A hub, not another opinion.

Real research on the impact of digital overload on children and youth already exists, published studies, peer-reviewed journals, credentialed researchers working on exactly these questions. But that research was never built for a tired parent to find at 9 pm. It sits behind paywalls, buried in academic language, scattered across hundreds of separate papers, while a single confident, well-produced opinion on social media can reach a million people in a day. Good research doesn't automatically win against easy content; it just takes more effort to find, and more effort to read once you do.

This site exists to close that gap. It's a hub, research and expert thinking on digital wellbeing and emotional intelligence, already found, already read, and organized by the questions parents and teachers ask. Written for beginners, not specialists. Some of it is adapted directly for children themselves. And for anyone who wants to go further, every claim links back to its original source, so the door to the deeper research is always open.

As a mother, a student, and a citizen of both online and offline worlds, I thought it was worthwhile to capture these perspectives and practices in one place in order to share them with others.

Why I Put This Together

My first child was born almost ten years ago, but my questions about children and technology started much earlier. I watched my younger brother grow up beginning in 1998. Being nine years apart, I was closely involved in his upbringing, which very much revolved around the stationary computer in our living room. I wouldn't say that this affected him negatively, but his childhood was definitely different from how I spent my days from the age of six onward. At the same time, he was very active and involved in our street boys' squad, jumping from garages, climbing poles, and riding his bike across half the city. By the time I became a mother, I had already watched one child grow up alongside technology. I wanted to understand what would be different for my own children.

At almost the same time, something seemingly unrelated was happening in my homeland. Crimea, part of Ukrainian territory, was annexed by the Russian Federation, and my entire family had to adjust to living under a different legal system. Travelling to see them became much harder. I made that journey many times, in all seasons, with a stroller, two children, and two suitcases. I physically experienced what it meant to navigate a changing environment without having control over the system. I could not change the circumstances themselves, but I could decide how to navigate them while protecting the values that mattered to me.

Years later, when I started wondering how to approach screen time with my children, I realized that the situation felt familiar in a way: media culture had already entered children's lives, and there was not much I could do about it. I could spend years fighting against it, wishing it were different, or trying to keep my children completely outside of it, but they would still have to live in this world. Just as I had learned to navigate a system I could not immediately change, I wanted to understand the digital environment my children were growing up in, learn how it works, identify what could be changed, protect what mattered to me, and find ways to use what was available to us in our favour.

01Born Into It

Today's children are not adapting to a media-saturated world - they were born into one. If you were born after roughly 2004, when smartphones and constant connectivity became the norm, you likely have no memory of life without them.

While strategies for maintaining a healthy online/offline balance are not always straightforward, every parent and teacher navigating this is making decisions in real time, often relying on their experience and intuition. What complicates this situation is that each family navigates what is realistic, what is the main trend in society, and what looks like a healthy choice today. Zooming out, asking a broader question: what kind of relationship with technology will best prepare young people for the future? Developing healthy digital habits is not only about protecting well-being today but also about fostering self-regulation, adaptability in digital space, and ultimately employment and mental health in the future.

This kind of immersive living requires specific skills to sustain a balanced life - skills that integrate emotional intelligence and digital competence are interdependent. Together, these form what recent scholarship names Digital Emotional Intelligence.

The importance of these skills is likely to grow. By 2030, demand for social and emotional skills, including empathy, collaboration, and self-awareness, is projected to increase substantially across major economies, even as concerns have been raised that opportunities to develop some of these skills may be challenged by changing patterns of digital interaction.

02Explore the Site

Five sections, each standing on its own - start wherever the question in front of you actually is.

Living Well OnlineBuilding a healthy family digital culture and taking a real interest in kids' media lives.
Digital EQWhy technical skill without emotional skill isn't enough, and how self-regulation develops in children.
AlgorithmsWhat a recommendation feed is actually optimizing for, and how to work with it at any age.
Living Well OfflineThe offline foundations - movement, creativity, belonging - that make online guidance land.
How My Grandma Fell Under SurveillanceA scrollytelling story about algorithms, written for a family to read together.