Parenting, Technology, and Progress: A Conversation with Dr. Susan Walker

Earlier this year, bedtime was the hardest part of my day. I’d read parenting books, asked friends for advice, and tried everything I could think of—but nothing helped. Then I found the Good Inside app from Dr. Becky, and for the first time, bedtime became something we could actually work on.

That experience made me wonder: why did that app work so well? And how can parents find tools that actually help? I reached out to Professor Susan Walker at the University of Minnesota to talk about tech and parenting. Her advice comes from teaching courses, research, writing a textbook on families and technology and consulting with the UN.

But first, a little validation at the volume of information available on parenting:

“Following guidance to parent can become it’s own job. I think it also can feel really, really overwhelming. It’s like ‘if I'm gonna keep up with all of this, what time do I have when I'm working a full time job?’ ” - Dr. Walker

Read on or watch the interview on YouTube or listen to Parent Tech wherever you get your podcasts.

Parent Tech: From Agrarian Labor to Digital Childhood

Parenting techniques and expectations evolve alongside technology, according to Dr. Walker. For example in agrarian societies children were seen as economic contributors—you had a lot of them because they could work the land:

“If we think about 300 years ago, children were very utilitarian. Families had a lot of children because they needed them to work on the farms… That’s very different from our sense of parenting today.” — Dr. Walker

Walker says that with industrialization, that changed. Schools became more essential, labor laws shifted, and childhood became something to protect rather than just a phase of work training. Following that, there was a medicalization with doctors offering guidance and tracking children’s developmental stages.

Now, children aren’t about economic necessity. Instead, many of us invest in them because they are wonderful, magical, and interesting. We think about their emotional well-being, their future potential, and how we can help them navigate the world.

The same way industrialization changed work and parenting, information technology shifts work and parenting. So much of modern life is tied to information technology and parenting is too. But we haven’t fully reckoned with how different that makes things.

“My childhood was very predictable because nothing really had changed a great deal. You know, from when my parents were growing up. Well, everything has changed now with regard to technology and children's introduction to technology.” — Dr. Walker

And, Walker says, things have changed for parents looking for advice too.

Read on for more or watch Walker’s thoughts here:

New Parenting Challenges And New Connections

A generation ago, parenting wisdom came from your own parents, the neighbor down the street, or maybe a friend you met for coffee. Now, it comes from everywhere—podcasts, Reddit threads, TikTok creators, online courses, AI-powered advice apps. If you have a parenting challenge at 3 AM, you can get guidance in seconds from experts or strangers who have been through the exact same thing.

Dr. Walker highlighted how this abundance of information is both a gift and a challenge. We’re no longer limited to the experiences of a few people in our immediate circles, but at the same time, we’re overwhelmed with choices. Which expert should you trust? Which method will work for your child? It’s easier than ever to access parenting advice, but harder than ever to filter it, contextualize it, and know if you’re making the right choice.

This also presents a challenge: How many people have actually raised kids in the age of generative AI? How many parents have seen a child go from toddlerhood to adulthood with a smartphone in their hand the whole way through? We’re all in uncharted territory, and yet, the very technology changing things is also what helps us navigate it.

To sift through this, she suggests looking at expertise, credentials and how the advice makes you feel. Ultimately, Dr. Walker wants you to feel confident: “When all the information goes away, it’s just you and your child. What I want is for parents to feel as confident as they possibly can.”

And, Walker says parents can lean on the powerful connecting ability of technology: “in the very early research on parents and technology usage was actually driven by parents who had a special needs child. There were parents who were not finding a resource that they needed in their physical environment. They didn't know any other parents, say, who had a three year old with a neuromuscular disorder. And so, they could go on and join a chat room or a discussion forum, and that's where they got information.”

To her, connecting with other parents is the number one thing parents should get from technology.

Parenting Tools Support Parenting Roles

I like to think about technology as a tool and Dr. Walker does too: “The way I look at technology is that it's a tool, right? And like any tool, we choose a tool based on what we need it to do for us.” - Dr. Walker

Knowledge, monitoring, connection: three distinct needs we have as parents all potentially supported with technology and all supporting different parental roles. Apps that help us do things like learn, track, remember and connect.

Walker explains: “it could be that I'm monitoring my children's health. I might be monitoring their play dates. I may be in a divorce situation, and so between my partner and I, we're monitoring and coordinating where the child's going to be at what time.”

Walker also points out that one of tech’s biggest benefits, especially for busy parents, is efficiency. “Efficiency is the pushback if people were to say ‘let's go back to the 1960s’. Or the counter to ‘life was better before we had technology’,” she said. “Well, was it though? There are tremendous efficiencies that technology does offer us.” It’s true: we can get parenting advice at any moment, order necessities in a few taps, track a child’s sleep, or have on demand access to every kids show we might want. When time is short we focus on efficiency, sometimes even to the detriment of being present.

Weighing Pros And Cons Of Tools

Walker says it’s not just splintered attention or lack of presence that can be an issue for parents turning to technology. In our conversations I realized I can use an app to track my child’s sleep, but does that make me feel more in control or just more anxious? I can monitor their location at all times, but does that make me a more effective parent or just a more stressed-out one? Walker sees that these tools don’t create new dilemmas; they amplify existing ones.

Amplifying dilemmas might be something we want to opt out of. But the other reality is that devices are woven into every aspect of our lives. Walker says: “I know people that are like, no phones, my kid's not going to have one. It's almost impossible. My college students would all always point out this hypocrisy because in some of their classes, they would have professors who would say no technology in the classroom, no laptops, no phones or whatever. And they would say, but at the same university, I can't even go to a bookstore and buy my books anymore. Everything is online.”

For Walker, choice is part of what helps: “I think it's great that all these tools are out there, but you are a unique individual and a unique family. You can choose which tools to use.”

These choices can be hard and without clear answers. My experience interviewing other parents shows me I’m not alone. I do know that the Good Inside app worked well for me and I’m still a regular user: there’s something about the content delivery and focused structure that just works for me. And, I surprisingly like the generative AI/chatbot component. But others might prefer a podcast format or an audio book or talking directly to other parents (I do frequent parenting Reddits quite a bit).

And, interviewing other parents about technology for their kids indicates a landscape that’s populated with phones, watches, tracking devices, and streaming shows just to name a few things.

Making Choices Without Clear Answers

I started Parent Tech thinking that understanding tech would make me a better parent and I would find new apps and services. And it has helped me—but not because of the reasons I expected. What’s really changed is that I’ve become more conscious of what I’m doing as a parent, what my goals are, and how my kid is feeling. The apps, devices, services, platforms aren’t self-contained solutions. Instead, what helps is the act of thinking about the situation in new ways and aided by these new tools. Technology isn’t an answer—it’s just part of the equation.

In the absence of obvious answers, it comes down to fundamental questions that parents have asked for decades (or longer):

• Who do I want to be as a parent?

• What do I hope my child feels and experiences?

• What information and tools can help me achieve those goals?

Whatever you’re turning to, I hope it’s helping you.

What are you using? What are you excited about? Send me an email and tell me about it.