Leonard Sax
- Narrated by: Andrew Colford
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Girls on the Edge, psychologist and physician Leonard Sax argues that many girls today have a brittle sense of self-they may look confident and strong on the outside, but they're fragile within. Sax offers the tools we need to help them become independent and confident women, and provides parents with practical tips on everything from helping their daughter limit her time on social media, to choosing a sport, to nurturing her spirit through female-centered activities.
-
-
So informative.
- By Customer on 10-04-22
By: Leonard Sax
-
Dopamine Nation
- Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
- By: Dr. Anna Lembke
- Narrated by: Dr. Anna Lembke
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting....
-
-
Interesting but feels incomplete
- By Chris on 09-02-21
By: Dr. Anna Lembke
-
Screen Schooled
- Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse Is Making Our Kids Dumber
- By: Joe Clement, Matt Miles
- Narrated by: Jean Rystrom
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the past decade, educational instruction has become increasingly digitized as districts rush to dole out laptops and iPads to every student. Yet the most important question, “Is this what is best for students?” is glossed over. Veteran teachers Joe Clement and Matt Miles have seen firsthand how damaging technology overuse and misuse has been to our kids. On a mission to educate and empower parents, they show how screen saturation at home and school has created a wide range of cognitive and social deficits in our young people.
-
-
robot reader
- By BJ Prax on 10-10-19
By: Joe Clement, and others
-
The Big Disconnect
- Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age
- By: Catherine Steiner-Adair, Teresa H. Barker
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the focus of family has turned to the glow of the screen - children constantly texting their friends, parents working online around the clock - everyday life is undergoing a massive transformation. Easy availability to the Internet and social media has erased the boundaries that protect children from the unsavory aspects of adult life. Parents often feel they are losing a meaningful connection with their children. Children are feeling lonely and alienated. The digital world is here to stay, but what are families losing with technology's gain?
-
-
Predictably alarming & disconcerting
- By William J Brown on 03-13-15
By: Catherine Steiner-Adair, and others
-
The Conscious Parent
- Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children
- By: Dr. Shefali Tsabary
- Narrated by: Dr. Shefali Tsabary
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Instead of being merely the receiver of the parents' psychological and spiritual legacy, children function as ushers of the parents' development. Parents unwittingly pass on an inheritance of psychological pain and emotional shallowness. To handle the behavior that results, traditional books on parenting abound with clever techniques for control and quick fixes for dysfunction. In Dr. Shefali Tsabary's conscious approach to parenting, however, children serve as mirrors of their parents' forgotten self.
-
-
Heals both the parent and the child!
- By Ja H on 03-03-15
-
The Shallows
- What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
- By: Nicholas Carr
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Weaving insights from philosophy, neuroscience, and history into a rich narrative, The Shallows explains how the internet is rerouting our neural pathways, replacing the subtle mind of the book reader with the distracted mind of the screen watcher. A gripping story of human transformation played out against a backdrop of technological upheaval, The Shallows will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.
-
-
It is not consistant, so it is frustrating.
- By Adam Shields on 08-03-12
By: Nicholas Carr
-
Digital Madness
- How Social Media Is Driving Our Mental Health Crisis—and How to Restore Our Sanity
- By: Nicholas Kardaras
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Nicholas Kardaras answers the question of why young people’s mental health is deteriorating as we become a more technologically advanced society. While enthralled with shiny devices and immersed in social media, our young people are struggling with record rates of depression, loneliness, anxiety, overdoses and suicide. Our immersion in toxic social media has created polarizing extremes of emotion and addictive dependency, while also acting as a toxic "digital social contagion”, spreading a variety of psychiatric disorders.
-
-
Couldn’t finish it, so repetitive and superfluous and dramatic.
- By Mike on 09-16-22
-
Play
- How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul
- By: Stuart Brown, Christopher Vaughan MD
- Narrated by: Michael Hinton
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We've all seen the happiness on the face of a child while playing in the school yard. Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless, all-consuming, and fun. But as Dr. Stuart Brown illustrates, play is anything but trivial. It is a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. We are designed by nature to flourish through play.
-
-
Message and content great, professional reader too serious for a book called Play!
- By Sara B aka Mommy on 10-26-17
By: Stuart Brown, and others
-
The Art of Screen Time
- How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life
- By: Anya Kamenetz
- Narrated by: Anya Kamenetz
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Finally there's a no-nonsense, don't-panic, evidence-based guide to one of the biggest challenges facing parents today: managing a world where screens are everywhere we look. With this book, Anya Kamenetz - a journalist, an award-winning expert on both education and technology, and a mother of two young children - takes a refreshingly practical approach. She surveys both the experts and hundreds of fellow parents to find out how they really manage screens at home - for their children and themselves.
-
-
A well-structured survey for intensive parents
- By Tom Craven on 09-11-18
By: Anya Kamenetz
-
The Self-Driven Child
- The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control over Their Lives
- By: William Stixrud PhD, Ned Johnson
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Many of us know we're putting too much pressure on our kids - and on ourselves - but how do we get off this crazy train? We want our children to succeed, to be their best, and to do their best, but what if they are not on board? A few years ago, Ned Johnson and Bill Stixrud started noticing the same problem from different angles: even high-performing kids were coming to them acutely stressed and lacking any real motivation. Many complained that they had no real control over their lives.
-
-
Alt title: Okay ideas to help kids of rich parents
- By S. Ma on 08-10-22
By: William Stixrud PhD, and others
-
How to Raise an Adult
- Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success
- By: Julie Lythcott-Haims
- Narrated by: Julie Lythcott-Haims
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In How to Raise an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims draws on research; on conversations with admissions officers, educators, and employers; and on her own insights as a mother and as a student dean to highlight the ways in which overparenting harms children, their stressed-out parents, and society at large.
-
-
Target Audience- Upper-Middle Class
- By Savy shopper on 06-02-16
What listeners say about Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David L.
- 12-02-18
Comprehensive, Relevant, Essential
I highly recommend this book to all parents – from those expecting a child to those with children in college, but this book is equally relevant to non-parents – to anyone wishing to understand the myths and messaging that are driving their own and society’s tech habits – how these are effecting us, and what to do about them. The author helps us understand the nature and impact of today’s family’s common digital screen tech habits on children and childhood, how our tech habits are driven by design for commercial interests, and the potentially serious risks as well as likely consequences that inappropriate digital tech exposure and habits can have on child development, adulthood, and the relationships between parents and children, siblings, friends, and adults.
Richard Fareed, does a remarkable job of clearing out the substantial clutter that confounds our perceptions due to the "digital myths" and conflicting messages we are constantly hearing about – with respect to the benefits and banes of digital technology, and our resulting susceptibility – mainly due to the overwhelming pro-tech biased media and other voices that promote and recommend more and more screen time to younger and younger children. These interests tend to encourage the over consumption of entertainment technology (e.g. TV, video gaming, social media, streaming media, etc.) and age inappropriate digital pastimes. Fareed comprehensively addresses the various myths and opposing arguments, and discusses why its important to clearly understand what’s being said and to know whether there are any financial motivations or biases accompanying claims and recommendations.
I’ve listened to several books that address digital wellbeing as well as a few that promote the more liberal consumption of tech by children, teens, and adults, and have consequently found this audiobook earns a well deserved maximum stars in every category. At only 6h 15m, one can easily glide through this book in a week or weekend; hopefully you will find it as worthwhile as I have.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- JJ
- 10-08-18
Every parent and future parent needs to read this book.
This book blew my mind. It changed our lives. Do not pass up listening to this book. The brains of your children are depending on you. I have gifted this book to multiple people and it is a main subject of conversation now.
I am pretty sure the narrator is actually a computer.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- SRMc
- 08-18-19
Great book, lousy digital narration.
With four kids, we found this book incredibly relevant. We've been concerned with some volatile behaviors after heavy use of gaming or social media by both our teens and pre-teens. Getting kids to cut back can be tough and we have the constant "comparison" to other parents' leniency which we find in talking to those parents isn't factual. This book provides validation and hard scholastic data to our concerns about the impact of heavy use of games, tablets, phones, etc. on children's brains as well as underscoring how much the tech industry is in the background pushing these on our kids as "healthy". It also provides some guidance and solutions on approaches to dealing with children as well as teens.
My gripe with the Audible version is with the narration. I have been through dozens of books on Audible, Although sometimes there was normal flow in the narration, I found the narrator's cadence and flow at times choppy and stiff, sounding monotone and almost robotic as if the spoken words had been pasted together by computer. Either the narrator did a lousy job or Audible thinks its okay to digitally fabricate parts of the narration. I found that almost insulting given the subject matter of the book. You might consider reading this one instead.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!